Image a scenario where you need different messengers to send different types of messages — for example, WhatsApp for text messages, Viber for audio, Telegram for video, etc. Rather inconvenient, right? But this is exactly what happens in finance: There is no way to send both digital fiat money and cryptocurrency from a bank account without extra steps. It’s not affecting the masses just yet, but after the issuing of national digital currencies, or central bank digital currencies, in the next few years over the world, the situation is about to become complicated. We need to start looking for a …

The financial and economic narratives surrounding Bitcoin (BTC) barely scratch the surface of what makes the digital asset so unique, according to Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy. In an exclusive interview with Austin Davis for Cointelegraph, Saylor calls Bitcoin “a masterpiece of monetary engineering,” and one that will likely go down in history as the world’s “first engineered monetary network.” “Once you understand money is monetary energy and you understand Bitcoin is a monetary energy network, then you start to appreciate the fact that it either does or does not respect the laws of thermodynamics. If it doesn’t, it means …

King Midas is most famously remembered through the fable we tell our kids that the king could turn everything he touched into gold. At first, it was a great idea that his greed turned even food into gold, leaving him wealthy but unable to live. Robinhood’s CEO and its board had the impossible King Midas dilemma this week: deciding whether to side with their customers and let them make over $15 billion in profits or halting trading and allow only the sale of GameStop (GME) to enable the money-hungry shorts to cover their position at lower prices and avoid massive …

Following the explosive growth of decentralized finance in the second half of 2020, we’re asking ourselves what the next chapter will look like. What would it take for DeFi to expand beyond crypto-native assets and communities and start eating financial services as we know it? The second half of 2020 surpassed many of our expectations, and the market has only accelerated since then. Total value locked in DeFi rose from less than $1 billion at the start of June to $13 billion at the end of the year and over $27 billion since then. Catalyzed by Compound’s COMP token launch, …

Decentralized finance is a form of finance that does not require traditional intermediaries such as banks, brokerages or exchanges. All of the work that would normally be handled by these institutions is instead performed by technological solutions including smart contracts and blockchain. The legacy banking system and DeFi are markedly different. While traditional finance is slow to develop and adapt, in just a few years, companies operating in the DeFi sector have built a parallel financial system from the ground up. There are payment systems, lending protocols, exchanges and more. There is also a growing stablecoins market of fiat-pegged assets …

It is a useful exercise for those of us working in tech to cast our minds back to the dot-com boom and bust of the late 1990s. There is a lot that can be learned from that time. The period was crucial for the United States and the global economy and a defining moment for the tech sector. It is helpful to consider those helter-skelter days when assessing the current crypto ecosystem. Most people will rightly point to the glut of Super Bowl ads coming in at over $2 million each or the initial public offerings that rose more than …

The wonder of the universe is that it is always in motion and, because of this, that everything changes over time. So, anything can be something completely different tomorrow, just like that — no guarantees. Karl Marx expressed this brilliantly with the phrase "All that is solid melts into air." The same occurred with Bitcoin (BTC), which over the years has undergone transformations, and from a cypherpunk idea, it has become a simple Che Guevara T-shirt. Be your own bank The following words, which Eric Hughes published in “A Cypherpunk's Manifesto,” was the great orientation of the developers in the …

It would be fair to admit that after 2020 and all it has put us through, making any predictions for the upcoming year is most likely to be a game of blindfold. Meanwhile, I am certain that humanity has much to learn from its past transgressions, and will move forward by correcting our mistakes and weaknesses. That’s what we always do. Undoubtedly, the major driver of our development this year was the COVID-19 outbreak. The effects of the ongoing global pandemic on every aspect of our lives will form our future, and there are some tendencies we started last year …

As Bitcoin’s (BTC) price continues to climb ever higher, more and more people are beginning to educate themselves on how they can enter the cryptocurrency market. However, the realities of cryptocurrency ownership (long complicated addresses, passphrases and security risks) all remain barriers to adoption for new users. Programmers and technologists generally assume a level of understanding and ability with tech innovations that the average person on the street simply is not equipped with. A survey carried out by our team saw 75% of respondents say they found cryptocurrency transactions stressful and unnecessarily complicated. A majority (55%) said they had had …

Holding Bitcoin (BTC) in treasury will soon become a corporate standard. Wall Street firm MicroStrategy recently made headlines when it decided to allocate a large portion of its treasury to Bitcoin, buying over 21,000 BTC in August and almost 17,000 more in September, making its CEO, Michael Saylor, seem quite prescient already. MicroStrategy stock rallied just like BTC as well — by 50%. According to Saylor, Bitcoin was the best inflation hedge and store of value, and in his words, “Cash is trash.” His wager has, so far, been handsomely rewarding. Related: MicroStrategy buying Bitcoin shows institutional investors seek to …

Back in June, I wrote that Wall Street remaining on the sidelines is not necessarily bad for our industry. While most traditional investors are still observing, Bitcoin’s (BTC) mainstream momentum has been building over the last four months. Currently, the Bitcoin price is hovering around $18,000, steadily approaching its historical all-time high. Bitcoin is a store of value and a potential global reserve currency When we talk about asset valuation, the first step is always to understand the fundamental economics. Equities, bonds and real estate, for example, generally derive value from generating cash flows. Therefore, valuation of these assets involves …

Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, said that decentralized finance is here to stay despite many DeFi projects showing signs of being in a bubble. In a Nov. 17 interview with Russia’s news agency RBC, Zhao argued that “a lot of DeFi projects are already in a bubble, and I also believe that there are some signs of a bubble in the DeFi industry, but this does not mean that DeFi will eventually disappear entirely.” Zhao went on to say that the DeFi industry has a lot of potential for growth, noting that DeFi still …