The rise of the digital currency

Chinese billionaire Cai Wensheng, founder of photo touch-up app and smartphone maker Meitu and a well-known angel investor, said in a recent online chat group that he believes blockchain is the biggest bubble the world has ever seen, and missing it would be the biggest mistake anyone can make. Cai, with a net worth of US$1.84 billion estimated by Forbes, made his first bucket of gold buying and selling dot com domain names in the late 1990s. Despite regulatory crackdowns and speculative behaviors in the market as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency experience volatile price gyrations, Cai believes that there are still enormous investment opportunities in the sector. "Blockchain is the biggest bubble the world has ever seen, but bubble is the catalyst for technological revolution," Cai said in a recent Wechat group chat organized by the Chinese blockchain community. "Similar to the industrial revolution and the dot com bubble, the underlying technology changed th

Coinbase is hiring a chief financial officer (CFO). This would be a significant move in the company's growth plans but also raises questions about whether the company plans to launch an initial public offering (IPO). Coinbase Coinbase i s a US cryptocurrency exchange founded back in 2011 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsan. It has two core products. One is a Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX) that trades a variety of digital assets. Coinbase is reported to have had revenue of $1 billion in 2017. The company was valued at $1.6 billion last August. Hiring a CFO is top priority for Coinbase Often adding a CFO to a company is looked at as a sign that the company is contemplating an IPO. However, with Coinbase it may simply be that it needs a CFO to properly manage its complicated business model. Coinbase is already in late-stage talks with several candidates. Tim Laehy a veteran CFO had already joined the company last October but just as an interim CFO. He is not expec

While investors in XRP may be feeling a tinge of disappointment regarding the crypto’s recent 5.9% drop in value, the smart money is on investment in  Ripple  being a long game – and here’s why: Ripple  is strengthening access to emerging markets in Brazil, India and China. Figures from the World Bank suggest that global remittance payments are on course to increase by approximately 3.4% – that’s $466 billion – in 2018, with two of the previously mentioned countries (India and China) having the highest incoming flows last year. Emerging markets are home to 85% of the global population, accounting for nearly 60% of global GDP. With this comes a need for efficient, cost-effective and transparent payment systems – something which RippleNet provides. Exciting new partnerships Brazil’s largest private-sector financial institution (Itaú Unibanco) and a leading Indian bank (IndusInd) have announced plans to use Ripple’s xCurrent technology to facilitate quick and easy cross-border

In the past, when cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have split in two, it was as if money fell from the sky. Take Bitcoin’s August fork, for instance. Mathematically speaking, one split in half results in two halves. But instead of adhering to that set of logic, that particular fork resulted in one plus a little extra. So while the price of Bitcoin hovered around $2,750, the price of it’s “forked” coin, Bitcoin Cash,  traded initially at $200 . Thus, investors who owned Bitcoin woke up the next day with one Bitcoin Cash for each Bitcoin they owned, and all the wealthier for it. Such forks are one way to get cryptocurrency “airdrops,” or apparently free digital coins distributed to users that meet certain criteria. And it’s a phenomenon some cryptocurrency investors have chased in recent months in the hopes of profits. As Fundstrat’s Thomas Lee notes, that interest is enough for tokens with upcoming forks to maybe do well. Notably, Lee calls for investors to generally stay out of

Cryptocurrencies  are very well known for their volatile prices, and despite only being two months into 2018, we have already seen one crash in prices. Despite thinking that the prices were recovering once again, many seem to have taken yet another dip in value. Bitcoin is down more than 7.5%, and the other top ten virtual currencies have not faired any better. You come to expect this to a certain extent; like we said, volatility is one of the biggest worries when it comes to investing in virtual currencies, but normally you can usually predict when these dips will happen. However, with regards to this latest dip, there is no bad news to dictate. In fact, it is quite the opposite, and there are several interesting developments that are hitting the crypto market, namely SegWit, which is an upgrade for Bitcoin, which has been designed to reduce transaction times and costs for trading Bitcoin. Ripple  is another coin that has loads of great things happening, but is still seeing a d

Xrapid is likely to push XRP into the $100 price range. We just have to look at the organisations which are currently involved with the pilot trials – these include Western Union, MoneyGram. At present, these companies are just using XRP in small channels, but fast forward to the situation once full implementation happens, and we could see these organisations using XRP throughout their back end for  transactions  such as liquidity transfers. It is all down to the security which  Ripple ‘s Xrapid provides to its users, not to mention its cost effectiveness as a platform. In a trillion dollar industry, if Ripple is able to partner with the likes of Western Union and MoneyGram, as well as partners such as IDT and Cuallix, we could really see them take the platform to the next level, with the ability to get up inside that coveted $100 price range. If XRP can corner this market, there is so much potential. Any time people send money to each other around the world via bank transfer, i

Bitcoin continues to yo-yo after a particularly rough month for the notoriously volatile cryptocurrency, The price dipped back below $8,000 on Sunday morning after briefly surpassing $9,000 earlier on Saturday, the latter being a week high. Bitcoin has lost more than half its value since hitting an all-time high of more than $19,000 at the end of last year. The cryptocurrency has landed in the sights of regulators in recent weeks, dampening some of the appetite among investors. Last week  Lloyds  became the first major bank in the UK to ban the buying of bitcoin with its credit cards. And  Irish banks are the latest to be revealed to be monitoring the situation , following on from others in the UK. An official from the ECB  called it a gold rush with no gold , while finance heads in  France and Germany called for a crackdown .

Finance has become untethered from productive work. This post originally appeared in Money Stuff . We have talked a  few   times  around here about a socialist republic that has been hit hard by sanctions imposed by the U.S. government and that, in response, is planning to issue its own cryptocurrency to raise money. I mean Venezuela. Venezuela's government is the one that is planning to issue a cryptocurrency to replace money that it has lost due to the policies of the U.S. federal government. In  other news : "The City of Berkeley, one of the epicenters of liberal California, is considering a turn to cryptocurrency to reduce its reliance on federal funding in the Trump administration. Berkeley would become the first city in the US to hold an initial coin offering (ICO) — a type of crowdfunding campaign that's become popular in the past year. The city would raise funds by selling digital assets called "tokens" that are backed by municipal b

Despite an expected $9.2 billion in spending by 2021, blockchain still harbors plenty of risk. The stock market may have practically tripled its historic returns in 2017, but compared with the cryptocurrency market, it looked like a flat line. Last year, cryptocurrency market caps as a whole increased by more than 3,300%. It would have taken the stock market decades to deliver similar returns. There were no shortage of catalysts, either, with news-driven events, partnerships, and a weaker U.S. dollar driving investors to take a chance on virtual currencies. But standing head and shoulders above these catalysts was the rise of  blockchain technology . Why businesses are so excited about blockchain Blockchain is the digital, distributed, and decentralized ledger that's often tethered to cryptocurrencies and is responsible for recording all transactions without the need for a financial intermediary, like a bank. Its evolution is a result of inefficiencies seen in the cur

Blockchain technology can be used for many different purposes. One of the use cases worth exploring is immutable and scalable data storage. That is precisely what the Bluzelle project is all about. This “next-gen database protocol” focuses on the decentralized internet and its associated applications first and foremost. While that sounds impressive on paper, it’s time to dig into the nitty-gritty of this project. WHAT IS BLUZELLE’S END GOAL? When it comes to decentralized applications – or  dApps,  as they are often called – centralized infrastructures are insufficient. Not only are cloud-based databases not the right way to go, but they also cause major scaling concerns for the entire industry. As such, Bluzelle wants to combine the best of the sharing economy with the token economy. Anyone can rent out excess computer storage space while dApp developers can use this space to store and manage their applications’ data. HOW WILL BLUZELLE ACHIEVE THIS GOAL? Under the hood,