Tom SpencerWith the US Federal Reserve printing up several trillion dollars of new money in 2020, market commentators have been banging the war drum. Inflation is coming! Some suggest gold as an inflation hedge, and others suggest bitcoin. But before we look at these two potential solutions to the inflation problem, let’s first consider whether inflation […]
What is Blockchain? Blockchain is a decentralized network of computing units called nodes that facilitate peer to peer transactions without the need for a third party or a larger centralized server to facilitate or validate those transactions. Currently, a trusted third party like a bank,lawyer or a government body is required to validate transactions, such […]
Just this week, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon came out strongly against Bitcoin. Calling it a “fraud“, claiming that “it is worse than tulip mania”, and declaring that he will fire any employee who trades the cryptocurrency for being “stupid”. (While somewhat amusingly admitting that his daughter invests in Bitcoin.) Also this week, several China-based Bitcoin […]
As I have been writing in this space of late, the days of the Wild West for cryptocurrency are absolutely at an end. The writing has been on the wall all summer. The latest news to hammer the point home? As September dawned last week, six more major banks joined a UBS-led effort to create […]
The regulation of the Bitcoin industry is getting even stranger. Not only are Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and token sales now subject to federal securities laws, in late August the SEC announced the temporary suspension of trading of First Bitcoin Capital Corp (BITCF). The trading ban on the Canadian company will be in effect until […]
One of the attractions of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the idea that they are not regulated by a central banking authority. It has led to some spectacular jumps in the price of Bitcoin, which is controlled by a relatively small number of global investors. The volatility in the market was even more obvious this […]
One of the most important things to remember about a digital currency is that it is just a way of transferring ownership and assets electronically. In fact, for those who are scrambling to understand both cryptocurrency and blockchain, this idea is the first, and unfortunately all too often, the only port of call. That said, […]
Cryptocurrencies are digital assets or “tokens” – akin to the idea of money – specifically designed to take advantage of the architecture of the Internet. Unlike traditional currency they have value not because of the guarantee of a financial institution or government. Instead, they have value for three reasons: their ability to be accurately “confirmed” […]
While “Bitcoin” has become a household word over the past several years, the concept of what cryptocurrency actually is goes far beyond traditional concepts of “money”. First invented by the individual or group of people known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, the original concept was to create a decentralized automated cash machine (in very simplified […]
The year 2017, for everything else it may or may not be, is already heralded as “The Year of Blockchain.” But what exactly is “blockchain” – and why is it slated to be the debutante of the ball across multiple industries? Essentially blockchain is a way of connecting distributed databases to each other. In other […]
Blockchain, the underlying technology used by Bitcoin, has implications that reach far beyond the financial services community and banks. This is where new development and implementation may have focussed so far. However, as the technology and its implications become better understood, it will rapidly expand to new industries and verticals. Blockchain systems operate as a […]
When news broke in late October that some of London’s largest banks were investing in Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies in general got another boost. According to reports, however, this latest move to embrace Bitcoin was not a positive embrace of the digital currency per se, but rather a move to stockpile Bitcoin to fend off denial of […]