Bold predictions for Bitcoin this week, despite its recent woes. Could we be on the cusp of a worldwide financial revolution?

Cryptocurrency update

BTC to overtake USD by 2050?

A panel of 42 cryptocurrency experts believe Bitcoin will replace fiat currency as the dominant form of finance by 2050.

The survey, undertaken by personal finance site Finder.com, showed 54% of respondents thought hyperbitcoinisation, i.e. the shift from fiat to BTC tokens, will occur by then. A further 29% believe this will happen by 2035.

Developing and emerging economies may be the driving force behind this global change. We’ve already seen El Salvador commit to using Bitcoin as legal tender. Other countries, such as Venezuela, may pursue similar options to extract themselves from the dollar in the long term.

Survey respondents were also feeling bullish regarding BTC prices. The consensus seems to be a price of $66,000 will be reached by 2021’s end. This was only slightly higher than the all-time high seen in April this year, prior to the BTC crash.

The most bullish price prediction comes from Morpher CEO Martin Fröhler, who suggests BTC token prices could climb as high as $160,000 by the end of the year.

This seems wildly optimistic. BTC has struggled to clear $32,000 and its predicted it may fall below $30,000 again soon.

Another thing to remember when looking at this survey’s results is participants’ vested interest in high crypto prices. At cryptocurrency experts, traders, and investors, they want to see high prices as it will pay off for them in the long-term. Take this survey with a grain of salt.

Indeed, not all respondents are bullish. University of Canberra senior lecturer John Hawkins is among the most bearish survey respondents. He gave an EOY prediction of US$20,000, stating that countries adopting Bitcoin may actually have negative impact on its price:

“I’m assuming El Salvador adopting it as legal tender puts a floor for a while. But after the price has dropped a lot, they may remove the legal tender status.”

Ethereum co-founder walks away

Anthony Di Iorio, one of Ethereum’s eight co-founders, has announced he is leaving the world of cryptocurrencies.

It’s a leftfield move from a man who has done a fair amount to promote decentralised finance and digital currencies through his work on the Ethereum blockchain and token.

Di Iorio has cited fears around his personal safety as one of the key reasons for pulling out.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Di Iorio said he doesn’t “feel necessarily safe in this space”. He also and warned that cryptocurrency is not what the world needs.

“[Crypto is] really a small percentage of what the world needs,” Di Iorio said, adding he wants to “to diversify to not being a crypto guy, but being a guy tackling complex problems. I will incorporate crypto when needed, but a lot of times, it’s not.”

According to Di Iorio, he has hired security teams to safeguard himself while attending meetings and travelling since 2017.

The world of decentralised finance is all built around personal freedom. But, because it is decentralised, it has also attracted a large following from the world’s criminal element. Money laundering and fraud is a big problem in the DeFi sector. Thieves and criminals have been particularly attentive to cryptocurrencies recently thanks to the staggering price increases we’ve seen across the past year.

Di Iorio will instead be focussing his attention and resources on more entrepreneurial endeavours.

ETH has struggled to find its footing again after Bitcoin’s collapse sent nearly the whole crypto market into the red.

Whales snap up more XRP tokens

XRP, the token for the Ripple network, has seen an upswing in whale transactions in the past week.

For context, whales are single-address entities that own 1,000 or more tokens in a single wallet.

In this case, the number of XRP coins involved has scaled into the hundreds of millions. Research from Whale Alert, a leading blockchain tracker, has revealed 124 million in XRP transfers, sourced from two transactions, took place in the past couple of days.

On 19 July 2021, a leading XRP address moved 84.3 million coins to an unknown wallet. The total value of the mentioned transaction, recorded by Bithomp.com, stands at around $50 million.

In a separate transfer, around 40 million XRP coins worth over $23 million were moved from a crypto wallet to the digital exchange Binance on Saturday 17^th July.

We’ve recently seen a high level of growth in the number of Bitcoin tokens sitting in whale wallets. Because of the price collapse, canny investors are buying the dip, in the hopes of another BTC price rally.

This may be the same here. It’s been reported that the XRP 50-day moving average is about to fall below the 200-day moving average. This so called “death cross” could spell disaster for XRP token prices – but it does present an acquisition opportunity. The trouble is with crypto is that prices are so volatile that death crosses such as the one mentioned could become more frequent.

Right now, the market is in a depression – but if enough whales hoover up enough tokens, the principles of supply and demand could kick in, and thus support prices again.