Fintech Land

Some of Silicon Valley’s leading investors are lining up to buy into a much-hyped initial coin offering by Telegram, the encrypted messaging service that is seeking $1.2bn to build a virtual economy within its app.

As The Financial Times reported, Venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark and Sequoia Capital have each told the company they want to invest $20m, according to three people with knowledge of the deals. Sequoia and Kleiner declined to comment, and Benchmark did not respond to requests for comment.

Cryptocurrencies are a bubble and cannot function as actual currencies because of their volatility, legendary macro trader George Soros said from Davos, Switzerland. But he didn’t quite predict the crash that some naysayers have forecast.

“Normally when you have a parabolic curve, eventually it has a very sharp break,” Soros said Thursday. “But in this case, as long as you have dictatorships on the rise you will have a different ending, because the rulers in those countries will turn to Bitcoin to build a nest egg abroad.”

The CEO of Nasdaq has revealed that it is looking into how it can offer digital currency futures that are different to Cboe and CME offerings.

Speaking to CNBC, Adena Friedman confirmed earlier reports that the Nasdaq is looking into bitcoin futures, but did not give a timeline for a launch or if it will definitely happen. Though her comments suggest that the development of a product is indeed happening.

The Accenture Strategy report, Reworking the Revolution: Are you ready to compete as intelligent technology meets human ingenuity to create the future workforce?, estimates that if businesses invest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and human-machine collaboration at the same rate as top performing companies, they could boost revenues by 38 percent by 2022 and raise employment levels by 10 percent. Collectively, this would lift profits by US$4.8 trillion globally over the same period. For the average S&P500 company, this equates to US$7.5 billion of revenues and a US$880 million lift to profitability.

Johann Schneider-Ammann, Switzerland’s economics minister, has said that the landlocked country should strive to "become the crypto-nation" if experiences in the Canton of Zug, colloquially known as Crypto Valley, remain positive. He made the comment in an interview with the news outlet SRF, as well as in a speech to the Crypto Finance Conference in St. Moritz, where he spoke after receiving a so-called "crypto award."

Weiss Ratings, a U.S. independent rating agency, had announced that it will issue letter grades on cryptocurrencies, to be released Wednesday January 24.

They will include market leader Bitcoin along with a series of altcoins like Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Cardano, NEM, Litecoin, Stellar, EOS, IOTA, Dash, NEO, TRON, Monero, Bitcoin Gold, and many more.

Robert Shiller, the Nobel Prize-winning Yale economist who predicted the housing bubble, says that he is mystified by the rise of Bitcoin-but ultimately regards the cryptocurrency as a speculative bubble that is likely to burst.

Speaking with CNBC, Yale professor Shiller questioned Bitcoin’s value, comparing it to the 17th century Tulip mania.

Digital currencies and the software developed to track them have become attractive targets for cybercriminals while also creating a lucrative new market for computer-security firms. In less than a decade, hackers have stolen $1.2 billion worth of Bitcoin and rival currency Ether, according to Lex Sokolin, global director of fintech strategy at Autonomous Research LLP. Given the currencies’ explosive surge at the end of 2017, the cost in today’s money is much higher.