The CEO of the world’s largest asset manager sees “huge opportunities” for cryptocurrencies – but argues that work needs to be done before they become more widely accepted.
Cryptocurrency Art Gallery: Litecoin, Ether, Ripple, Bitcoin and Namecoin (Image: Namecoin/Flickr)
In a new interview with Bloomberg TV, BlackRock chief Larry Fink said that he’s a “big believer”, but that the current market today is primarily focused on speculation. His comments come months after the firm’s chief strategist said that, to him, the cryptocurrency market charts at the time looked “pretty scary.”
Fink said in the interview:
“Related to cryptocurrencies, I’m a big believer in the potential of what a cryptocurrency can do. You see huge opportunities, but what we’re talking about today, it’s much more of a speculative platform, people are speculating on it.”
“We are in the process of developing a new operating system for the planet.”
The remark, issued by Barclays’ vice chairman of corporate banking, Jeremy Wilson, perhaps summed up the scope and tenor of discussion at the Blockchain for Finance conference yesterday. Held in Dublin, the event played host to participants more at home in suits than hoodies, though the mood was no less enthusiastic than if it was packed with developers.
Blockchain (Image: DavidStankiewicz/Wikipedia)
Leading off with a panel of C-Suite executives from large financial institutions, it was here Wilson issued his positioning statement, one that added to the outlooks of other panelists assembled to provide a top-down view of blockchain work originating in the financial sector.
However, if Wilson appeared awe-struck at the enormity of the promise of blockchain and distributed ledger applications, he was equally critical of the work the industry is doing to assess ethical and moral dimensions of the coming impact.
Emmanuel Aidoo, director of blockchain at Credit Suisse, also hinted at fragile complexities. He likened the integration of blockchain into financial processes to a game of Jenga – you pull out the blocks from the bottom and hope that the tower doesn’t crumble.
But while few details about live implementations were forthcoming, all participants mentioned specific projects their institutions had undertaken. And, in contrast to years past, Wilson wasn’t a lone voice on the panel remarking on the potential of what is to come when – not if – these projects come to fruition.
Hadley Stern, senior vice president of Fidelity Lab, told attendees:
“Asking us that is as if Tim Berners-Lee had just developed HTTP and you’re asking us if the internet will change the world.”
The cryptocurrency that powers Ripple’s XRP ledger is showing signs it may be consolidating ahead of a boost.
At press time, the XRP-U.S. dollar (XRP/USD) exchange rate seems to be building a base around $0.20-levels. The third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has gained 2.56 percent in the last 24 hours.
Elsewhere, Ripple news was quiet, and no major news was observable on its major channels and company forums. But, while week-on-week XRP is trading dead flat, it’s possible traders see opportunity in an upcoming event sponsored by Ripple.
Notably, this month, Ripple is to host “Swell” – an event aimed at bringing the world’s financial leaders together to network and discuss trends and strategies. Swell will go head-to-head with Sibos, Swift’s annual banking and financial conference scheduled for October 16–19 in Toronto, Canada, and bring in speakers including World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee.
After the hard fork on August 1 that produced Bitcoin Cash, many bitcoiners have been waiting for the possibility of a fork taking place this November with the Segwit2x plan. However, a lot of bitcoin proponents don’t know about another fork called “Bitcoin Gold” (BTG) that’s scheduled to take place on October 25th.
Gold bullion (Image: Stevebidmead/Pixabay)
Yes, you read that correctly bitcoin enthusiasts might see another hard fork this October that produces another token called Bitcoin Gold. The project first announced on Bitcointalk.org in July was created by Jack Liao, the founder of Lightning ASIC a mining firm based out of Hong Kong and an anonymous developer named “h4x3.” The forked protocol aims to change bitcoin’s consensus algorithm allowing users to mine the currency with graphic processing units (GPU) among other changes. According to the development team, Bitcoin Gold will use the Equihash algorithm used by the altcoin Zcash rather than bitcoin’s original SHA256.
Bitcoin could hit $6,000 by year-end, experts said
But investors should brace for more volatility as another “fork” could take place
Bitcoin rose more than 74 percent in the third quarter
Bitcoin could rally nearly 40 percent to hit $6,000 before the end of the year but investors should brace for more volatility, according to industry experts.
Bitcoin price chart (Image: geralt/Pixabay)
The cryptocurrency was trading around $4,333 on Tuesday.
The third quarter has been one of the most eventful in bitcoin’s history. It is up over 74 percent in the September quarter, with a shifting landscape in regulation and developments in the underlying technology taking place in the last three months.
After a few last minute hitches our work has paid off and the website is finally visible to the public! We hope you like it.
I Love Bitcoin and wording design (Image: Bitcoinula/Wikimedia)
It will change significantly over the next few days – and in fact will continue to evolve over the next few weeks and months – as we improve and adapt it to match our vision of what the site can be. Our aim is to make it the best Bitcoin and cryptocurrency site online for British investors.
I have been trading in Bitcoin for some time but still find that in the UK most people are unaware of it, or at least know nothing about it beyond its name. In other countries, particularly the US, China and Japan, it is increasingly being accepted.
Why is the UK behind? In fact, not just the UK but Europe? I don’t know, but I’ve created this website to give information about Bitcoin to those interested in the UK.
Welcome to the launch of Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk! We’ve been busy behind the scenes for a while and are happy to finally be online. Our aim is to make this the primary place for all things Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency for UK investors.
A graphic of the bitcoin digital currency (Image: Web-dev-chris/Wikimedia)
We’ll be covering Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency news and views, plus reviews of trading and faucet sites, and looking at crypto lending and trading. We look forward to building up a community of like-minded individuals.
The leading Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency site for UK investors
