Hand holding bitcoin

More Than Half Of All Bitcoin Trades Are Fake

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Bitcoin suffered its biggest drop in three months on Tuesday, falling nearly 10% in the wake of a worse-than-expected August inflation report, as investors fear the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates for a third time this year, potentially sparking a so-called&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/cryptocurrency/what-is-crypto-winter/">crypto winter</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/assets/bitcoin-btc/?sh=4bd808ef4357">Bitcoin</a>&nbsp;continued a months-long fall Tuesday afternoon, dropping 9.35% to $20,304.73, following new Labor Department&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/09/13/inflation-climbed-83-in-august-slowing-for-second-month-straight-as-gas-prices-plunged/?sh=440a3b3266c5">data</a>&nbsp;that showed an 8.3% rise in consumer prices over the past 12 months ending in August, slowing for the second straight month, but still higher than economists had expected.



Bitcoin had been steadily climbing after briefly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2022/08/27/bitcoin-drops-below-20000-amid-recession-fears/?sh=11693c4f77f4">dropping</a>&nbsp;below $20,000 on August 27, but is less than a third of what it was at its peak of $67,037 last November.



It’s the largest drop since&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/08/18/crypto-winter-watch-all-the-big-layoffs-record-withdrawals-and-bankruptcies-sparked-by-the-2-trillion-crash/?sh=6ec3191f3309">June</a>, when bitcoin fell from $28,636 on June 11 to $20.556 on June 16—it continued its downward trend to a low of $19,327 on July 1, and economists warned that a looming recession could erase the progress cryptocurrencies had made during the Covid-19 pandemic, when shares skyrocketed.



Elon Musk-backed cryptocurrency&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/assets/dogecoin-doge/?sh=2c9bed213ab3">Dogecoin</a>&nbsp;also fell 5.85% Tuesday, trading at 6 cents, while&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/assets/ether-eth/?sh=20ebec4a7b0e">Ether</a>&nbsp;dropped $7.96% to $1,586.92, and crypto broker&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/coinbase/?sh=d9d9449699f6">Coinbase</a>&nbsp;dropped 8.61%, to $75.44.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Although low interest rates and Covid-19-related government stimulus checks fueled bitcoin’s rise in 2020, two rounds of interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve this summer made investing riskier. Last month, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/08/26/down-plunges-1000-points-after-fed-chair-powell-warns-inflation-requires-restrictive-policy-for-some-time/?sh=3d6e98691dd2">warned</a>&nbsp;soaring inflation might “take some time” to ease and require the Fed to act “forcefully.” In the week ending June 17,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/08/18/crypto-winter-watch-all-the-big-layoffs-record-withdrawals-and-bankruptcies-sparked-by-the-2-trillion-crash/?sh=6ec3191f3309">outflows</a>&nbsp;from bitcoin totaled roughly $423 million, after falling to an 18-month low, according to crypto firm CoinShares.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">TANGENT</h2>



Stocks&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/madelinehalpert/2022/09/13/dow-plunges-900-points-after-hotter-than-expected-inflation-report/?sh=4932c9342a63">tumbled</a>&nbsp;throughout the day Tuesday in the wake of the Labor Department’s consumer price index report, with the Dow Jones dropping 3.87% to $31,163.99 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq falling 3.76% to $61.70 as of Tuesday afternoon, erasing recent stock gains as the price of food, medical care and shelter increased, despite falling gas prices.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/madelinehalpert/2022/09/13/dow-plunges-900-points-after-hotter-than-expected-inflation-report/?sh=65ab9c5f2a63">Dow Sinks 900 Points After Inflation Report Shows Stubbornly High Prices</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2022/08/27/bitcoin-drops-below-20000-amid-recession-fears/?sh=11693c4f77f4">Bitcoin Drops Below $20,000 Amid Recession Fears</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/13/bitcoin-slumps-7percent-reversing-gains-after-inflation-report-disappoints.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bitcoin slumps 7% after inflation report causes investors to flee risky assets</a>&nbsp;(CNBC)



By Brian Bushard, Forbes Staff

Digital Composite Image Of Cropped Hands Using Computer Keyboard By Bitcoin Icons

Bitcoin Drops Nearly 10% After Inflation Report—Its Biggest Drop Since June

Business fund investor planning for investment in crisis

Crypto Winter Watch: All The Big Layoffs, Record Withdrawals And Bankruptcies Sparked By The $2 Trillion Crash

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The Ukraine government and organizations supporting its fight against a Russia invasion have amassed more than $52 million in cryptocurrency donations—and already deployed at least $14 million—amid an influx of support as the country starts accepting a wider array of tokens and digital assets, including proceeds from the sale of one of the most expensive non-fungible tokens in history.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



Wallet addresses linked to the Ukrainian government and nongovernmental organizations supporting its military have received nearly 60,000 donations since Russian President Vladimir Putin&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2022/02/23/russia-orders-special-military-operation-in-ukraine/?sh=6145da562321">ordered</a>&nbsp;an invasion of Ukraine early Thursday, including an all-time high of more than 10,000 on Wednesday morning, according to blockchain analytics firm Merkle Science.



The donations include $6.5 million in proceeds from a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/03/02/ukrainian-flag-nft-raises-675m-for-countrys-war-efforts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ukrainian flag NFT</a>&nbsp;auctioned off Wednesday by the Ethereum-based group Ukraine DAO—marking the tenth most expensive NFT ever sold, according to Tom Robinson, chief scientist at blockchain analytics company Elliptic.



As of 12 p.m., wallet addresses directly linked to the Ukrainian government have received about $34 million in bitcoin, ether, tron and polkadot, including $5.8 million from Polkadot founder Gavin Wood and a highly sought-after CryptoPunk NFT worth over $200,000, Elliptic&nbsp;<a href="https://www.elliptic.co/blog/live-updates-millions-in-crypto-crowdfunded-for-the-ukrainian-military" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">notes</a>; the government also started accepting dogecoin Wednesday morning.



On Twitter Wednesday morning, Ukraine’s Kuna Exchange founder Michael Chobanian, whose firm has been helping the country manage the cryptocurrency received,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/ChobanianMike" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">noted</a>&nbsp;about $14 million worth of the donations had already been used, with a majority of spending happening exclusively in cryptocurrency transactions.



In an interview with CoinDesk on Tuesday, Chobanian <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/03/01/ukraines-defense-ministry-decides-where-crypto-funds-are-spent/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a> funds have gone to Ukraine&#8217;s military and special forces to help purchase equipment, food and gas, but he stopped short of providing additional specifics &#8220;due to a level of secrecy involved.&#8221;



He also said ether and bitcoin—which have represented about 69% of donations, per Merkle Science—were his “preferred” method for spending, given their ease of convertibility.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Ukrainian officials took to Twitter on Saturday to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/02/26/ukraine-receives-4-million-in-crypto-donations-within-hours-including-19-million-tied-to-julian-assange-nft-auction/?sh=754901853062">ask</a>&nbsp;for cryptocurrency donations to help in the fight against the Russian military after a number of nongovernmental organizations and volunteer groups successfully raised more than $5 million within days. Coming a week after the Ukrainian parliament&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/08/ukraine-legalizes-bitcoin-and-cryptocurrencies.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">passed</a>&nbsp;a bill to legalize cryptocurrencies, the donations to Ukraine “add to a trend of nation-states turning to crypto assets as a means of raising funds,” Elliptic noted in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.elliptic.co/blog/ukrainians-turn-to-bitcoin-to-crowdfund-the-fight-against-russia" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>&nbsp;this month. “Iran is using bitcoin mining as a way to monetize its energy reserves, while North Korea is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60281129" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">believed</a>&nbsp;to be stealing cryptocurrency to support its missile development program.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT WE DON&#8217;T KNOW</h2>



Though Ukraine’s government has made use of a large portion of proceeds, it&#8217;s still unclear whether it has yet sold any of the NFTs it’s received. The CryptoPunk donated Tuesday evening reportedly last sold for about $31,300 in February 2021, roughly one sixth of its latest estimated value.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



Despite the booming support in cryptocurrency, the large majority of aid is still expected to come in the form of traditional currency. On Tuesday, the United Nations put out a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2022/3/621e0aa74/un-seeks-us17-billion-humanitarian-needs-soar-ukraine-neighbouring-countries.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">call</a>&nbsp;to raise $1.7 billion for humanitarian support in Ukraine and for refugees in neighboring countries.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/03/01/ukraines-defense-ministry-decides-where-crypto-funds-are-spent/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ukraine&#8217;s Defense Ministry Decides Where Crypto Funds Are Spent</a>&nbsp;(CoinDesk)&nbsp;



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/02/26/ukraine-receives-4-million-in-crypto-donations-within-hours-including-19-million-tied-to-julian-assange-nft-auction/?sh=754901853062">Ukraine Receives $4 Million In Crypto Donations Within Hours—Including $1.9 Million Tied To Pak, Julian Assange NFT Collection</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesstaff/2022/02/25/bitcoin-donations-to-ukrainian-army-surpass-4-million/">Bitcoin Donations To Ukrainian Army Surpass $4 Million</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/02/28/russia-may-use-cryptocurrency-to-try-and-evade-sanctions-but-heres-why-it-will-be-hard/">Russia May Use Cryptocurrency To Try And Evade Sanctions—But Here&#8217;s Why That Will Be Hard</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

Sakura Bitcoin Exchange Inc. Store in Shibuya

Crypto Donations To Ukraine Top $52 Million As Funds Pour In From Bitcoin, Ether, PolkaDot And NFTs

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Bitcoin tumbled 16% overnight Saturday amid a wider plunge of cryptocurrencies as investors pared riskier bets with financial markets unsettled by the spread of the omicron coronavirus variant.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



Bitcoin, the No. 1 cryptocurrency by market value, was trading at $47,558.47 as of 9:30 a.m. Saturday, down 16% from a day earlier, according to<a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;CoinGecko</a>.



It had fallen as much as 20% before recovering some of its losses.



As of Saturday morning, Ether, the second-largest digital token, was off 13.1%; Binance Coin, the third-largest token, was down 11%; Solana, the fifth-largest token, had given up 17.2%, according to<a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;CoinGecko</a>.



Meme coin Dogecoin <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shed</a> nearly a fifth of its market value and Shiba Inu coin declined 14.9%.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The drop in cryptocurrencies came after a volatile week in financial markets. The omicron variant has led countries around the world to restrict travel amid worries that vaccines may not be as effective against the strain. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell indicated earlier this week the central bank could accelerate the tapering of its pandemic bond-buying program, with inflation looking more persistent than policy makers had believed.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-price-tumbles-after-wall-street-selloff-11638621435" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bitcoin Price Tumbles After Wall Street Selloff</a>&nbsp;(Wall Street Journal)



<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-04/bitcoin-plunges-more-than-20-amid-tumble-in-cryptocurrencies?sref=X2kHL3Gj" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bitcoin Plunges Over 20% in Another Sign of Global Market Nerves</a> (Bloomberg)



By Lisa Kim, Forbes Staff

Bitcoin and candlestick chart

Bitcoin And Other Digital Tokens Plunge Amid Volatility In Financial Markets

TOPLINE Fast food giant McDonald’s has started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment in El Salvador after the country became the first to adopt the cryptocurrency as legal tender Tuesday.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



California-based bitcoin payment processor OpenNode confirmed to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;it has formed a partnership with McDonald’s to allow it to begin accepting bitcoin (Editor&#8217;s Note:&nbsp;OpenNode earlier told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;that Panda Express was also using bitcoin, but has since said that was an error and we have clarified the piece).



Bitcoin can now be used to pay at all 19 McDonald’s locations in the country, as well as online and through the delivery app, OpenNode said.&nbsp;



Though this appears to be the first major American company to adjust to El Salvador’s cryptocurrency initiative, OpenNode spokesperson Ryan Flowers said his team is “currently onboarding multiple multi-billion dollar businesses based in El Salvador.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“Just walked into a McDonald’s in San Salvador to see if I could pay for my breakfast with bitcoin … fully expecting to be told no,” cryptocurrency journalist Aaron van Wirdum wrote in a tweet Tuesday morning. “But low and behold.”&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">Just walked into a McDonald&#39;s in San Salvador to see if I could pay for my breakfast with bitcoin, tbh fully expecting to be told no. But low and behold, they printed a ticket with QR that took me to a webpage with Lightning invoice, and now I&#39;m enjoying my desayuno traditional! <a href="https://t.co/NYCkMNbv7U">pic.twitter.com/NYCkMNbv7U</a>&mdash; Aaron van Wirdum (@AaronvanW) <a href="https://twitter.com/AaronvanW/status/1435236902274220040?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 7, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND&nbsp;</h2>



El Salvador on Tuesday became the first sovereign government to adopt bitcoin as legal tender alongside its existing currency, the U.S. dollar. It allows the country’s residents to pay taxes and other debts using bitcoin, and for businesses to widen their payment options to the cryptocurrency. However, El Salvador’s proclaimed “Bitcoin Day” got off to a rocky start as the cryptocurrency market&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/09/07/crypto-flash-crash-wipes-out-400-billion-in-market-value-on-el-salvadors-bitcoin-day/?sh=3fd3b7154fb9">plunged</a>, with the price of bitcoin falling from over $52,000 to $42,830, its lowest level in nearly three weeks on Tuesday morning. Bitcoin recovered to just under $46,957 by 1:45 EDT, still 9% below a day earlier.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING&nbsp;</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/09/07/el-salvador-taps-billionaire-backed-bitcoin-unicorn-in-the-cryptocurrencys-historic-legal-tender-debut/?sh=42a359be4fac">“El Salvador Taps billionaire-Backed Bitcoin Unicorn In Historic Legal Tender Debut”</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)&nbsp;



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/09/07/crypto-flash-crash-wipes-out-400-billion-in-market-value-on-el-salvadors-bitcoin-day/?sh=3fd3b7154fb9">“Crypto Flash Crash Wipes Out $400 Billion In Market Value On Bitcoin Day Before El Salvador’s President ‘Buys The Dip’”</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

El Salvador Sells $1 Billion In Bonds To Help Fight Pandemic Spread

McDonald’s Starts Accepting Bitcoin In El Salvador

TOPLINE El Salvador acquired roughly $21 million worth of bitcoin on Monday, President Nayib Bukele announced, buoying the crypto market ahead of making history Tuesday by becoming the first country in the world to formally adopt the digital currency as legal tender. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



El Salvador&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1434968475928248331?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">bought</a>&nbsp;its first 400 bitcoins in two lots on Monday—worth an estimated $21 million based on bitcoin’s value at the time of the announcement—according to a series of tweets by Bukele.



Bukele said the country had plans to buy “a lot more” when announcing the first salvo of 200 bitcoins.



The purchase comes as El Salvador makes history as the first country to make bitcoin legal tender Tuesday.



The law enacting the change,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/06/09/el-salvador-makes-history-as-worlds-first-country-to-make-bitcoin-legal-tender/?sh=867e05eeaa3b">approved</a>&nbsp;by an overwhelming majority in June, places bitcoin alongside the U.S. dollar as El Salvador’s national currency.



Bukele said he hopes the initiative will boost foreign investment, financial inclusion and generate jobs, and bitcoin can be used to make purchases and pay tax.&nbsp;



The value of bitcoin jumped around 2% to just under $53,000 on Tuesday morning following Bukele’s tweets—though the volatile token dipped around 3% later that morning—its highest value since the cryptocurrency market crashed three months ago.     



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">El Salvador just bought 200 new coins. We now hold 400 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/bitcoin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#bitcoin</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BitcoinDay?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BitcoinDay</a> 🇸🇻&mdash; Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) <a href="https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1435023474494410753?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 6, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



El Salvador’s decision to adopt bitcoin as legal tender is controversial and questions over logistics have been raised both at home and abroad. Polls&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/56588fee-dca8-450d-a848-80d29f02f45e" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">suggest</a>&nbsp;most Salvadorans are against the idea and many have taken to the streets to&nbsp;<a href="https://news.sky.com/story/bitcoin-protests-and-confusion-in-el-salvador-as-country-prepares-to-make-cryptocurrency-legal-tender-12400516" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">protest</a>&nbsp;the change. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said its plans may&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/bitcoin-helped-tank-el-salvador-bonds-now-they-re-rising-back" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">threaten</a>&nbsp;an anticipated deal with the country, while some economists&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/30/scepticism-grows-in-el-salvador-over-pioneering-bitcoin-gamble" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">warn</a>&nbsp;of the country becoming a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-09/el-salvador-s-bitcoin-bombshell-what-does-it-mean-quicktake" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">haven</a>&nbsp;for financial crime and there are widespread concerns over the potential&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/bitcoins-energy-usage-explained/#:~:text=That's%20roughly%20enough%20electricity%20to,Digiconomist's%20Bitcoin%20Energy%20Consumption%20Index.">environmental impact</a>&nbsp;of bitcoin, which uses huge amounts of electricity. Some of these criticisms—notably environmental impact and crime, which certainly are significant problems—are often raised as if they are insurmountable and without reference to&nbsp;<a href="https://fortune.com/2021/03/28/crypto-bitcoin-carbon-energy-consumption/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">efforts</a>&nbsp;to remedy the issue or context. Bitcoin could be mined using electricity generated from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/robday/2021/03/10/bitcoin-could-be-a-climate-disaster-but-it-doesnt-have-to-be-one/?sh=22580ba73a65">clean sources</a>, for example, and crypto’s popularity among criminals makes up a small&nbsp;<a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/banning-cryptocurrencies-to-counter-crime-is-a-nonsensical-excuse" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fraction</a>&nbsp;of illicit financial transactions. Many are excited about the change and Bukele has been open in his hopes it will attract a new cohort of entrepreneurs to the country.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$30. That’s how much each citizen downloading the government bitcoin wallet, Chivo, will receive in bitcoin. 



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">Justo el día más importante de mi vida. 🙄 <a href="https://t.co/n46jprobT7">https://t.co/n46jprobT7</a>&mdash; chivo (@chivowallet) <a href="https://twitter.com/chivowallet/status/1435128539553095680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 7, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/56588fee-dca8-450d-a848-80d29f02f45e" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">El Salvador becomes a crypto laboratory with bitcoin gamble</a>&nbsp;(FT)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/06/09/el-salvador-makes-history-as-worlds-first-country-to-make-bitcoin-legal-tender/?sh=867e05eeaa3b">El Salvador Makes History As World’s First Country To Make Bitcoin Legal Tender</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/06/14/tanzania-considers-crypto-and-boosts-bitcoin-as-nations-line-up-behind-el-salvador-to-embrace-decentralized-finance/?sh=15a7e4434fc3">Tanzania Considers Crypto—And Boosts Bitcoin—As Nations Line Up Behind El Salvador To Embrace Decentralized Finance</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/09/06/solana-leads-massive-altcoin-rally-as-jpmorgan-warns-crypto-markets-are-looking-bubbly-again/?sh=7828d2c020fa">Solana Leads Massive Altcoin And Bitcoin Rally As JPMorgan Warns Crypto Markets Are Looking Bubbly Again</a> (Forbes)



By Robert Hart, Forbes Staff

President Bukele Speaks To Congress Since Ousting Attorney General And Supreme Court

El Salvador Goes On A $21 Million Crypto Buying Spree As Bitcoin Becomes Legal Tender

Five years ago, from her prison cell, trans whistleblower Chelsea Manning sketched out a new way to protect online privacy. Now, she is helping an MIT-affiliated cryptographer bring the next generation of privacy software online.



Chelsea Manning’s long blonde hair catches in a cool summer breeze as she turns the corner into Brooklyn’s Starr Bar, a dimly lit counter-cultural haunt in the heart of the hipster enclave of Bushwick. The 33-year-old best known for leaking hundreds of thousands of top-secret government documents to Julian Assange in 2010, then coming out as a transgender woman, walks past a poster depicting sea turtles, humans and geese merging to form the outline of a dove. Beside the image are the words, “Your Nations Cannot Contain Us.”



Dressed in a black suit and wearing a silver Omega watch, she makes her way to a small wooden table illuminated by a shaft of sunlight. She orders a coke. Contrary to what one might expect, this whistleblower turned trans-icon looks uncomfortable in the hip surroundings. A fan reverently approaches her and welcomes her back. “This is my life,” she says after he leaves, expressing both gratitude for the well wishes, and lamenting the loss of her privacy. “I’m not just famous, I’m in the history books.”



While serving the longest sentence ever doled out to a whistleblower after she used the privacy protecting Tor Network to anonymously leak 700,000 government documents, she used her time in incarceration to devise a better way to hide the tracks of other online users. Knowing that the non-profit Tor Project she used to send files to Wikileaks had become increasingly vulnerable to the prying eyes of intelligence agencies and law enforcement, she sketched out a new way to hide internet traffic using blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, to build a similar network, without troublesome government funding. The entire plan was hatched in a military prison, on paper.



The privacy network industry, including the virtual-private networks (VPNs) familiar to many corporate users, generated $29 billion in revenue in 2019, and is expected to triple to $75 billion by 2027. Fixing the known weaknesses of these networks is about more than just protecting future whistleblowers and criminals. Private networks are also vital for big businesses who want to protect trade secrets. Manning thinks that not-for-profit efforts like Tor, which relies on U.S. government funding and a worldwide network of volunteers to run its anonymous servers, aren’t robust enough. “Nonprofits are unsustainable,” says Manning casually, sipping from her Coke. “They require constant upholding by large capital funds, by large governments.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F61252ad46f47d2194c1d0d80%2F20210621-162555%2F1960x0.jpg%3Ffit%3Dscale" alt="20210621_162555"/><figcaption>Nym Technologies founder Harry Halpin sips on a “homojito” at Brooklyn’s LGBTQ-friendly Starr Bar, as he and Chelsea Manning discuss their nascent partnership, formalized in July.&nbsp;MICHAEL DEL CASTILLO FOR FORBES</figcaption></figure>



By January 2017, she was seven-years into a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, home to the likes of former Army Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 14 fellow soldiers in 2009. As President Barack Obama prepared to leave office, he granted Manning an unconditional commutation of her sentence. Newly tasting freedom, she was contacted by Harry Halpin, the 41-year-old mathematician who worked for World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee at MIT from 2013 to 2016 helping standardize the use of cryptography across web browsers.



Halpin asked Manning to look for security weaknesses in his new privacy project, which eventually became Nym, a Neuchâtel, Switzerland-based crypto startup. Halprin founded Nym in 2018 to send data anonymously around the Internet using the same blockchain technology underlying Bitcoin. To date, Nym has raised some $8.5 million from a group of crypto investors including Binance, Polychain Capital and NGC Ventures. The firm now employs 10 people and is using its latest round of capital to double its team size.



Halpin was impressed by Manning’s technical knowledge. More than just a famous leaker who happened to have access to secret documents, Manning struck Halpin as someone with a deep technological understanding of how governments and big business seek to spy on private messages.



“We&#8217;ve very rarely had access to people who really were inside the machine, who can explain what they believe the actual capabilities of these kinds of adversaries are, what kinds of attacks are more likely,” says Halpin. “She&#8217;ll help us fix holes in our design.”



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



Born in Oklahoma on December 17, 1987, Manning had her first exposure to network traffic analysis in high school. She and her Welsh mother Susan had moved to Haverfordwest, Wales in 2001, when Manning was 13. In a computer class there, in 2003, she first learned to circumvent blocks put in place by the school to prevent students downloading certain files—and got caught pirating music by Linkin Park, Jay-Z and others. The headmaster had been watching remotely.&nbsp;“It was the first moment where it dawned on me, ‘Oh, this is a thing. You can do this.’”



By 2008 Manning’s interest in what’s called network traffic analysis first brought her to The Onion Router (Tor), a volunteer network of computers that sits on top of the internet and helps hide a user’s identity. The non-profit organization leveraged something called onion routing which hides messages beneath layers of encryption. Each message is only decipherable by a different member of the network, which routes the message to the next router, ensuring only the sender and receiver can decipher it all. Ironically, the network colloquially known as the Dark Web, and used by Manning to send classified documents to WikiLeaks, was developed by the U.S. government to protect spies and other government agents operating online.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F6123cdbdc986a89368d58199%2FChelsea-MAnning-by-Jamel-Toppin-for-Forbes-DSC7733%2F1960x0.jpg%3Ffit%3Dscale" alt="Chelsea MAnning by Jamel Toppin for Forbes_DSC7733" width="710" height="887"/><figcaption>Much of Manning’s consulting work comes with mutually binding non-disclosure agreements that make it difficult for her to market her business.&nbsp;JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES</figcaption></figure></div>



At around the same time Manning discovered Tor, she joined the U.S. Army. As a young intelligence analyst her job was to sort through classified databases in search of tactical patterns. After becoming disillusioned with what she learned about the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, she plugged into her computer, put in her headphones, and loaded a CD with music from another of her favorite musicians: Lady Gaga. Instead of listening to the album though, she erased it and downloaded what would eventually be known as the largest single leak in U.S. history, ranging from sensitive diplomatic cables to video showing U.S. soldiers killing civilians, including two Reuters journalists.



In prison she studied carpentry, but she never stopped exploring her earlier vocation. “I&#8217;m a certified carpenter,” she says. “But when I wasn&#8217;t doing that, I would read a lot of cryptography papers.” In 2016, she was visited in prison by Yan Zhu, a physicist from MIT who would later go on to become chief security officer of Brave, a privacy-protecting internet browser that pays users in cryptocurrency in exchange for agreeing to see ads.



She and Zhu were concerned with vulnerabilities they saw in Tor, including its dependence on the good will of governments and academic institutions. In 2020 53% of its $5 million&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.torproject.org/transparency-openness-and-our-2019-and-2020-financials" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">funding</a>&nbsp;came from the US government and 27% came from other Western governments, tax-subsidized non-profits, foundations and companies. Worse, in their opinion, the technology to break privacy was being funded at a higher rate than the technology to protect it.



“As the dark web, or Tor, and VPN, and all these other services became more prolific, the tools to do traffic analysis had dramatically improved,” says Manning. “And there’s sort of been a cold war that&#8217;s been going on between the Tor project developers, and a number of state actors and large internet service providers.” In 2014 the FBI learned how to decipher Tor data. By 2020 a single user reportedly controlled enough Tor nodes to steal bitcoin transactions initiated over the network.



Using two lined pieces of composition paper from the prison commissary, Manning drew a schematic for Zhu of what she called, Tor Plus. Instead of just encrypting the data she proposed to inject the information equivalent of noise into network communications. In the margins of the document she even postulated that blockchain, the technology popularized by bitcoin, could play a role. In the notes below she wrote the words: “New Hope.”



Then, this February Halpin woke her up late one night with an encrypted text message asking her to take a look at a paper describing Nym. Developed completely separately from Manning’s jailhouse sketch, the paper detailed an almost identical system disguising real messages with white noise. A hybrid of the decentralized Tor that relies on donor support, and a corporate owned VPN that requires trusting a company, this network promised the best of both worlds. Organized as a for-profit enterprise, Nym would pay people and organizations running the network in cryptocurrency. “The next day I cleared my schedule,” she says. By July she’d signed a contract with Nym to run a security audit that could eventually include a closer look at the code, the math, and the defensive scenarios against government attacks.



Unlike Tor, which uses the onion router to obscure data sent on a shared network, Nym uses what’s called a mix network, or mixnet, that not only shuffles the data, but alternates the methods by which the data is shuffled making it nearly impossible to reassemble.



“Imagine you have a deck of cards,” says Manning. “What&#8217;s really unique here is that what&#8217;s being done is that you are taking essentially a deck of cards, and you are taking a bunch of other decks of cards, and you are shuffling those decks of cards as well.”



And, as it, turns out, not every government is comfortable using a privacy network largely funded by the U.S. government. Despite Halpin’s commitment to build a network that doesn’t require government funding to operate, in July Nym accepted a 200,000 euro grant from the European Commission, to help get it off the ground.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large">&#8220;Knowing that Wikileaks had become increasingly vulnerable to prying eyes from intelligence agencies and law enforcement, she sketched out a new way to hide internet traffic using blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin.&#8221;</blockquote>



“The problem is that there was never a financial model that made any sense to build this technology,” says Halpin. “There was no interest from users, venture capital, and big companies. And now you&#8217;re seeing what we consider a once in a lifetime alignment of the stars, where there&#8217;s interest in privacy from venture capital. There&#8217;s an interest in privacy for users. There&#8217;s interest in privacy from companies. And most of the interest from the venture capital side and the company side, and the user side has been driven by cryptocurrency. And this was not the case even five years ago.”



Even Tor itself is exploring how to use blockchain to create the next generation of its software. After receiving 26% of its total donations in cryptocurrency last year, the Tor Project received a $670,000 grant from advocates of the zcash cryptocurrency and sold a non-fungible token (NFT) representing the first .onion address for $2 million in May, 2021. Now, Tor’s cofounder, Nick Mathewson&nbsp;says the Seattle-based non-profit is exploring some of the same techniques developed by cryptocurrency companies to create Tor credentials that let users develop a reputation without revealing their identity. What he calls an “anonymous blacklistable credential.”



“If you&#8217;ve got a website, and somebody does something you don&#8217;t like, you can ban them,” says Mathewson. “You can ban the person who did that activity without ever finding out what other activities they did or figuring out who you banned.”



Though Mathewson is interested in the possibility of using blockchain to upgrade Tor itself, he warns that making privacy infrastructure for-profit could lead to more money being spent on marketing than product development. “Our mission is to encourage the use of privacy technology,” says Mathewson. “I don&#8217;t really care whether that privacy tool is the one I made or not.”



Ironically, the same cryptocurrency culture Halpin says brought so much attention from investors, deterred Manning from getting involved earlier. Though she counts herself among the earliest bitcoin adopters, claiming to have mined cryptocurrency shortly after Satoshi Nakomoto activated it in 2009, she sold her bitcoin last year for decidedly non-monetary reasons.



“I am not a fan of the culture around blockchain and cryptocurrency,” she says. “There&#8217;s a lot of large personalities that are very out there like your Elon Musk&#8217;s and whatnot,” she says. “And it&#8217;s very, like, ‘Oh, we&#8217;re going to get rich off of blockchain.’ It&#8217;s very nouveau riche. Like a new-yuppies-bro-culture that&#8217;s surrounded it. It has gotten a little bit better in some corners. But I think that culture is what I&#8217;m talking about. It&#8217;s like Gordon Gekko, but blockchain.”



By Michael del Castillo, Forbes Staff

Chelsea Manning Appears Before Second Grand Jury In Wikileaks Investigation

Chelsea Manning Is Back, And Hacking Again, Only This Time For A Bitcoin-Based Privacy Startup

TOPLINE Billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk stirred up the cryptocurrency market with his Twitter account again Sunday when he appeared to hint Tesla would cast out its bitcoin holdings, a move that saw the cryptocurrency plunge.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h3>



When a Twitter user&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/CryptoWhale/status/1393981793813078017?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">speculated</a>&nbsp;Sunday Musk would ditch bitcoin over the hate the billionaire had received after announcing Tesla would&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/05/12/tesla-will-stop-accepting-bitcoin-as-payment-due-to-environmental-worries-musk-says/">no longer accept the cryptocurrency</a>&nbsp;as payment last week, Musk replied with one word: “<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1394001894809427971?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Indeed</a>.”&nbsp;



The vague message was enough to push cryptocurrency investors to sell off their bitcoin, and the price dipped nearly 8.5% down to $44,395 a coin Sunday.



Cryptocurrency is notoriously volatile, but Sunday’s dip was bitcoin’s biggest slump in more than three months and represented one of its biggest drops in value since the price first began to rapidly ramp up in January.&nbsp;



Last week, Musk said Tesla would no longer accept the cryptocurrency until bitcoin, which requires colossal amounts of electricity to work with, shifts to&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392602041025843203" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">more sustainable energy use</a>,



Musk said at the time Tesla would not sell off the bitcoin it already had.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">Indeed&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1394001894809427971?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 16, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$1.5 billion. That’s how much Musk spent on buying bitcoin just&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/08/tesla-buys-1point5-billion-in-bitcoin.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">three months ago</a>, in preparation for using the cryptocurrency at Tesla.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



Running bitcoin uses&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">more electricity</a>&nbsp;than some countries, according to a University of Cambridge study published in February. Researchers said the cryptocurrency burns through 121.36 terawatt-hours annually, roughly the equivalent of used by countries like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Argentina and Norway</a>.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h3>



Just two months ago,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/03/24/bitcoin-surges-as-elon-musk-says-it-can-be-used-to-buy-teslas/?sh=4e37216b3cb2">bitcoin prices soared</a>&nbsp;when Musk announced Tesla would accept the cryptocurrency as payment for Tesla’s pricey electric vehicles. Musk’s quick reversal last week to suspend Tesla bitcoin payments and the cryptocurrency’s loss of value soon after angered many bitcoin investors, who said the billionaire was&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/PeterMcCormack/status/1393971202738302986?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">misinformed</a>&nbsp;about bitcoin’s energy consumption. Musk has&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1393995872413888518?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">bickered</a>&nbsp;with and&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1393246529498976258?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">made fun of</a>&nbsp;the bitter investors on Twitter in recent days.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">TANGENT</h3>



Musk is no stranger to playing the cryptocurrency market with his tweets. His current cryptocurrency of choice, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/05/14/dogecoin-stages-a-comeback-amid-cryptos-300-billion-crash-soaring-30-as-elon-musk-and-coinbase-signal-confidence/?sh=258f1752672f">dogecoin</a>, is regularly boosted by the eccentric CEO’s Twitter memes and public enthusiasm. 



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">👀&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1383103246470811652?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 16, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h3>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/05/12/tesla-will-stop-accepting-bitcoin-as-payment-due-to-environmental-worries-musk-says/?sh=39f2924f6e9f">Tesla Will Stop Accepting Bitcoin As Payment Due To Environmental Worries, Musk Says</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2021/05/12/elon-musk-says-tesla-stops-accepting-bitcoin-for-car-purchases-due-to-carbon-energy-use/?sh=34e39d386f85">Bitcoin Tanks After Elon Musk Says Tesla Stops Accepting It Due To Carbon Energy Use</a> (Forbes)



by Carlie Porterfield, Forbes Staff

gettyimages-1130598362-594×594

Elon Musk Sends Bitcoin Tumbling With A One-Word Tweet

TOPLINE Shares of Coinbase, the nation’s largest crypto exchange, skyrocketed nearly 60% within minutes of their public-market debut on Wednesday, propelling the nine-year-old company’s market capitalization to more than 12 times its last private valuation of $8 billion in 2018 and marking another instance of booming demand lifting the still-nascent cryptocurrency space to meteoric highs.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h4>



Listed on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker COIN, shares started trading at about 1:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday and immediately surged to a price of more than $398, eclipsing the $250 reference price set on Tuesday.



The soaring stock price boosted the firm’s market capitalization to roughly $105 billion, making Coinbase one of the 100 most valuable publicly traded companies in the United States and more valuable than both New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental Exchange and Nasdaq Inc.—combined.



Eschewing the traditional initial public offering that enlists investment banks as intermediaries and underwriters to sell shares ahead of trading, San Francisco-based Coinbase opted instead for a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2021/01/29/coinbase-investors-say-it-could-hit-100-billion-valuation-when-it-goes-public/">direct listing</a>, selling 114.9 million shares on Wednesday directly to the public.



“I wanted there to be just a true market on day one that set the price, not something that was set behind closed doors,” Coinbase&#8217;s billionaire CEO, Brian Armstrong, said on CNBC Wednesday, calling the direct listing “more true to the ethos of crypto.”



Ahead of its listing, Coinbase&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/04/06/coinbase-posts-record-18-billion-revenue-as-crypto-market-shoots-past-2-trillion-direct-listing/">reported</a>&nbsp;first-quarter revenue that climbed nearly 900% from $190.6 million in the same period last year, blowing past the $585 million it nabbed in the fourth quarter.



Update 5 p.m. EDT: Coinbase shares closed Wednesday at a price of roughly $328, up 31% from the reference price and giving Coinbase a market capitalization of about $86 billion.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE&nbsp;</h4>



“The Coinbase [listing] is a watershed moment and historical event for the crypto industry and something Wall Street will be laser-focused on to gauge investor appetite going forward,” Wedbush Analyst Dan Ives said in a Wednesday morning note to clients, calling Coinbase a “barometer” for growing mainstream [crypto] adoption.&nbsp;



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h4>



Coinbase’s foray into the public market comes after a massive year of growth for cryptocurrencies, fueled by inflationary concerns and heightened institutional adoption. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs started offering cryptocurrency to their wealthy clients just last month, and companies like Tesla, MicroStrategy and payments fintech Square have purchased billions of dollars of bitcoin as a means to diversify their largely U.S. dollar-based balance sheets. Up a staggering 825% over the past year, bitcoin hit its latest high, of just under $65,000, early Wednesday morning. The total cryptocurrency market is worth more than $2.2 trillion.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-chief-critic">CHIEF CRITIC</h4>



“Even though Coinbase’s revenue surged over the past 12 months, the company has little to no chance of meeting the future profit expectations that are baked into its ridiculously high expected valuation of $100 billion,” says David Trainer, the CEO of investment research firm New Constructs. “The crypto markets are very young, and we expect many more companies to compete for the profits Coinbase enjoys today.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h4>



Coinbase joins a growing rank of buzzy tech companies that have started trading over the past year—to varying degrees of fanfare. Gen-Z gaming platform Roblox, which similarly opted for a direct listing, jumped more than 50% on its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/03/10/roblox-valuation-hits-42-billion-as-gen-z-gaming-giant-skyrockets-50-in-ipo/">first trading day</a>&nbsp;in January and has since climbed about 6% higher. Airbnb and Doordash debuted in December, and both roughly doubled on their first day of trading, but&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/12/10/airbnb-ipo-shares-valuation-billion-more-than-marriott-hilton-hyatt/">Airbnb</a>&nbsp;has jumped about 25% since then, while&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/12/09/doordash-ipo-shares-first-day-of-trading/">DoorDash</a>&nbsp;has tanked 23%.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h4>



Crypto regulation. “With cryptocurrencies’ astronomical price jumps, and as they become increasingly embedded in the global financial system, investors must expect much greater government scrutiny,” Nigel Green, the CEO of $12 billion advisory deVere Group, said in a Wednesday note, adding that Coinbase’s direct listing will help the firm reach a wider investment base other than “the usual crypto evangelists.” Gary Gensler, a blockchain and cryptocurrency professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/04/14/gary-gensler-confirmed-sec-chairman/">confirmed</a>&nbsp;as the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new chairman on Wednesday, and one SEC official has said&nbsp; he’s “sympathetic to the call for regulatory clarity” in the space.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h4>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/04/13/bitcoin-hits-new-high-ahead-of-coinbase-listing-but-74-of-fund-managers-think-its-just-a-bubble/">Bitcoin Hits New High Ahead Of Coinbase Listing, But 74% Of Fund Managers Think It&#8217;s Just A Bubble</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/04/06/coinbase-posts-record-18-billion-revenue-as-crypto-market-shoots-past-2-trillion-direct-listing/">Coinbase Posts Record $1.8 Billion In Revenue As Crypto Market Shoots Past $2 Trillion</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2020/02/19/coinbase-billionaire-brian-armstrongs-plan-to-make-bitcoin-ethereum-xrp-safe-for-all/">Bitcoin&#8217;s Guardian Angel: Inside Coinbase Billionaire Brian Armstrong&#8217;s Plan To Make Crypto Safe For All</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2021/01/29/coinbase-investors-say-it-could-hit-100-billion-valuation-when-it-goes-public/">Coinbase Investors Say It Could Hit $100 Billion Valuation When It Goes Public</a> (Forbes)



By Jonathan Ponciano, Forbes Staff

In this photo illustration, the Nasdaq Stock Market logo

Coinbase Skyrockets In Nasdaq Listing, Landing $105 Billion Valuation On First Day Of Trading

Over the last six months, Bitcoin has been on a constant upward rise. Experts wonder: will it eclipse gold’s market cap in the years to come?



With Bitcoin making headlines again in 2021, one might be inclined to say that the volatile nature of this 12-year-old social experiment is not that volatile in the long run.



“We are now seeing more institutional investment come into play, with greater investments and interest in crypto from some of the biggest names in the business – Visa, Facebook, PayPal, Square, JP Morgan… This is going some way to allaying the doubts that have previously undermined Bitcoin,” says Marius Reitz, the General Manager for Africa of Luno, the global cryptocurrency exchange that added almost a million new South African customers during 2020, and over 250,000 so far in 2021. It recorded $8.3 billion in transactions worldwide and processed nearly $3 billion in volumes in South Africa last year.



In February, South African-born billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, the founder of the electric car company Tesla, announced a $1.5 billion investment into the cryptocurrency. One of the reasons behind this considerable investment was to enable the company to have the right kind of liquidity when it starts accepting payments in Bitcoin.



“If you look at Bitcoin now, over the last six months, it’s been on a constant upward rise with very little volatility in hindsight. Where in the past, we used to have 40% corrections, the largest correction we’ve seen in the last few months has been 25%. So I am not sure that volatility applies to a technology that is already starting to get adoption,” offers Ran Neuner, a South African cryptocurrency investor and the co-founder and CEO of Onchain Capital, a Blockchain investment fund and advisory service.



Bitcoin was created with the objective to be a new type of currency, a replacement for traditional FIAT currencies (government-issued currency not backed by a physical commodity such as gold), however, it has become a store of value, over being a currency.



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“My feeling is that within the next three to five years, Bitcoin [will] take over gold&#8217;s market cap.” – Ran Neuner
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Bitcoin is now considered to be the new gold. Gold has been a store of value for centuries now and currently has a market cap of $11 trillion. Since Bitcoin’s conception, its market share has grown to $1.1 trillion over the past 11 years.



“My feeling is that within the next three to five years, Bitcoin [will] take over gold&#8217;s market cap,” adds Neuner. “The question is what is gold’s market cap going to be then? The answer will depend on how many US dollars are printed and if the US keeps printing US dollars, then gold’s market cap could be $20 trillion, but my opinion is that Bitcoin will eclipse gold within the next three to five years.”



Compared to 2017 or 2018, we are starting greater adoption and usage of the cryptocurrency market as a whole with Bitcoin driving the market. The more large companies like JP Morgan or Tesla take on assets like Bitcoin to their portfolio, the greater its adoption by the greater public and with some investors making claims that Bitcoin will rise to $140,000 per coin.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“We are now seeing more institutional investment come into play, with greater investments and interest in crypto from some of the biggest names in the business.” – Marius Reitz</blockquote>



“I really do think whilst others are talking about Bitcoin, there’s a lot of other cryptos and decentralized finance networks that are doing spectacular things, if you just look at Ethereum as the second crypto, there are more use cases for that ecosystem, and that ecosystem is growing at a phenomenal pace,” says Ian Ferrao, a telecoms executive currently serving as the Regional Director for East Africa at Airtel Africa. Ferrao is a cryptocurrency fan and spends his spare time researching and investing in various crypto tokens, liquidity mining projects and NFTs (non-fungible tokens).



Bitcoin seems to be what began paving the way for the cryptocurrency market, and over Ethereum.



With the next biggest crypto mirroring Bitcoin, it is safe to say that Bitcoin still is the daddy of all cryptos and really before you can get into the whole market of cryptos, one first needs to get into Bitcoin.



Sadly, there are a number of scams engulfing the cryptocurrency space, so investors need to be guarded.



“We encourage responsible investing which includes never investing in something you don’t understand, and never spending more on speculative technologies like Bitcoin than you can afford to lose. We also recommend making a small investment initially if you are unsure so that you can familiarize yourself with the Luno platform and the cryptocurrencies on offer. We do expect further volatility in the crypto space, so we advise care and encourage people to learn more about cryptos,” says Reitz.



If you are interested in buying Bitcoin, but do not know how to do it safely, here is a step-by-step guide on how to go about it.



Step 1: Get a Bitcoin wallet. This can be downloaded onto either a PC or smartphone. The wallet is there to store your Bitcoin in the same way you would keep cash in the wallet in your back pocket.



Step 2: Buy Bitcoin. You’ll need to go to a cryptocurrency exchange in order for you to turn your FIAT into Bitcoin. The best exchange to use would be dependent on the country you live in, if you are based in Africa, the best option would be Luno as it is the only registered exchange on the bitcoin.org website. A list of all exchanges can be found in the same place.



Step 3: Move your Bitcoin from the exchange to your wallet. The exchange should give you a temporary wallet to store your crypto from which you can send the crypto to your personal wallet. This is the most important step as it is highly advisable not to keep your crypto in an exchange due to the potential possibility of the exchange getting hacked and all your crypto is gone with the wind.



The writer too has some experience in this area, having bought my first Bitcoin in February 2018, valued at around $8,000 per coin at the time. In March last year, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and more people began investing their money into Bitcoin, I decided to have a look at what mine was worth. In just over two years, the coin value had climbed to an all-time high of around $45,000.



With stability becoming a bigger part of Bitcoin, it is clear that this asset is an investment that shouldn’t be overlooked even if it&#8217;s not understood. Bitcoin’s profit potential is speculated to continue soar and now is a great time if there were any to buy some Bitcoin. Watch this space for more on what looks to be the future of money.



By Peter Engelbrecht

The Surge Of The Big Daddy Of All Cryptos

It’s everyone’s dream to get paid to do nothing. Bitcoin miner Layer1 is turning that dream into reality — having figured out how to make money even when its machines are turned off.&nbsp;



Layer1 is a cryptocurrency startup backed by the likes of billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/peter-thiel/#20734ccc533a">Peter Thiel</a>. In recent months, out in the hardscrabble land of west Texas,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2020/02/28/why-is-this-peter-thiel-backed-startup-mining-bitcoin-in-west-texas/#57cf2dc55174">the company has been busy</a>&nbsp;erecting steel boxes (think shipping containers) stuffed chockablock with high-end processors submerged inside cooling baths of mineral oil. Why west Texas? Beause thanks to a glut of natural gas and a forest of wind turbines, power there is among the cheapest in the world — which is what you need for crypto.&nbsp;



“Mining Bitcoin is about converting electricity into money,” says Alex Liegl, CEO and co-founder. By this fall Layer1 will have dozens of these boxes churning around the clock to transform 100 megawatts into a stream of Bitcoin. Liegl says their average cost of production is about $1,000 per coin — equating to a 90% profit margin at current BTC price of $9,100.&nbsp;



So it’s odd how excited Liegl is about the prospect of having to shut down his Bitcoin miners this summer.&nbsp;



Already this year west Texas has seen a string of 100-degree days. But the real heat and humidity don’t hit until August, which is when the Texas power grid strains under the load of every air conditioning unit in the state going full blast. During an intense week in 2019, wholesale electricity prices in the grid region managed by the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) soared from about $120 per megawatthour to peak out at $9,000 per mwh. It was only the third time in history that Texas power hit that level. And although the peak pricing only lasted an hour or so, that’s enough to generate big profits. Analyst Hugh Wynne at research outfit SSR figures that Texas power generators make about 15% of annual revenues during the peak 1% of hours (whereas in more temperate California grid generators only get 3% of revs from the top 1%).



Turns out that running a phalanx of Bitcoin miners is a great way to arbitrage those peaks. Layer1 has entered into so-called “demand response” contracts whereby at a minute’s notice they will shut down all their machines and instead allow their 100 mw load to flow onto the grid. “We act as an insurance underwriter for the energy grid,” says Liegl, 27. “If there is an insufficiency of supply we can shut down.” The best part, they get paid whether a grid emergeny occurs or not. Just for their willingness to shut in Bitcoin production, Layer1 collects an annual premium equating to $19 per megawatthour of their expected power demand — or about $17 million. Given Layer1’s roughly $25 per mwh long-term contracted costs, this gets their all-in power price down 75% to less than 1 cent per kwh (just 10% of what residential customers pay).&nbsp;



It may seem like grid operators are paying Layer1 a lot for something that might not even happen, especially with coronavirus reducing electricity demand, but it makes total sense, says&nbsp;<a href="https://uh.edu/uh-energy/about-uh-energy/energy-fellows/blog-posts/ed-hirs/index.php" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ed Hirs</a>, a lecturer in energy economics at the University of Houston and research fellow at consultancy BDO: “It’s a lot cheaper option than building a whole new power plant or battery system just to keep it on standby.”&nbsp;



And although this may be a new concept for cryptocurrency miners, it’s been done before. Two decades ago industrialist Charles Hurwitz bought up power-hogging aluminum smelters in the Pacific Northwest and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2001/0402/053.html#34cccc1d3da9">made more money reselling electricity</a>&nbsp;than making metal. “It used to be called load management,” says Dan Delurey, a consultant with&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wedgemere.com/team/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wedgemere Group</a>. “In old commercial buildings you might still find telephone wires connected to air conditioning systems so that grid operators could send a signal to shut off.” More recently we’ve seen companies install radio-based devices to control hot water heaters and lighting systems. Indeed, grid management is a hot enough area that in 2017 Italy’s power giant Enel bought Boston-based Enernoc for $250 million and Itron&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/itron" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ITRI</a>&nbsp;bought Comverge for $100 million. What’s emerged are entities, like Layer1, that Delurey calls the “prosumer” — producing consumer.&nbsp;



As for Layer1, Liegl says his next step is to vertically integrate into financial products, including Bitcoin derivatives and more. “We are building an in-house energy trading division to leverage this into being a virtual power plant.”&nbsp;



His message to any pikers still trying to mine cryptocurrencies from their bedroom PC or even via cloud services: “I can’t think of something more irrational at this point. It’s like if I wanted to dig a hole in my backyard and try to get oil out of the ground.”&nbsp;



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/">Christopher Helman</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/energy">Energy</a>

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How This Billionaire-Backed Crypto Startup Gets Paid To Not Mine Bitcoin

Yele Bademosi is passionate about helping his home continent of Africa. Born into a missionary home in Ibadan, Nigeria, Bademosi’s mother and father used to deliver medical services and bibles to the Yoruba tribes-people in the forests surrounding&nbsp;his home-town, often going from hut to hut. When he and his sisters were old enough, they helped. “That is my earliest memory in terms of thinking about how to give back,” he says, “But as I grew older, I changed my views to thinking about, how do you actually help people at scale?”&nbsp;



Last year, Bademosi became a director at the venture capital arm of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which trades $1.5 billion in crypto assets each day. And today he is excited because he’s launching Bundle, one of six African startups the Malta-based crypto exchange is now funding, and the first it launched. The startup is being run by Africans in an effort to get Africans to use cryptocurrency, not as an investment vehicle, but as a global means of exchange. Bundle is essentially a social payments app, similar to Venmo or Square’s Cash App.



It lets users send, receive and spend bitcoin, ether, and Nigerian naira with little more than the recipient’s phone number. Unlike Square though, Bundle will also let users spend Binance coin (BNB), the exchange’s native cryptocurrency, which has been doled out to loyal and active traders using its crypto exchange. In the near future they’ll be able to spend and (more importantly) save Binance U.S. dollars (BUSD), stablecoins backed by U.S. dollars and regulated in the United States.



Bundle joins numerous tech giants working on ventures in Africa. Facebook <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2020/04/16/libra-compromises-undermine-original-facebook-promise/#41334dc02737">intends</a> to co-launch a cryptocurrency targeting the unbanked and Square’s founder Jack Dorsey recently announced plans to immigrate to the continent. “Regardless of your geography, you should have access to the best financial services. And unfortunately, your geography today defines the quality of financial services that you have,” says Bademosi, who is also Bundle’s CEO. “The same way the internet created freedom of information, I think blockchains create freedom of quality of financial services.”



Born in 1991, the only boy among five sisters, Bademosi always knew entrepreneurship was in his future. Perhaps rebelling from his bossy sisters, he knew he didn’t want to work for others. Bademosi’s first experience with a computer was at an internet cafe. As a child, he’d walk up a flight of stairs to the second floor of his local shopping center, push open a sliding door and frantically scan for cheat codes to his favorite computer games in 30-minute chunks, before his money ran out.



It wasn’t until 2007, when Bademosi was 16-years-old, that he finally got his first computer, an Acer Aspire One Series his parents got for him when he started classes at Lansdowne College, a preparatory school for University, similar to a high-school, in Westminster, England. For the first time, he had unlimited online access and an outlet to focus his burgeoning interests. By the time he graduated two years later, the 6’ 6” Bademosi had not only competed on the school’s football and basketball teams, but studied biology, chemistry, psychology and mathematics. “There&#8217;s a huge difference between what you learn in college in a structured environment and what you can learn online,” he says. “It felt like what I imagined the Enlightenment period felt like for people who lived when the printing press was first available.”&nbsp;



Growing up in Nigeria, he says, meant that students who did well in school were pushed into the sciences. When his youngest sister decided to go into economics, or what he called “liberal-type accounting,” he was in shock. In spite of his entrepreneurial aspirations, he knew he would be expected to either to become a medical doctor like his father, an engineer or an architect. He hated physics though, so passed on engineering, and architecture was out because as he put it, “I couldn&#8217;t draw straight lines.” His father convinced him that even if he didn’t end up practicing medicine,&nbsp;the University of London’s accelerated three-year program meant he’d have extra time afterwards to find a path of his own, and he enrolled in 2009.



In his first year of medical school his father died of kidney-failure. His father’s death gave him the courage to rebel. He had always found that he was more interested in computers than medicine so he dropped out of medical school with plans to build apps for Apple’s OS.&nbsp;After a few unsuccessful months building a social media app Bademosi flew back to Nigeria.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5ea0b91d8c2caa0006e71892/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Yele Bademosi, Bundle"/><figcaption>Bademosi works in his company&#8217;s office.&nbsp;BINANCE / YUSUF</figcaption></figure>



There he got a job as manager of Starta, devoted to helping African companies get off the ground by providing education, tools, and networking opportunities. After developing a taste for helping startups get off the ground, Bademosi founded his own angel investing firm called Mircotraction. His venture had well connected backers: Nigerian energy and real estate tycoon, Tunde Folawiyo; the CEO of Y-Combinator, Michael Siebel, and Google’s head of ecosystem for sub-Saharan Africa, Andy Volk.



Lagos-based Microtraction is now among the most active investors in Western Africa, having funded 15 companies, including 54gene, an African genomics research startup that recently attracted $15 million from Adjuvant Capital, Y-Combinator and others.



Bademosi had learned about bitcoin in college but it wasn’t until 2017 after he read a book called Master Switch by Columbia professor Tim Wu, that he began to see blockchain as a way to let networks of individuals compete against the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple using a shared technology infrastructure. “We’re not there yet,” he says. ‘But I believe that blockchain and decentralized technologies can open up the internet again, and create a new playing field that new entrants could play on.”



While the jump from medicine to blockchain may seem big , Bademosi sees them as strongly related. “The similarity really is the fact that you have individual organisms, whether that&#8217;s a cell or a human or a computer, acting in their own best interests towards what&#8217;s still a common goal, and there are a bunch of rules they all have to obey.”



Just a few months after founding Microtraction in August 2017, Bademosi bought his first bitcoin and as its price fluctuated wildly he became hooked on crypto asset investing. That led him to Binance, which was, founded in China, and is now doing business from Malta. In November 2018, Binance published a ten-point <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://medium.com/@benjaminrameau/10-reasons-why-binance-labs-is-fully-committed-to-africa-3aeaaa32fe9e" target="_blank">thesis</a> on why it was dedicated to the continent and launched a subsidiary in Uganda. Number four on Binance’s list was Bademosi’s childhood mantra: scalability. 



“For me, blockchains are as big as the internet,” says Bademosi. “And can you imagine Bill Gates or Larry Page or, Mark, Zuckerberg coming to Africa less than one year after the company was started?” He was impressed. So much so, that by January 2019, he had pitched his vision for what Binance should be doing in Africa and instead of taking him up on his advice, the company hired him, making him the first director at Binance Labs focused on investing in Africa-based blockchain startups and leading the Africa chapter of the organization’s incubation program.



So far Binance Labs has invested in five African startups, one from South Africa, one from Kenya, one from Ghana and three from Nigeria, all serving different aspects of the content’s growing crypto economy. Notably, Lagos-based Yellow Card is a way to buy bitcoin even without a bank via local agents, and Flutterwave is the same fiat-to-crypto bridge that lets Binance customers buy cryptocurrency with naira.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5ea0b97cbed92b0006690434/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Bundle team"/><figcaption>Bundle backend engineer Kenny Shittu (left) meets with blockchain engineer Oluchi Enebeli, user experience designer Ugo Ifezue, backend engineer Seyi Ajonibode and operations associate Chinny Eze at Bundle&#8217;s offices on March 9, 2020   BUNDLE / YUSUF</figcaption></figure>



Binance and its new Bundle have Western competitors in Africa. Facebook’s Libra has its sights set on banking the unbanked. Another potential competitor using cryptocurrency to serve the unbanked is Akon, the Senegalese-American musician whose Akoin project announced recently that it would be the exclusive currency of the Mwale Medical Technology City in Kenya.&nbsp;“Our goal is for akoin to be the official currency of the continent,” says Akon.



To give an idea of the total market up for grabs here, even if the average account holder might only own a fraction of what Western banks require to open an account, the World Bank estimates that 1.7 billion adults around the world are without such access. Fifty-seven percent of adults in sub-Saharan African, or about 350 million people, don’t have bank accounts, according to the World Bank. To help close that gap nearly&nbsp;$700 million was invested in fintech in Africa last year, according to media firm WeeTracker.&nbsp;Of the 1.2 billion people living in Africa, Bademosi estimates only 1.4 million are already using crypto.&nbsp;



In two weeks Bundle expects to add BUSD, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, created by blockchain startup Paxos, regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services, and spendable anywhere in the world. One possible financial product that could eventually be offered using this technology would be what amounts to a savings account denominated in U.S. dollars for people living in Nigeria, and eventually other African nations. Instead of Nigerians losing 12% to inflation at current rates by keeping their cash in a savings account, they could be paid interest denominated in U.S. dollars for funds held in custody elsewhere. “Being able to save in stablecoins and earn interest per annum is huge,” says Bademosi. “And we can offer that up to anyone anywhere.”



Users will also be able to cash in and cash out using local fiat currencies. Longer term plans include a physical debit card and the ability to purchase U.S. stocks, Nigerian mutual funds and agriculture debt, and unspecified incentive programs designed to jumpstart the cryptocurrency economy in Africa, according to internal documents provided to&nbsp;Forbes. The documents compare Bundle to Mosaic, the internet browser invented by Marc Andreessen, and credited for weaving together the previously esoteric processes required to use the internet into a single, intuitive browser.&nbsp;



In September 2019, Bundle quietly raised $450,000 from Binance, Pave Investments and other African investors. “We believe Bundle can become one of the key projects that will support Binance&#8217;s mission of scaling the adoption of crypto on the continent,” says Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ). To help do that, Bundle will be free at launch, with plans to eventually charge 0.5% to 2% per transaction on all short term trades and 3% of assets under management on yearly gains, for longer-term investing. While the finer details of how that works have yet to be announced, we can look to Binance for some intriguing clues.&nbsp;



After creating BNB in July 2017, the asset has grown to a total market value of $2.2 billion, making it the eighth largest crypto-asset according to&nbsp;CoinMarketCap.com, the widely used cryptocurrency markets site Binance recently acquired for a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2020/03/31/bitcoin-and-crypto-world-rocked-by-massive-400-million-binance-bid-for-coinmarketcap-report/#34f2d302247f">reported</a>&nbsp;$400 million. But it’s the way Binance uses that asset, which users acquire in exchange for making transactions on-site, that Bundle perhaps has the most to learn from.&nbsp;



Binance’s users are allowed to pay their fees on the site using the same BNB cryptocurrency they are rewarded for being regular users, and a new platform, called LaunchPad, lets users raise capital via initial coin offerings (ICOs) also payable in BNB, establishing what cryptocurrency news site CoinDesk <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.coindesk.com/the-unbelievable-brilliance-of-binance" target="_blank">called</a> “a virtuous cycle by which its users were incentivized to stay within its platform.” Bademosi, it would seem, has learned his lessons well, a promising sign for the future. “Bundle does an excellent job of putting fiat and crypto side by side,” he says. “And then nudging the user to use some of these digital currencies or assets in innovative ways.”



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/">Michael del Castillo,</a>Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/crypto-blockchain">Crypto &amp; Blockchain</a>

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Binance Spinoff Aims To Be Bitcoin-Powered Venmo Of Africa

Millions of cryptocurrency investors&nbsp;have been scammed out of massive sums of real money. In 2018, losses from cryptocurrency-related crimes amounted to&nbsp;US$1.7 billion. The criminals use both old-fashioned and new-technology tactics to swindle their marks in schemes based on digital currencies exchanged through online databases called blockchains.



From&nbsp;researching&nbsp;blockchain,&nbsp;cryptocurrency&nbsp;and&nbsp;cybercrime, I can see that some cryptocurrency fraudsters rely on&nbsp;tried-and-true Ponzi schemes&nbsp;that use income from new participants to pay out returns to earlier investors.



Others use&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/cryptocurrency-scammers-are-running-wild-on-telegram">h</a>ighly automatized and sophisticated processes, including automated software that interacts with Telegram, an internet-based instant-messaging system popular among people interested in cryptocurrencies. Even when a cryptocurrency plan is legitimate, fraudsters can still&nbsp;manipulate its price in the marketplace.



An even more basic question arises, though: How are unsuspecting investors attracted to cryptocurrency frauds in the first place?



RELATED | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/investment/2019/04/01/is-forex-a-scam-or-money-goals/">Is Forex A Scam Or Money Goals?</a>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Fast-talking swindlers</h4>



Some cryptocurrency fraudsters appeal to people’s greed, promising big returns. For example, an unknown group of entrepreneurs runs the scam bot iCenter, which is a&nbsp;<a href="https://medium.com/@nickcryptoltc/ponzi-investment-schemes-new-and-improved-on-the-blockchain-icenter-co-f9ee68f6c8fe">P</a>onzi scheme for Bitcoin and Litecoin. It doesn’t provide information on investment strategies, but somehow&nbsp;promises investors 1.2% daily returns.



The iCenter scheme operates through a group chat on Telegram. It starts with a small group of scammers who are in on the racket. They get a referral code that they share with others, in blogs and on social media, hoping to get them to join the chat. Once there, the newcomers see encouraging and exciting messages from the original scammers. Some newcomers decide to invest, at which point they are assigned an individual bitcoin wallet, into which they can deposit bitcoins. They agree to wait some period of time – 99 or 120 days – to receive a significant return.



During that time, the newcomers often use&nbsp;social media to share their own referral codes&nbsp;with friends and contacts, bringing more people into the group chat and into the investment scheme. There’s no actual investment of the funds in any legitimate business. Instead, when new people join, the person who recruited them gets a percentage of the new funds, and the cycle continues, paying out to earlier participants from each round of newer investors.



Some members work especially hard to bring in new funds, posting&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/cryptocurrency-scammers-are-running-wild-on-telegram">t</a>utorial videos and pictures of themselves holding large amounts of money&nbsp;as enticements to join the scam.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Lies and more lies</h4>



Some scammers go for straight-up deception. The founders of scam cryptocurrency OneCoin&nbsp;defrauded investors of $3.8 billion&nbsp;by convincing people their&nbsp;nonexistent cryptocurrency was real.



Other scams are based on impressing potential victims with jargon or claims of specialized knowledge. The Global Trading scammers claimed they took advantage of&nbsp;price differences on various cryptocurrency exchanges&nbsp;to profit from what is called arbitrage – simply buying cheaply and selling at higher prices. Really they just took investors’ money.



Global Trading used a bot on Telegram, too – investors could send a balance inquiry message and&nbsp;get a response with false information&nbsp;about how much was in their account, sometimes even seeing balances&nbsp;climb by 1% in an hour. With returns looking like that, who could blame people for&nbsp;sharing the scheme&nbsp;with their friends and family on social media?



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Exploiting friends and family</h4>



Once a scheme has started, it stays alive – at least for a while – through social media. One person gets taken in by the promise of big returns on cryptocurrency investments and spreads the word to&nbsp;<a href="https://news.bitcoin.com/crypto-scams-comprise-0-6-fraud-australian-consumer-watchdog/">f</a>riends and family members.



Sometimes big names get involved. For instance, the kingpin behind&nbsp;GainBitcoin&nbsp;and other alleged scams in India convinced a number of Bollywood celebrities to&nbsp;promote his book, “Cryptocurrency for Beginners.” He even tried to make himself&nbsp;a bit of a celebrity, proclaiming himself a “cryptocurrency guru,” as he&nbsp;led&nbsp;efforts&nbsp;that&nbsp;costinvestors between&nbsp;$769 million and $2 billion.



Not all the celebrities know they’re involved. In one blog post, iCenter featured a video that purported to be an&nbsp;endorsement by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, holding a sign featuring iCenter’s logo. Videos of Justin Timberlake and Christopher Walken were deceptively edited so they appeared to praise iCenter, too.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Fraudulent initial coin offerings</h4>



Another popular scam technique is called an “initial coin offering.” A potentially legitimate investment opportunity, an initial coin offering essentially is a way for a startup cryptocurrency company to raise money from its future users: In exchange for sending active cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum, customers are promised a discount on the new cryptocoins.



Many initial coin offerings have&nbsp;turned out to be scams, with organizers engaging in cunning plots, even renting fake offices and creating fancy-looking marketing materials. In 2017, a lot of hype and media coverage about cryptocurrencies fed a huge wave of initial coin offering fraud. In 2018,&nbsp;about 1,000 initial coin offering efforts&nbsp;collapsed, costing backers at least $100 million. Many of these projects had no original ideas –&nbsp;more than 15% of them&nbsp;had copied ideas from other cryptocurrency efforts, or even plagiarized supporting documentation.



Investors looking for returns in a new technology sector are still interested in blockchains and cryptocurrencies – but should beware that they are complex systems that are new even to those who are selling them. Newcomers and relative experts alike have fallen prey to scams.



In an environment like the current cryptocurrency market, potential investors should be very careful to research what they’re putting their money into and be sure to find out who is involved as well as what the actual plan is for making real money – without defrauding others.



&#8211;Nir Kshetri; Professor of Management, University of North Carolina – Greensboro



&#8211;The Conversation



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How Cryptocurrency Scams Work

&nbsp;On a bustling street near the shiny new international airport in Ethiopia’s capital is a small coffee roastery with big dreams.&nbsp;



Nearly 40 Ethiopians &#8211; a third of them women &#8211; sift, roast and package prized Arabica beans for export to Europe under the Moyee brand, founded by a Dutch social entrepreneur.



The roastery, together with the innovative use of blockchain technology to ensure the supply chain is transparent, represents an attempt to keep as much of the profits as possible in Ethiopia, one of the world’s poorest countries.



“It’s the world’s favorite drink. We drink over 2 billion cups a day,” said Killian Stokes, who set up the Irish branch of Moyee.



“The industry’s worth $100 billion and yet 90 percent of coffee farmers in Ethiopia live on less than $2 a day.”



That is partly because most exporters process the beans elsewhere, but also down to price fluctuations and other factors that make coffee growing a precarious business.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/agriculture/2019/01/24/ugandan-firm-uses-blockchain-to-trace-coffee-from-farms-to-stores/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Ugandan Firm Uses Blockchain To Trace Coffee From Farms To Stores (opens in a new tab)">Ugandan Firm Uses Blockchain To Trace Coffee From Farms To Stores</a>



To make things fairer, Moyee has created unique digital identities for the 350 farmers it currently works with &#8211; meaning buyers can see exactly how much each individual grower is paid, with prices set at 20 percent above the market rate.



Now the brand, whose slogan is “radically good coffee”, wants to use blockchain to take that to the next level &#8211; allowing buyers to tip farmers, or fund projects such as a new planting program, through a mobile app.



The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a recent report that blockchain had huge potential&nbsp;to address challenges&nbsp;smallholder farmers faced by “reducing uncertainty and enabling trust among market players”.



The technology, used to underpin cyber-currencies like Bitcoin, allows shared access to data that is maintained by a network of computers and can quickly trace the hundreds of parties involved in the production and distribution of food.



Once entered, any information cannot be altered or tampered with.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">‘BIGGER THAN THE INTERNET’</h4>



Siobhan Kelly, an advisor to the Food Systems Programme at the FAO, said blockchain would ultimately be “much bigger than the internet”.&nbsp;



“Within 10 years &#8211; it’ll take probably 10 years &#8211; it’s going to be a major revolution, for everything,” said Kelly.



Fruit farmers in Caribbean nations are also looking at using blockchain to attract better-paying customers, bring traceability and build a credit trail.&nbsp;



“It’s an innovation that is poised to empower local farmers in the Caribbean region,” said Pamela Thomas, executive director of the Agriculture Alliance of the Caribbean (AACARI), a regional network of nearly 100,000 farmers.



AACARI’s project has two components: auditing by accredited professionals to ensure farmers adhere to the Global GAP (good agricultural practices) standards, and a digital marketplace where buyers can find detailed information about the produce.&nbsp;



Global GAP is a voluntary standard required by many European and U.S. supermarket chains.



Vijay Kandy, whose company is building the blockchain platform, said the auditing process would allow farmers to deal directly with buyers &#8211; bypassing the middlemen that many currently rely on &#8211; and make access to credit easier.



“One reason why buyers from faraway places or different countries go through middlemen is because they rely on them to make sure farmers are following these good practices,” he said.



One such buyer is London-based Union Hand-Roasted Coffee.&nbsp;



The company sources its coffee directly from growers’ cooperatives to ensure higher quality, pays farmers more than minimum price set by the global Fairtrade organization, and works with more than 40 producer groups in 14 countries.



“We currently undertake direct interviews to verify farmers have been paid, but it’s very time- and labor-intensive to do that and to record all that data,” said Steven Macatonia, who co-founded Union in 2001.



“So to have a much more simple system where we can get a confirmation that payment has been received and how much that is, that could be hugely beneficial,” he said.



Price fluctuations and the impact of climate change make coffee a particularly challenging crop to grow.



“Large companies’ profits usually increase when prices are low, but the profit for farmers does not, and in some cases it may cost them money to produce coffee,” said Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.&nbsp;



Davis’s latest research shows climate change and deforestation are putting more than half of the world’s wild coffee species at risk of extinction.



Ethiopia &#8211; the birthplace of Arabica, the world’s most popular coffee &#8211; is of particular concern. Up to 60 percent of the land used to grow coffee could become unsuitable by the end of the century, Davis found.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“The more a farmer is paid, the more resources he will be able to devote to climate resilience,” he said.&nbsp; &nbsp;</blockquote>



Both Davis and the FAO’s Kelly however cautioned that blockchain technology was not going to be a “quick fix”, with farmers around the world facing multiple challenges.



“Farmers need access to affordable seeds, to affordable finance and credit when they need it &#8230; and these things are not going to be given by blockchain,” said Kelly. -Reuters



-Thin Lei Win @thinink

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