According to Saylor, Bitcoin will see a significant rebound in its prices if investors´ perception of sectors such as gold, sovereign bonds, and new technologies changes.

The CEO of the company MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor, assured in a recent report that the value of Bitcoin could increase exponentially and how the digital currency would be worth 80 times more than its current price.

These are indications that the MicroStrategy executive exposed during an interview by the Binance team, in which Saylor discussed with the exchange’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), about the most relevant aspects and other points of interest in association with the present and future that the ecosystem of the cryptocurrencies would experience.

In this regard, Saylor assured that Bitcoin needs to see a relevant change regarding how many people and entities perceive it. Therefore, it should stop being perceived as a highly volatile speculative asset to be considered one of the means of store the value of looking to the future.

Concerning those approaches, Saylor commented:

“The speculative narrative was predominant before March, but that is not going to attract 99% of investors or of the money that moves in the world… they want something different. They want Bitcoin as it is the ultimate long-term reserve asset. It is a haven asset, designed to be superior to gold in all respects for the ultimate bearer … If people leave gold and enter Bitcoin I do not guarantee that 1% of investors will get 1% of the capital they invest … I am speaking of 100% of investors deriving profits of at least 50% .”

For Saylor, once this change in the way users are perceiving Bitcoin starts to take place, the increase that will come if at least a couple of markets decide to step forward in favor, an increase in the price of the digital currency will happen, which would also increase significantly its global capitalization.

Favorable perception of gold falls

For Saylor, gold is a market that is out of date and can no longer compete against Bitcoin:

“Gold is defective, it is an antiquated store of value. It was the best store of value for 5,000 years until we invented the computer… It was just a good idea until it became a bad idea .”

The trend with which Saylor perceives Bitcoin is gaining more and more strength among reputed investors and representatives of traditional markets, who have gradually increased the amount of capital they allocate for investments in the digital currency sector. In this group, it is relevant to know cases such as Paul Tudor Jones, Raoul Pal, Stanley Drukenmiller, Bill Pulte, among others.

Meanwhile, the price of Bitcoin is at the time of publication above $ 19,000 as enthusiasm grows among many investors and analysts regarding the possibility of seeing new all-time highs before the end of this year.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

Bogotá will invest more than $ 11,000 in the Data Analytical Agency (Ágata). It is unknown which blockchain will be used to store the data of the citizens from Bogotá.

Colombia moves forward in its race to adopt new solutions with blockchain. Now, they have announced the creation of a data analysis agency that will use technology to check citizen policies in the country’s capital, Bogotá.

The mayor of Bogotá, Mayor Claudia López, announced on Monday the creation of the Data Analytical Agency (Ágata). The report is in the local newspaper El Tiempo. This research center will center its efforts to change how citizens’ data are analyzed to implement policies in the city, exposes the same source.

Among the policies that will emerge from the analyzes in Ágata, there is the allocation of public resources for jobs or other credits that relates to the production area. “In a year, the information will be able to have access to microcredits from the financial system with the best conditions, to avoid being a subject of traditional usury methods,” López said.

Also, the authorities foresee the use of Agate as a preventive system that will be a very helpful tool to monitor crime and will improve the reaction of the security agencies against crimes committed in the city. For this, Ágata will be able to link data from security cameras around all the Colombian capital.

With the same approach, tests have already been in development with the monitoring of the use of masks for the prevention of covid-19, as an example of how Agata will work to process the data, reported the manager of the TransMilenio transport system, Felipe Ramírez. “The possibilities are immense” with the use of this technology, assured the executive.

The analysis agency is part of the Public Management office of the Mayor’s Office of Bogotá. It has among its partners the Bogotá Telecommunications Company (ETB), the Bogotá Energy Group, the Administrative Unit of Cadastre, the Aqueduct Company and Bogotá fromhe District Planning Secretariat.

For the creation of Ágata, there will be an initial investment of 40 million pesos, just over 11,000 dollars.

The mayor claims that this system will allow decisions to be made transparently. However, it is unknown which blockchain the research center will use if it will be public and will allow independent audits of the data.

The project also does not make it clear how citizens’ data will be handled in terms of privacy and security. In this regard, the agency ensures that there will be no commercialization of the data collected in its system.

Sergio González, President of ETB, assured that all Ágata partners commit to “take care of the personal data of citizens and guarantee the security of the information.”

From government agencies, Colombia keeps a solid step and stance about the adoption of solutions with blockchains for public institutions, even President Iván Duque himself has expressed his intention to move more and more toward that direction.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor discussed Bitcoin. The CEO of MicroStrategy realized that Bitcoin is the ultimate store of value for all investors in the world.

Earlier this year, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor announced that the company would buy Bitcoin as part of its investment strategy.

Many members of the crypto market have debated the company’s move. Firstly, it did so because of what that meant for the cryptocurrency and, secondly, because the company benefited from Bitcoin’s huge appreciation.

Changpeng Zhao, CEO of one of the largest crypto exchanges on the market, wanted to talk with Michael Saylor. Binance Regional CEO Josh Goodbody served as a moderator between them.

Bitcoin as a Safe Haven

Saylor admitted that he had not paid attention to the crypto industry until last March. The reason why he took notice of it is that the US economy experienced a significant expansion of the money supply.

“The most important monetary event is the expansion of the M2 money supply. There was an expansion of 5.5% per year for a decade, but this year the jump was about 24%. In the future, the expansion will be 15% each year for the next five years,” explained Saylor.

For that reason, “if the expansion does not exceed the money supply with its returns and investments, it cannot preserve wealth. It is not possible to store value, since a bond that does not yield 15% loses its value”, explained the CEO of MicroStrategy.

The executive suggests that fiduciary investments may lose value through inflation. In particular, he notes that everyone will lose half of their wealth if there is no solution to the problem.

In this sense, Changpeng Zhao says that he does “not own any significant amount of fiat money” but has invested all his funds in cryptocurrencies instead. He adds that he does not buy fiat money with his crypto assets, which he uses directly to pay for goods and services.

Welcoming Bitcoin

Based on what Saylor explained, it is possible to understand why there is an unbridled struggle to find a store of value.

“We know that cash will not work and that the rate of expansion of money supply will degrade bonds, real estate, and securities or fiduciary instruments. When looking for gold, we finally settled on the idea of a perfectly engineered digital gold, something superior to gold in all respects,” explained Saylor.

Therefore, when he found Bitcoin he thought that it was “the ultimate safe-haven asset and store of value for all investors worldwide.” Concerning gold, Saylor discards it as it is obsolete.

Zhao agrees with Saylor in that pension funds and sovereign funds will eventually lose their value, while Bitcoin will remain a good store of value. He says that individuals and public companies are now investing in crypto, so they “will have to abandon the ship [of funds] and hold some Bitcoin.”

Institutional Investors Fall in Love with Cryptocurrencies

One of the most frequent questions in the crypto market before 2020 was: “When will institutional investors join the crypto market?”

MicroStrategy was one of the pioneers but others joined it. This year, the crypto market has seen institutional investors come together and demand the pioneering cryptocurrency.

The CEO of Binance initially saw cryptocurrencies from an individual’s perspective rather than from an institution’s point of view. However, he considers that the current wave of institutional investment “is something refreshing” for the ecosystem.

The Bitcoin Market Will Expand

Changpeng Zhao says that he first heard of Bitcoin in 2013 and started buying it in October that year. In December, he even sold his house for fiat money and quit his job to invest in Bitcoin. He became a little anxious as Bitcoin’s price dropped very quickly at that time.

Saylor said that “what happened in March was a wake-up call. In April, I searched for the truth to rethink everything that I believed about macro investments. In May, it was clear to me that Bitcoin was the future.”

The CEO of MicroStrategy explained that Bitcoin will have three types of investors: those who put their money in gold (about USD 10 trillion), those who have bonds (about USD 17 trillion), and those who invest in great technologies.

“Those three types of people are looking for a store of value. Among these three types of investors, there is USD 150 million.” Therefore, Saylor notes that there is room for growth in the market capitalization of Bitcoin.

By Alexander Salazar

The Suzhou City trial aims to double the participation of the previous trial. So far, China’s digital currency project is cannot receive a test without a free coin giveaway.

China’s second most popular e-commerce platform, JD.com, processed 20,000 digital yuan transactions. Thus, closed the first day of a new experiment to test the operation of the system known officially as Electronic Payment in Digital Currency (DCEP) that has been under development in the country for more than six years.

The pilot test was launched after the Suzhou city municipal government raffled off 100,000 virtual currency packages worth 200 digital yuan ($31) each. The funds spending needs to happen before December 27, according to media reports in that country.

Residents, which found benefits and advantages from the raffle, participated en masse in an e-commerce festival organized by JD.com. The FinTech subsidiary of the e-commerce platform, JD Digits, confirmed that transactions with the digital currency got faster.

On average, a customer could complete the payment with the digital yuan in about 0.5 seconds. The trial arose as a result of a partnership between JD Digits, the People’s Bank of China, and the local government of Suzhou.

In this way, the popular e-commerce platform becomes the first to test the digital yuan for online purchases, although the current test also includes the participation of physical stores.

The JD data revealed that the users who used the digital yuan platform during the first day of the retest were from the younger population, with more than 80% born after 1980.

The statistics also indicate that the use of the currency Digital was slightly biased towards men, who made 57.6% of purchases. The largest online payment amount exceeded 10,000 yuan ($ 1,526).

More proofs with free Digital Yuan

The 20 million yuan distributed in the city of Suzhou represents more than double the amount given away during the first large-scale public test of the beta version of its cryptocurrency, which took place in Shenzhen in October.

For that opportunity, the Shenzhen municipal government gave away 8.8 million digital yuan that users can spend at participating in physical stores in the city.

Although the Chinese government has been expressing satisfaction with the participation of citizens during the tests, it remains a mystery what the scope of the digital yuan would be if its delivery is not for free to Chinese residents.

Cao Yin, managing director of the Shanghai-based Digital Renewal Center, believes that, despite extensive testing, the speed, progress, and upgrade of the DCEP integration will be cautious.

“In 2021, China will continue to look for additional and better scenarios to test the digital yuan, but a large-scale launch is not in the plans by now,” he said. In his opinion, the official launch of the digital currency in the country will happen around 2023.

China has been working on the development of its digital currency that will run on its Blockchain Services Network (BSN), which makes it a cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin.

China’s goal is not to challenge the dollar or euro with its new currency, the digital yuan, according to economist Zhou Xiaochuan, who served as governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). The focus is more about having greater dominance and expertise over the electronic payments market in their own country.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

A new phishing or fake link attack is in development in the bitcoin ecosystem. A group of hackers who in October tried to steal funds from users of the hardware wallet, Ledger, is now targeting those of the Trezor wallet.

The pirates use the same modus operandi applied two months ago. The plan in development is to send fake emails to users with information about their wallets being disabled. The fake statement includes an act of the new KYC (Know Your Customer) regulatory standards.

The origin of the attack would be related to a data leak of Ledger users. It is that same database that the hackers would be using, but now identifying their message with the Trezor brand.

The manufacturer warned about what was happening on its Twitter account and clarified that the wallets have no problem. Besides, he invited users to keep their private keys safe, so this is the way not to put their bitcoin and cryptocurrencies at risk.

“Attackers are using Ledger’s leaked database to spam people in the hope that they also own the Trezor device. Please ignore these phishing attempts and keep your seed (private keys) safe. Your Trezor is fine” was the message posted on the manufacturer’s social network.

Hardware Bitcoin Wallets…without Security Risks?

Another warning message was sent by Bitcoin evangelist Andreas Antonopoulos, which said that the word Trezor used by hackers is misspelled. The author of the book “Mastering Bitcoin” said that criminals use a zero (0) instead of a letter O to trick users.

The lecturer clarified that the attack has nothing to do with Trezor; the hackers used the same false name and an alleged code that does not represent any particular situation. Antonopoulos also defended the security of hardware wallets by saying:

“This violation of the sales database (of Ledger) guards no relation to the security of the hardware wallets (…) This has nothing to do with Trezor the same database is used simply to pursue and find more victims, ”Antonopoulos posted on Twitter.

Jameson Lopp, CTO of startup Casa also argued and warned about the situation regarding Trezor Lopp shared an image containing the Internet address (URL) for the false data verification. It is unknown if there are people who have been victims of the attack and the amounts in danger.

A report in October mentioned the situation about the Ledger wallets and their users. At that time the company indicated that hackers took advantage of a vulnerability in the system to make a breach and reach toward the data. The failure was fixed after the data leak, the company said.

It is important to remember that no hardware or software wallet manufacturer requests private keys from their users. These keys work as seeds or seed words; it is a series of 12, 24, or 36 words that validate the ownership of the funds that are in a portfolio. They also serve as a security element in case of theft or loss of the purse.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

For JP Morgan, the purchase of MassMutual is an indicator of how the interest in demand will continue to grow. The bank values ​​the entry to bitcoin of insurance firms and pension funds.

The investment of the insurance firm MassMutual in bitcoin is the purest example of how the cryptocurrency is gaining more and more ground at the institutional level, according to executives of JP Morgan, the largest bank in the United States.

According to executives such as Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, interest in bitcoin is spreading, beyond investors in the technology area. Now, that interest transcends insurance firms and pension funds, according to bank executives, cited by Bloomberg.

“MassMutual’s Bitcoin purchases represent another achievement in the adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) by institutional investors,” they assured from JP Morgan through a note to their clients cited by the aforementioned media.

The entry of the insurance firm does not only show a general view of the current situation; in the eyes of JP Morgan, the bank also points to a potential increase in that interest for the future. This is especially true when considering insurance companies and pension funds as generators of the power that impulses bitcoin as a store of value.

“You can see the potential demand is eager to arise in the coming years as other insurance companies and pension funds follow the example of MassMutual,” explained the banking institution.

Although the interest of this type of institutional players shows the potential of bitcoin in the future, traditional investors face regulatory obstacles associated especially with the risks due to the volatility of bitcoin in the market, JP Morgan pointed out.

The same bank has shown increasing interest in bitcoin and the world of cryptocurrencies, to the point of having created its stablecoin, JPM Coin, with which it has recently begun to finance itself.

MassMutual, the newest addition to the institutional rush for bitcoin

Just a few days ago, the insurance firm MassMutual announced the purchase of $ 100 million in bitcoin, which destinations go for its general investment account. Although the figure represents 0.04% of the total capital the company reported, the intention is to gain “a measured but significant exposure to a growing economic aspect of our increasingly digital world”, in the words of MassMutual.

This year it has been relevant because there have already been many institutional players betting heavily on the future of bitcoin. But as JP Morgan points out, the arrival of MassMutual seems to broaden the horizon.

Institutional interest is in consideration by some analysts in the bitcoin environment. They are seeing a determining factor for the price increase that BTC has experienced in recent months. These analysts think this factor could continue to be an element for new price records in the months to come.

 Bitcoin is currently trading above $ 19,000 again, after recovering from a correction of up to 7% and after breaking its all-time high on some exchanges just a few weeks ago.

By: Jenson Nuñez.