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Showing posts with the label opinion

3 theses that will drive Ethereum and Bitcoin in the next bull market

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Cryptocurrency is going to break out of its bubble and reach critical mass thanks to layer-2 blockchains — and a couple of other factors. After 2021, we entered an era in cryptocurrency where people stopped talking only about financial decentralization and started to broadly discuss the tokenization of everything, thanks in part to nonfungible tokens (NFTs). This shift represents a critical perspective that is set to guide three theses for the upcoming bull market . To fully grasp these theses , it is crucial to understand that everything is data. Money is data. Your engagement with a brand is data. Your credentials are data. The ticket for your favorite show is data. Since 2021, the ecosystem has increasingly started to store a large part of this data in the form of fungible tokens, NFTs, and timestamps on the blockchain, which acts as a data repository in this context. Related: Expect new IRS crypto surveillance to come with a surge in confiscation While not all data needs to be on...

How Bitcoin miners can survive a hostile market — and the 2024 halving

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Bitcoin mining is becoming harder — which means miners will have to spend more to receive fewer rewards. But there are still ways to be profitable. Only seven months remain before the next Bitcoin (BTC) halving in April 2024. It happens approximately every four years and is a deflationary process that cuts the production of new coins by 50%. Bitcoin's halving is a high-profile event for crypto investors, and has historically led to an increase in Bitcoin's price. However, its impact on the mining industry is a more complex issue. It reduces block rewards,  one of the primary revenue streams for miners. The 2024 halving will reduce it from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. That’s why miners must adapt their strategies to compensate for the reduced rewards resulting from the halving. Let’s explore the strategies and alternative income sources that may help Bitcoin miners amid hostile market conditions. Changing mindsets Bitcoin mining involves a competitive process where miners vie for ...

10 years later, still no Bitcoin ETF — but who cares?

The Securities and Exchange Commission will inevitably approve a spot Bitcoin ETF, but we should retain some healthy skepticism about the risks it will create. The first spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) application, filed in July 2013, was denied in both 2017 and 2018. A decade has passed since that initial application, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has rejected more than a dozen additional applications and repeatedly punted the date for deciding on others. The ETF saga’s latest iteration saw Bitcoin (BTC) jump more than 6% as industry advocates celebrated a court ruling that affirmed what we already knew — that the SEC’s rejection of Grayscale’s ETF application was “arbitrary and capricious.” This was, of course, followed by the SEC delaying its decision on all seven pending Bitcoin ETFs, and a subsequent price drop. Now we wait as the SEC deliberates on its next move and Grayscale pleads for approval. Related: Bitcoin ETFs: Even worse for crypto than central exch...