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UBS Chief Economist Has Some Nasty Words for Bitcoin

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UBS Chief Economist Has Some Nasty Words for bitcoin

UBS chief Paul Donavan doesn’t think too highly of bitcoin.

I Hate You, I Hate You!

In a recent blog post, the global chief economist of the Switzerland-based wealth management firm UBS says bitcoin is “not healthy,” and suggests it may be in its final days.

bitcoin has been the subject of much hate and spurn throughout 2018 thanks to the ongoing bearish conditions that never seem to let up. The currency was selling for just under $20,000 in December 2017, getting several people excited about the prospects of blockchain and what bitcoin could do for a seemingly ailing financial system.

Things Are Dropping Too Fast

But things weren’t as jolly as everyone hoped. People rang in the new year to the tune of bitcoin dropping rapidly, and by February, bitcoin was trading for a measly $11,000 – nearly $9,000 less than where it had stood two months prior.

Throughout 2018, bitcoin has fallen further and spent much of its time meandering through the $6,000 range, but the last two weeks have proven to be a major gamechanger for everybody’s favorite cryptocurrency. Thanksgiving, for example, brought on a new crypto bloodbath that saw bitcoin fall to less than $3,600 – the lowest it had been in over 14 months.

Ubs chief economist has some nasty words for bitcoin
You Got No Style – Or Value

Donavan suggests in his blog – entitled “I Come to Bury bitcoin, Not Praise It” – that the developers behind the currency are virtually knowledge-less when it comes to economics. He scathingly writes:

The cryptocurrency bubble may be in its death throes. A loss of over 80 percent is not healthy. Economists said from the start that bitcoin and the like would never be currencies. They will never be currencies. Their designers are brilliant at math, but they appear to know nothing about economics. Real value comes from matchmaking supply and demand. Cryptocurrency supply can go up. It cannot go down. Demand for cryptocurrencies can go down. Demand was created by blind faith, not real economics. The failure to balance supply and demand destroys value. Value is being destroyed right now.

Repeat Yourself, Much?

For the most part, however, the post just seems to echo a report that Donovan issued last August, in which the chief staffer wrote:

[bitcoin] falls short of criteria that need to be satisfied to be considered money. Fixed supply and unusual demand dynamics make the system susceptible to high price volatility, in turn making it difficult for bitcoin to step into the role of money or to be a viable new asset class.

Do you agree with Paul Donavan that bitcoin isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? Post your comments below.

Image courtesy of ShutterStock

The post UBS Chief Economist Has Some Nasty Words for Bitcoin appeared first on Live Bitcoin News.

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Cross Coin ICO to Use Venture Tokens, Raise Investments for Funding Startups at U.S-Russian Starta Accelerator

Blockchain platform Cross Coin has announced its plans to launch an ICO crowdsale, with an investment target of between $1.5 million and $5 million. The investment raised will be utilized to develop a large pool of technology startups under the Russian and American project Starta Accelerator. Cross Coin is expecting significant speculative interest in the secondary markets for its venture tokens, which will eventually end up driving its price further upwards.

[Note: This is a press release.]


Cross Coin has enabled its investors to maximize their returns by giving them the option to exit their positions at any stage of the project. Investors can also trade Cross Coin tokens on the secondary market while participating in the various growth stages of all the 21 startups.

Based in Singapore, Cross Coin intends to release the full 5 million tokens during its upcoming ICO. The ICO price per token has been set at $1.00 — a price which, the company believes will interest a large range of potential investors in the venture capital industry.

Cross Coin plans to allocate the first $1.5 million raised in the ICO to refinancing the 21 startups that passed the Starta Accelerator Program in 2016/2017. Any remaining funds after the successful allocation of the first tranche of funds will be set aside for investing in the next group of startups at the Starta Accelerator program.

News about the purchase of startups by strategic investors – ‘exits,’ in venture terminology – exercises a tremendous influence upon the price of their shares on the secondary market.  In this instance, the Cross Coin token issuer will get a percentage of the profits gained by the Starta Accelerator from the exit of each startup. Cross Coin will receive 33% of all the revenues generated from the exits. The profits, after deducting expenses will be utilized by the platform to buy back the tokens at market price.

Additional news triggers that influence the secondary market value of the tokens include an increase in revenues generated by the startups, partnerships with major market participants, signing up large players as clients of B2B startups, and acceptance of startups to large accelerator programs and further rounds of investments.

The prominent members of this combined project include Alexey Girin and Kayrat Kaliyev. Alexey Girin is an investor, co-founder and managing director of Starta Capital VC fund and Starta Accelerator. He brings over ten years of experience in venture capital sector to promote the accelerator program in the right direction. Similarly,  Kaliyev with over 13 years of experience in the financial sector, is also the deputy director of the Financial Technology Department at the Astana International Financial Center in Kazakhstan. He plays an important part in the ICO as the head of Cross Coin.

Starta Accelerator is an initiative of Starta Capital Foundation, and it was started in 2015 in New York, USA. The program is geared towards a business and cultural adaptation in the USA and integration into the investment ecosystem of technological startups from Russia and the Eastern European countries.

Cross Coin has call options for 33% of the Starta Accelerator 16/17 SPV, a company that owns 7% in each of 20 startups and 2% in the 21st start-up, all of which passed the Starta Accelerator program in 2016-2017. Each of the pool’s companies has been appraised with a market value of $1.9 million or higher.


Images courtesy of Starta Accelerator, AdobeStock

The post Cross Coin ICO to Use Venture Tokens, Raise Investments for Funding Startups at U.S-Russian Starta Accelerator appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.