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The Digital Currency Group (DCG), a company founded and led by Barry Silbert, held an investor day in Palo Alto, California, where companies could demo their products to investors in the Bitcoin and blockchain space.

DCG is the firm responsible for the Bitcoin Investment Trust, which started trading on the OTCQX back in May under the ticker “GBTC.”

During the event, Silbert gave a presentation where he laid out his predictions for bitcoin in 2016, which P. Bart Stephens, another investor in the Bitcoin space, shared:

TOP TEN PREDICTIONS FOR 2016

1. Bitcoin as a currency/store of value re-emerges as theme
2. When price starts to increase, flywheel effect begins...
3. Wall Street begins to trade bitcoin
4. Cross border payments/remittance using bitcoin becomes competitive
5. Growth in Brazil, China & Middle East
6. Slow progress around private blockchains for financial markets
7. Industry consolidation and shake out continues
8. Non-financial use cases of blockchain ledger explode
9. Banks begin to service digital currency companies
10. Bitcoin price on 12/31/16 = higher

Silbert expressed significant optimism related to the price of bitcoin.

“Bitcoin price will be higher,” Silbert said.

At the Inside Bitcoin’s conference in New York City in April, he made a similar claim when he offered one of two outcomes: Either the price would be $0 or it would be significantly more than it was at the time. “It won’t be $230,” he said in April.

His predictions were focused around three main points. First, as the currency/store of value theme re-emerged, the price would start to increase, which would result in the flywheel effect. As a wheel turns, it can easily gain more momentum, resulting in further turning. The fear of missing out propagates an ever-increasing price, which partially contributed to the previous bubble.

Tyler Durden, the pseudonymous Zero Hedge author, has offered a belief that the fear of capital controls in China could push bitcoin into a bubble like never seen before.

“If a few hundred million Chinese decide that the time has come to use bitcoin as the capital controls bypassing currency of choice, and decide to invest even a tiny fraction of the $22 trillion in Chinese deposits … in bitcoin (whose total market cap at last check was just over $3 billion), sit back and watch as we witness of the second coming of bitcoin, one which could make the previous all-time highs in the digital currency, seems [sic] like a low print.”

Despite many in the “rebittance” business believing bitcoin doesn’t make remittance cheaper, Silbert predicted that 2016 would give rise to competitive cross border payments/remittance businesses that use bitcoin. However, while remittance might not be ready for disruption, international B2B transactions might be a use case that bitcoin is ripe to change.

Diving deeper into the finance of bitcoin, Silbert said that bitcoin was a noncorrelated asset. According to InvestorWords.com, noncorrelated assets are, “assets that tend to change in value independent of the core financial markets such as stocks and bonds.”

Fundamentally, Silbert remains significantly bullish on the potential for bitcoin as an investment. With the recent rise in price, there is a growing optimism that the price of bitcoin might finally begin an ascent back to previous-bubble levels. For now, bitcoin entrepreneurs and investors continue to focus on building more products and services that will better utilize the blockchain ledger over time. As Silbert predicts, 2016 should bring many nonfinancial use cases.

Jacob Donnelly is a full-time product manager and freelance journalist covering stocks, business and bitcoin. He runs a weekly digital currency and blockchain newsletter called Crypto Brief.

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China’s central bank has cut its benchmark lending and deposit rates again in an attempt to stir a stuttering economy. The People’s Bank of China, the authority as the Chinese Central Bank has cut its rates and lowered the minimum ceiling of cash reserves that banks must hold, in order to try and shake up some activity to spur a slowing economy. Reuters reports that it is the sixth time since November last year that China has slowed down on its monetary policy by slashing its interest rates in the face of stagnating growth and prolonged weak inflation. The People’s […]

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American Express is using its investment in bitcoin remittance app maker Abra to investigate the technology.

Bitcoin price has made a double in the BTC/CNY exchange charts and we might see a trend reversal today. However, the USD exchange charts do not confirm the double top pattern and we examine the confirmation signals for trade. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3-hour delay. Read the full analysis here. Not a member? Join now and receive a $29 discount using the code CCN29. Bitcoin Price Analysis Time of analysis: 15h05 UTC OKCoin-CNY 15-Minute Chart From the analysis pages of xbt.social, earlier today: A partial outcome for our expectations but we still do not have sufficient […]

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Of the more than 14 million bitcoins currently in existence, we know of many who have a great deal of Bitcoins. One are the Winklevoss Twins, who made plain how many they had purchased to the press in 2013. At that time, they claimed to have purchased $11 million worth of BTC at a rate of around $120. There have only been a few times since then that they've actually lost any value, and currently they're sitting on a higher value than their original investment. If they sold during the $1000-plus bubble at the end of 2013, and then purchased […]

The post Who Has The Largest Bitcoin Stash? appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

The College Cryptocurrency Network (CCN), a leading cryptocurrency organization supported by established financial institutions and bitcoin startups including Barclays, Augur, BitGo, Blockchain, Ethereum and Factom, has officially announced the launch of the “Borderless Block Party,” a month-long hackathon designed for high school and undergraduate university students to create innovative financial solutions and technologies through the implementation of bitcoin and the blockchain technology.

The participants of the Hackathon will be mentored by financial experts and bitcoin gurus from its supporting companies and organizations, and will be granted free access to APIs that could be integrated to create unique applications.

All projects will be judged by three panelists: Ethereum founder and lead developer Vitalik Buterin, Provable chief scientist Piotr Piasecki and Whit Jackson, based on four criteria. The three panelists will look into its uniqueness, execution and whether the product truly solves fundamental problems that have not yet been solved.

The winner will be granted a three-month membership to Barclay’s rise hub, mentoring from ThinkRise.com, $1,000 and a weeklong stay in Ibiza, an island in the Mediterranean Sea.

“The last decade has seen the rise of remarkable new decentralized technologies that both can both empower individuals and eradicate barriers. The Borderless Block Party aims to help passionate students explore these amazing technologies and show to the world what the new paradigm of collaboration and production looks like,” says the CCN team.

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Abra, a payment network that uses bitcoin to provide fast and secure transactions, announced its merchant API solution. The startup also announced it has attracted American Express as an investor. The Abra Pay solution will allow merchants to accept online payments minus the friction created by other online networks. The solution reduces payment acceptance costs and settlement times. Abra uses bitcoins to provide instantaneous and secure money transactions. The company will provide an app to enable merchants to accept digital cash and will first be available to users in the U.S. and the Philippines. Abra's newly-announced investments from American Express and […]

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Jersey's government is to introduce "light touch" regulation as a way of helping to boost the Bitcoin industry, according to the assistant chief minister.

San Francisco's new software engineering school, Holberton, has announced it will tackle fake degrees using bitcoin technology.

Ada Colau, Barcelona’s new mayor, has made good on her campaign promise to create a local digital currency to help simulate local commerce and spending within the city limits, along with other benefits. The city of Barcelona, capital of the Catalonia - an autonomous community in Spain is in currently the throes of a heightened local movement to break away from Spain. Although the Spanish constitution explicitly disallows any region in the country to separate, pro-independence parties won a clear majority of seats in Catalonia’s parliament during the recent local elections. In a coalition, the victorious parties have sought to […]

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Bitcoin Press Release: CEX.IO Bitcoin exchange announced about integration with TradingView, a financial charting platform for traders. CEX.IO is now added on the TradingView list of Bitcoin exchanges with real-time charts for BTC/USD, BTC/EUR, and BTC/RUB. Browser-based charts and tools on TradingView allow traders to do research and access data on any operating system, wherever they are and without extra installations. TradingView creates favourable conditions for discovering investment ideas and showcasing talents to a large and active community of traders. Such informative and handy source as TradingView is something that our users have been missing, Jeffrey Smith, CIO of CEX.IO. […]

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