Plus, El Salvador marks one month since adopting Bitcoin as legal tender, SHIBA INU surges up the rankings, and crypto billionaires are among Forbes' 400 richest Americans.
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Here's what happened on this week's show:
What’s Next for Bitcoin?
Bitcoin’s had a good month so far. On Oct. 1, it raced from $44,900 to $47,600 in the space of 25 minutes.
There was much more to come. It hit $50,000 for the first time in a month on Oct. 4 — and broke through $55,000 on Oct. 6. That’s the highest price since May.
But now it’s returned to a $1 trillion market cap, what’s next for BTC?
CrossTower research analyst Martin Gaspar joined us to talk about the bullish surge in the crypto markets — and we asked why the final three months of the year are historically so important for Bitcoin. He said:
“The summer has always been a slow period for Bitcoin and crypto. So now we have traders back at their desks. Everyone’s trying to inch out some last few gains in the quarter, so this can often lead to optimism on crypto more broadly.”
Martin also says this year feels different, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission set to make a decision on whether to approve Bitcoin exchange-traded funds — and last year’s halving event having an effect on prices.
He pointed to data from Glassnode that suggests 81% of Bitcoin’s supply is now held by long-term holders, and hasn’t moved for more than 155 days. All of that indicates that many investors aren’t prepared to sell, and this creates a supply squeeze.
When asked what Bitcoin’s ascendancy means for altcoins, Martin explained that some altcoins may lag in the near term — but they could run higher later in December and January.
And on the issue of how long BTC’s bull run might last, Martin said:
“I could see Bitcoin continuing to trend higher for the next few months — I’d say for most of Q1. It really just depends how high we go. I still think it’s very possible we’re going to be well over $100,000 by the end of the year — somewhere around $150,000 is where I’m thinking. If we go much higher… if we approached $200,000, I think we’re going to see some profit taking… it’s going to be very interesting to see how traders react to those levels.”
We also asked Martin about the rehabilitation plan that Mt. Gox victims have been voting on for the past five months — and whether we could see mass Bitcoin sell-offs as 200,000 BTC enters the marketplace. Although he said downwards pressure is possible, he added:
“If they were involved in Mt. Gox, they were early adopters — early believers. So I don’t think we’re going to see as much selling pressure from these sorts of investors. Bitcoin has continued to outperform all other assets during this timeframe, so I think a lot of them will feel it may just be safer to hold on to their Bitcoin.”
Facebook in Crisis
There was another big story in town this week.
Facebook was rocked by two crises. A devastating outage on Monday meant the company’s 3.5 billion users were unable to access Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for almost six hours.
Meanwhile, a whistleblower who had leaked thousands of internal documents was identified as Frances Haugen, who had worked as a product manager at the tech giant for two years.
She gave damning evidence to Congress in which she claimed Facebook’s products “harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy” — and alleged that the company knows how to make its platforms safer but “won’t make the necessary changes because they have put astronomical profits before people.”
So… does this mean that greater levels of decentralization are needed online — and could cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology help here?
Lia Holland, campaigns and communications director at Fight for the Future, said:
“It’s a strong moment to illustrate what many, many activists have been saying for a long time, which is that Facebook’s presence in our culture is deeply, deeply toxic. And urgent action — like final boss action — to stop them is needed immediately.”
Discussing the outages, she added:
“It’s testament to how centralized our infrastructure online is currently and how vulnerable it is. If people had many alternatives or protocols to engage through different decentralized networks, the internet would likely be impossible to bring down… I’m hopeful that this experience is also waking people up to the fact that there are infrastructural problems with the way that the internet functions now.”
She said internet users should be able to create their own communities with their own rules and settings — and this would prevent people from being silenced and apps from being taken down because of government pressure:
“The question is how do we communicate with each other better? And how do we create systems that give us the power instead of these corporations that will always be centralizing and taking our rights away?”
When asked whether decentralization would make social networks harder to regulate, and potentially make it harder to protect people on the internet, she argued:
“We are unprotected because we have been denied the tools to protect ourselves. The government has shown a total failure to keep up with technology for decades.”
Although Facebook says it has been pushing for regulation to be updated, Lia warned that the changes they’ve asked for will “specifically benefit them and cement their monopoly.”
“This company has proven over and over that it can’t be trusted to be the infrastructure of the internet for so many people.”
News Roundup: SHIBA INU, El Salvador, Crypto Billionaires
CoinMarketCap’s Molly Jane Zuckerman also joined us for this week’s crypto roundup — with SHIBA INU notching up seven-day gains of 348% at one point.
It’s now been one month since El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender. Consumers have started day trading on the Chivo app, deposits into Bitcoin ATMs are now outnumbering withdrawals, and the country has started to use volcanic energy to mine the cryptocurrency.
We also discussed how to stay safe online after Coinbase revealed that at least 6,000 people were affected by phishing attacks earlier this year — and the news that seven crypto billionaires feature in this year’s Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans.
