Miller backed Bitcoin with his statements and described as myths some arguments that people are currently using to go against the digital currency.

The millionaire investor of traditional markets, Bill Miller, embarked on a new journey to endorse Bitcoin as he describes it as an excellent investment asset. The investor highlighted its technical and financial features and stated that they are superior compared to other currencies.

Miller shared these thoughts in a letter to investors in various markets, where the millionaire shared some considerations about the role of MicroStrategy in the evolution of Bitcoin in price.

After presenting some considerations regarding the MicroStrategy case, Miller started at deeper concerns about Bitcoin. Among many things, he said:

“Now that everybody knows what Bitcoin is, why would anyone want to have some [of it]? There is no other existent asset out there with the capacity to combine Bitcoin’s liquidity with its upside potential. Bitcoin continues to be an emerging, limited-property technology with enormous routable potential, a currency that owns a market, and it has a brilliant protocol, logically consistent with distributed governance”.

William H. Miller III is an American businessman, Fund Manager, Philanthropist, former President, and Chief Investment Officer of Legg Mason Capital Management

William H. Miller III is an American businessman and philanthropist. He also served as President and Chief Investment Officer of Legg Mason Capital Management and Senior Portfolio Manager of Legg Mason Capital Management Value Trust. He is the portfolio manager for the former Legg Mason Opportunity Trust mutual funds, now in his firm “Miller Value Partners.”

Bill Miller is from Laurinburg, North Carolina. Son of a man that worked as a terminal manager for a trucking company. Miller graduated with honors from the University of Washington and Lee in 1972 with a BA in economics.

After graduation, he offered his services to the nation as a military intelligence officer abroad. He then went on a journey to pursue a grade study in philosophy at the Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins University, and at the same time, he worked part-time as an accountant while working part-time in accounting.

Bill Miller’s Investment Philosophy

Miller is considered a value businessman with a knowledgeable eye for investments; he believes that stocks can be valuable if it trades at a discount from its intrinsic value. Legg Mason Capital Management Value Trust’s performance eclipsed the S&P 500 index for 15 consecutive years from 1991 to 2005.

Michael Mauboussin, the former chief investment strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management, analyzed historical data on the percentage of equity mutual funds surpassing the market during Value Trust’s 15-year streak. He estimated that beating the market in the 15 years ending in 2005 was a very distant probability.

Miller is currently living in Baltimore, Maryland. He recently made a massive donation of $ 75 million to his alma mater, John Hopkins University. The money went to the philosophy department of the institute. He argues that philosophy helped him to build what he is to date.

By: Jenson Nuñez

The plan is to implement a set of improvements with the Berlin fork. The schedule is for July, and the proposals seek to introduce advances in the network’s transaction format.

The platform and engineering software, Light Clients, published a series of improvement proposals to the Ethereum community and hinted at a possible launch in 2021. With hopes that this year will be the most innovative season since 2016 for this protocol.

Light Clients mentioned on its Twitter account how this progress would bring advantages to Ethereum. The platform first referred to the four Enhancement Proposals (EIPs)and their activation on the next Ethereum hard fork called Berlin.

The first one, EIP-2929, increases the cost of gas for some operational codes to provide greater security. The platform argues the gas limit should correspond to a necessary limit in time to process a block.

Light Client explains that this IPE increases the gas cost for access to the network status three times in its thread since the gas price for storage codes has shown low rates.

Due to these increases, malicious transactions that could take 20-80 seconds to execute start to appear standard action.

Another proposal is EIP-2930. It seeks to prevent breaches of specific Ethereum contracts usually generated by the previous EIP (2929). This EIP allows users to pre-specify and prepay the accounts and store the required spaces for the transaction to access.

The plan with this proposal is to add a type of transaction that contains an access list. A list of addresses and storage keys to which the transaction intends to gain access. If users do not belong to such a plan, gaining complete access to this information would be too expensive.

Regarding the EIP-2930, Light Clients highlights its function of fixing breakages in approximately 0.18% of the EIP-2929 transactions. It also introduces a new transaction type that allows you to specify which storage slots to read. This allowance will also bring clients the chance to pay a 10% discounted fee.

A third of the proposals, EIP-2718, create a wrapper or package to facilitate new types of transactions, as long as they show compatibility with the previous ones.

More EIPs Will See Inclusion into the Ethereum Blockchain

During the mentions of the four previous proposals, Light Client also said that “after Berlin, things will be less concrete.”

The next fork’s completion will happen in July, and there will be an inclusion of these four proposals. Then, around July, what has been called the ice age in Ethereum is about to begin.

 Ice age in Ethereum refers to the deliberate increase in time between blocks due to the increased difficulty of mining, as part of the transition from proof of work to proof of stake, and as a consensus mechanism.

“2021 changes the entire Ethereum protocol. There is much more than just this list. All stateless eth2 and ethereum groups have their ambitious agendas for the year. It is a fascinating time to work on Ethereum,” added Light Clients.

By: Jenson Nuñez

Wladimir Van Der Laan will keep offering support to Bitcoin. The lead developer will begin to delegate tasks to decentralize the network development process.

Wladimir Van Der Laan, the main maintainer of Bitcoin, started delegating his tasks regarding the support of bitcoin. This action is leading to a decrease in his involvement in the project, although, he will remain contributing to the maintenance of the network.

The lead developer published a letter on January 21 on which he explained in detail the reasons that led him to make this decision. The letter reflects some important factors like the growth that Bitcoin achieved since the leader took the management of the main maintenance of the network in 2014. Bitcoin grew so much that it went to become a more demanding project.

The plan of Van Der Laan, an expert in computer science and cypherpunk from Amsterdam (Netherlands), is to begin a slow transition to more supportive roles instead of the stressful activities that relate to the maintenance of the network.

The developer won’t stop his contributions to the blockchain and The Bitcoin Core client but he desires to assume easier roles. He also stated that he does not want his decision to become a public debate that could expose him.

In this regard, the developer’s note appears in parallel with controversy in the bitcoin community due to the removal of the original Bitcoin white paper from the Bitcoin Core repository on GitHub.

Although Van Der Laan’s arguments do not show this explicitly, the removal of the document coincides with the pressure that Craig Wright, the self-described Satoshi Nakamoto, has been employing. Wright recently made a copyright claim to the white paper.

On January 21, Van Der Laan justified his decision arguing that the status of the file’s license was unclear. He received both criticism and support for the removal of the Bitcoin Core document and then used his Twitter account to claim that his intention is not to become “a bitcoin martyr” and invited bitcoiners to join the defense of the project.

Wladimir Van Der Laan, the main maintainer of Bitcoin, started delegating his tasks regarding the support of bitcoin. This action is leading to a decrease in his involvement in the project, although, he will remain contributing to the maintenance of the network.

The lead developer published a letter on January 21 on which he explained in detail the reasons that led him to make this decision. The letter reflects some important factors like the growth that Bitcoin achieved since the leader took the management of the main maintenance of the network in 2014. Bitcoin grew so much that it went to become a more demanding project.

The plan of Van Der Laan, an expert in computer science and cypherpunk from Amsterdam (Netherlands), is to begin a slow transition to more supportive roles instead of the stressful activities that relate to the maintenance of the network.

The developer won’t stop his contributions to the blockchain and The Bitcoin Core client but he desires to assume easier roles. He also stated that he does not want his decision to become a public debate that could expose him.

In this regard, the developer’s note appears in parallel with controversy in the bitcoin community due to the removal of the original Bitcoin white paper from the Bitcoin Core repository on GitHub.

Although Van Der Laan’s arguments do not show this explicitly, the removal of the document coincides with the pressure that Craig Wright, the self-described Satoshi Nakamoto, has been employing. Wright recently made a copyright claim to the white paper.

On January 21, Van Der Laan justified his decision arguing that the status of the file’s license was unclear. He received both criticism and support for the removal of the Bitcoin Core document and then used his Twitter account to claim that his intention is not to become “a bitcoin martyr” and invited bitcoiners to join the defense of the project.

“This is about decentralization and distributed systems, not about personal macho positions. I have no interest in it and they don’t pay me enough to do it,” said the developer.

What’s to Come for Bitcoin: The Need to Decentralize Processes?

After indicating his other personal interests, Van Der Laan’s letter talks about how the development of the Bitcoin network should be approached this year. This highlights the need to decentralize processes.

He thinks that other members can also assume many of his responsibilities. Consequently, he’s looking forward to stopping leading some meetings, and not signing or submitting releases to the bitcoin-dev and bitcoin-core-dev lists. “Other maintainers should be able to launch without my participation,” he says.

In the letter, the developer also proposes the decentralization of the network development center through the use of a P2P distributed code collaboration platform. This proposal’s purpose is to avoid central servers. In this regard, it advises developers to stay away from clearnet (open Internet) websites in the long term to distribute code.

By: Jenson Nuñez

The price of Ether would have to multiply eight times to exceed USD 10,000, according to analysts. Other cryptocurrencies and tokens could follow Ether, leading to what everyone knows as altseason.

The Fundstrat Global Advisors Company recently stated that “Ethereum represents the best risk-reward ratio in cryptocurrencies.” This group of financial researchers believes that the price of Ether (ETH) could reach USD 10,500 this year.

The expectation that the development of new “real-world applications” will continue serves as the foundation for this Fundstrat forecast. Those innovations include smart contracts, stablecoins that maintain parity with the US dollar, and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, among others.

Even though many people criticize the fees on Ethereum for their magnitude, the analytics company also regards them as a bullish indicator. Fundstrat made a comparison under which the high consumption of gas/fees is equivalent to the increasing number of institutional investors in Bitcoin. Both factors would be catalysts for the increase in the price of these cryptocurrencies.

The company estimates that the fees that users pay on Ethereum this year will reach USD 4 billion. This figure is almost seven times higher than the USD 600 million that users paid last year. Based on statistical calculations, the analysts argue that an ETH price close to USD 10,500 would be in line with this growth.

Other Possible Growth Factors for Ethereum

In addition to these factors, it is necessary to add the potential institutional investments that could reach Ethereum in 2021. A recent report from the analytical platform CoinMetrics takes this possibility into account.

There could be acceleration in institutional investment in Bitcoin, as early signs for 2021 point. “On January 4^th, Three Arrows Capital revealed a USD 1 billion position in GBTC. SkyBridge Capital also announced a USD 300 million Bitcoin position and the launch of a Bitcoin fund for accredited investors.”

Other relevant factors are the possible proposals for improvement and the development of version 2.0 of Ethereum, which is already partially working. Some investors believe that the native token of the blockchain, which Vitalik developed, can soon generate a considerable monetary return.

Ether would have to multiply its current price (of around USD 1,314) eight times during 2021 to reach USD 10,500. The Ethereum cryptocurrency went from USD 168 to USD 1,432 in the last 12 months. That last Ether price was above its previous all-time high of USD 1,420. Therefore, it is not exorbitant as its growth during that period was 8.42 times.

The higher valuation of Ether could also lead to an increase in the price of other cryptocurrencies and tokens developed on the Ethereum blockchain. If this happened massively, it would be an indication that the so-called altcoin season (or altseason) has begun.

One of the factors that have driven the price of Ether higher is the boom in investors in Bitcoin in the last year. The pioneering cryptocurrency is the one that sets the tone for the behavior of altcoins on the market. The trust of users in the cryptocurrency that Satoshi Nakamoto created has also favored the second-largest cryptocurrency on the market.

By Alexander Salazar