March 15, 2019

Dr. Doom Buys First BTC, Is Warren Buffett next?

Famed Swiss investor, analyst and, until recently, crypto skeptic Marc Faber, 73, has bought his first bitcoin in another sign the old guard of investments is warming to crypto.

Speaking to German finance website Cash, Faber revealed he recently bought bitcoin for the first time to learn more about cryptocurrencies and following some persistent and high-profile badgering.

Gloom, Boom and Doom

His normally pessimistic market outlook earned him the nickname “Dr. Doom.” Faber, with a net worth reportedly around $25 billion, famously predicted the crash of 1987. He pens the Gloom, Boom and Doom monthly market report.

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March report “The Dilemma between the ethical and virtuous versus the pragmatic and opportunistic capitalistic System" published. https://t.co/k29bzcK3DY

— Marc Faber (@gloomboomdoom) February 28, 2019

Younger readers of the newsletter, plus a “one-hour talk” with Wence Casares, CEO of Xapo, convinced Faber to take the plunge and buy bitcoin.

It’s a sign younger, clued-up investors who place more trust in crypto than traditional markets, are gradually asserting their influence on the old guard.

But Faber is not the only billionaire investor to be linked to crypto. Warren Buffett, 88, who famously called bitcoin “rat poison squared” last year is also warming to blockchain.

Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box, he has praised blockchain, despite admitting he doesn’t fully understand it:

It’s a very ingenious thing to figure out how to have a limited supply and make it harder and more expensive to create. This is explained to me by people a lot smarter than I am.

Institutional Money’s Already Here

Along with a $40 million investment from two US pension funds into Morgan Creek Digital’s crypto venture fund, the signs are positive of a subtle shift in attitudes towards bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies more generally.

Many claim the market has bottomed out. Meanwhile, wealthy investors and institutional money are only too aware of the bitcoin’s potential.

Faber said he bought bitcoin around the end of February. Prices were hovering around $3.8k per coin. He believes BTC now looks better from a technical perspective. The crash of bitcoin contributes to his analysis.

During the interview he hinted that while not guaranteed, the future for bitcoin was good.

He said:

It’s not certain, but possible, that bitcoin will be the standard for money transfers.

Faber is probably the best-known, but also the most controversial, Swiss investor.

As well as being nicknamed Dr. Doom or “the crash prophet”, he gained international recognition after predicting the Black Monday stock market crash in 1987.

He’s well known for his regular criticism of central banks and traditional monetary policy.

Published at Fri, 15 Mar 2019 03:15:09 +0000

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December 2, 2017

AWS on Blockchain Reluctance: ‘We Don’t Build Technology Because We Think the Technology is Cool’

At a time when many companies are rushing to embrace blockchain technology, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has adopted a more cautious ‘looking but not touching’ approach.

At this year’s AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, CEO Andy Jassy made clear AWS’ stance on the popular technology, telling journalists that while they have “a lot of customers and partners who either build blockchains on top of AWS or are building services to use blockchain on top of AWS,” they have no plans to integrate the technology themselves anytime soon.

Jassy stated:

We don’t yet see a lot of practical use cases for blockchain that are much broader than using a distributed ledger. We don’t build technology because we think the technology is cool, we only build it if we think we can solve a customer problem and building that service is the best way to solve it.

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

While the cloud services platform, which boasts such high profile customers as the NFL, Time Warner, and the Walt Disney Company, isn’t necessarily averse to rolling out a blockchain product at some point, AWS says that isn’t a need for it at this time.

As far as Jassy is concerned, there aren’t many use cases for blockchain technology beyond the distributed ledger. He noted that most of the use cases for which their customers are turning to blockchain technology can already be solved using other technologies – most of which AWS already has within its existing capabilities.

Competitors Rush in Where AWS Won’t (Yet) Tread

AWS has many competitors in the cloud services space and many of those competitors, including IBM and Microsoft, are more optimistic about blockchain technology and distributed ledgers.

This year, Microsoft rolled out Coco, a framework designed to facilitate blockchain adoption by adapting existing blockchain protocols or by creating entirely new protocols, and their Azure Blockchain service, a BaaS (blockchain as a service) that enables businesses to quickly and easily configure and deploy a blockchain network.

IBM also launched their own BaaS, IBM Blockchain, which “empowers businesses to digitize transaction workflow through a highly secured, shared, and replicated ledger.” In addition, they have joined The Hyperledger Project in an effort to help advance cross-industry blockchain technology.

The blockchain ecosystem has received a lot of hype in recent months for its unparalleled solutions across several industries, including business, health, insurance, supply chain, artificial intelligence, and many others. Just like any new technology, the first adoption is very important in creating value. But since the sector is still growing, more research is needed, as clearly stated by Jassy, in order to ensure the realization of the true use cases of this technology. But as to whether there are other systems that will be more useful in solving decentralized problems than the blockchain, that is yet to be known.

Do you think AWS is making a mistake by not throwing their hat into the ring and embracing blockchain technology? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Flickr/JD Lasica, AdobeStock, Flickr/debbie ding

The post AWS on Blockchain Reluctance: ‘We Don’t Build Technology Because We Think the Technology is Cool’ appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

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