Todays episode of Decoder is about a very big idea: bitcoin. The Verge has been covering bitcoin since we launched in 2011. And since then Ive heard many loud, powerful voices talking about how its going to be the future of something. Everything. Maybe nothing at all.

To be honest, Ive been a bitcoin skeptic: over the past 10 years weve seen the value of bitcoin skyrocket, but very few actual uses for what should be a revolutionary digital currency. But that value keeps going up, and it feels like we might be at an inflection point for the bitcoin story. And there doesnt seem to be a lot of gray area between the people who think bitcoin is going to change everything and the people who think its nonsense.

For this episode, I had two conversations. First I spoke to a bitcoin investor. Then, a few days later, I spoke to a bitcoin skeptic. In each conversation, I tried to play the other role but without the usual yelling and chaos that seems to characterize bitcoin debates.

The investor is Nic Carter. Hes a general partner at Castle Island Ventures, which funds startups that are building on top of the bitcoin infrastructure to make payments more accessible. Basically, making sure bitcoin can function like a currency.

The skeptic is Steve Hanke. He is a professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University and senior fellow and director of the Troubled Currencies Project at the Cato Institute. He has also advised other countries on how to deal with hyperinflation and how to stabilize currencies.

In the end, my biggest question about bitcoin is whether people are interested in it because its bitcoin or because its worth a lot of dollars.

Here we go.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Nilay Patel: Nic Carter, youre a general partner at Castle Island Ventures. Welcome to Decoder.

Nic Carter: Thanks for having me. Im really excited for this.

NP: You have kind of an interesting history. You were the first crypto-analyst at Fidelity. Now you manage investments into the bitcoin ecosystem at Castle Island Ventures. I want to start at the very beginning. What drew you to bitcoin and crypto, generally?

NC: It wasnt anything super dramatic. It wasnt like my family had our wealth confiscated by some tyrannical government or anything. As much as I, weirdly enough, wish I had a great bitcoin origin story, I dont, but I just was attracted to the playful community initially on Reddit, believe it or not. And I thought it was really cool to tip people through the internet and do P2P payments that werent being cleared through any traditional financial medium.

That was really interesting and exciting to me to have that instant, final settlement on internet payments. And then it was only with time and it took me a long time that I came to realize that there was actually a deeper, sort of philosophical underpinning behind the project, that it was a real monetary project, and it was tightly intertwined with some normative views on economics and the role of central banking in society.

NP: I want to pull back out of that. Im really interested in your perspective on what the normative aspects of central banking are and how they might change with bitcoin. But just help me out from the very beginning. How would you define bitcoin at this moment in time?

NC: So the thing about bitcoin is that we have a bit of a definitional problem because the word bitcoin actually refers to a number of different things, and that causes confusion. So on the one hand, its a protocol.

Its a set of rules that people opt into to send value through a communications medium in a final way so you get final settlement. And on the other hand, its also a financial asset, so bitcoin is the name of the monetary unit that circulates within the bitcoin protocol.

That doesnt make a lot of sense to a lot of people, but the bitcoin network is such that, really, theres only one native currency that is changing hands on the bitcoin network, and we call that bitcoin.

And as of today, all of the bitcoins are worth about a trillion dollars. So thats our problem, is that we use the same word to refer to the network itself and to the actual medium of payment on the network.

NP: I think theres a lot of focus on the dollar value of the outstanding bitcoin right now. But one thing that strikes me is there is the bitcoin network; theres the Ethereum network; theres Dogecoin, which Elon Musk just tweeted about, and it spiked in value.

Theres a wide variety of cryptocurrencies and now crypto assets, right? The NBA is selling highlight clips as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, for a quarter of a million dollars, right?

So theres all these crypto assets and crypto networks and cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin still seems like the center of that conversation. How do you think it relates to all of the others?

NC: Bitcoin is the alpha and the omega. I mean, its the originator of this whole thing. Bitcoin is the reason we have the word blockchain, right? Bitcoin kicked this whole thing off in 2009. It was the first public blockchain, the first cryptocurrency. It wasnt the first digital cash project, but it was the first successful one; the first decentralized one; the first one that people realized, Wow, we can actually transact outside of the purview of the state here. We dont necessarily need financial intermediaries.

And bitcoin has this great set of embedded values and this commitment to genuine decentralization, and genuine distribution of governance, such that no one individual or entity can co-opt or change the network. And it has this extreme resilience and robustness and this unwillingness to change or be changed by anyone.

Thats what gives it a lot of strength. Thats what a lot of the clones of bitcoin and the competitors and the alternative cryptocurrencies lack, fundamentally. Most of them are set up by corporations, venture investors, that try and own a huge percentage of the initial stake, things like that. And they have CEOs and foundations and leadership. Bitcoin is much more organic, which kind of explains its sticking power. Its this real phenomenon that people can align with. And all of the competitors, theres certainly some interesting technology out there. But its not surprising to me that bitcoin has endured in the way that it has because its kind of unique in terms of its own trajectory, its history.

And I think people really align with that. They align with the unique circumstances of its launch.

They like the fact that its pretty decentralized. I think, ultimately, bitcoin is our best shot to basically strip some of the power from governments, in the monetary context, and from large financial institutions for that matter.

NP: Why should we strip the power from governments in the monetary context?

NC: Because they misbehave. Because they mismanage their currencies, and in the US, things seem pretty much okay. Inflations not too bad. But the US experience, the experience of Americans, is not the typical experience for people globally, right? Were only something like 4 percent of the population. Your average person on the planet Earth probably does not have a high degree of trust in their banking sector. They may be living under inflation or conditions of monetary repression.

They might have to deal with capital controls, which exist so that their government can manage exchange rates. So because central banks tend to misbehave, because they tend to plunder the currency of savers in order to achieve their own government aims, we have plenty of reason to be skeptical of monetary authorities.

And I would actually extend that to the Federal Reserve. I mean, the Fed is not behaving in a way that I think is consistent with good objectives for society. My interpretation of what theyre doing is that their actions are actually worsening inequality, but thats a whole different conversation. I think the very fact that sovereign currencies do fail and you see hyperinflations, I think that justifies the existence of an alternative thats not state-controlled.

And historically, gold has been that alternative. And its actually quite a good alternative, I would say, but bitcoin just improves upon golds qualities in some critical respects.

And I think its totally valid to propose one alternative which is not state-controlled because ultimately, thats just a tool for freedom, and you cant mandate that anyone use it. Its a free choice to opt into it, but I think its really inspiring that probably around 100 million people worldwide have opted into the system so far.

So what does a Bitcoin critic think of this decentralizing potential, specifically in the context of places outside the U.S.?

Now is a good place to bring in Prof. Steve Hanke. As I said at the top, he is a professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow and director of the Troubled Currencies Project at the Cato Institute.

NP: Steve Hanke, Welcome to Decoder.

Steve Hanke: Great to be with you, Nilay.

I wanted to start the conversation addressing the big promise Bitcoin seems to be offering: that there can someday be a stateless or decentralized currency that can replace the US Dollar.

Right off the bat, Prof. Hanke tells me that: A) Bitcoin is not a currency; And B) Bitcoin is not really decentralized.

SH: Everybody says that bitcoin is decentralized. It is not decentralized. Its heavily centralized; 99 percent of all the transactions occur on centralized exchanges, which well get into that later, because that leads to all kinds of issues about potential vulnerability in terms of privacy.

According to Prof. Hanke, there are three criteria for something to be considered a currency: a reliable unit of account, a medium of exchange, and a store of value.

SH: And to become considered a currency, it has to be a reliable unit of account, a reliable measuring rod. And obviously, bitcoin has a problem in that area. It is highly volatile. Just in the last week, its shed about 25 percent of its value from its all-time high, so its very volatile and moves around. Its not a very stable system, if you will, and its a yardstick thats moving around all over the place. That means two things. Its not used to price current transactions, and thats what a unit of account is, something thats used as a unit that can be assigned and used as a price, to price current things, or price inventories and things like that.

So unit of account is a very big thing. Its a big bugaboo for bitcoin. Its a big bugaboo, by the way, for many so-called currencies. Many national currencies produced by central banks are not used as reliable units of account.

And thats why, if you look at transactions for commodities, for example, almost all the commodities in the world are traded in US dollars. That is the unit of account thats used for corn, oil, soybeans, you name it. Most people dont realize, its also used as an invoicing currency, the US dollar, for many manufactured goods. In other words, if you go to England, for example this is a good example we have British pounds sterling. And when you go to Germany, and what does Germany use now, they use the euro. But what is the invoicing currency for about 35 percent of the manufactured goods in England? Its a US dollar.

So if youre going to replace anything with bitcoin, it would be the US dollar, to put it into context. Thats what were talking about.

The second currency criteria is a medium of exchange, and bitcoin is not used as a medium of exchange. Its not used because its very expensive. Transaction costs are very high, so about the only places that you find that are places experiencing hyperinflation like Venezuela, or very high inflation like Argentina, maybe Zimbabwe, these kinds of places. But its not used because its very expensive to use.

The third item in the currency criteria is a store of value, and the store of value, of course, its no good. Its not safe. There have been a lot of infringements and lack of trust, and its extremely volatile. So on all those three criteria, basically, you cant check the box, for bitcoin.

NP: Lets take them in order. Unit of account is really interesting to me. Youre saying in most places around the world, youre making a large transaction, youre making a series of repeated transactions for commodities or manufacturing, you are working across currencies. The backstop is the dollar.

The argument here is, well, the reason the backstop is a dollar is because those currencies are unstable. They might be mismanaged by the central banks of those countries, there might be hyperinflation, there might be all kinds of shenanigans. The currencies might collapse. The dollar is stable because the United States does a good job, or a reasonably better job, maybe not even a good job.

Bitcoin solves the problem in those countries. It is decentralized, you can see it. It might flow in a volatile way against the dollar, but compared to a mismanaged currency in an unstable country, it might be a much better bet to clear some of those repeated transactions, to be more secure in terms of knowing who is making the transaction with who, preserving a ledger. There are lots of benefits of bitcoin as a currency compared to the unstable currencies that we currently backstop with the dollar.

SH: Well, I would argue, number one, in these countries where you do get some usage of bitcoin, they are not used as units of account in those countries, like Venezuela. The dollar is the unit of account. Everything will be priced in dollars, you pay for it in bitcoin. So bitcoin comes in and is used for transactional purposes there, but its very costly to do it. And people who are doing it are very inefficient. Lets put it this way, they are really speculators, theyre not transacting.

It comes in, and it got started in these places due to the fact that the local unit of account, the Venezuelan bolvar, has completely disappeared. Its not used. The unit of account used in Venezuela is a US dollar. And by the way, I have very good sources on the ground in Venezuela, and today as we speak, with inflation, as I measured, over 2,000 percent in Venezuela, about 80 percent of all the transactions are actually done in US dollars. And bitcoin, at most were talking about a fringe footnote thats picked up by bloggers and bitcoin fanatics and that kind of stuff, but its peanuts. Its really irrelevant. It doesnt make any difference. Eighty percent, in Venezuela, of all transactions [are] in US dollars.

And the only reason you get other units being used, like the Venezuelan bolvar, its small change. Lets say you have an $85 bill thats invoiced to you. And to pay, youve got four $20 bills and you hand them over to whatever you bought. But youve got $5 left over, and there is a small change problem. There arent that many $1 bills running around in Venezuela. So the small change, what do they do? They use bolvars. For the $5 differential and residual in that transaction, they would use bolvars. And bitcoin is somewhere way off in the horizon someplace. Its more or less kind of an academic footnote, but it is used to some extent. And its used because of hyperinflation, and its attractiveness for basically speculators, not people really doing transactions.

NP: I think my question there is, what you were describing with the dollar and the bolvar is a bad system for most Venezuelans, right? Thats not an ideal monetary system for the average citizen of Venezuela to participate in.

The opportunity to participate in a more decentralized system that is perhaps free of interference from the government, or free of actually having to have cash, like physical cash, and whatever elements around you. That seems like a better system. Why wouldnt you want to transition to a better system from a broken financial system that relies on a weird exchange rate between the bolvar and the dollar, and the dollar isnt even your currency?

SH: Well, the ideal system for someplace thats hyper-inflating would be to do officially what spontaneously has already occurred. What spontaneously occurred is dollarization; Venezuela is dollarized at the tune of about 80 percent of all transactions. And savings, its even a bigger percentage. Of course, the savings are safe in Miami or someplace else, not in Caracas, but theyre in dollars. Thats what the big lumps of savings, or cash thats held by corporations in Venezuela, its in US dollars.

So the ideal thing to do would be, Nilay, to officially dollarize and get rid of the bolvar completely. The day you would do that, hyperinflation would end immediately, and youd end up someplace like Panama thats officially dollarized, they use the US dollar. Ecuador is officially dollarized. El Salvador is officially dollarized. There are 37 countries around the world that are officially dollarized. They use some other currency rather than a home currency.

NP: I think this leads right into... In my previous conversations about bitcoin, you just quickly arrive at nationalism concerns. You quickly arrive at international relations concerns. If you are a country and your currency is unstable, giving up your monetary policy to the whims of the United States seems like a bad idea.

If youre a citizen of one of those countries, you are 5,000 steps removed from the value of the currency that you hold. I just see the incentive to say, you know what, Im going to go to the different decentralized system that does not have state actors on top of me, acting on a whim.

SH: Well, I was a state counselor in Montenegro in 1999, an adviser to the president, [Milo] ukanovi. And we had a hyper-inflating currency, it was called the Yugoslav dinar. Because in those days, Montenegro was still part of the rump Yugoslavia. ukanovi decided and there was a strategic thing in this, and it was nationalistic he wanted to exit Yugoslavia, and he also wanted to do so in a way that would be very popular with the population. So how do you do this? My advice was that you make the German mark legal tender.

And if you did that, you would stop hyperinflation immediately. It would be very popular. So we did this, it smashed inflation, and started the first step towards independence, actually. It wasnt viewed as a dependency thing, it was viewed as a way to get out from the stranglehold of [Slobodan] Miloevi in the rump Yugoslavia. And so that was that particular case.

Look at Panama. Panama is actually a big financial center, theyve been dollarized for over 100 years. To put it back, Nilay, into your context, this is a problem politically. I completely agree with you. But if you adopt the US dollar, one argument has said, Oh, gee, we dont want to be dependent on the US government and so forth. So thats a negative. But its actually a positive: youre telling me that these local central banks are more reliable than the US Federal Reserve? And why does everyone in the world use the US dollar as a unit of account? Well, right now its the best alternative. And by the way, if we go back 2,000 years and look at [the] history of currency, theres always one dominant international currency. Always one.

And the US came into the picture after World War I. The dominant currency before World War I was the pound sterling, that was the international currency. They got into trouble because of financing requirements and burdens associated with World War I; sterling became very unstable. And as that started happening, that instability, the US dollar became a competitor, a challenger. And what youre arguing here, your conjecture was, well a decentralized non-sovereign currency I wouldnt call it a currency because it isnt ... bitcoin isnt a currency.

Recently, somebody said, Well, whats the fundamental value of bitcoin? Does it have a fundamental value? And to have a fundamental value not the market value; the market value is whatever the value in the price of bitcoin, thats the market value. The fundamental value is zero. Because to have a fundamental value, you have to have an asset that generates some kind of free cash flow that can be discounted back into present value, and bitcoin doesnt. Now, people say, well, other currencies dont have a fundamental value. Well, if you look at money in the United States, broadly defined, the most broad measure is M4. M4 is computed and calculated reliably at the Center for Financial Stability.

That has 14 components, and a currency is only one, very small component at the one end. And at the other end of the 14 youve got Treasury bills. So in that sense, the US dollar has a fundamental value. It is comprised of 14 components, and 10 of them pay interest and four do not.

NP: Im not going to do better at financial system regulation than you are, but let me push back on this from the perspective of a regular person. The interest rate in this country is very low; it has stayed low for a long time. If you have a dollar, the purchasing power of that dollar goes down over time. That is what most people experience. You put your money into a savings account, youre making a tiny fraction of interest compared to just putting it into the stock market, in an index fund. If you put it into bitcoin, you have massive gains over time, right? It has just gone up because more people believe that it will become a challenger currency.

So the idea that the dollar per your M4 definitions, generates value from the perspective of a regular person, does not hold. It might hold in a larger financial ecosystem, because the Treasury would print more money. But from my perspective, I just have some dollars, the best thing I can do is spend them on something that might generate value. If I have some bitcoin, the best thing I can do is hold it because it will itself increase in value.

SH: Well, my conjecture is that I think eventually it will enter a death spiral and go towards zero, towards its fundamental value.

NP: Why do you think it will go into a death spiral?

SH: Oh, because therell be many superior alternatives in the crypto space that will move bitcoin out of the picture. And I know exactly how to design them, they arent there yet right now.

Picking up our conversation with Nic Carter, I wanted to know why anyone would spend bitcoin. Its happening all the time but I just cant figure out why if all it does is appreciate in value.

NP: Well, let me ask you this. I dont have any bitcoin. For our ethics policy, were not allowed to own stock, and we extended that to cryptocurrency because we cover it, and we do have the ability to affect the prices. So I dont have any.

But if I did have some bitcoin, why would I ever spend it at this point in time?

NC: At this point in time, you probably wouldnt want to. And so its not really a widely offered or used or employed medium of exchange at this stage in its life cycle, and thats okay. Right now, the focus is more on getting it up to speed as a large-scale monetary good. And then maybe once it is more mature, we can develop ways to spend it. But if you expect it to appreciate relative to the dollar and I think we all do, or most bitcoiners do, rather thats a deflationary thing, and you dont necessarily want to spend. I think thats totally fine.

We expect this experiment to play out over the course of decades. Its the same way that you dont really spend gold, but gold is worth $10 trillion in the aggregate. The fact that its not used in a retail payments context, no one buys coffee with grains of gold, that doesnt delegitimize gold as a monetary good. It just means that people are using it more as a way to store value over time, especially relative to sovereign currencies.

NP: But I think this brings you back to your core definitional problem. Youve described bitcoin and gold as monetary goods. Youve also described them as currencies. I think bitcoins initial philosophical underpinning was a new kind of currency, a replacement for cash, untraceable, free of government and corporate constraints. I cannot think of a reason to use it as a currency at this time. I can think of a reason to hold it as an asset. When do you think the shift to actually using it as a currency would arrive?

NC: Yeah, its a good point. And a lot of bitcoiners, we actually fought a civil war over this exact question, a largely bloodless civil war, thankfully.

NP: [Laughs] I hope so.

NC: Well, yeah.

NP: When you say largely, that implies there was some.

NC: Well, things get really heated on Reddit and the bitcoin talk forums and Twitter, but this was a great question that people in the bitcoin community struggled over, right? Because if you want to create a peer-to-peer digital cash, is that even compatible with the way the bitcoin network works?

And unfortunately, or for better or for worse, bitcoin can only throughput so much data per unit of time, right? Bitcoins divided up into blocks. We have about 144 blocks a day, or they max out at about three megabytes.

And because transactions carry a payload of a few hundred bytes, that means you can only squeeze so many transactions into a days worth of blocks, and thats there for good reason. Its because you dont want to overwhelm the network with data, because then nobody would be able to run a node and participate in the network, right?

So theres a physical constraint, which limits the transactional throughput of the network, right? We have to keep that in mind. Some people wanted to lift that constraint and embrace this vision that you promote here and some people would say the original vision of Satoshi.

I might contest that, but hes not around to clarify what his vision was, which was to facilitate cheap, fast payments on the internet, especially for small-dollar transactions. And that tribe kind of lost the battle, I would say. And the tribe that won was one that said, Look, we want to do that too. We just want to pursue it in a more measured way whereby we introduce layering into the system.

And so thats really the key concept to understand is, at the base layer, you have a fast-settling settlement network, which you might think of as equivalent to sending a wire transfer, right? You send a wire, it costs you $15. Its kind of annoying, but once youve done it, that payment is totally final. Theres no reversing it. The money really settles between banks. Same thing with bitcoin. Once youve done it, its pretty much final within 30 minutes to an hour.

Then the way the payments system works in the real world is we introduce many, many other layers on top of that. So you have ACH [Automated Clearing House], and then obviously banks kind of sit on top of that, [the] Fedwire network. And then the banks themselves, youve got payment processors on top of them. And then you move up five rungs in the ladder, and you get to you making a Venmo or a PayPal payment to me, or you get to you making a credit payment with a merchant. That payment doesnt really settle immediately. It takes some time to settle. A credit card payment might settle in 90 days, 120 days. The settlement is occurring on the base layer, but the financial messaging and the financial settlement are totally distinguished from each other, right?

So thats the way bitcoiners really began to think about it too was, lets distinguish payment and settlement. We can settle large transactions on the base layer. Thats suitable if you want to send a billion dollars from Mexico to the Philippines, and you want to have it settle within 30 minutes, and everybody can trust that it cleared. But if youre buying groceries, you probably actually dont need final settlement for that transaction. Thats a low stakes transaction. You dont need to employ this powerful, utility-scale infrastructure to do that. So this was the alternative vision of bitcoin that emerged. And I grant that its complex. And its not that intuitive, and it doesnt even sound that much like the way Satoshi [Nakamoto] described bitcoin.

Thats okay. Things evolve, right? We are discovering product market fit. How should this protocol actually interact with the real world, real constraints that exist in the world? And I think the way to do that is to mirror the layered approach of the payment system. And thats kind of the way that people are thinking about it today.

Its not mature yet. We dont have these half dozen layers that I described that work in the payments stack. We do have some emerging second layer solutions, but thats sort of the current thinking around this, is that not every transaction needs that final settlement. And so well have more convenient payments networks that are built on top and that settle to bitcoin.

NP: One of the things that strikes me about that comparison is one, it does look an awful lot, or sound an awful lot, like the existing layers of the payment infrastructure that banks control, and second, youre describing it as product market fit, which is language that as a tech product person I deeply understand.

Product market fit is not predictable for people. Slack started as a video game company and then they made Slack, and the investors were just along for the ride, and now theyre invested in a B2B software company that got bought by Salesforce. That was not what they thought they were doing when they sat down at Slack the first day. They thought they were making a video game.

NC: Totally.

NP: Banks and governments to some extent are far more predictable for consumers, and theres a democratic process, that if you hate one presidents financial policy you can at least vote for the other guy. Its very hard to participate in bitcoin governance, or even understand the fights between the tribes you are talking about.

It might be more democratic in that the decision-making is more decentralized, but in another way it just seems far more opaque, complicated, and unpredictable, and I just dont know how to reconciles that initial vision of fast-clearing payments for regular people with the opaque chaos I sometimes hear about from the bitcoin community.

NC: No, thats a fantastic point, and theres this concept, the tyranny of structurelessness. Have you come across this?

NP: Yes.

NC: This characterizes decentralized communities, especially cryptocurrencies where governance is not codified. There is a lack of hierarchy, and its bewildering for people oftentimes when they try to determine who has power in bitcoin, how much power do the core developers have relative to the minors, and the economic node operators.

The answer youll get is, Well, just read the bitcoin stock exchange, or subscribe to the mailing list. Its completely incomprehensible jargon. There have been efforts to reckon with that and identify the power structures, but there is a real structurelessness. I think its sort of beautiful in a chaotic way that its this organic, collaborative, open-source phenomenon. It sounds esoteric and difficult to penetrate when youre hearing it from me, but the debates really do happen in the open. Its just they dont happen in a specific place. Its just this constant low-grade warfare on Twitter, and mailing lists, and at conferences, and so on.

NP: Wait, let me stop you, if I was to say, where should I invest my money? And you say, one quality of the asset that youre investing in is constant low-grade Twitter warfare, my instinct would just be to run the other way.

NC: Yeah, its not at a stage in its development where its that well understood by society, but I would say thats where the opportunity is, right?

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Is there a future for bitcoin? An investor and a skeptic debate - The Verge

Fidelitys head of digital assets says that bitcoin adoption will continue at an accelerated pace, noting that weve reached a tipping point. He explained that investors are increasingly drawn to bitcoin Particularly, in an environment where weve seen unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus from central banks and governments in response to the pandemic.

Tom Jessop, president of Fidelity Digital Assets at Fidelity Investments, talked about bitcoin adoption Wednesday during an interview at Marketwatch and Barrons Investing in Crypto event. Jessop is also head of Corporate Business Development for Fidelity Investments.

The Fidelity executive says that the maturation and adoption of bitcoin as an investment class will continue at a rapid pace in the coming years, Marketwatch detailed, adding that this suggests that cryptocurrency may have turned a corner in traditional finance circles.

He was quoted as saying:

I think we continue to see adoption at an accelerated pace for a host of reasons.

The head of digital assets at Fidelity has previously talked about the bitcoin market becoming more mature. Theres more liquidity. Volatility is down about 50% from where it was in 2017. So we believe, that the composition of this investor base, whats driving the market higher today, is fundamentally different than what we saw three years ago, he said in January.

Jessop further explained Wednesday why investors are increasingly drawn to bitcoin, citing factors such as the ultralow interest rates and an environment stimulated by easy-money policies.

I think youve had the accumulated experience of now roughly 12 years of the bitcoin blockchain being operative since the genesis block in early 2009. And the pandemic, quite frankly, was a catalyst for institutional adoption, and specifically bitcoin and the narrative, or use-case, around digital gold, Jessop described.

The Fidelity executive elaborated, Particularly, in an environment where weve seen unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus from central banks and governments in response to the pandemic, adding:

I think weve reached a tipping point Were not going to get out of this stimulated environment anytime soon.

Jessop is not the only finance executive who believes that bitcoin has reached a tipping point. Bitcoin bull Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital, said last month that Bitcoin adoption has hit a tipping point and investors dont want to sit on the sidelines. His comment followed the approval of some bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in Canada. Meanwhile, investment bank Goldman Sachs also sees the bitcoin market becoming more mature.

Do you agree with Tom Jessop about the tipping point of bitcoin adoption? Let us know in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Fidelity Says Bitcoin Adoption Will Keep Accelerating 'We've Reached a Tipping Point' Featured Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

The IRS wants Circle, a Boston-based financial technology company enabling trade in various types of cryptocurrencies, to produce account-registration information, account activity records and other materials for customers who had at least $20,000 in transactions any year from 2016 to 2020.

Cryptocurrency has gained prominence and value over the year, but the IRS says tax reporting hasnt kept up.

The IRS issued Circle with a summons, which is part of an ongoing investigation by the Internal Revenue Service to make sure all sorts of cryptocurrency users across the board are reporting and paying up their tax obligations, the government explained in court papers.

The IRS treats cryptocurrency as property and, when its sold at a profit, the tax collection agency will assess a capital-gains tax. If, that is, the IRS knows the transaction occurred.

The IRS treats cryptocurrency as property and, when its sold at a profit, it will assess a capital-gains tax. If, that is, the IRS knows the transaction occurred.

The IRS and the Justice Department note they are not alleging any wrongdoing on Circles part but based on dealings with some people who have Circle accounts, the feds want more information to see who else might be owing tax money.

For example, one unidentified taxpayer amended 2014-2017 returns to show $1.6 million in previously unreported virtual currency sales, the government said. Poloniex was one of the exchanges the taxpayer used.

(Circle sold the Poloniex exchange in late 2019 and customers in America can no longer trade on the exchange, court papers noted.)

Massachusetts Federal District Richard Stearns signed off on the summons Thursday, saying it was narrow enough and supported by a reasonable basis to think some account holders might not be following tax laws.

Were reviewing, and of course expect to work collaboratively with the IRS in responding to the court order, a Circle spokesman told MarketWatch.

The summons sends the clear message to U.S. taxpayers that the IRS is working to ensure that they are fully compliant in their use of virtual currency, IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said in a statement. We will enforce the law where we find systemic noncompliance or fraud.

The IRS has filed other court summons seeking information from other exchanges in previous years, said Dale Werts, a partner at Lathrop GPM in Kansas City, Mo., where he advises companies on blockchain and cryptocurrency matters.

But its also coming during tax season, at a time when rising cryptocurrency prices are at the front of mind for many investors. This is their way of reminding you, Hey, you better fill out your tax return properly,' he said.

For Werts, its not that the tax laws on cryptocurrency are new. Since 2014, the IRS has stated its view that capital gains taxation rules apply. Its just a new crowd that has to learn the laws that have been on the books for years, Werts said. Lots of folks, I discovered, believe that cryptocurrency is new and existing laws dont apply. This is just not true.

The summons is another sign of cryptocurrencys growing mainstream appeal, according to David Sacco, practitioner in resident at the University of New Havens Pompea College of Business. The IRS has its eyes on the money in the emerging market and more eyes may ultimately mean more regulation and investor protections, said Sacco, who teaches finance courses.

The IRS revised its tax paperwork this year to give prominent play to one question about cryptocurrency. Near the top of the 1040s first page, it asks, At any time during 2020, did you receive, sell, send, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency?

When Sacco looked over the revamped 1040, the question struck him as a little creepy but on the other hand, it makes it like any other asset class now.

Two accountants specializing in cryptocurrency and taxes were split when previously talking to MarketWatch on whether to answering yes for merely buying currencies like bitcoin or ether. Answering yes doesnt necessarily mean more taxes, they note.

Either way, a lots happened for cryptocurrency in 2020, and 2021 so far looks to be no different. Bitcoin BTCUSD, +0.62% tripled in value during 2020. Ethereum ETHUSD, +0.94% hit a record value above $2,000 on Friday, and was trading above that on Monday, as Bitcoin traded near $58,000 on Monday.

Between 2013 and 2015, a mere 800 to 900 taxpayers filed returns reporting cryptocurrency, the IRS said. That number increased from 2016 to 2018, but the numbers still fall far short of what would be expected given the number of users, transactions, and value that the exchanges publicize occur on an annual basis, court filings said.

Over the years, the IRS has stepped up enforcement. In the summer of 2019, it sent more than 10,000 letters to people it believed potentially failed to report virtual currency income. The taxpayer who amended returns to report $1.6 million in previously unreported sales was one of the letter recipients, the court filing said.

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The IRS wants to know all about your Bitcoin holdings --- and this court summons is a reminder - MarketWatch

This weeks price movements for bitcoin, gold, the S&P 500, and this weeks wildcard stock Canopy Growth Corporation, with bonus Airbnb.

Bitcoin (BTC) has mostly been trading sideways, but compared to last week, it has overall been bearish. Last weeks bull run saw BTCs price jump from around $51,500 on March 26 to nearly $60,000 on March 31. However, on April 1, it began channeling between $58,000 and just below $60,000.

On April 3, the price fell to $57,000, which it struggled to overcome the next day before falling back to that level on April 5. Later that day, though, the price bounced back up above $59,000. Persistent selling pressure then took it back down to $56,000 by April 7. Bitcoin is currently trading just below $58,000.

Source: TradingView

Despite this short-term volatility, bitcoin is still in an overall uptrend, according to Fairlead Strategies analyst Katie Stockton.

In our reports, weve highlighted a short- and intermediate-term neutral view for both bitcoin and ethereum (ETH), within the context of their long-term trends, she said. So, if we were a long-term holder wed certainly sit with these coins.

Gold had a rollercoaster ride last week, which ended on an upswing. That trend continued this week.

On April 1, gold continued trading up before rising to $1,730 by the end of the day. It reached nearly $1,735, where it stalled going into the weekend. Gold channeled mostly between $1,730 and $1,720 when markets reopened on April 5.

Meanwhile, April 6 began with buying pressure that largely continued into the afternoon, rising to $1,745. Gold floated down to $1,735 by the end of April 7. But buying pressure early in the day pushed golds price up to $1,755, where it is currently trading.

Source: TradingView

This is the highest gold has been trading for over a month, as the dollar and U.S. yields dropped and the Federal Reserves reaffirmation of its dovish policy stance also lifted its appeal.

Bob Haberkorn, senior market strategist, RJO Futures, said:

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The dollar and U.S. yields are coming off, and thats the key catalyst right now. A pretty unimpressive jobs number is also helping push gold higher.

Haberkorn further added:

And the fact that were above $1,750, which is a key technical level, shows that gold has some legs to continue higher.

The S&P 500 (SPX) reached a new all-time high last week, rising above the $4,000 threshold for the first time. This pushed on to $4,020 on April 1. On April 5, the price had gapped up even further, pushing past $4,080 by the end of the day.

It seemed to have met resistance at this point, trading at this level for the next two days. However, on April 8, it began trading up again, reaching $4,095, where it is currently trading.

Source: TradingView

One reason the S&P 500 eked out another record closing high was minutes from the Federal Reserves March meeting. The minutes mentioned policymakers commitment to accommodative monetary policy to support a full economic recovery while showing concerns about the job markets recovery.

Mike Loewengart, managing director of investment strategy at E-Trade Financial, wrote:

With the tick up in jobless claims this week, were back up to the elevated levels we saw to kick off the year.

This weeks wildcard stock is Canopy Growth Corporation. Over the past few months, the stock of the Canadian cannabis company had traded largely like a cryptocurrency.

After seeing increased momentum towards the end of last year, it exploded in the new year, reaching an all-time high by mid-February. However, like the crypto markets, it tumbled down towards the end of the month.

Although unassociated with cryptocurrencies, the marijuana industry is also a relative newcomer to financial markets.

Source: TradingView

Although the stock has struggled in the past month, some good news is on the horizon. The company announced this week that it would be acquiring Toronto-based Supreme Cannabis Co. Inc. in a stock and cash deal valued at about $345.6 million. As marijuana becomes increasingly legalized across States in America, this consolidation could CGC meet that exploding demand.

This weeks bonus stock in Airbnb (ABNB). ABNB had its IPO on Dec. 10, 2020. Despite occurring in the midst of a global pandemic, the house-sharing platform popular with tourists has fared well coming into the new year.

The stock saw healthy buying pressure in the first month of the year. This continued to its peak, once again in mid-February, of $219.88. As a new stock, it has seen a lot of volatility, but its overall bullish trend now appears to be trading sideways, as another spike in mid-March failed to clear the previous all-time high. It is currently trading around $182.

Source: TradingView

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Gold, Stocks, and Bitcoin: Weekly Overview April 8 - Yahoo Finance

The Ballooning Valuations In Private Equity Deals

Private equity is getting increasingly expensive. As a result, the pricing of an average deal today, by the EV/EBITDA metric, is expected to be at a premium relative to the last decade.

The EV/EBIDTA ratio breaks down into two parts:

Overall, EV/EBITDA shows the relationship between a companys total value and its earnings, and is often seen as the price-to-earnings ratios sophisticated sibling, used to view companies the way acquirers would.

However, the EV component is not necessarily intuitive, so lets expand a little on it:

To acquire a company completely, one must pay out all stakeholders in order to reach the final cost of the acquisition. This includes the stock (equity holders) and the debt holders, subsequently, adding back the market value debt to market cap does just this.

Subtracting cash can also be seen as arriving at net debt. That is, the remaining debt after using the cash and equivalents on a companys balance sheet to pay it down. In other words, if cash exceeds debt, enterprise value shrinks, and the cost of acquiring the company becomes cheaper. Whereas if debt exceeds cash, the acquirer would have to pay off more debt holders, thus making the acquisition more expensive.

First, the public markets are often used as a starting point to derive valuations for deals. Generally, companies with similar business models and operations should be assigned similar valuation multiples. For instance, Lowes and Home Depot, or alternatively, Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Therefore, a company under consideration in private equity often has peers trading publicly.

Furthermore, the average multiple assigned to businesses in the stock market fluctuates through peaks and troughs. Today, theyre trading at a premium to historic averages, a result of a rallying prices and elevated investor risk appetite. Naturally, these public valuations spills over into the private equity space.

Second, asset markets move based on relativity and opportunity cost. A low interest rate environment pairing with the trillions in money printing is placing debt securities at unattractive levels. Hence, low rates of return on debt is resulting in money moving elsewhere.

For private equity though, debt is considered fuel. And in this industry firms use high levels of leverage to acquire companies. For this reason, low rates and cheap debt are a private equity managers dream.

But whats true for one private equity firm can be true for all. Because access to cheap debt means more money chasing deals, and this heightened level of competition is reflecting in the higher multiples and expensive deals today.

The rest is here:
Why the Market is Thinking About Bitcoin Differently - Visual Capitalist

Celebrity investor Kevin O'Leary says he will only buy bitcoin mined sustainably in countries that use clean energy and not "blood coin" mined in China.

"I see over the next year or two, two kinds of coin," he told CNBC's "Capital Connection" on Monday. "Blood coin from China, (and) clean coin mined sustainably in countries that use hydroelectricity, not coal."

Bitcoin mining is extremely energy intensive, and around 65% of the world's bitcoin was mined in China as of April 2020, according to Statista.

"I'm going on the side of clean coin," said O'Leary.

O'Leary did not elaborate on where he acquires "clean" bitcoin, but some countries use hydroelectric power more widely than others, and there are entities that claim to mine cryptocurrencies in a sustainable way.

The chairman of O'Shares ETFs once called bitcoin "garbage," but changed his mind more recently and said he would allocate 3% of his personal portfolio to the cryptocurrency, according to a CoinDesk report.

O'Leary said he was "inundated" by institutions asking if he was buying "blood coin from China" after he said he wanted to invest in bitcoin.

I'm not buying coin unless I know where it was mined, when it was mined, the provenance of it. Not in China. No blood coin for me.

Kevin O'Leary

Chairman of OShares ETFs

Increasingly, large institutions impose restrictions on assets they will hold in order to comply with environmental and corporate governance rules. Concerns include human rights and carbon emissions. O'Leary said whether products are made in China is also a consideration.

"All these issues have now come to the fore on bitcoin," he said. "Institutions will not buy coin mined in China, coin mined using coal to burn for electricity, coin mined in countries with sanctions on them."

Institutions are saying that they don't want to endorse China because of issues with human rights, he added.

O'Leary said personally, he's working to ensure every coin he owns is compliant.

"I'm not buying coin unless I know where it was mined, when it was mined, the provenance of it," he said. "Not in China. No blood coin for me."

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Kevin OLeary says he will only buy bitcoin mined with clean energy, and none mined in China - CNBC

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BIGtoken Inc., the first privacy focused, opt-in data marketplace where people own and monetize their data, will host a webinar on Thursday, April 15, 2021 to discuss the future of bitcoin.

With the price of bitcoin up 90% year-to-date, driven in large part by institutional investors, are we closer to the beginning or the end of this cycle? Bitcoin has potential to hit a $400K price peak this year, how much longer until it becomes a risk-off choice for investors? And as it matures, will bitcoin continue to have the dramatic plunges in price that have plagued it in the past? What else is happening across the crypto landscape, from NFT to CBDCs, that will impact the global interest in bitcoin?

Join BIGtoken CEO Lou Kerner, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Commodity Strategist Mike McGlone, and Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten on April 15 for a discussion on the future of bitcoin.

Who: Lou Kerner, Mike McGlone, Cory Klippsten

When: April 15, 2021 1:00 p.m. ET / 10:00 a.m. PT

Where: Sign up for the webinar via Zoom HERE!

Mike McGlone

Mike McGlone is a senior commodity strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence, a unique research platform that provides context on industries, companies, and government policy. Mr. McGlone specializes in the broad investable commodity and crypto markets, authoring the monthly Bloomberg Commodity Outlook and Bloomberg Crypto Outlook.

Mr. McGlone joined Bloomberg in 2016 with over 25 years of futures and commodity trading and investing experience, beginning at the Chicago Board of Trade. Prior to joining Bloomberg, he was a head of U.S. research at ETF Securities. Prior to ETF Securities, Mr. McGlone headed the commodity business at S&P Indices. His previous roles included head of futures research at ABN Amro and VP research, analyst, trader, sales at Aubrey G. Lanston / IBJ Futures.

Mr. McGlone has an MBA from DePaul University in Chicago and bachelors of science and arts degrees from Illinois State University. He is a CFA Charter holder and has earned a Financial Risk Manager (FRM) designation.

Cory Klippsten

Cory Klippsten is the founder and CEO of Swan Bitcoin. He also serves as an advisor to Riot Blockchain (NASDAQ: RIOT), Unchained Capital, and Bitcoin Venture Fund (TVP), and is a partner in Bitcoiner Ventures. As an advisor he has supported more than $250M of fundraising since 2016, and as an angel has funded 20+ early stage startups.

Before startups, Klippsten worked for Google, McKinsey, Microsoft and Morgan Stanley, and earned an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from the University of Chicago. He grew up in San Francisco and Seattle, split 15 years between NYC and Chicago, and now lives in LA with his wife and daughters.

About BIGtoken

BIGtoken believes that data privacy is a human right. BIGtoken is the first privacy focused, opt-in data marketplace where people own and monetize their data. Through a transparent platform and consumer reward system, BIG offers users choice, transparency, and compensation for their anonymized data. Participating consumers earn rewards and advertisers and media companies get access to insights from compliant first-party data for marketing and media activation. For more information on BIGtoken, visit bigtoken.com.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information:

This news release contains "forward-looking statements'' made pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements relate to future, not past, events and may often be identified by words such as "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "believe," "seek" or "will." Forward-looking statements by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain. Specific risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in our forward-looking statements include risks inherent in our business, and our need for future capital. Actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements. Additional information on potential factors that could affect our results and other risks and uncertainties are detailed from time to time in BIGtokens periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

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BIGtoken to Host Webinar on Thursday, April 15, 2021 to Discuss Bitcoin 2021 and Beyond - Business Wire

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- In an era of prosperity for investment banks, Credit Suisse Group AG is careening from one crisis to another and then another -- this time, with a $4.7 billion writedown tied to billionaire investor Bill Hwangs trading blowout.The staggering hit -- the largest yet linked to market-shaking losses run up by Hwangs Archegos Capital Management -- prompted sweeping management changes at the Swiss bank Tuesday and cast fresh doubt on its checkered record of managing risks. It caps a catalog of costly errors at Credit Suisse -- most recently the collapse of Greensill Capital -- in what was supposed to be the start of steadier era under Chief Executive Officer Thomas Gottstein.At a moment when investment banks are feasting on market activity and dealmaking, Credit Suisse is under mounting pressure to persuade shareholders and clients it can put its house in order and remain a vital, independent force in global banking. After the firm announced plans to cut its dividend and suspend share buybacks, analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut their recommendation for the stock, which already was breaking with peers in tumbling this year.The ongoing negative newsflow could have an impact on the remainder of Credit Suisses businesses, analysts Kian Abouhossein and Amit Ranjan wrote in a note, lowering their rating to neutral from overweight. Besides the impact from various management changes and regulatory oversight, they wrote, the bank might have to pursue a strategy of capital preservation that could restrain growth.David Herro at Harris Associates, a top shareholder of Credit Suisse, said the banks losses should serve as a wakeup call to expedite cultural change as Chairman Urs Rohner prepares to hand over to Lloyds Banking Group Plc CEO Antonio Horta-Osorio at the end of the month. Rohner has offered to forgo his compensation for 2020 of 1.5 million francs.Another long-standing backer of the bank, Qatars former prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, stands to suffer a personal hit as well after vehicles linked to him invested about $200 million in funds Credit Suisse ran with Greensill, according to people familiar with the matter. As former head of the Qatar Investment Authority, Sheik Hamad had made Qatar one of the Swiss banks largest shareholders.Acknowledging the need for deep change, Credit Suisse on Tuesday replaced its investment bank head and chief risk officer, along with a handful of other executives. Gottstein, who took over in February last year after a spying scandal toppled his predecessor, told the Neue Zuercher Zeitung that the bank has no sacred cows with regard to strategy.Serious lessons will be learned, he pledged in a statement. The Archegos loss is unacceptable.While the Swiss bank wasnt the only firm that helped Hwangs family office lever up large positions in a relatively small slate of stocks, rivals including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG managed to unwind their exposures quickly with minimal damage.Credit Suisse has now offloaded the bulk of its Archegos exposure, helped by a $2.3 billion sale this week. But the impact of that latest disposal and any remaining positions could affect second-quarter results, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.The dual hits from Archegos and Greensill have put the bank on track for its second straight quarterly loss, at a time when investment banks around the world are still focused on the windfall unleashed by the market turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic. The five largest U.S. firms boosted trading revenue by more than a third last year to the highest in at least a decade.JPMorgans Wall Street unit generated its most fourth-quarter revenue and profit ever. Deutsche Bank is among firms that have said their investment banks are off to a strong start this year. And Jefferies Financial Group Inc. already reported an 81% jump in revenue from capital markets in the fiscal first quarter that ended Feb. 28.In an update on its underlying businesses Tuesday, Credit Suisse noted that issues such as Archegos were negating the very strong performance that had otherwise been achieved by our investment banking businesses as well as higher profits in wealth and asset management units.The firm is still set to give an update on the effect of last months collapse of Greensill Capital, which helped manage $10 billion of investment funds the Swiss bank offered to asset management clients. Credit Suisse is leaning toward letting clients take the hit of expected losses in those funds, a person familiar with the discussions said.Among the executives to leave over the missteps are investment bank head Brian Chin and risk chief Lara Warner. Gottstein previously removed Eric Varvel from his role running asset management after Greensills downfall. In a memo to staff Monday, Credit Suisse also announced at least five other departures, including equities trading chief Paul Galietto.Christian Meissner, the former Bank of America Corp. executive who joined Credit Suisse in October, will take over from Chin next month. Joachim Oechslin will become risk chief in the interim, a role he held until 2019 when Warner took over. Thomas Grotzer was named interim head of compliance.The bank cut its dividend proposal for 2020 to 10 centimes a share, from about 29 centimes, and suspended its share buyback until its common equity Tier 1 ratio, a key measure of capital strength, returns to the targeted level. Credit Suisse said it expects a CET1 ratio of at least 12% in the first quarter. It had aimed for at least 12.5% in the first half of this year. Top executives bonuses for last year have been scrapped.Credit Suisse Payout Pause Wont Halt Archegos Fallout: ReactThe Zurich-based bank was one of several global investment banks to facilitate the leveraged bets of Archegos, and had tried to reach some sort of standstill to figure out how to unwind positions without sparking panic, people familiar with the matter have said. The strategy failed as rivals rushed to cut their losses.Almost two weeks in, it is still not clear how the bank managed to take a 4.4 billion-franc charge for one client in the prime brokerage business, which we estimate generates less than 1 billion francs per annum in revenues, JPMorgans analysts wrote.Among big banks that dealt with Archegos, only Nomura Holdings Inc. has signaled the potential to also take a multibillion-dollar hit, saying it could lose as much as $2 billion.Credit Suisses latest trades came more than a week after several rivals dumped their shares. The bank hit the market with block trades tied to ViacomCBS Inc., Vipshop Holdings Ltd. and Farfetch Ltd., a person with knowledge of the matter said. The stocks traded substantially below where they were last month before Hwangs family office imploded.In addition to the Archegos writedown, Credit Suisse may need to set aside 2 billion francs over the coming years for litigation tied to Greensill, according to the JPMorgan analysts.Startup lender Greensill Capital had borrowed from the bank and helped manage a group of debt funds that were marketed as among its safest products. Now the funds are frozen and being wound down after Lex Greensills firm collapsed amid doubts about its lending practices.Credit Suisse said it will provide an update on the funds in the next few days.(Adds shareholder comment in fifth paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Excerpt from:
Ripple Granted Access to SEC Documents on Bitcoin, Ether in Ongoing XRP Fight - Yahoo Finance

Experts representing numerous aspects of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin are scheduled to participate in the Bitcoin Conference April 16-17, hosted by the Mays Innovation Research Center, a center of excellence within Mays Business School at Texas A&M University.

The conference, which will be held via Zoom but with an in-person option on April 17, will address topics such as Bitcoins economic foundations, underlying technology, business and finance, and the law/policy/regulatory landscape.

Bitcoin is one of the most radical innovations of our time, so it is appropriate that the Center convene a healthy debate on Bitcoin from all angles, said Center Director Korok Ray.

Bitcoin, created in 2009 by an unknown person, is the first cryptocurrency. The digital currency is bought and sold anonymously, usually through exchanges such as Coinbase, without the need for banks or other intermediaries. The supply is limited to 21 million coins.

Bitcoin is now reaching widespread adoption and attention from institutional investors and corporations in addition to retail investors, Ray said. This attention is at least partly in response to the current low interest rate policies of the Federal Reserve.

There is considerable debate among investment professionals regarding the fundamental value of Bitcoin. Some market participants expect Bitcoins value to continue to rise, reflecting an increase in competition for a limited number of coins. Others are more conservative in their predictions, pointing to significant regulatory risk and to the fact that, contrary to other financial assets, acquiring Bitcoin does not confer their holder a claim on a commodity, on a precious metal, or on the cashflow of any other asset.

Ray said conference participants will better understand what Bitcoin is and how it works, as well as its possibilities, limitations, and future prospects.

The conference idea came from conversations between Mays Business School faculty, including Ray, and Grant Weston, Texas A&M Bitcoin Club president.

I founded the Texas A&M Bitcoin Club with my roommate Matt Lohstroh to create a community around Bitcoin, said Weston, a senior busines honors major. Students need to know about the opportunities that are out there. The Bitcoin space is still so small. Every new participant makes a difference.

Featured speakers will include Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates; Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson; Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy; Bill Miller of Miller Value Partners; Pete Briger of Fortress Investment Group; Glenn Hutchins of Silver Lake Partners; Rob Kaplan of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; Dawn Stump of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission; Nobel Laureate Eric Maskin of Harvard; and more.

For the full schedule and to register, go to the Bitcoin Conference registration page.

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Texas A&M Mays Innovation Research Center To Host Bitcoin Conference April 16-17 - Texas A&M University Today

Anthony Scaramucci, known Bitcoin proponent heading global investment firm SkyBridge Capital, believes that the future of the digital asset in investment portfolios is inevitable.

What Happened: In a recent interview with CNBC, Scaramucci called it "the apex predator in the space. I tell my clients whether you like it or not, the world is moving into digitization.

SkyBridge Capitals Bitcoin Fund LP holds over $600 million worth of Bitcoin at present, and two weeks ago, the firm applied for the SEC approval of a Bitcoin ETF.

However, by Scaramuccis own admission, SkyBridges focus on Bitcoin may have more to do with its clients preferences rather than his own.

I predicted Ethereum has good fundamentals and will grow, but Im in an institutionalist sort of business. I think like an institutionalist, and Ive got to get my clients thinking about cryptocurrency and digital assets. So, as a first step, Im focused on Bitcoin and we only have now a Bitcoin fund, he said.

Why It Matters: In recent months, Ethereum has risen in popularity, and price, after its use cases extended beyond DeFi (decentralized finance) into the realm of NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap has garnered support from high-profile investors, including Mark Cuban, who recently revealed his bullish stance on Ethereum, calling it a hotbed of continuous innovation.

Scaramucci appeared to share this belief too, as he went on to state, "The technology around Ethereum is going to make it a sticky cryptocurrency and a store of value and something people will transact with.

What Else: While he wouldnt recommend a 20% portfolio allocation towards cryptocurrency just yet, Scaramucci thinks that an allocation between one and three percent would be ideal for investors.

When you think about our children... they're going to be very comfortable transacting in Ethereum or Bitcoin, and Ive got to get my clients ready for that, he said.If they have a 1, 2, or 3% position they're going to look at us as fiduciaries and think they were very well served.

Story continues

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Scaramucci: Bitcoin Is The Apex Predator, But Ethereum Will Be The Actual Store Of Value - Yahoo Finance