I’ve been involved in the crypto community for some time. I think I first heard about bitcoin in 2011. Then I started reading about it a bit more a couple of years later. And in 2016 I began studying it in a more structured way.

Recently it became clear to me that I know a lot more than most people around me. I’m not claiming to be an expert but with a tech background and being a long time investor and also active in the finance industry at the moment I believe I might have a useful perspective.

The chronicle posts are meant to be a collection of links, comments and interesting stuff gathered around cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology.

Let’s go!

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China

It’s impossible to avoid mentioning China in this context considering recent events. Although it is interesting to follow international events i’m not a macro guy. But I don’t think it’s far-fetched to link bans in China and the 19th national congress that wraps up a five year period and at the same time kicks off a new five year period by electing a new leading team. And Jinping is making sure he will be leading and that he gets the right team. The fact that Xi Jinping is calling himself a “core leader”, a title usually earned and not used to describe yourself, is a statement.

But let’s get back to technology. In China you have Baidu (Google), Sina Weibo (Twitter), Alibaba (Amazon), Renren (Facebook), Taobao (Ebay) to name a few Chinese versions of western tech companies. The China strategy, it seems, is to make sure they don’t fall behind on global tech trends by doing trendy tech stuff. And I‘m sure the same strategy applies for crypto-currencies and blockchain technology.

CryptoRuble

Russia also recently slamming the ban hammer on cryptocurrencies, contradictory because they’ve been communicating a pro-crypto stance before and also Putin meeting Vitalik, announced the launch of CryptoRuble. Why? Because, according to Nikiforov, if they don’t someone else will.
Also the Russia’s finance minister, Siluanov, said that “Cryptocurrencies are a fact of life”.

Cryptocurrencies in business

I saw this interesting survey result on the Banking Innovation site about UK businesses estimating that 21% of their payment transactions will be done with bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies over the next 12 months.

Strymex

Strymex is a nice page for overview and doing some basic screening.

I'm not affiliated. I just like useful tools

That’s it! See you next time :)