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The Bitcoin Lightning Network Grows Even If You’ve Forgotten About It
21.2.2021
Source: Adobe/Евгений Вершинин
You may be forgiven for forgetting about the Lightning Network (LN). The layer-two scaling solution that aims to help Bitcoin (BTC) manage a much higher workload, has been seemingly consigned to the sidelines by the ascent of bitcoin as a store of value...
Public and Private Money Can Coexist in the Digital Age
21.2.2021
Tobias Adrian is the Financial Counsellor and Director of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Monetary and Capital Markets Department. Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli is a Deputy Division Chief in the same Department.
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We value innovation and diversity—including in money. On the same day, we might...
Microstrategy Is Not For Microsoft and 20 Crypto Jokes
20.2.2021
As bitcoin (BTC) soared over USD 50,000 this week, American politicians engaged in a high-stakes crypto pledge wars, while MicroStrategy raised over USD 1bn for its bitcoin purchases. The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, started “to dabble a bit’’ in bitcoin, even though Microsoft said...
Solana Founder On Critical DeFi Challenges and How To Fix Them
18.2.2021
Anatoly Yakovenko. Source: A video screenshot, Youtube/Solana
High transaction fees and security are the two most pressing challenges in the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry, according to Anatoly Yakovenko, Founder and CEO of blockchain developer Solana (SOL). The fee challenge can be solved...
A Wave of Giants Rushing to Invest in Bitcoin Could Derail the Stock Market
14.2.2021
Gavin Brown, Associate Professor in Financial Technology, University of Liverpool.
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After Tesla announced it has invested USD 1.5bn in bitcoin and expects to start accepting the cryptocurrency as a payment for its electric vehicles in the near future, the bitcoin price went soaring. It went...
Global Debt Landscape Sends a Warning Sign
14.2.2021
Xuehui Han is an Economist in the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s Fiscal Affairs Department. Paulo Medas is Deputy Division Chief in the same department, while Susan Yang is a senior economist in the department.
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Many countries entered the pandemic with elevated debt levels. Our...
Decentralized Exchanges Set To Accelerate in 2021
13.2.2021
Cryptocurrencies are decentralized forms of electronic money, yet for the most part, the places where you obtain cryptoassets — exchanges — are thoroughly centralized. This centralization has a practical and a political downside, since not only does it introduce single points of failure in which...
Tesla's BTC, Apple's Chance, Mastercard's Stablecoins, and 20 Crypto Jokes
13.2.2021
This week started with Tesla announcing USD 1.5 billion worth of bitcoin (BTC) purchase, thus prompting a new BTC price all-time high of USD 48,000. The CME Group launched the trading of ethereum (ETH) futures, while an analyst said that Apple has a “a clear multi-billion dollar opportunity...
Banning Disruptive Online Groups Is A game of Whac-a-Mole
13.2.2021
Andrea Baronchelli, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, City, University of London.
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From Washington DC to Wall Street, 2021 has already seen online groups causing major organised offline disruption. Some of it has been in violation of national laws, some in violation...
Tesla’s Bitcoin Buy Comes As Earlier Large Investors Retreat
12.2.2021
Philip Gradwell is Chief Economist at Chainalysis. He provides data and insight on the uses of cryptocurrencies and the direction of the market at markets.chainalysis.com.
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On 8 February, Tesla disclosed in an SEC filing that it had “invested an aggregate USD 1.50 billion in bitcoin”...
7 Traditional Investors Who Said Bah Humbug to Bitcoin
11.2.2021
While there is no shortage of investors who have given bitcoin (BTC) their seal of approval, there is a possibly even longer list of financial Svengalis who would happily dance on the cryptoasset’s grave.
Check out this list of just a few of the investment top guns who just love to nay-say about...
BBC Features Stories of Traders who Struck it Rich on Bitcoin
10.2.2021
The mainstream media is continuing to focus on bitcoin (BTC) in the wake of the token’s Tesla-fuelled record-breaking rise. And in the UK, the national broadcaster, the BBC, has delved into the world of British and international crypto investors, unearthing tales of folks hit the jackpot with BTC...
Epic Says A Bunch More Epic Store Exclusives Are Still On The Way
8.2.2021
Epic pissed off a lot of people when it first revealed that big games like Metro Exodus and Borderlands 3 would be Epic Games Store timed-exclusives on PC. Now it says that even more exclusivity deals are on the way.Read more
Are GameStop-Style Surges In Crypto Any Different From Old Pumps & Dumps?
7.2.2021
Source: Adobe/epic_images
The biggest financial craze of the first month of 2021 was neither bitcoin (BTC) nor any other cryptoasset. It’s GameStop (GME), or rather the anti-short collective buying that has emerged around this stock of a troubled US company and other heavily shorted securities.
In...
WallStreetBets Is Disrupting Financial Markets — Possibly Permanently
7.2.2021
Pierre-Yann Dolbec, Assistant professor in marketing and Research Chair in Complexity and Markets, Concordia University.
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If the financial world follows the pattern seen a decade or so ago in other markets, such as fashion and music, Reddit’s WallStreetBets (r/wallstreetbets) phenomenon might...
IPOs, M&As, and New Token Sales To Bring Fresh Capital For Crypto in 2021
6.2.2021
Few commentators have remarked on one big difference between the 2020 and 2017 bull markets: the fact that record bitcoin (BTC) prices weren’t complemented by a wave of high-profile initial coin offerings (ICOs). Unlike 2017, there were few notable ICOs that took advantage of heightened interest...
Pumping, Dumping, Rallying, Jumping and 20 Crypto Jokes
6.2.2021
This eventful week in crypto, ethereum reached a new all-time high, insiders shared a number of bullish signs for BTC, dogecoin dumped, then pumped again, tron dumped, then XRP doubled and dumped, while Ripple gave its preliminary legal response to the SEC and SBI’s crypto exchange started offering...
GameStop: I'm A WallStreetBets 'Degenerate' & It's Just Getting Started
5.2.2021
Mohammad Rajjaque, Program Director, Accounting and Financial Management Division, University of Sheffield.
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I joined the WallStreetBets forum on Reddit almost two years ago. But I was far from the image of the typical “bored, young Reddit trader” that has been portrayed in the media lately....
Can't Beat Crypto Regulators? Educate Them
5.2.2021
Crypto industry players urge each other to focus more on educating regulators to avoid overregulation and help authorities to foster financial innovation.
According to Dave Hodgson, Chief Investment Officer at NEM Group and Managing Director at NEM Ventures, “one primary obstacle that we are facing...
GameStop and Dogecoin Show How Memes Can Move Markets
4.2.2021
Source: Twitter/@elonmusk
Jason Potts, Professor of Economics, RMIT University, Chris Berg, Senior Research Fellow and Co-Director, RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub, RMIT University.
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One of the most difficult problems in finance right now is figuring out the fundamental economic value...