Day: August 13, 2017

Entrepreneur Loi Luu discusses why he believes liquidity is a key challenge keeping decentralized exchanges from going from concept to production.

The goal for Tezos is to create the smart contract language as quickly as possible in order to facilitate programmers wishing to build applications on the platform.

The price of the digital currency Bitcoin has passed the $4,000 mark on Aug. 12, 2017, driven by strong Japanese demand.

The world of cryptocurrency debit cards is getting more competitive. Some new players have emerged with an ICO as of late. Both TenX and MonaCo will be making some significant waves in the coming months, by the look of things. Speaking of TenX, they are working on various improvements to make things more exciting for … Continue reading TenX and MonaCo Move Closer to Issuing Their Ethereum & Bitcoin Debit Cards

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The continuing surge in the price of bitcoin has seen it climb to over $4,000 for the first time since the cryptocurrency was created in January 2009.

Supported by upward momentum established by the lock-in of the Bitcoin Core development team’s scaling solution Segregated Witness (SegWit), bitcoin achieved a new all-time high price at $4,168.

Earlier in August, the activation of SegWit was essentially finalized through the lock-in of Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 141. As a result, the activation period of SegWit was initialized and according to various data analysis platforms, SegWit is expected to activate on August 22.

Upward momentum of the bitcoin price set by SegWit was carried by the rising demand from institutional investors such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs, the $90.4 billion US-based investment banking conglomerate, encouraged its investors, clients and portfolio managers to consider investing in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, considering the market’s increasing confidence in bitcoin.

More importantly, Goldman Sachs analysts, along with JP Morgan researchers, told their clients in official corporate letters that regardless of their lack of understanding of the technical intricacies of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, the $135 billion market cap of cryptocurrencies cannot be ignored.

JP Morgan analyst Robert D. Boroujerdi stated:

“With the total value nearly $120 bln, it’s getting harder for institutional investors to ignore cryptocurrencies. There are currently over 800 cryptocurrencies out there, though just nine have a market cap in excess of $1 billion.”

Other analysts including CNBC’s Brian Kelly attributed the elimination of uncertainty in bitcoin’s ability to scale, increasing adoption of bitcoin in regions like Japan and rising demand from institutional investors as the core three factors behind the recent rally of bitcoin price.

Tom Lee, Major Wall Street strategist from Fundstrat, also told CNBC in an interview that he expects bitcoin to outperform all US-based stocks by the end of this year and continue its strong rally throughout 2017.

Lee, emphasizing the value and importance of bitcoin as a robust store of value, stated:

“I think bitcoin is an under owned asset with potential for huge institutional sponsorship coming. It has a lot of characteristics that are very similar to gold that I think will make it ultimately attractive as an alternate currency. It’s a good store of value,” said Lee.

Lee further emphasized that the integration of bitcoin by the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), the largest options exchange in the US, through its partnership with Gemini will lead to a surge in demand from institutional investors.

“Institutions have to directly buy the coin today through a broker, but both the CBOE and the CFTC have opened up options futures trading, so I think it’s going to grow in holdings,” said Lee.

He also noted that he prefers bitcoin over gold, would “easily” rather invest in bitcoin than stocks, and that bitcoin will become the best performing asset of 2017 without a doubt.

In upcoming weeks, as SegWit activation nears and the market continues to demonstrate confidence over bitcoin’s ability to scale, bitcoin price will likely rise without a minor correction, until $5,000 as analysts predict.