Crypto firms move to stop bad actors as Bitcoin price predictions go wild
Last week the price of Bitcoin (BTC) moved from $6,800 to close in on the $7,000 mark. Successfully breaching the $7,000 level, the cryptocurrency’s price jumped to over $7,500, and has continued its momentum to trade at the time of writing at $7,700. Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has moved up from $167 to trade at $195.
The last week has seen cryptoasset firms work hard to act against bad actors in the space, while analysts have made increasingly bullish price predictions ahead of Bitcoin’s upcoming halving event.
Chinese decentralized finance protocol dForce has reportedly managed to glean data on the individual who breached the platform last week, and has successfully negotiated the return of all $25 million worth of cryptocurrency that had been stolen. While some speculate that the hacker had a sudden change of heart, other reports claim that the hacker became aware of the involvement of Singapore police, and decided to return the funds after realizing they had left behind traceable data.
Ripple Labs, the largest holder of the XRP cryptocurrency, and its CEO Brad Garlinghouse have filed a lawsuit against YouTube in a San Francisco court. Ripple and Garlinghouse claim that YouTube’s failure to crack down on XRP giveaway scams – where hackers hijack popular YouTubers’ accounts to livestream fake giveaways – has caused “irreparable harm to their public image, brand, and reputation.”
The motion claims that YouTube has failed to meet its own standards when it comes to keeping scammers and impersonators off their platform, even after alleging being informed by Ripple of the fake XRP giveaways on “countless occasions.”
While there’s no mention of the potential damages to be paid, Garlinghouse has claimed that funds received from the lawsuit are going to be used to reimburse scam victims. Tracking platforms suggest these scams – across various social media platforms – have stolen over 8.5 million XRP (over $1.5 million) from unsuspecting victims.
As cryptocurrency firms move to stop bad actors, a new survey conducted by research firm Visual Objects has found that the majority of cryptocurrency is spent on day-to-day purchases for food and clothing, not on illicit goods or services. Curiously, most respondents predicted the top use cases for crypto would be illicit, while only 26% of actual expenditure was on illegal activities.
Rumours circulating on social media last week suggested that Reddit is considering integrating a cryptocurrency onto its platform. Co-founder Alexis Ohanian was unwilling to confirm the rumours during an interview this week, but said that the “long-term value of Reddit is not going to come from advertising,” adding that its community is Reddit’s biggest asset.
During the interview, Ohanian said that he was confident Reddit could “provide a very seamless digital transaction” for user-generated digital commerce, and that ““now is the time for companies like Reddit to double down on revenue streams that are like this, that are accretive, that […] build on community dynamics.”
Bitcoin Price Predictions Go Wild
All eyes in crypto are now turning to Bitcoin’s upcoming halving event which will see block rewards shrink from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC per block, cutting the rate of Bitcoin’s supply in half.
Many analysts believe the supply drop coupled with rising demand will see BTC’s price surge. Former macro hedge fund manager Raoul Paul, for example, last week revealed that he believes bitcoin will be the major asset class of the future and could one day see a $10 trillion valuation.
Preston Pysh, founder of the financial learning platform Buffett’s Books, has said that he sees bitcoin’s price skyrocketing to $200,000 or $300,000 after the halving event, citing electrical expenses and mining costs as the main drivers of the surge. Even if BTC failed to meet its “escape velocity,” he said, the price would settle between $80,000 and $100,000 until the next halving in 2024.
Despite the accusations of many critics of the crypto space, research conducted by the University of California Berkeley’s Haas Blockchain Initiative has found that issuances of cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of fiat currencies – stablecoins – have not been inflating the price of bitcoin. Instead, the study found, new issuances are consistent with investors using stablecoins to store value during risky or bearish periods.