With the US now engaged in military conflict with, and targeting Syrian army forces, what the Trump administration has (un)wittingly done is provide support to Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and al-Nusra and other terrorist forces, all of which have been engaging with the Assad regime in a fight in which the Syrian president has gradually seen the tide of war turn in his favor. At least until last Friday’s US cruise missile attack that is.
Which is why it should probably come as no surprise that, emboldened by US actions, moments ago the that Islamic State militants attacked a US-led coalition base (at least we now have official confirmation that there are US military bases in Syria) in southern Syria on Saturday, “triggering a fierce fight that required coalition airstrikes to repel, U.S. military officials said Sunday.”
The complex attack began on Saturday when Islamic State fighters detonated a vehicle bomb at a base in al-Tanf, a town in southern Syria along the Jordan border used by American special operation forces and Syrian rebels working with the U.S. coalition, the officials said.
Between 20 and 30 Islamic State fighters, including some with suicide vests, then attacked the base, which is a staging ground and training facility for the U.S.-backed Syrian rebels.
As the WSJ adds, Coalition forces and Syrian rebels engaged in firefights with the attackers and then called in airstrikes to repel the attack, officials said.
The total value of all cryptocurrencies currently sits at around $300 billion, but venture capitalist Albert Wenger believes that it could eventually be worth trillions of dollars.
The economic, not to mention societal, impact of cryptocurrency cannot be denied. Individuals from across the globe are turning to decentralized digital currency for numerous reasons, such as investment, ease of transactions, anonymity, lack of bank access, or . It seems every new week brings a new high to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and the total value of all cryptocurrencies is now around $300 billion. However, one of the top venture capitalists, Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures, says that cryptocurrencies could eventually be worth .
Is the Future of Cryptocurrency Rosy?
At the technology conference in Helsinki, Finland, Wenger made a number of remarks to CNBC. He said that there’s a lot of “irrational exuberance” in the cryptocurrency market right now (as seen by the recent dips and surges), but he believes that the total value of all the various digital currencies could go a lot higher in the future. He told CNBC that it’s too early to tell if digital currencies are in a bubble, and he added:
So I believe there’s a good chance that cryptocurrencies taken together as a bucket will be worth trillions of dollars. We are a long way from that.
Cryptocurrency Following in Amazon’s Footsteps?
An interesting note made by was his reference to Amazon when discussing the long-term prospects of cryptocurrency. He said:
If you look at (the) Amazon stock chart, it looks like this massive upward sloping curve. But then if you zoom in you see in the beginning there was this very quick run up and then this big drop off. So the way I look at this (cryptocurrencies) is when we look back at it from far in the future, it will be a very massive run up. The current run up could turn out to be a blip on that chart.
So I think it’s you know, once you reach the territory we are in today, there’s definitely a way for it to go down. And there’s definitely also a path in the future where, cryptocurrency as a whole will be worth trillions of dollars.
Overall, this is an interesting perspective from a widely respected venture capitalist, and his Amazon reference could be spot-on. Albert Wenger was an angel investor to Etsy and Tumblr, and Union Square Ventures has invested in a number of blockchain startups.
Wenger is not alone in being bullish on cryptocurrency. Ronnie Moas of Standpoint Research told CNBC he expects bitcoin to be worth at least a trillion dollars in a few years. Hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz said that the market cap of cryptocurrency could be $2 trillion by the end of 2018. Of course, there are still the naysayers, like , the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who believes that bitcoin is a fraud.
Do you agree with venture capitalist Albert Wenger that the market cap for cryptocurrency could one day be trillions of dollars? Or will digital currency eventually crash and burn? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of Flickr, Pixabay, and Bitcoinist archives.
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With the US now engaged in military conflict with, and targeting Syrian army forces, what the Trump administration has (un)wittingly done is provide support to Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and al-Nusra and other terrorist forces, all of which have been engaging with the Assad regime in a fight in which the Syrian president has gradually seen the tide of war turn in his favor. At least until last Friday’s US cruise missile attack that is.