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If you attend investment conferences or talk to long-time industry analysts, it’s clear that that the general cryptocurrency market bubble is unsustainable.

There were 30 initial coin offerings (ICOs) in July, each launching new cryptocurrencies. Then, in August, there were more than 50, with marketing and investors ranging from Floyd Mayweather to Paris Hilton.
Now, part of this mania is based on speculation. But it’s also clear that we’re departing from the fundamental assumption of what a cryptocurrency originally is – a scarce digital commodity where the value derives from that scarcity.
Select winners
Simply put, if more than 100 new sources of this digital commodity have been launched since the summer, then the entire concept of scarcity, and therefore value, begins to erode. In fact, many of these new cryptocurrencies will need to fail in order to maintain the viability of the best-known currencies, bitcoin and ether.
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has been around for two years, so it’s a relatively known quantity. Most of the recent ICOs are based on the ERC-20 ethereum token, and the primary purchasing mechanism for new cryptocurrencies has been ether, the currency of the ethereum network.
Therefore, an investor often needs to buy ether in order to buy into any of the new ICOs.
But the crypto bubble of lesser-known currencies will pop at some point, leaving some people in a bad spot. Even so, the core technology behind it, blockchain, will provide value as a hidden infrastructure underlying future applications.
A small number of currencies – likely bitcoin and ethereum – and utility tokens where genuine value is created, will remain viable over the long term – although not necessarily at the current prices.
The fundamental premise of cryptocurrency, if it’s not a scarce digital commodity, is that it is a token that allows access to a utility service. One of the few valid tokens that have been launched recently is IOTA, which is targeted at the Internet of Things market.
However, it’s hard to justify building an IoT application using IOTA when surging token prices mean the cost of doing blockchain transactions doubles in seven days or increases by 500 percent over the course of a month, as it has recently done.
While IOTA has a strong long-term future, the ability to use it for IoT applications depends upon removal of the speculation-driven volatility. This shows the disconnect between the value proposition of utility tokens and the trading prices.
Tokenless blockchains
This is also a reminder that it’s essential to separate blockchain technology from cryptocurrencies.
It is entirely possible to run a blockchain without a cryptocurrency, as demonstrated by Metrognomo, which predates and takes a similar approach to IOTA, but uses a subscription payment for nodes publishing to the network.
Another example is Quorum, JPMorgan Chase’s permissioned, minimally-forked ethereum network, designed to promote private transactions for the enterprise.
So, even though a blockchain can be very useful for securing distributed systems and businesses, it does not justify the fundamentals of any cryptocurrency.
Blockchain’s future is bright, just maybe a little less glamorous without the get-rich-quick investment aspect.

http://cryptofundamentals.com.ng/what-comes-after-the-cryptocurrency-bubble/

This must be a record for Mr. Dimon, who seems to have barely been able to last an hour without calling out Bitcoin as a “fraud”, or a refuge for criminals and North Koreans.
Mr. Dimon finally broke his Zen-like meditative silence late last week, once again returning to the familiar assaults we’ve come to expect from the world’s most powerful banker.
On Thursday, Dimon downplayed the importance of Bitcoin during a teleconference with journalists, and then said he wouldn’t talk about cryptocurrency anymore.
One day later, Dimon was talking about cryptocurrency again, this time at the annual meeting of the Institute for International Finance.
Dimon’s rant was in top form, and he went back to his core material– governments won’t allow Bitcoin to exist, it’s only useful for criminals, etc.
He was later joined by his sidekick Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of Blackrock (the largest investment management firm in the world with over $5.7 trillion under management).
Fink stated succinctly that Bitoin is “an index for how much demand for money laundering there is in the world.”
Now, these are clearly not dumb guys. Dimon and Fink are princes of Wall Street. They know finance.
But it’s pretty obvious they haven’t done their homework on cryptocurrency… since there’s really no objective evidence to support their assertions.

http://cryptofundamentals.com.ng/the-one-way-governments-could-actually-kill-bitcoin-2/

Tanjalo, a blockchain startup in Nigeria has launched an online marketplace where residents can buy and sell bitcoin. The Lagos based company officially began operations on October 12 in a bid to address borderless payments and access to cryptocurrencies in West Africa. Tanjalo's CTO and Co-founder Tim Akinbo also runs the only node in West Africa.

Bitcoin enthusiasts look at Africa as a vast potential market for cryptocurrencies. Tanjalo is taking the challenge by allowing Nigerians to exchange their local Naira for bitcoin. The firm intends to add more digital currency alternatives over time. With cryptocurrency, locals can access a global payment network regardless of whether they have a bank account or not.

Speaking to Cryptovest, Tim, who runs the only bitcoin node in West Africa, said of the launch:

"Our mission is to offer people with the opportunity to participate in the financial ecosystem with or without a bank account or mobile money wallet especially in a region that has the highest rate of financial exclusion in the world."
Nigeria, alongside Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa lead the continent in bitcoin volumes according to data from localbitcoins. Weekly trading volumes averaged at 1,140,000,000 Naira, roughly $ 3.2 million. But according to Tim, there is more trading activity happening offline that is not captured by peer-to-peer marketplace data. His startup is targeting a piece of this market and has already launched a beta where customers can buy bitcoins.

Nigerians are all too familiar with what can go wrong with fiat currencies. Last year, cornered by a dollar shortage, the Central bank of Nigeria imposed FX limits, a move that hurt local startups and businesses making international payments. The regulator's 16-month dollar naira fixed peg forced locals to turn to 6 different exchange rates on the black market.

Tim says the nation's dependence on US dollars from oil exports sometimes works against the country even choking intra-African trade between countries that neighbor Nigeria, like Ghana. He sees digital currencies as an inflection point for the new financial order.

Officials from the Central Bank of Nigeria agree cryptocurrencies are disruptive. At a conference in Lagos in September, Musa Jimoh Deputy Director/Head, Payments System Policy and Oversight, CBN said

"[we] cannot stop the tide of waves generated by the blockchain technology and its derivatives. Currently, we have taken measures to create four departments in the institution that are looking forward to harmonise the white paper on Crypto currency."
Nigeria receives over $21 billion in remittances annually. The cost of remittances into African countries is highest at over 9% compared to all the regions of the world. Services like Tanjalo and up and coming Nigerian startups like BitPesa, Nairex, and Bitkoin.Afrika, can significantly lower costs by leveraging cryptocurrencies as a settlement currency and medium of exchange.

www.cryptofundamentals.com.ng

The rapid proliferation of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin most prominent among them, has seized the attention of financial regulators and traditional industry players. Many do not like what they see. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has ruled that some cryptocurrencies are actually securities, not currencies, while in September the People’s Bank of China went much further and banned ‘initial coin offerings’, which cryptocurrency initiators use to raise funds. As buyers from hedge funds to chicken farmers invest in cryptocurrencies amid warnings of fraud, tulip mania and Ponzi schemes, there is an increasing need to understand both the dynamics of these nascent markets and the underlying technologies and social implications of financial technology (FinTech).

Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From Money that We Understand to Money that Understands Us by David Birch makes a valuable contribution to understanding how technology is changing money. Discussion of these developments has often been characterised by extremes: uncritical celebrations of technological disruption, on the one hand, and dark depictions of the coming crash on the other. This book sits in neither camp. Rather, it draws on the long sweep of history to place current developments in context and offers an optimistic, but caveated, view of the potential future.
Birch is Director of Innovation at Consult Hyperion and a visiting professor at the University of Surrey Business School. As his frequent references to his consulting company make clear, Birch has been a long-term participant in, rather than just a spectator to, the development of payment technologies and platforms. Birch’s perspective is therefore that of a self-described ‘technologist’ who has worked on the practical rollout of payment technologies.
As the title suggests, the book covers far broader material than just the rise of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. (Birch suggests that Bitcoin is ‘a peculiar kind of digital commodity’ rather than money, an observation consistent with claims that the primary purpose of owning Bitcoin is speculation.) Its chief concern is to explore how technological innovations have changed money in the past and are transforming money today, along the way outlining some of the new trade-offs that will concern industry, consumers and policymakers. Birch’s contention is that the ‘transition to the mobile phone as the basic platform for financial services’, used for both making and receiving payments, is a truly disruptive development that will facilitate both the cashless economy and the unbundling of banking and payments, developments which the author welcomes.
The book is structured chronologically, beginning with a section surveying ‘The Past: Money That We Understand’. This recounts the often colourful story of how historic innovations in the ‘technology’ of money resulted in the development of money as it is commonly understood, functioning as a unit of account, medium of exchange, store of value and means of deferred payment. The second part of the book, ‘The Present: Money That We Think We Understand’, charts the rise of ‘electronic money’, beginning with the invention of the telegraph and continuing through the introduction of credit cards and automated clearing houses to the mobile phone, which Birch claims will revolutionise money by enabling more secure and ‘frictionless’ payments. This is followed by several chapters arguing for the economic and social benefits of moving to a cashless economy.
The third part of the book turns to ‘The Future: Money That Understands Us’. To summarise, Birch sees the technologies of mobile phones, social networks, biometrics and big data combining to enable the production of an unlimited number of ‘digital fiat’ currencies by corporations and communities, in addition to central and commercial banks. Shared ledger technology (of which Bitcoin’s blockchain is an example) enables the decentralised settlement of transactions in these currencies, potentially displacing the need for a central clearing authority. The book closes with an informative appendix summarising experiences of ‘cashlessness’ in a diverse group of countries. China is a particularly interesting case, with non-cash payments already accounting for two-thirds of all retail transactions.
The book’s historical perspective is particularly valuable for distinguishing the truly novel from cases where technologies are replicating old models. There is often a tendency to depict both cryptocurrencies and FinTech generally as complete ruptures with all that has gone before: all that is solid melts into bits. But whereas JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon has warnedthat ‘you can’t have a business where people are going to invent a currency out of thin air’, Birch contends that ‘all currency is now virtual’, and has been since the US ended the dollar’s convertibility with gold in 1971. At issue, according to Birch, is not the nature of fiat currencies backed by reputations rather than commodities, but rather which organisations and communities are able to issue such reputation-based currencies. In short, Birch predicts ‘the decoupling of currency from the nation state

www.cryptofundamentals.com.ng

Welcome to the System! Together we will change the world!”
These are the words I found scrawled at the bottom of a web page, right next to a picture of Sergei Mavrodi, a convicted Russian fraudster infamous for operating Mavrodi Mundial Moneybox (or MMM), one of the world’s largest ponzi schemes.
Two decades after MMM was shut down, the organization reemerged under new branding, as a technology-driven “financial mutual-aid network” that uses Bitcoin to provide its members up to 100% returns on their contributions. If MMM’s participation numbers are to be believed—they claim to have over 200 million participants—they may be one of the biggest drivers of Bitcoin adoption in the world today, especially in low-income areas.

www.cryptofundamentals.com.ng

The largest cryptocurrency crossed $4,500 on Monday and is now hovering right below the $5,000 line. Behind the rally could be reports saying the Chinese government will ease recent regulations and that Goldman Sachs is exploring how it could help clients trade cryptocurrencies. Also, there’s yet another split — a.k.a “hard fork” (or even two) — looming, but that might be bullish as bitcoin rallied after the split into Bitcoin Cash earlier this year.

www.cryptofundamentals.com.ng

In a 1999 interview, Professor Milton Friedman, an American economist who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and the complexity of stabilization policy. He had this to say:
“I think the internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government. The one thing that’s missing but that will soon be developed is a reliable e-cash.

www.cryptofundamentals.com.ng

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