From the long-term success of Bitcoin to a new cross-border use case at Ripple, here’s a look at some of the stories breaking in the world of crypto.
Bitcoin
Venture capital billionaire and Bitcoin bull Tim Draper says he believes Bitcoin will outlast fiat currencies and prove to be far more stable in the long run. At the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Draper said,
“We’re going to see all sorts of volatility. One Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin. It’s just all these other political currencies are going to be very volatile against it as they slowly disappear from our use.”
Draper also reiterated his belief that the price of Bitcoin will reach $250,000 in the coming years.
“My prediction for $250,000 by 2022 – maybe 2023, but in that range – is absolutely solid. But I’m not so sure how we’re going to get there.”
Ethereum has set a loose date for its next upgrade.
In its latest group conference, developers set January 16th as the launch date for Constantinople. The anticipated upgrade includes a number of optimizations and lowers the mining reward from three ETH to two ETH per block.
Japanese financial giant MUFG says it will use Ripple’s proprietary payment technology to create a new cross-border payment service between Japan and Brazil.
Meanwhile, the coder working to bring XRP transactions to Amazon Alexa has launched a closed beta test.
You can sign up for the beta here.
EOS
The co-founder of Block.one just sat down for an interview with Bloomberg.
Brendan Blumer talks about how blockchain can transform the Internet and looks at the future of initial coin offerings.
NEO founder Da Hongfei says he believes excessive government regulation has significantly slowed the adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency.
“In the early days, people were expecting to see blockchain being applied to the finance industry as the new technology may disrupt the traditional finance industry. However, implementation has been faced with regulatory barriers as the finance industry is strictly regulated virtually everywhere in the world. There are only two possible ways to integrate blockchain into finance industry by either cooperating with a licensed traditional financial institute … or you may bypass the license by doing something that doesn’t need a license … In essence, blockchain can barely survive within the existing financial regulation system.”
You can check out the full interview on NEO’s official blog here.
Litecoin
One of the biggest transactions to ever hit the Litecoin network was just processed.
As reported by Litecoin.com, the transaction,
“appears to be a consolidation of funds into a new Multi-Signature / Segwit ‘M’ address from a handful of Legacy addresses. The transaction which created the new richest address on the network was made by the previous richest address on the network which is now lies empty. In the process, a staggering 71,618,997 coin days were also destroyed.”
VeChain
VeChain has released a new video introducing its Digital Carbon platform. The initiative is part of a partnership with DNV GL and is designed to give companies and home owners a blockchain-based way to monitor and reduce emissions.