Author: Forbes
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency prices have staged a late Santa rally this week with the bitcoin price climbing over $50,000 per bitcoin—even as Tesla’s Elon Musk and Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey spar over the future of crypto. The bitcoin price climbed to levels not seen since before its early December crash, boosting the ethereum price. Meanwhile, smaller cryptocurrencies, including ethereum and its biggest rivals, have rocketed in recent weeks. Ahead of the crypto market’s pre-Christmas surge, bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor’s huge bitcoin price prediction was revealed—as well as his personal near-$900 million bitcoin stash. MicroStrategy’s chief executive Michael Saylor, who’s transformed his business intelligence…
Many will recall the ICO craze of 2017 as crypto startup projects raising capital exploded onto the scene from May of that year with bitcoin hitting all time highs and surging above $15 thousand by December. Projects flooded the market seeking capital to mint new coins and promised groundbreaking changes. The ICO landscape rapidly descended into chaotic scenes of indiscriminate buying and selling often for quick profit, disregarding long-term sustainable growth and investor interests. Hype and expensive marketing campaigns often misled investors, many of whom succumbed to greed instead of performing even cursory due diligence. Though there were many excellent projects, some still…
Tis the season for blockchain game announcements from big publishers, with Jam City announcing a new division focused on the red-hot sector, along with its first play-to-earn title and the pending sale of 10,000 accompanying characters built on non-fungible tokens. This week’s announcement marks a big move by Culver City, Calif.-based Jam City into new kinds of games beyond their mobile-focused portfolio. The first title from the new division is called Champions: Ascension, a multi-platform fighting game built on Web3 protocols where players earn cryptocurrency. As part of Champions: Ascension, Jam City will mint and sell 10,000 unique “Prime Eternals” characters built on…
We are out to achieve a mission,” says 30-year-old cryptocurrency entrepreneur Nader Al-Naji, holding court over plates of rare steak at a private room in Quality Meats, one of those Midtown Manhattan temples of red-meat excess. That directive, he says, is to find an optimal blend of social media and blockchain technology. “I feel like money and social together can compete,” says Al-Naji, who’s in the mood for a filet-quality fete after commencing on this earlier in the year. In April, he launched BitClout, a site part Twitter, part crypto marketplace. Its users post while minting their own personally branded…
JPEGs going out for tens of millions of dollars, legacy auction houses selling blockchain-based artworks and accepting cryptocurrency for payment, fashion brands issuing digital wearables…2021 will certainly go down in the annals of crypto history as the year of NFTs. The still nascent market for non-fungible tokens has had its best year on record, generating over $23 billion in trading volume—a frenzy away from less than $100 million recorded last year, according to data from DappRadar. The Lithuania-based blockchain analytics company, which tracks more than 30 networks that support decentralized applications, estimates that the number of unique active wallets engaging with NFTs…
The bitcoin and cryptocurrency community has this week been locked in a blazing row over the development of web3—the idea a decentralized crypto and blockchain-based version of the internet could replace the Silicon Valley-centric web 2.0. The bitcoin price has climbed this week, helped by former Twitter TWTR -1% chief executive Jack Dorsey who trashed the ethereum-based web3 vision and made a bold bitcoin prediction. Now, Tesla TSLA +7.5% billionaire Elon Musk, who’s this year called for dogecoin developers to upgrade the meme-based cryptocurrency in order to better compete with bitcoin and ethereum, has weighed in on the web3 row—revealing why he’s “pro doge.” “My goal is to build…
Cryptocurrencies were born to be volatile, says Jihan Wu, but their growth over the long term will far outweigh their price fluctuations. “Even if 95% of today’s coins lose all their value and disappear, the remaining 5% will grow massively,” he says. Wu’s optimism is borne of his experience. He discovered bitcoin and recognized its early promise more than a decade ago, when he saw it being used to buy computer hardware and IT services in online forums like Bitcointalk.org. But to break out of its niche market and gain wider acceptance, bitcoin would need far more infrastructure to support it. So,…
The year 2021 has seen the popularization of two phrases, occupying the mind-space of technology enthusiasts and investors alike: non-fungible tokens — better known by their acronym ‘NFT,’ and decentralized finance, commonly abbreviated as ‘DeFi.’ Since I addressed the relevance of the former in this 2018 Forbes article, I will turn to the latter here, contrasting DeFi with fintech solutions and their impact on rent-seeking third parties in the realm of financial services. Premises A first-principles view on the innovation of financial services will focus on the central tenet of technology: the increase of productivity of human activity, freeing up individuals’ attention —…
The news cycle is awash with supply chain problems and inflation. What had once been a niche academic concern seems to have reared itself into significant policy effects and narratives. Terms like the “Phillips Curve” and intricate cost curves on shipping have come to the fore as the world economy deals with aggressive monetary policy, unpredictable health policy, and fiscal stimulus paired with lockdowns. Is inflation “transitory” as a result of COVID-19? Or is it here to stay? What role does bitcoin have to play when it comes to inflation? 1- Inflation is more global than the American context it’s…
A battle is currently underway for the future of the internet via Web 3.0 and blockchain technology. Only it is not what most investors think. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and current chief executive at Block on Tuesday summed up Web 3.0 in a single tweet: You (users) don’t own web3. Venture capitalists do. He has a point. Investors should ignore the hype and buy Meta Platforms and Alphabet. The current internet, Web 2.0, is a massive communications network where users exchange packets of data for digital products and services like Facebook and Google. This information is collected, mined and used primarily to…