A Happy New Year to all of you, and let’s hope it is a better year than 2020, which took us all by surprise with the coronavirus.

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts have had an excellent start as the value of Bitcoin, and the leading altcoins, such as Ethereum (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC) have been surging in value over the Christmas period. It has kept many of us glued to the price on an hourly basis. There were definitely days of waking up and nervously opening whichever device you prefer and checking the numbers, often to find that Bitcoin had achieved yet another All Time High while we slept.

Now that Bitcoin has breached the $30,000 barrier, and even almost touched $35,000 at one point, the predictions for an even higher climb are coming in, as might be expected. We’ve seen a small correction this morning, but the USA-based Binance CEO Catherine Coley is suggesting BTC could reach $100,000 by 2022. Only another year to HODL your crypto then! Coley said, “Where maybe we thought maybe $50,000 made sense, this number is definitely going to be a little bit higher than that in my opinion,” said Coley. “I think we’re going towards $75,000 to $100,000 for Bitcoin by the end of 2021.”

Dan Held, crypto exchange Kraken’s growth lead says Bitcoin could be entering a “supercycle” in 2021 eventually driving the price to $1,000,000. That’s mind-boggling.
Ethereum has also seen a massive surge and is now over the $1,000 mark after a few weeks of apparently hovering around $700. Cointelegraph points out that ETH has “broken a critical price point against Bitcoin, signalling that altcoins may be about to see huge gains.” Michael van der Poppe, a market analyst at Cointelegraph said, “I do believe that we’re seeing money shift from BTC towards altcoins and that Ether has bottomed out on the BTC pair,” explained Van de Poppe. “So probably continuation of altseason in this quarter with the topping out of Bitcoin dominance.”

So, buckle up folks, it’s going to be an interesting year in cryptocurrency, even if other things in the world are less inspiring.

https://lendoplatformltd.medium.com/happy-new-year-cryptocurrency-269b49ddba72

The upcoming, annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos has put two sessions about cryptocurrencies on the agenda, a sign of its growing importance, Cointelegraph suggests.

The sessions, titled Resetting Digital Currencies, are going to be held on the Monday and Thursday, if you want to follow it, and will feature speakers Andrew Bailey, Bank of England Governor and Hikmet Ersek, president and CEO of Western Union.

At the Thursday session, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, a senior minister for the government of Singapore, and Zhu Min, chairman of the Beijing-based National Institute of Financial Research will be amongst the speakers.

The prospectus for these sessions points out that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the move away from cash in the long term, and that the emergence of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are potentially transforming how people use money worldwide.
It also asks: “What policies, practices and partnerships are needed to leverage the opportunities posed by the rise of digital currencies?”

Davos is a meeting of the world’s leading figures in government and finance, and the talks are split by theme, with cryptocurrencies coming under ‘Fairer Economies’. Other themes are “Tech for Good,” “How to Save the Planet” and “Healthy Futures.”

The WEF, based in Geneva, is providing more resources to a working group so that blockchain technology can be better researched and understood, The group is also looking into blockchain as a key driver of sustainable digital finance, and unlocking the hidden values of smart contracts. It is also looking at CBDCs and has developed a framework to “evaluate, design and potentially deploy CBDC,” a project it worked on in conjunction with over 40 central banks and other financial institutions.

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https://lendoplatformltd.medium.com/cryptocurrency-is-on-the-davos-agenda-e594300ea1b6