Blockchain — Crypto — Artificial Intelligence — Megaprojects
NOTABLE DEVELOPMENTS THIS WEEK
Crypto Flash Crash Wipes Out $400 Billion In Market Value on Bitcoin Day As El Salvador’s President ‘Buys the Dip’
The cryptocurrency market posted staggering losses Tuesday as a wave of selling pummeled the prices of nearly every single coin — unraveling the gains priced in by a retail trading mania ahead of El Salvador’s first day accepting bitcoin as legal tender. Here are the major takeaways and interesting points:
· The value of the world’s cryptocurrencies plunged to a low of about $1.9 trillion by 11:15 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, nearly 15% less than 24 hours prior and reflecting a loss of more than $410 billion, according to crypto-data website CoinMarketCap.
· Heading up market value losses, the price of bitcoin dipped 15% to less than $43,000 — the lowest price in nearly three weeks — before quickly paring some of the losses and settling at about $46,810 by 11:50 a.m. EDT, still 9% lower than one day earlier.
· Meanwhile, ether, binance coin and Cardano’s ada plunged between 13% and 18% apiece, while Solana was the only token posting an increase in value, climbing 8% after a stunning run-up of nearly 36% over the past week.
· In the middle of the flash crash, El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced the country took advantage of crashing prices to purchase an additional 150 bitcoins, boosting its holdings to 550 total coins, worth about $25 million.
Sentiment started taking a hit early Tuesday as El Salvador’s wallet experienced technical difficulties within hours of its debut, forcing President Bukele to announce it would temporarily go offline. The heightened trading volume then fueled speculation about institutions selling off large stakes and even triggered brief outages and trading delays on many of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, including Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini.
Cybereum feels that the volatility in the crypto market is not going to go away in the foreseeable future. It is an evolving market with a fundamental conflict between the desire for decentralization and the need for regulation, with numerous experiments being tried out. It is a viable and needed resource that lends immense value globally. The Bitcoin community is strong and vocal with a desire that it remains a leading coin with a range of $45,000 to $55,000 in the short to mid-term, holding hope for further breakouts as it becomes more widely adopted. Even if Bitcoin is superseded by better technologies, the passion and advocacy of its community, fueled further by their passionate desire for returns, will make it viable for some time to come.
Read the Forbes article here
CYBEREUM
Cybereum: Developments
The cybereum team met with John Wolpert, a highly influential leader in the enterprise blockchain and crypto space. We discussed how cybereum’s protocol has several similarities and can be complementary to that of his latest project, Baseline. The Baseline Protocol is an open-source initiative that combines advances in cryptography, messaging, and blockchain to deliver secure and private business processes at low cost. The protocol will enable confidential and complex collaboration between enterprises without leaving any sensitive data on-chain.
Link to the Baseline page here, and John’s LinkedIn here; follow him for the great information.
The concept of linking a private permissioned blockchain to a public “Mainnet” can be found in cybereum’s patent application here (ProBloCh is the cybereum corporate parent), in inn our ACM paper here.
Coinbase calls out SEC after threat to sue over cryptocurrency lending product: The crypto exchange accuses the regulator of “really sketchy behavior.”
Coinbase slammed the US Securities and Exchange Commission late Tuesday after saying the cryptocurrency exchange had received a warning from the regulator over its upcoming Lend program. In a series of tweets, CEO Brian Armstrong accused the SEC of “really sketchy behavior” and “creating an unfair market.” Coinbase disclosed in a blog post on Tuesday that it had received a notice from the SEC, signaling the regulator’s intent to take the company to court. The crypto exchange had been engaging with the SEC about its Lend product for six months before receiving the notice last week, Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said in a company blog post.
As we mentioned earlier, crypto is an evolving market with a fundamental conflict between the desire for decentralization and the need for regulation. It must also be borne in mind that institutions such as the SEC evolved over time with a need for the protection of common investors and depositors.
Read the story here.
AROUND THE GLOBE
Here’s Why Most People Don’t Risk Using Bitcoin as a Currency: The digital token’s 17% plunge — in a matter of minutes — on the day El Salvador adopted it as legal tender shows the risks of using it as legal tender
El Salvador became the first country to adopt the digital token as legal tender on Tuesday, with the government’s Bitcoin wallet Chivo coming pre-loaded with $30 worth of the currency for users who register with a national ID number. But it almost immediately ran into trouble — the government had to disconnect the wallet to sort out technical glitches. Bitcoin tumbled as much as 17% in a matter of minutes, and other crypto assets and related stocks crumbled too.
El Salvador’s move is “a stunt that will completely clog the transactions for the majority of Bitcoin holders who really just want it to remain a store of value to hold,” said Carsten Sorensen, a researcher with The London School of Economics. “When individual countries seek to overnight make it legal tender, then the network will easily suffer as there already are issues with the transaction rate.”
Read why people are hesitant to use Bitcoin as their currency here.
cybereum observes that the hesitancy that common people have in using a cryptocurrency as a store for their savings is completely understandable. While there may be less hesitancy in economies in Latin America known for the volatility of their national currencies, there is still some way to go for crypto to be mainstreamed. The esoteric nature of the technology, its volatility, lack of institutional protection for investors or depositors is all to blame. This is not helped by the noncritical, holier-than-thou attitude of may in the crypto industry which is often a veneer for an intense desire for personal gain.
