Author: Forbes
Last Friday in my closing monologue on Market on Close, I outlined the deep bear case for bitcoin. It’s straightforward: rising interest rates should be King Crypto’s Achilles heel. Policy tightening from the Federal Reserve is exactly what crypto thought leaders have told us could never happen, and it’s happening. Coiners have been selling a story of central bank profligacy and ineptitude that is now being very precisely disproven as we speak. Fed Chair Jerome Powell is choosing to fight inflation at a more aggressive pace than just about anyone thought he would – or, in the case of bitcoiners,…
Once again, Xbox chief Phil Spencer is weighing in on a new issue, and seems to understand it better than most other breathless tech execs. Before, it was his position on NFTs, now he’s talking about the metaverse, and identifying a core problem with it that everyone else in the sector seems to be missing. In a new interview with Protocol, Spencer talks about the main issue the metaverse idea currently faces: “We’re spending a lot of time as leaders coming together talking about the learnings that we’ve had and how the technical underpinnings might come together. But more fundamental to…
The recent report that Sotheby’s has had over $100 million in Non-Fungible Token (NFT) sales year to date is raising questions among Creators and Collectors about what are NFTs, what role NFTs play, and will play, in the art market and whether Creators and Collectors should jump onboard the NFT bandwagon. Those who create and collect art can try to just ignore the impact of NFTs but they cannot ignore how NFTs fit into the current Intellectual Property (IP) rights which protects both Creators and Collectors. There are great opportunities and great risks for Creators and Collectors in this market today. To assess these…
Mobile gaming giant Zynga ZNGA +0.2% said it will partner in a strategic alliance with software developer Forte to create blockchain-based games built around Zynga’s portfolio of intellectual property and vast user base. “Our goal is to bring a new level of quality and fun into Web3 and blockchain games, while also providing a safe and trusted ecosystem that will keep our valued players and communities entertained for years to come,” said Zynga’s recently hired VP of Blockchain Gaming Matt Wolf. “We’re excited to partner with Forte because of the team’s long‐term vision and approach to blockchain solutions and web3 development.” “Web3” is a…
Mediahub Worldwide decided to rent space in the metaverse instead of buying digital real estate, and the process of getting into their virtual digs took just two days. Interpublic Group is the parent company of the global media buying and planning agency headquartered in New York. Mediahub’s clients include Netflix, Chipotle, Morgan Stanley, E-Trade, and the NBA. The company shared on Twitter that its one of the newest residents of Decentraland, a decentralized 3D virtual reality platform. Simeon Edmunds, SVP and creative director of Mediahub’s R+D Lab, said the exercise was partly about getting familiar with the metaverse so it could help clients, but also realizing it’s almost…
Former Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, who recently quit the social media giant he cofounded to grow his payments company, has predicted bitcoin will eventually replace the U.S. dollar. The bitcoin price, having surged over the last 12 months, has fallen back in recent weeks, losing more than 30% of its value in just over a month. The recent bitcoin price collapse has also hit the ethereum price, which is down almost 20%. Bitcoin leaped higher shortly after Dorsey’s tweet, however, reversing a downward trend over the last few days that added 5% to the bitcoin price over the last 24 hour…
Confidence is often an underrated key to success. If you’re confident in your knowledge and abilities (or at least your ability to learn), success is on your doorstep. But if you aren’t confident in your investing prowess, it’s difficult to believe that you’re making the right decisions. Not to mention, if you lack both confidence and knowledge, it’s harder to get where you want to be financially. We can’t teach you everything you need to know about investing in one day. But we can give you the tools to help you fake it ’til you make it – and learn…
What do Mickey Mouse, the Gucci bee and Snoop Dogg have in common? Besides being animal-themed, all three are coming to a metaverse near you. The metaverse, as I’ve explained before, is part of the next iteration of the internet some are calling Web 3.0—and it promises to upend everything as we know it. Within the next few years, we will all work, play, socialize and invest in this all-encompassing ecosystem, whether that means attending a professional conference at a virtual Four Seasons hotel, shopping for a new designer handbag for our digital avatar or swinging through the New York City…
In this new world of Meta, I’m going to go meta and make a neologism. It is “neoinsaniae.” It means: a new madness. The most recent one is the phrase “20 times less,” which, while you know what it means, i.e.: one twentieth’ or 5%, it is not a logical operation. Of course, 1/20 times less is fine. The “x times less” meme is leveraging the laziness of writers and is spreading like a fungus over the financial media. It is only a matter of time before you will read bitcoin is 2 times less than its ATH. Another neoinsaniae…
2021 was the year, unarguably, that blockchain and cryptoassets moved from a fringe topic and emerging conversation to a mainstream idea and item that has moved to the mainstream financial markets conversation. That said, and even taking into account the rapid rise in market capitalization of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, there is still substantial ambiguity surrounding the future of this sector. Even as regulatory and policy makers began to make substantial progress in both the understanding and treatment of cryptoassets, much ambiguity remains. Predicting the future is always a trick business, and is especially so when trying to forecast or…