The majority of market observers presently consider it a foregone conclusion that the Fed will raise interest rates by 25 bps in December and arrive at a base rate of 1.25% to 1.50%. At the same time QT (Quantitative Tapering) is supposed to be progressing at US$ 10 billion monthly. More rate hikes are expected in 2018. As in the past such a Fed policy will probably result in a recession as higher interest rates and tightened credit will slow down growth.
Bank of Canada thinks now is a good time to research their own digital currency. Although the name remains unknown, they are not the first financial institution to contemplate such an approach.
Central bank digital currencies are a very unusual development in the financial sector. So far, no major bank has made any significant progress in developing such a currency. Bank of Canada may be the first to achieve some breakthrough in this regard. A paper has been circulating which focuses on creating a native digital currency.
Following new cryptocurrency regulations in April, Japanese police have pointed to 170 cases of money laundering via cryptocurrencies reported by exchange operators in six months between April and October.
The first such report by the National Police Agency was conducted after the law on prevention of transfer of criminal proceeds was revised in April, requiring cryptocurrency exchange operators to report transactions suspected to be involved in money laundering.
Bitcoin’s price has levelled off at around $9,600 on Friday after the cryptocurrency lost almost $2,000 in less than 24 hours over Wednesday and Thursday. Despite the falls, bitcoin is still trading at almost ten times its value at the start of the year.
And according to the Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau, Bitcoin is a speculative asset and people who invest in it do so at their own risk.
Bitcoin’s ongoing meteoric price rise has received the bulk of recent press attention with a lot of discussion around whether or not it’s a bubble waiting to burst.
However, most the coverage has missed out one of the more interesting and unintended consequences of this price increase. That is the surge in global electricity consumption used to “mine” more Bitcoins.
Bitcoin surpassed $US11,000 in a matter of hours after hitting the $US10,000 milestone, taking this year’s price surge to almost 12-fold as buyers shrugged off increased warnings that the largest digital currency is an asset bubble.
The euphoria is bringing to the mainstream what was once considered the provenance of computer developers, futurists and libertarians seeking to create an alternative to central bank-controlled monetary systems. While the actual volume of transactions conducted in cryptocurrencies is relatively small, the optimism surrounding the technology continues to drive it to new highs.
Bitcoin hit the $10,000 mark for the first time Nov. 28, passing the milestone on several exchanges and indexes. When you consider the digital currency’s rapid growth, you might think that people who say a single bitcoin could be worth $50,000 in the next decade might be onto something.
After a day of tepid approaches toward the total, the price of bitcoin rose above $10,000 on CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) for the first time in history on Tuesday.
Former Fortress hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz said Monday that bitcoin can multiply more than four times in roughly the next 13 months.
On CNBC’s Fast Money, Novogratz expressed his optimism towards both bitcoin and Ethereum in the mid-term. Novogratz, who has predicted the price of bitcoin to achieve the $10,000 mark before the end of 2017, stated that bitcoin price will quadruple by the end of 2018, and the price of Ether, the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum, will triple in value.
