No, Ray Dalio, bitcoin won't be killed by the govt.
Journalism 101: Check Your Sources
The price of Litecoin skyrocketed on Monday by nearly 30% after a fake press release issued by GlobeNewsWire announced that Walmart would begin to accept Litecoin as an official payment method. The news quickly spread through the media, with major news outlets such as CNBC and Reuters writing about the big move apparently before verifying their sources...
The crypto community was quick to point out that the release was fake — the email used in the release, “WALMART-CORP.COM,” did not route to the official Walmart site, and was apparently registered only last month. Also, no announcement appeared on Walmart’s online newsroom, where such news would surely be prominently listed. Both Walmart and the Litecoin Foundation released statements verifying that the release was, indeed, bogus. Litecoin’s price promptly calmed back down soon after. The moral of the story: your high school English teacher was not crazy. Check your sources and don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
NFT Mayhem
OpenSea, the current leader in the NFT market, has fired their head of product, Nate Chastain for violating company policy. The allegations were first brought up in a tweet on Tuesday.
The accusations aimed at Chastain for buying NFT drops before they were listed and then reselling them for profit shortly thereafter launched an immediate response from OpenSea, disavowing any knowledge of the actions and launching new policies to prevent OpenSea employees from engaging in such conduct in the future. In a followup statement released Thursday, they confirmed that Chastain did violate their trust standards and was promptly asked to resign, which he accepted. In the same letter, OpenSea also defended their company as a whole, basically saying that NFTs are new territory, they take this very seriously, and that they are still “evolving their policies”.
It’s About Time
Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, has joined the list of Time’s most influential people of 2021. The Russian-born programmer is the first innovator in the crypto industry to make the list. It’s another acknowledgement of the undeniable impact crypto has made in our world. Ethereum’s market cap, worth more than $400 Billion, is continually expanding, and Buterin spearheads the project with a deep understanding of all the complexities of the crypto space. His inclusion in this list is also part of Time’s declaration to add crypto-immersion into their reporting and business model. Kieth Grossman, president of Time, said in an interview earlier this month, “Time isn’t even in the first inning of what we want to do with crypto”. In the past year, Time has announced their intention to search for a new CFO who is “comfortable with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies”. They also auctioned three NFT’s of their 1996 cover theme “Is ____ Dead?”, and will be holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets. We can’t help but wonder, when will Satoshi finally become “Man of The Year”?
Not quite a Ray of Sunshine
If you’re looking for comfort after seeing those Bitcoin numbers go sideways recently, best not ask Ray Dalio what he thinks. The founder of the largest hedge fund in the world, Bridgewater Associates, recently had some harsh words to say about the future of cryptocurrency in America:
“I think at the end of the day if it’s really successful, they will kill it and they will try to kill it. And I think they will kill it because they have ways of killing it”.
Dalio is not against crypto, and has stated many times that it is a good alternative to cash, and that he holds, “a certain amount of money in Bitcoin”. However he also has said many times that it does not have “intrinsic worth,” referring to its intangibility (as opposed to gold, in which he is heavily invested). In an interview at the SALT conference held at the Jacob Javits Center in NYC this past week he also said:
“You have El Salvador taking it on and you have India and China getting rid of it. And you have the United States talking about how to regulate it and it could still be controlled”.
Dalio has long been a revered source of financial knowledge and intuition, and his opinion is reminiscent of that of fellow hedge fund manager and gold-enthusiast, John Paulson (whose opinion we covered just two weeks ago).
Almost everyone agrees that governments will try to kill Bitcoin. That’s why bitcoin was created, to have a competing currency that couldn’t be shut down — and bitcoin achieved this by becoming the first decentralized currency with no focal point to shut down. So they can try, but the extent to which governments will succeed in their attempt is another question.
Cryptocurrencies are not currencies because… reasons…
European Central Bank President, Christine Lagarde, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV that cryptocurrencies are not currencies. Full stop. Perhaps she followed her proclamation with “full stop” because she had nothing to support her statement. Although she did continue to elaborate a little, her remarks seemed to have nothing to do with why cryptocurrencies wouldn’t be currencies.
The interview came across as a strange plea from someone who desperately does not want cryptocurrencies to be currencies.
