Mediaboss Marketing

In a recent CNBC interview, hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones discussed why he's buying Bitcoin(CRYPTO: BTC). Interestingly, he did not once mention blockchains, smart contracts, decentralized applications, or non-fungible tokens (NFTs). There was no crypto mumbo-jumbo, and no outlandish price predictions.

Instead, this billionaire hedge fund investor analyzes Bitcoin the same way he analyzes every other asset in his portfolio. Correlations, risk premiums, economic scenarios, and statistical probabilities matter. If you're thinking of investing in Bitcoin now, this investment framework might be helpful.

The starting point is viewing crypto as a unique asset class. Once you do that, you can compare Bitcoin against other asset classes, to see which ones you should be holding in your portfolio, and how much should be allocated to each. Every asset comes with its own unique risk-reward profile, and that's where Bitcoin really stands out. Yes, there is significant risk involved with investing in Bitcoin, but there's also significant upside potential.

Paul Tudor Jones refers to Bitcoin as "a great tail event," and that has a very specific meaning in the investment world. It refers to the possible distribution of events. In statistical terms, a tail event is a 3 standard deviation event, meaning that there is only a 0.3% likelihood of it occurring. If you think about a standard bell curve distribution, for example, there will always be a giant hump in the middle, and very flat tails on either side. Most assets are part of that giant hump in the middle.

But Bitcoin is different -- it's seemingly always the "tail." Sometimes, it's the tail of negative distributions (as was the case in 2022). But more often, it's the tail of positive distributions. As a result, from 2011-2021, Bitcoin was the top-performing asset in the world, and it wasn't even close.While those historical returns are no guarantee of future performance, they do showcase Bitcoin's upside potential.

Bitcoin is also interesting in terms of its correlations. Over the past few months, Bitcoin has started to become more and more correlated with gold. The elevated level of economic uncertainty right now is causing people to search out so-called safe haven assets, and many people consider Bitcoin to be in that class.

This is not because Bitcoin is inherently safe -- it's because Bitcoin is outside the traditional banking system. Thus, if more banks run into trouble, then Bitcoin theoretically won't feel the bite as much as other financial assets.

Image source: Getty Images.

Right now, Paul Tudor Jones still views Bitcoin as a potential inflation hedge, similar to gold. That makes Bitcoin valuable, since it is a potential way to hedge away inflation risk. Thus, over time, the expectation is that Bitcoin will maintain its correlation with gold. However, he warns, once the Fed stops hiking interest rates, the case for Bitcoin as an inflation hedge might start to wane.

Paul Tudor Jones also uses economic modeling to predict the future path of asset prices. This, after all, was what allowed him to predict the 1987 stock market crash and generate tremendous profits in the process. He modeled the stock market crash of 1929, compared it to what was happening in the 1980s, and concluded that stock prices were going to plummet. He's now doing the same with the current situation, comparing it to what occurred during the 2008 financial crisis, to see what might happen next.

You don't need to have a degree in economics to do this same type of modeling. All you need to do is think in terms of potential economic scenarios. In short, think about a few economic scenarios that might happen, and then think how Bitcoin will respond in each scenario. What happens in a rising rate environment? What happens if the economy goes into recession next quarter?

Taking all of this into account, Paul Tudor Jones obviously likes what he sees in Bitcoin. "I've never sat on a horse that long," he says. He started investing in Bitcoin in 2020 when it was trading for around $9,000, rode it up to its all-time high of $68,790, and then watched it plummet all the way to $15,000 before rising once again to near $30,000. He's still holding on to it, nearly three years later.

Of course, you don't want to overdo things when it comes to Bitcoin. We don't know exactly how much Paul Tudor Jones has allocated to Bitcoin right now. Back in 2021, he suggested he might be willing to hold as much as 5% in Bitcoin. However, more recently, he suggested that he was allocating just 1% to 2% of his portfolio to Bitcoin.

Even if you don't agree with Paul Tudor Jones, one thing is clear: You can become a better crypto investor by changing the way you analyze Bitcoin. Instead of relying on popular crypto narratives (many of which sound like marketing slogans for Bitcoin), use the same tried-and-true approaches used by billionaire investors.

Read the original here:

Billionaire Investor Paul Tudor Jones Is Buying Bitcoin Now. Should ... - The Motley Fool

Historically, startups have built their products on blockchains outside of the Bitcoin network to avoid its slow transaction speeds, high fees and inability to communicate cross-chain.

But thanks to efforts like the Lightning Network and Taproot Assets (formerly Taro), which have improved the Bitcoin networks accessibility, speed and scalability, a number of enthusiasts are building on top of Bitcoin.

For reference, the Lightning Network is a layer-2 payment system that aims to enable faster transactions at a nominal cost for the blockchain. Separately, Taproot, which launched in April 2022, aims to help issue digital assets on Bitcoins blockchain that can then be transferred to Lightning Network instantly in low-fee transactions.

In Wolfs Clothing (Wolf), a startup accelerator launched by asset management firm Stone Ridge, is a similar effort that wants to bolster Bitcoin-focused applications and use cases. Over 100 teams from 36 different countries applied to be a part of the flagship, exclusively nonremote cohort, based in New York City.

Its first cohort, Wolfpack 1, consisted of eight teams and 23 founders from 10 countries, and they presented their ideas on Wednesday during a demo day, exclusively covered by TechCrunch+.

All teams were provided seed capital by Wolf, the accelerators CEO, Kelly Brewster, said. NYDIG, a subsidiary of Stone Ridge, is also supporting the program, alongside mentorship and investments from Bitcoin-centric VC firms and operating companies.

Many of the startups presented real-world use cases that werent about improving the bitcoin ecosystem but rather were products and services people can use everyday, only powered by faster payment rails. The majority of the startups integrated the Lightning Network into their tech.

The program featured 30 guest speakers from Stone Ridge and NYDIG, among others, including Lightning Labs co-founder and CEO Elizabeth Stark; Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation; and Lyn Alden, who founded Lyn Alden Investment Strategy.

Company: 10101

What it does: Decentralized trading on Bitcoin

Founders: Philipp Hoenisch, Richard Holzeis, Lucas Soriano del Pino, Mariusz Klochowicz, Daniel Karzel

The pitch: 10101 (Ten Ten One) provides decentralized finance and bitcoin trading through its mobile application. The company is a self-custodial, on- and off-chain wallet that lets users trade perpetual futures without counterparty risks or third-party middlemen, like exchanges.

The application is fully open source and powered by the Bitcoin Dev Kit and the Lightning Dev Kit. The company plans to add synthetic stablecoins and other products like binary options, futures, structured products and prediction markets to its application in the long term, co-founder Philipp Hoenisch said during his pitch.

It is raising a $2.7 million seed round and plans to launch publicly in the third quarter of 2023.

Company: Arcade

What it does: Global peer-to-peer marketplace built on Nostr

Founders: Christopher David, Erik Aronesty

The pitch: Arcade is building a decentralized global marketplace for peer-to-peer commerce with an initial focus on expanding in the Nigerian market. It wants to build a global order book that allows people to buy any product or service globally. Peer-to-peer Bitcoin onramps have to be uncensorable, global, mobile and extensible, so thats what were building, said co-founder and CEO Christopher David.

The marketplace hopes to claim the market share freed up by the recent closure of P2P marketplaces like LocalBitcoins. It builds on censorship-resistant open networks for payments like Bitcoin, Lightning and the data network Nostr. The application is live in beta mode with about 500 test users.

Arcade is currently raising $2 million in seed funding via YC SAFE.

Company: Agora

What it does: Social debate platform

Founders: James Pierog, Ruban Sundara Raj T

The Pitch: Agora is a gamified social debate platform where people can post ideas, argue their points in the comments and vote with satoshis, the smallest denomination of bitcoin, to determine which side wins. When the debate is over, the funds are split by those who voted for the winning side. The business takes about 5% of each prize pool. It has seen about 140,000 satoshis or $36.98 in payment volume across 1,085 transactions and 30 debates in the past two weeks, co-founder and CEO James Pierog said.

The platform plans to launch a mobile app by the end of 2023.

Company:Dustup What is does:Streamlined tournament tools Founders:Neil Woodfine, Richard Bensberg, Adam Woodfine The Pitch: Dustup aims to improve the e-sports competition space through its streamlined tournament tools that integrate bitcoin payments, giving players the ability to pay entry fees and collect prize payouts quickly. The typical registration process for e-sports tournaments is extremely slow and requires a bunch of rerouting, said CEO and co-founder Neil Woodfine, but through the companys tool, players can register directly in a Discord in less than 30 seconds. The startup also provides automated results and custom scoring, as well as a bot that can help manage battle royale tournaments.

Its raising a pre-seed extension round of $350,000.

Company: ShockNet

What it does: Lightning-focused web infrastructure

Founders: Justin Hilton, Hatim Boufnichel

The Pitch: ShockNet provides infrastructure and tools to bridge web applications with the Lightning Network for quick payments. Its infrastructure connects Lightning micropayments to any app, so people can deliver content and have a means for monetization. The startup is also building its platform, Lightning.video, which uses its technology stack to give creators an opportunity to earn by publishing and monetizing their own content without having to post on platforms like YouTube.

Company: Route Finance

What it does: Corporate treasury operating system

Founders: Nate Castillo, Ramin Keene

The Pitch: Route is building an operating system for corporate treasuries that lets businesses automate cash management, analysis, forecasting, reconciliation and integrate payments directly into treasury workflows by pulling data from over 170 different integrations. The service provides a programmable financial data platform with AI, ML and Bitcoin support that will tailor support for advanced treasury workflows.

Over time, the startup wants to power payments through Lightning and Taproot technologies, and essentially replace Swift and become the Stripe for treasury, said Nate Castillo, the companys co-founder. It has four customers Amboss, StackHawk, Denali and Teachable in its pilot program. However, after this story published, Ambosss CFO, Asher Hopp, reached out to TechCrunch+ to clarify that Route pitched Amboss, but there is no formal agreement between them.

Likewise, StackHawk SVP Holly Hamann told usthat StackHawk is not one of Routes customers, either, and is not involved with its program. Weve reached out to both Route and Wolf and will update this story with their comments accordingly.

Company: Zawda

What it does: Preserving paychecks

Founders: Oday Kamal, Javier Vargas

The Pitch: The Zawda platform helps employees in MENA, Lebanon, Turkey and Pakistan allocate portions of their paychecks to bitcoin and stablecoins directly through their employers to preserve the monetary value.

Countries in the Middle East face high inflation and rising costs, and people in those regions are seeing their local currencies and purchasing power diminish dramatically, said company co-founder Oday Kamal. Its platform requires no tech integration and aims to work with people to improve their ability to maintain currency and offer them a way to receive a small portion of their paycheck in bitcoin to preserve their funds.

It is starting its pilot phase with the United Arab Emirates and plans to finalize licenses with regulators in the country by the third quarter of 2023; it anticipates exiting that phase by end of year. It also wants to expand paycheck offerings into stablecoins, via Taproot Assets. It later plans to launch in Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan, as well as add services like remittances, staking and lending.

Company: Zeus

What it does: Bitcoin wallet, node management

Founder: Evan Kaloudis

The Pitch: Zeus is an open source, noncustodial Bitcoin wallet and node management client that aims to provide a better option for lightning interfaces and node costs. The entire process to set up its wallet takes less than 30 seconds, founder Evan Kaloudis showed during his presentation. The wallet currently has about 10,000 users, making up over 10% of all Lightning Network users. It is also building Olympus by Zeus, a lightning service provider, that aims to offer easier connectivity to the lightning network. The wallet is supported by Eclair, LND and Core Lightning and is integrated by companies like BTC Pay, MyNode and Nodl, among others. Its looking to raise $2 million to $3 million.

See more here:

Take a look at Wolf's first cohort of Bitcoin-driven startups - TechCrunch

Home Journal Litecoins Upcoming Halving Unnoticed by Markets Can Bitcoins Plunge Ignite the Spark?

As the crypto landscape evolves, one event is causing a significant stir: Litecoins (LTC) halving, set to take place on August 10, 2023. This event, where mining rewards will drop from 12.5 LTC to 6.25 LTC on block 2,140,000, is expected to influence Litecoins price, supply, and demand, potentially mirroring patterns seen in Bitcoins halvings.

Indeed, the halving could provoke a surge in mining activity before the event and an increased valuation of each existing LTC, due to the universally acknowledged slower production of coins post-halving. Such dynamics typically prompt price increases, often aligning with the crowds enthusiasm and awareness of the event. Current trends indicate a steady rise in on-chain transaction volume since May 8, likely due to increased investment activity in anticipation of the halving.

Open interest in Litecoin futures derivative contracts has also seen an impressive growth of 22% since the beginning of the year, exceeding $420 million, suggesting increasing market anticipation for the halving event.

However, Crypto analyst Michal van de Poppe points out that despite the upcoming halving, the markets are barely showing interest in LTC, although this could change if Bitcoin finds a low. At the time of writing, LTC is valued at $84.72, with a 10% decrease over the past week.

Turning our attention to Bitcoin, BTC is currently valued at $26,245, marking a 4.4% decrease over the last seven days. Despite this recent correction, van de Poppe maintains a positive outlook, characterizing it as a healthy correction in an upward trend. He suggests that if BTC bounces back to the $26,600 level, then traders may have already witnessed Bitcoins local low.

Regarding Litecoins price analysis, theres a strong resistance level at $93.8, with the current support level at $91.3. In recent hours, the price has faced rejection at the $92.8 level, resulting in a continuous downward drift. Despite a bullish sentiment as shown by the moving average indicator (MA) at $89, selling pressure has contributed to the downward movement, with a prevailing trend favoring the bears. However, the downtrend remains manageable, with no significant setbacks observed.

Historically, Bitcoin and Litecoin have often moved in tandem, given their similar foundational technologies. Litecoin, often referred to as the silver to Bitcoins gold, was created by Charlie Lee in 2011 as a lite version of Bitcoin. It offers faster transaction confirmation times and a different hashing algorithm. Significant events in Bitcoin, like halvings and price movements, often have ripple effects on Litecoin and the broader altcoin market. It will be interesting to observe how the upcoming Litecoin halving will impact both LTC and other cryptocurrencies.

In conclusion, while the upcoming Litecoin halving is creating buzz and possibly influencing Litecoins price, the markets are still closely watching Bitcoins price action. As these two influential cryptocurrencies navigate these events, its crucial for investors to stay informed and attentive to these market dynamics.

Continue reading here:

Litecoin's Upcoming Halving Unnoticed by Markets - Can Bitcoin's ... - Captain Altcoin

(Kitco News) - Gold will "fail" as an asset as people realize that Bitcoin offers superior properties to the yellow metal. That is according to billionaire Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of MicroStrategy, a publicly traded company which holds 140,000 Bitcoin.

"[Bitcoin] is the digital synthetic successor to gold," Saylor told Michelle Makori, Lead Anchor and Editor-in-Chief at Kitco News. "Bitcoin is going to appreciate at a faster rate. Gold is going to fail. Eventually people will sell all their gold and buy Bitcoin."

MicroStrategy started purchasing Bitcoin in August 2020, which Saylor said has paid off, given the appreciation in Bitcoin's price since then.

"Bitcoin is up 140 percent," he observed. "The S&P Index is up maybe 25 percent, the NASDAQ is up in the teens or maybe less, gold is like a plus one percent, silver has been down and lost money, and bonds have lost even more."

A long time HODLER of Bitcoin, Saylor claimed that Bitcoin has succeeded as an inflation hedge and store of value. He first started investing in Bitcoin because of its limited supply cap and decentralized blockchain network, which make it cheaper to self-custody than other assets without counterparty risk.

"[Bitcoin] is faster, smarter, and stronger than gold, with all of the advantages of gold a bearer instrument with no counterparty risk that's a non-sovereign store of value," said Saylor. "[Gold] is expensive to hold, it's centralizing, people can steal it from you, and gold miners keep debasing it by making more gold."

Saylor spoke with Makori at the Bitcoin 2023 conference in Miami, Florida.

To find out Saylor's inflation outlook and why he thinks Bitcoin is the best inflation hedge, watch the video above.

"I'm a Bitcoin realist'

Saylor maintained that he is a "Bitcoin realist," and not a purist when it comes to how people choose to hold Bitcoin.

"If Bitcoin is going to be the solution for 8 billion people on the planet, then it's going to be inevitable that large institutions, churches and corporations and the like, are going to need an infrastructure of custodians and banks," he said. "There are all sorts of groups of people that can't reasonably be expected to self-custody."

He noted that a corporation which owns Bitcoin cannot have the CEO or Board of Directors self-custody the Bitcoin due to due diligence and regulation.

"If Apple is going to have Bitcoin, and Apple is a corporation, they're not going to give it to [Apple CEO] Tim Cook," Saylor remarked.

To find out what Saylor thinks will lead to more Bitcoin adoption, watch the video above.

Bank Failures are Political

March of 2023 saw the failure of the banks Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature. On May 1st, First Republic Bank also collapsed and was bought by JP Morgan. In total, these banks had over $500 billion in total assets.

Saylor said that whether or not more U.S. banks fail is a "political decision."

"It's the politicians that decide whether the banks collapse," he said. "They can choose to have them not collapse by backing them, or they can choose to take into receivership a bank, and then the creditors and the equity-holders are wiped out, and the depositors aren't."

In the case of Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature, the federal government and Federal Reserve bailed out depositors, while allowing the banks to fail.

Saylor is particularly concerned about jurisdictions outside of the U.S.

"Under no circumstances would I have my money in a weak bank, or in a bank in a weak country with a weak currency," he stated. "That's basically playing Russian roulette. In the U.S., I would probably have confidence in my deposits, but if I were an investor or creditor to a smaller bank, I wouldn't have confidence in my securities."

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

Read the original here:

Gold will 'fail' and be replaced by Bitcoin, bank collapses are a ... - Kitco NEWS

Meme coins are on the rise in unfamiliar places thanks to Ordinals, the project launched in January on the Bitcoin network. It started with an NFT-like effort to "inscribe" assets like artwork and profile pictures onto Bitcoins blockchain, but soon evolved to support BRC-20 tokens minted using the same protocol.

Now, thanks to the sensation surrounding Ordinal inscriptions and meme tokens on Bitcoinnot to mention the increasingly high network fees that resultedinscribers have brought the latest craze in blockchain to Litecoin and Dogecoin. And in the process, theyve sent daily transaction totals to the moon.

On Wednesday, the three largest proof-of-work blockchains by market capitalization collectively tallied over 2 million daily transactions: 579,260 on Bitcoin, 363,885 on Litecoin, and 1.126 million on Dogecoin alone, per data from BitInfoCharts. Each chain has also marked a respective all-time single-day peak for transactions so far in May.

How did we get here? Ordinals coming to Litecoin and Dogecoin was a natural progression, considering that Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin and Dogecoin was based on code forked from Litecoin. They're all related, in a sense, and that's what has led to the migration of Ordinals tech from Bitcoin to the others.

Meanwhile, the BRC-20 and subsequent LTC-20 and DRC-20 standards were inspired by Ethereums ERC-20 tokens, allowing developers to create fungible tokens on the blockchains. It was a lighthearted experiment on Bitcoin... until the tokens caught on and nearly reached a collective $1 billion market cap.

Given that, it's no surprise to see the trend catch on elsewhere since. And Ordinals and the resulting meme token frenzy is already having a sizable impact on Litecoin and Dogecoin alike. Here's a look at how it happened.

In January, software engineer Casey Rodamor released the Ordinals protocol, which let users transfer and receive individual satoshisthat is, the smallest denomination of a Bitcoin (1/100,000,000 BTC). The key upgrade here is that they could include inscribed data like videos or images, instead of simply storing transaction data.

In March, Ordinal inscriptions hit a new high after a pseudonymous creator named Domo launched the BRC-20short for "Bitcoin Request for Comment" implementation. BRC-20 allowed the creation of "fungible tokens" on the Bitcoin network, opening the door for anyone to create meme tokens on the original blockchain.

As newer tools and infrastructure have made Ordinals easier to inscribe and handle, the total number of inscriptions has soared, topping 8 million as of this writing. And with over 24,000 BRC-20 tokens minted to date, the total combined market cap is currently over $618 millionand previously neared $1 billion in total. Bitcoin transactions set a single-day record of 682,000 on May 1 amid the meme token frenzy.

Critics of Ordinal inscriptions point to the rising cost of transactions on these blockchains now that blocks are filled with JPEGs and meme tokens, with some going so far as to call it a potential attack vector and that Ordinals and meme tokens should be blocked on the network. However, proponents of Ordinals say that the higher cost help secure the network.

Following the Ordinals-fueled explosion in activity on the Bitcoin network, the inscription protocol made its way to the Litecoin network. Litecoin was launched in 2011 as a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain and was a prominent cryptocurrency for years, though it has been overshadowed at times by newer and buzzier coins.

Ordinals came to Litecoin in February after a challenge from pseudonymous Twitter user Indigo Nakamoto, who initially offered 5 LTC (around $500) to anyone who could port the Ordinals protocol to Litecoinand the prize pool quickly grew. Software engineer Anthony Guerrera launched Litecoin Ordinals after forking the Bitcoin code.

In May, the LTC-20 standard was introduced to Litecoin, bringing meme tokens to the network. Litecoin transactions surged after the addition of Ordinals, going from 100,684 transactions on May 1 to hit an all-time high of 584,836 transactions on May 10. Over 2.6 million Litecoin Ordinals have now been inscribed, according to the Litecoin Foundation.

That same month, meme token and digital artifacts using Ordinal inscriptions made their way to the original meme coin network, Dogecoin, by introducing the DRC-20 standard. Users began filling the blockchain by inscribing tokens into the smallest denomination of a Dogecoin, sometimes referred to as "shibes" or "koinu," after copying the Ordinals protocol to create Doginals.

Dogecoin saw an even heavier surge in activity than its contemporaries, at least in terms of daily transaction volume, which jumped from about 88,000 on Monday to over 1.1 million on Wednesday. Not everyone is convinced that the trend is strong enough to last, however.

Something like this cannot become a real feature because it has not had enough thought given to it, Dogecoin core developer Patrick LoddertoldDecrypt this week. Furthermore, he believes that the impact on the broader network will cool the hype, adding that sustained and growing pressure on Dogecoin will cause this to die off quickly."

Editor's note: This article was updated after publication to clarify the terms used to describe the smallest unit of a Dogecoin.

Go here to see the original:

Meme Tokens and NFTs Took Over BitcoinNow It's Happening on ... - Decrypt