Bitcoin’s obituary and a Starbucks blockchain: Bad crypto news of the week
Check out this week’s Bad Crypto podcast.
It’s been a tough week for Bitcoin. The price has fallen more than 8 percent and dipped below $10,000 on three consecutive days. Analyst Willy Woo, though, thinks it’s all looking good. He believes that on-chain indicators, such as the NVT ratio, suggest a bullish outlook, while Su Zhu of Three Arrows Capital believes that a surge to $100,000 is more likely than a fall to $5,000.
The son of gold investor and Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff is convinced. The 18-year-old college freshman just bought some more Bitcoin, against his father’s advice. Asked whether they want to follow the student who’s never had a job or the 30-year investment professional, Twitter picked the Bitcoin fan.
At least the young Schiff will be set for the end of the world. Podcaster Adam Curry has told comedian Joe Rogan that the apocalypse is coming, and as you hide in your bunker and battle the zombies, you’re going to need a Bitcoin. It’s no wonder that Bitcoin is now the world’s sixth-largest currency. And that’s despite dying again. As the cryptocurrency lost value this week, the Bitcoin Obituary got to add another eulogy to its list.
As you’re mourning the 382nd death of Bitcoin, you might want to hold off on loading up on Bitcoin Cash, though. It turns out that Tim Draper didn’t recently buy some or thank Roger Ver. It looks like his Twitter account was hacked or a paid ad went wrong.
But if the apocalypse does come, maybe the GoodDollar will save us. The eToro token will set aside a daily amount as a basic income for the platform’s participants. Andrew Yang would like it. Or alternatively, you could just hack a wallet. Crypto Twitter user Alon Gal has declared that he has a wallet containing 69,000 Bitcoins. He just doesn’t have the password. Hackers have been trying to crack it for two years with no luck. Did they try “password123”?
The number of active decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, has jumped over the last year. It’s up 660 percent, from ten a year ago to 76 now. At the same time, the first phase of the MakerDAO debt auction is reaching its final stages. Bidders have already committed to buying $2 million worth of Maker tokens using Dai.
It’s not only DAOs that are on the up, though. Starbucks is now getting ready to deploy a blockchain to trace its coffee beans and enable greater product transparency. China’s Hainan Wenchang International Aerospace City will use a blockchain to support its Smart Brain Planning and Design Institute. And Bangladesh is about to get its first blockchain-powered remittance service. The service will let Bangladeshi expats in Malaysia send their money home.
There have been a few setbacks too this week. The Texas State Securities Board has detected some more cryptocurrency scams. Texas Securities Commissioner Travis J. Iles named Kumar Babu Bondesi and Darwin Eric Balusek as the alleged operators of the Forex Birds and PEK Universe scams. They could face up to ten years in jail. Balusek is also known as “Bitcoin Pope.”
And YouTube pulled the plug on Sunny Decree’s crypto livestream. The platform said the video violated its policy against “harmful and dangerous” content.
Finally, Jay Cassano, Cointelegraph’s editor-in-chief, has been promoted to CEO. His position will be taken by Jon Rice, previously the managing editor of Cointelegraph Magazine. Congratulations to them both.
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Joel Comm is an internet pioneer, New York Times best-selling author, futurist speaker and co-host of The Bad Crypto Podcast. That’s a fancy way of saying he writes words, says things and loves to play with cryptos.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
