Coinsmart. Beste Bitcoin-Börse in Europa
Source: https://cryptopotato.com/grayscale-total-assets-value-soars-above-50-billion-following-the-recent-bitcoin-ath/

Finance officials from both sides of the globe are taking the opportunity to criticize the value and utility of cryptocurrencies, as media focus intensifies on the space following Coinbase’s direct listing on the Nasdaq.

Bank of Korea Governor Lee Ju-yeol said cryptocurrencies had “considerable limitations” as a method of payment, following a monetary policy meeting on Thursday, reports local outlet KBS World.

While asserting that it was difficult to accurately value cryptocurrencies due to their volatile price fluctuations, Lee said the BOK had not shifted on its stance that they had no intrinsic value.

Lee also referenced United States Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, noting that the head of the Fed shared his sentiments on the crypto space.

Hours earlier, Powell stated in a virtual interview with The Economic Club of New York that cryptocurrencies were purely speculative, adding that they had not been readily adopted as a means of payment.

“They’re really vehicles for speculation. They’re not really being actively used as payments,” Powell said, according to CNBC.

Flying in the face of Powell and Lee’s comments is the recent adoption of cryptocurrency by major global payment processors. Visa, Mastercard and PayPal all began to implement crypto payment options in the past few months, while Tesla introduced Bitcoin (BTC) as a payment option for its electric car business.

That’s not to say Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a sure thing as far as payment methods go. Bitcoin’s average transaction fee is currently around $30 due to its limited block size and resultant network congestion. For this reason, payment processors are often forced to eat such transaction fees as a cost of doing business. Until they can no longer afford to, as was the case with gaming platform Steam in 2017.

One point of agreement shared by Powell and the crypto community is the suggestion that cryptocurrency could be compared to gold — but for completely different reasons. Cryptocurrency (particularly Bitcoin) proponents argue that the technology can be used as a long-term store of value in the same manner as a precious metal.

Powell, however, intended the comparison to be derisory. The Fed chairman’s opinion of gold seems to be no better than that of cryptocurrency.

“For thousands of years, human beings have given gold a special value that it doesn’t have,” said the chairman of the fiat-printing center of the United States.

Coinsmart. Beste Bitcoin-Börse in Europa
Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/finance-officials-pour-cold-water-on-cryptocurrency-amid-coinbase-celebrations

David Schwartz, the Chief Technical Officer at Ripple Labs, has been giving some pretty positive investment advice, but it comes at an interesting time.

Simply put, the CTO believes that if someone has life-changing amounts of different cryptocurrencies, that person should definitely consider selling some of the said cryptos in order to reduce the risk of failure and over-exposure. This was communicated to Schwartz’s followers in a tweet, and he later clarified that this investment advice is not representative of some prophecy or projection about the future of any cryptocurrency market, and is mostly just general advice.

Sound advice? 

Schwartz said in the tweet that it was likely to be his “least famous tweet” ever, but he nonetheless advised his followers that selling a considerable portion of their respective cryptocurrency assets isn’t a bad idea, particularly given the industry’s unpredictable nature. This is definitely real, as there have been countless examples of people keeping their investments for far too long, only to see the valuation of those assets plummet by the time the owners attempt to cash them out.

Furthermore, with the present state of the cryptocurrency industry, XRP has risen by 850 percent this year while Bitcoin has simultaneously risen by 790 percent to a new all-time peak of $64k.

Schwartz has, in the past, taking his own advice. In 2019, he admitted to selling $40,000 in ETH prior to the late-2017 bull run in order to buy solar panels. In the most recent thread, he mentioned that, in retrospect, he could not have sold the majority of it. “I guess I was hoping it would come back down so I could buy back in,” he tweeted. “However, it did not succeed. Of course, you may come to regret taking smaller risk,” he said. 

Ripple V. SEC

The legal battle between Ripple and the SEC is still ongoing. Despite recent wins for Ripple, the matter is still far from settled. Furthermore, during a legal proceeding, executives normally maintain a low profile so that their comments do not become weapons to be used against them.

Schwartz, on the other hand, was thinking of cryptocurrencies in general, not XRP directly, and he also suggested that cryptocurrency prices can and so often do deteriorate.

However, XRP seems to be an exception to this rule, as its particular price has been slowly stretching, hitting its highest level in three years at just over $1.8.

Coinsmart. Beste Bitcoin-Börse in Europa
Source: https://zycrypto.com/as-xrp-skyrockets-ripple-cto-david-schwartz-wants-you-to-consider-selling-some-crypto-holdings/