Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: People, Culture and Tech
Investment management firm VanEck has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. VanEck is clearly hoping that the departure of SEC chairman Jay Clayton will give its latest ETF application a chance.
“Bitcoin all-time high. Merry Christmas,” Peter McCormack, host of the What Bitcoin Did podcast, summarized to Twitter followers. “It’s roast bear for Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.”
Bitcoin’s white paper came out a decade ago this week, and perhaps a positive sign of its success is this week’s big, dire headline: “Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C.” However, there’s a problem (or, perhaps, not really a problem): the paper was written with the assumption that the Bitcoin bulls and HODL bros are right. Reality may say otherwise, to the benefit of the global environment. Written by seven academics at the University of Hawai‘i and published by Nature, the piece used a significant part of Alex de Vries’ work on his site, Digiconomist. De Vries has been sounding the alarm regarding Bitcoin’s threat to the…
With bitcoin prices bouncing around from day to day and even minute to minute, it’s incredibly difficult to tie down finance professionals to a concrete prediction on where the cryptocurrency is heading. Nobody wants to be wrong, after all, and with cryptocurrencies’ extreme volatility, it’s highly likely that their predictions could be very wrong. So how do finance gurus handle the topic of bitcoin’s future without painting themselves into a corner? Increasingly, they avoid the question and talk about blockchain instead. Recently, it’s practically the default response of people in the industry to start singing the praises of blockchain when anyone asks them about bitcoin. Wall Street Journal tech columnist…
