Bitcoin will rise to $ 500,000 – according to Catherine Wood Ark Investment CEO

Bitcoin will rise to $ 500,000 – according to Catherine Wood Ark Investment CEO

by | May 21, 2021 | News

Ark Investment CEO Catherine Wood expects Bitcoin to rise to $ 500,000 despite the latest price swings this week. 

Catherine Wood has once again expressed her opinion about bitcoin. In an interview with Bloomberg TV, the founder of Ark Investment Management said that bitcoin is now “sold out”, and even during yesterday’s fall, the cryptocurrency may not have reached a minimum yet. 

She describes the current market as emotional and says the bottom is difficult to predict. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has almost completely won back yesterday’s losses. 

During the interview, Wood expressed her opinion on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s comments on the environmental issues posed by bitcoin miners. The use of solar energy in the mining industry is about to skyrocket, she said. 

Wood also noted that prospects for Bitcoin ETF approvals in the US this year have been boosted by the recent fall in prices. 

“Now that we’ve gone through this correction, the odds are better,” she said. 

Last month, Catherine Wood said that Bitcoin could become the new gold standard as it can increase purchasing power. She also believes that bitcoin will continue to grow and the first trillion in cryptocurrency capitalization is just the first step. 

Earlier, Catherine Wood also warned BTC holders in the United States against converting crypto assets into fiat currency pending tax changes.

China creates another blockchain national hub in Yunnan and Alibaba joins it

China creates another blockchain national hub in Yunnan and Alibaba joins it

by | Mar 17, 2020 | News

China has opened a new blockchain centre in Yunnan province. This new centre aims to allow companies to trace their products and fight the sale of fake ones. China hopes this centre will become a new technology hotspot.

The blockchain centre in Yunnan was opened on Sunday, March 15.

The centre is hosted in Wuhua Technology Industrial Park in Kunming, the capital city of the Yunnan province, which is considered a remote and a less-developed province in China.

Quite a few blockchain companies will operate from the new technology centre, including a platform which will trace consumer products and food using blockchain. This is the first provincial platform of this sort.

By opening this new facility in Yunnan, the authorities hope to boost the adoption of blockchain in the region and that Yunnan will become a national hub for technology.

Some of the most known companies that occupy the new technology centre in Yunnan include the e-commerce giant Alibaba, Hyperchain and the blockchain-as-a-service provider Uni-Ledger. Currently, there are a total of 24 companies that occupy the centre.

To aid the tracing and sourcing locally produced goods, a new protocol was set in place, called the “Peacock Code,” in which companies and providers participate.

The name of the “Peacock Code,” comes from the idea of the local ethnic communities which believe that the peacock is sacred. The Yunnan region is among the largest producers of agricultural products in China. Their main products are tobacco, tea, sugar and coffee.

But the blockchain platform can be be used for other functions as well (medical records management, legal evidence management, e-invoicing and supply chain financing) as they are used in other Chinese major cities.

Also, there was also set in place a blockchain alliance, which included 38 members (research institutions, educational groups and companies) that are not present in the region.

The movement towards blockchain adoption started in 2019, by the government, when they introduced the first blockchain-based invoice system, in the province, for touristic attractions.

The entire world is taking notice of China’s efforts to pursue the blockchain adoption as a mainstream technology and this could lead to China being a leader in this sector.

Last year, the president of China himself urged the adoption of the blockchain technology in the country, arguing its abilities to reduce costs to business processes.

How is the Federal Reserve Bank of NY affecting the crypto market

How is the Federal Reserve Bank of NY affecting the crypto market

by | Mar 16, 2020 | News

The coronavirus outbreak is affecting all areas of our lives and a financial crisis seems to be knocking at our door. On March 12, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced the offering of $1.5 trillion in loans to banks. These short-term loans are meant to “address highly unusual disruptions in Treasury financing markets associated with the coronavirus outbreak”.

The distribution of the sum has been divided into weekly batches.

On the same day of the New York Fed’s announcement to inject money into the bond market in their attempt to stabilize it, the Dow Jones industrial average index (the stock market index that measures the stock performance of 30 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States) went down by 10%.

The New York Fed also announced that it will buy $60 billion worth of Treasury bonds over the next month, starting with March 13. The problems reported by investors over the past week reminded the Fed about the 2008 financial crisis and that’s why it has decided to act so quickly.

What happened to the crypto market after WHO declared the Coronavirus pandemic

On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a pandemic, after considering over 120 000 cases of infection and over 110 countries affected by the spread of the virus.

According to Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general:

“This is not just a public health crisis, it is a crisis that will touch every sector,”

“So every sector and every individual must be involved in the fights.”

One day later, on March 12, the price of Bitcoin lost over $1,000 in value in under 30 minutes and the depreciation continued to values comparable to last year’s prices.

Bitcoin, the most known cryptocurrency lost 50% of its value in a matter of hours, and at some point dipped under the $4,000 benchmark.

By March 13, Bitcoin had recovered some of the lost value, and it was trading at almost $6,000.

Following the March 12 plunge, Bitcoin continued to lose value over the weekend, and the sudden increase in volatility made some analysts reconsider if Bitcoin is or ever was a safe-haven asset.

Other top cryptocurrencies have seen major value losses during the same time.

Is crypto in a bear market?

The stock and crypto markets are in a bear market after the response of the US Federal Reserve to the Coronavirus crisis to diminish interest rates to near zero. The crypto market registered a brief fall after this announcement on Friday, March 15.

Anthony Pompliano, the founder of Morgan Creek, told Decrypt:

“I don’t make calls on short term price movements, but I generally think the Fed’s actions are (a) going to be proven to be ineffective and (b) are bullish for Bitcoin long term,”

This was the second initiative of the Fed to aid confidence in the financial markets.

On Sunday, the Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell, stated during a conference:

“We will maintain the rate at this level until we’re confident that the economy has weathered recent events and is on track to achieve our maximum employment and price stability goals,”

Blockchain to aid the Coronavirus crisis

Timothy Mackey, an adjunct professor at the UC San Diego, has added blockchain solutions to teach on his global health policy course, which has the coronavirus crisis at the core.

The goal is to point out the faulty points in supply chains to health officials and to identify which hospitals from around the world are prepared to treat patients.

Others are trying to profit off the coronavirus crisis publicity and have issued Coronacoin, which destroys coins every 48 hours, based on the number of new global infection cases and deaths.

What are the crypto enthusiasts responding to the Coronavirus crisis

How is coronavirus affecting the cryptocurrency markets

How is coronavirus affecting the cryptocurrency markets

by | Mar 12, 2020 | News

The recently declared coronavirus pandemic has triggered massive sell-offs of stocks and cryptocurrency, and some turned back to considering gold a safe-haven.

There are many concerns regarding the global economy and with the announcement of shutting down the economy of Italy, other governments are starting to think about future measures to stop spreading the virus.

As of March 12, 109 countries have reported the spread of the infection and massive travel cancellations have been announced. Europe is facing a fast widespread and many business interruptions.

Stock and commercial markets might be facing a halting period, and Bitcoin’s market cap has shrunk by $50 billion in the curse of the last month, since the 12th of February, when only 28 countries were infected by the Coronavirus.

According to Coindesk, some analysts are questioning whether Bitcoin can be a safe haven from financial panic and to be treated similar to gold. The price of Bitcoin is under $7,400, the lowest in the last 2 months.

But it is worth to bear in mind that bitcoin was created after the last global financial crisis in 2008 and survived for over a decade.

Chamath Palihapitiya, a billionaire investor, told CNBC that believes that Bitcoin is not correlated to any other assets, such as stocks or bonds. He urges other investors to put 1% of their assets into Bitcoin.

“I don’t think when you wake up and see a coronavirus scare and the Dow down 2,000, you should not be going in and buying bitcoin. That is an idiotic strategy,” Palihapitiya said. “I think a reasonable strategy is to say 1% of my net worth should be in something completely uncorrelated to the world and how the world works. You quietly over some period of time accumulate a position and then just never look at it again and hope that that insurance under the mattress never has to come due. But, if it does, it will protect you.”

The Approach of Big Companies to Quarantine

Tech companies form a wide range of industries that are dependent on China have been affected by the Coronavirus situation and try to adopt uniform decisions as a strategy to fight off the spreading of the virus.

Major companies have instructed their employees to work from home following the recommendations of global heald organizations.

Coinbase, for instance, has laid out the plan on how the company will act in various scenarios if the number of cases of Coronavirus rises in the vicinity of their offices. The Japan office is one most at risk.

Having plans for future possible scenarios for ensuring a low-stress environment might be critical for businesses to keep cryptocurrency available and open for the world to trade them.

The Remote World of Cryptocurrency 

Many blockchain startups form China have been forced for limiting the spreading of the Coronavirus. Some of these measured included work from home, and taking the in-person conference to the online.

The decentralized nature of the technology is an advantage to the blockchain industry as a whole because developers can build new projects without having any physical contact with an office.

With all the madness going on, an entrepreneur decided to take advantage of the free publicity and to issue CoronaCoin. The coin’s total supply is based on the world’s population and tokens are burnt every 48 hours, based on the number of those who have died or have been infected.

“Some people speculate a large portion of the supply will be burned due to the spread of the virus, so they invest,” Sunny Kemp, a user who identified himself as one of the developers, said in a chat on messaging app Telegram.

The main question of how to keep the economy afloat remains, as the coronavirus threatens to infest the entire world. Traditional stock markets have been severely hit by the overall panic, but the crypto market is still high, although there has been registered a drop.

Regardless of the evolution of the cryptocurrency market, the aim of cryptocurrency is to thrive, even through hard times, and it is not depended on its price. The most important thing is to keep the economy alive and that will allow the community to adopt its beliefs in a crypto future.

Nike, Kohl’s & Macy want to gather data from their supply chain and run experimental Blockchain

Nike, Kohl’s & Macy want to gather data from their supply chain and run experimental Blockchain

by | Mar 10, 2020 | News

Auburn University RFID Lab in Alabama has published a whitepaper which aims to demonstrate the improvement of the supply chain using the blockchain technology.

Yes, supply chains are chaos and, at least at a theoretical level, blockchain can sort things out.

The structure of this Proof-of-Concept is to enclose, encrypt, disburse and save data from several points across the supply chain on Hyperledger Fabric.

The experimental blockchain has saved data from brands such as Nike, Herman Kay, Kohl’s and Macy’s.

This pilot program is part of CHIP (Chain Integration Pilot) which is the first supply chain program to integrate item-level data streams into a blockchain.

A number of 223,036 products were saved on the blockchain; only 1% was from stores and 87% were from distribution centres. 12% originated from the place of encryption.

According to CHIP, blockchain is a solution for serialized data-sharing issues within the supply chain. The report states that the organizations were “able to record transactions containing serialized data in a common language and share that data with their appropriate trade partners.”

The same report states to be “a tremendous amount of error and inefficiency in currency supply systems,” and that using blockchain will help further eliminate counterfeit products. This will help businesses regain up to $181 billion.

To face the truth, the technology used today in most of the supply chains, were developed before the internet era and are not suited to process the huge volume of data they are facing today.

There is a lack of “an effective, industry-wide solution for exchanging serialized data between business partners,” in spite of the launch of serialized data through the use of QR codes and RFID tags ten years before. Additionally, the report contends that earlier approaches to merge framework and draw info en masse’ throughout the supply chain have been “constrained by the industry-wide ineptitude for sharing serialized data.”

Crypto World February 2020: Yemen’s Civil war, New Jersey attempt to crypto, Oil more volatile than crypto

Crypto World February 2020: Yemen’s Civil war, New Jersey attempt to crypto, Oil more volatile than crypto

by | Mar 2, 2020 | News

The entire world is pushed to the edge of their nerves as a global pandemic and civil wars are knocking on its door. What has happened in the Crypto world in February 2020?

New Jersey Lawmaker Wants to Create a Crypto License

A Lawmaker from New Jersey wants to create a crypto license for crypto exchanges. The Digital Asset and Blockchain Technology Act was introduced by Yvonne Lopez, whose proposal is to provide licences to any service of digital asset trading, storage, purchase, sales, exchange or issuing services. If the bill passes, the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance would be responsible with the licences and regulating businesses.

Oil Prices Are Now More Volatile Than Bitcoin

When traditional investors think about Bitcoin, they mostly think about its price volatility.

The volatility is determined by measuring the past prices and is typically measured for a 30-day period, calculating the standard deviation of daily price variations. But volatility only measures the price deviation and not its direction.

The price of oil has been more volatile than the price of Bitcoin.
The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil price’s volatility stood at 105.3% on Feb. 10. The oil price’s volatility hit a 4-month high of 119.6% at the end of January.

Bitcoin’s historical volatility recently dropped to 42.3%, the lowest level since September.

MoneyGram Got Another $11M From Ripple to Use Its Cross-Border Payments Tech

Ripple has paid over $11 million in the past half year to MoneyGram, as a continuation of their partnership. MoneyGram is the first money transfer company which scales the blockchain capabilities usage.

“The Company is compensated by Ripple for developing and bringing liquidity to foreign exchange markets, facilitated by Ripple’s blockchain, and providing a reliable level of foreign exchange trading activity. The Company expects that this partnership, at scale, will reduce our working capital needs and generate additional earnings and cash flows,”

Ripple is closely tied to MoneyGram and own 10% of their stocks.

Revolut Bank Valued at $5.5B in $500M Funding Round

Revolut is a London-based bank and it has raised over $500 million in a Series D funding round.

Revolut offers the option to purchase cryptocurrency to its users and it is valued at over $5.5 billion. Revolut aims to challenge the traditional bank systems, by minimizing the prices on the provides services.

Revolut has raised a total of $836 million in its funding rounds.

New Zealand Plans to Drop ‘Unfavorable’ Sales Tax Treatment of Cryptocurrencies

The Tax authority of New Zealand is considering a change in the crypto space, that would eliminate the current goods and service tax.

The current regulation considers digital currencies as a form of property and it is liable for a 15% tax when the currency is traded. The double taxation issues arise when the income tax is applied.

The New Zealand Inland Revenue Department (IRD) suggests eliminating the property tax for cryptocurrencies and keeping the income tax for these assets.

In a policy issues paper made public on Monday, the IRD states:

“Because of their innovative nature, [cryptocurrencies] will often also have different features to … other investment products. This means that some existing tax rules can be difficult to apply, involve very high compliance costs or may provide policy outcomes for some crypto-assets that lead to over-taxation compared to other alternative investment products.”

Ukraine Justice System Employee Caught Mining Crypto at Work

An IT employee of the Judicial Administration in Ukraine has been charged with illegally mining cryptocurrency at his workplace. 

The employee was working in the data system division of the court administrative department and was taking advantage of the equipment and internet bandwidth from his office to mine cryptocurrency from January to May 2018. He has also used servers from his workplace to host external websites.

If he will be found guilty, he faces up to six years in prison and he will not be allowed to work in any governmental agencies.

Yemen’s Civil War Shows the Dangers of Crypto

Yemen is in a state of civil war and is has the biggest humanitarian crisis on its hands. With half of the country being controlled by the Iran-backed Houthi militant group, which have their own crypto, locals are wary of being associated with them and with cryptocurrency.

So far, it appears using bitcoin (BTC) in a war zone may be riskier than cash, especially when illicit actors use cryptocurrency as well as civilians. 

The ongoing civil war in Yemen highlights the contradictions underlying bitcoin adoption: It’s difficult for civilians to acquire cryptocurrency without heavily regulated infrastructure that makes them vulnerable to coercion and surveillance. Such is the case in Yemen, where the Iran-backed Houthi militia controls the northern half of the country and a failing government controls the central bank in the south.

For most people in Yemen, purchasing bitcoin is nearly impossible. Most international companies avoid doing business in Yemen due to concerns over U.S. sanctions, which aren’t comprehensive like the sanctions against Iran but nonetheless raise compliance questions.

Plus, peer-to-peer markets are hampered by both cash shortages and a lack of reliable communications infrastructure. Yemeni-American researcher Ibraham Qatabi at the Center for Constitutional Rights said telecom and electricity companies are owned by governments, both foreign and domestic, depending on the region. There’s no need for a warrant if Big Brother already owns the pipes. Plus, Qatabi said, most international money transfers are monitored by local authorities.

“Everything is monitored. They have everyone’s information,” Qatabi said. “If they want to go after somebody, they’ll have access to those files.”

Hamza Alshargabi, a doctor who worked in Yemen until 2012 and briefly mined ether (ETH) after he immigrated to the U.S., agreed it’s “almost impossible” to get a safe and reliable internet or phone connection in most of Yemen. He said in big cities connectivity is “so expensive that it’s unusable,” so he can’t imagine his sister using bitcoin in Yemen.

As such, some Yemeni civilians and expats are scared to be associated with cryptocurrency, including bitcoin. If protests last year in Iran and Lebanon offered a peek at bitcoin’s limitations, then Yemen is the full picture of bitcoin usage still relying on government infrastructure. 

Coronavirus Is Changing How Crypto Markets Are Trading

The increasing fear of new pandemic is showing the financial markets as stock prices go down. Indexes are going down form the beginning of 2020. Bitcoin’s price has taken a hit and it is trading below $8,000.

One strategy some traders are contemplating to prepare for COVID-19 is not holding volatile cryptocurrency assets unless absolutely needed. That’s what Althena’s OTC desk is doing. “We manage inventory very tight and run a matched book, so the coronavirus hasn’t been a factor,” said Althena’s Leon.