Bitcoin (BTC) is heading to at least $100,000 during the bull cycle which has already begun, one of the industry’s best-known analysts has confirmed.

Speaking to RT financial news show the Keiser Report on March 3, Willy Woo said that described BTC/USD hitting $135,000 as a “common-sense prediction.”

Woo to Keiser: BTC could soon clinch $250K

Woo highlighted the cumulative average Bitcoin price as a particularly effective metric for forecasting future gains.

“You go could 35 times the cumulative average of the price — and that’s actually picked every single top in the ten-year history of Bitcoin — right now that’s sitting above $50,000, but it keeps climbing the longer it runs for,” he told host Max Keiser.

Explaining that Bitcoin ebbed and flowed in line with the four-year cycles of its block reward halvings, Woo likened new highs in BTC/USD to water “sloshing” in a bathtub.

“If you make a best guess, it’s above $100,000; I think one of the more common-sense predictions would be around $135,000 based on the timing cycleture and the 35x of average cap,” he continued.

“I’m looking at around the $100,000 to $250,000 range depending on how long this bull market runs.” 

Optimism drowns out price skeptics

Woo was speaking as BTC/USD continued trading at around its 200-day moving average after a week of noticeable losses.

A sudden but suspicious rally in traditional markets failed to spill over into Bitcoin, leading to criticism from one skeptic in particular that its successes in 2020 would be short-lived.

At the same time, several industry figures have delivered buoyant price forecasts for the rest of the year, while technical forecasts suggest that current price performance is exactly on schedule prior to May’s block reward halving.

IN A RECENT discussion with Malaysia’s innovation czar, I explained that the clearest indicator of a failing market for innovation funding was government money. There are countless great ideas to fund and a massive pool of speculative money, so if the government has to divert the public’s tax money into supporting the innovation sector then something is obviously systemically wrong. It doesn’t happen in Silicon Valley, so what’s wrong in Malaysia?

Malaysia’s problem is the same as everywhere in the world, except Silicon Valley. Only in Silicon Valley, and a few other similar American enclaves like Seattle does the Early Stage funding ecosystem work where countless gambles are placed on exciting ideas with enough capital, managed by proven entrepreneurs who understand that, for all your checks, this is a lottery.

And over there, there is no government grant money required to drive innovation. The system works. And thus, so many of the great new high-growth companies leave their homelands to Silicon Valley in search of the financial support they need.

From a Scottish context, If we imagine innovation funding as a stairway which entrepreneurs must climb the stairs gaining funding as they go, the problem here – like all developed countries is rarely the top stairs. There is a robust ecosystem to support exciting proven companies looking for Series B, C or listed cash. This pool is swimming with venture capital. The challenge is at the bottom of the funding stairway. The area called ‘Early Stage’; series A to Seed, where success is never guaranteed. In fact, where success is literally a form of lottery.

The vast majority of VC’s hate the uncertainty of Early Stage and thus the trend is towards larger deals higher up the stairway. So, with venture capital firms still nervous and the government pouring money in without the scale or results to inspire any auditor, the last remaining pool of cash for these exciting companies is the public.

The government will say the public should never invest in early-stage ventures which is total rubbish as they will allow them to seed business and more importantly, they will gladly promote gambling with no restrictions.

So how to funnel the public’s cash into early-stage projects? The equity Crowd-Funding concept seems the solution, yet any investigation of this sector and one will see its fundamental flaws in that the platforms do nothing to protect or empower the public.

Their fundamental principle of ‘just do your due diligence’ is laughable when it comes to the public. They don’t know how. And why would they trust a platform whose interests are aligned with the issuer. And the final nail is the five-seven-year payback cycle which is well beyond the public’s investment confidence.

In Scotland, I can see a solution being delivered in the form of a new form of tokenised crowdfunding delivered by a Crowd Finance ecosystem. It’s a lot of new jargon, yet the solution takes the concept of crowdfunding and meshes it with a crypto coin that represents the innovative company’s shares, so it’s easy to buy, list and sell, and is seen as a new form of public support platform.

A platform that presents the innovative company’s offer in a way they can understand, with trusted due diligence and the education they need.

The crypto world is evolving at light speed and whilst most people remain sceptical, behind the scenes the largest financial and consumer organisations have announced their entry. Most are focused on the payment crypto space and later in 2020, you will see the other leading use cases of crypto-asset technology hit the market.

Indeed, famous football clubs will lead the tidal wave of ‘Community Coins’  –  West Ham and Juventus have already reaffirmed this. Following that will be the new security token market that will transform the Crowd-Funding space and thus the funding of high growth innovative businesses.

The new Crowd Finance world from 2021 has the power to fund thousands of innovative companies at millions for each venture. It will create a paradigm shift in the raising of innovative funding.

Terry Murden in Daily Business Magazine – 29 Oct 2019

Interview: Ed Ludbrook, financial entrepreneur

Ed Ludbrook: ‘The crypto-yuan is going to change the world’ (pic: Terry Murden)

It had been a disappointing week for New Zealander Ed Ludbrook, seeing England knock the All Blacks out of the Rugby World Cup tournament that they had been expected to win. Ludbrook is a big chap who wouldn’t look out of place in his national team’s line-up, though he has a small confession to make. “I was actually born in England…in Hastings.. and I married an Englishwoman,” he says. “We’ve no hard feelings towards the English. What people don’t realise is that our main rivals are the Springboks. Yeah, I’ll be cheering on England in the final!”

Ludbrook is a global finance entrepreneur and adviser and he’s just flown in from New Zealand to meet prospective customers in Scotland who want to buy into his new venture in cryptocurrency that he believes will be a game-changer in the next few years.

He has been around the industry for more than 30 years launching and floating companies, advising on company restructuring and now evangelising on new opportunities for ordinary investors to make money.

He was just three when his family left England for a new life on the other side of the world. After training at a military college and a short spell in the army he returned to England and a job in derivatives with a City investment bank.

“It wasn’t really me. I’m a people person,” he says. He moved into direct sales, and in the 1990s helped launch Telecom Plus, a customer acquisition company. Since then he’s been buzzing around the world, helping firms with new projects and getting involved with cryptocurrencies, his new baby and something he’s now passionately extolling to those looking for a decent return on their investments.

“I founded a billion dollar company and am currently building a second one”, he says, with a confidence that refutes any possibility of failure. His specialisation is working with high-performance communities – crowds – that pioneer new industries, in which he leads from the front.

That includes two million sales of eight books in 20 languages and career stop-offs as an adviser, two companies listed on stock exchanges and a regular column in the Evening Standard.

He’s CEO of Dacxi, a company that operates in a sector he calls “crowd finance”, serving those looking for “new wealth opportunities” to make money because the classic routes – property and shares – are “at the top of their cycle.”

‘Bringing new wealth opportunities’ (pic: Terry Murden)

‘Bringing new wealth opportunities’ (pic: Terry Murden)

He believes cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are the new gold rush, the “hottest” sector in the finance industry. He points to the current moves in China to create the crypto-yuan.

“It is going to change the world,” he says. “Asia will not need to use the US dollar any more. When President Xi said China will support blockchain projects the value of Bitcoin leapt 20{63f8a48abbc3b6ed1c546c5062d19c645307100b58edcd524ad62028ad26658a}.”

Xi has this week stated that he sees blockchain as a key to infrastructural and technological development and the world is taking notice.

Ludbrook shakes his head at those questioning Facebook’s attempts to set up the libra currency, stating: “The media focuses on the few companies who have opposed it, but 1,500 have applied to join.”

He says that while institutions and countries move into the Bitcoin space it is a sector that has largely excluded the public.

“The public have not done well out of the digital boom,” he says. “I have spent 30 years helping people get involved with new wealth opportunities and I am excited by the possibilities.”

At a workshop in Edinburgh he drew a small number of interested individuals who included a sales manager with a television company, a part-time accountant and a lorry driver.

Did any of them sign up as investors?

“Yes. All of them,” he says.

It seems the revolution may have begun.

PERSONAL CHECKLIST

Occupation: Founder and CEO, Dacxi

Age: 57

Education: Royal Military College, New South Wales

Career Highlights: Captain, Royal New Zealand Engineers; Proprietary trader, Elders Finance Group; network marketer; a founder of Robbins Research Europe; founder Telecom Plus; growth coach, strategy director; founded Dacxi, pioneering the global Crowd Finance sector.

That’s quite a list. Is there anything else?

I was an aerobics instructor. The most fun job I have ever had.

If you were to invite three people, past or present, to a meeting or dinner who would you choose?

Jesus… for inspiration

Genghis Khan… the greatest ever conqueror

Thomas Edison…a great innovator

Has trying to understand blockchain ever left you dazed and confused? Sick of hearing nonsense like SHA256 algorithms and byzantine fault tolerance? Just want to know what the hell blockchain is and why people keep talking about it?

Well you’re in luck. In this article, I’ll explain in plain English what blockchain is, how it works and why it’s so important in less than 1000 words. Let’s get to it.

What is blockchain?

At its core, a blockchain is not so different from a regular database. It stores information on things that happened in the past, with unique attributes, such as:

• Decentralisation — no single party has control over what information goes in
• Consensus — many different parties store exact copies of the same ledger, so the majority has to agree on the information being added
• ‘Add-only’, meaning you can’t edit what’s already there, you can only add information
• New information can’t conflict with what’s already been added
• Information is able to be accessed and replicated by everybody on the network

The most important feature of a blockchain is decentralisation. Copies of a blockchain ledger are stored and updated on computers all over the world, meaning that there is no central authority to make decisions.

At its core, a blockchain is not so different from a regular database. It stores information on things that happened in the past, but with unique attributes.

Let’s take a look at a Bitcoin transaction as an example of how blockchain works (Bitcoin is just one possible application of blockchain technology. Blockchain is to Bitcoin what the internet is to email):

Let’s say I have one bitcoin and I want to send it to you. Everybody who holds a copy of the Bitcoin ledger can see that I have one bitcoin and you have zero (but on the Bitcoin network our identities are relatively private).

I can then send you one bitcoin, and the network will see this and immediately update every ledger.

But what if I’m greedy, and want to try cheat the network?

I could change my copy of the ledger to say I have 2 bitcoins, send you one and use the other to buy myself something nice.

But in the history of the Bitcoin network this act of double-spending has never happened.

Why not?

Blockchain security

To understand how and why blockchains are so resistant to tampering and fraud, we need to understand how they work.

Without getting too technical, let’s take a look under the hood and see what’s going on.

The information stored on a blockchain is stored in groups — called blocks — and each block is time-stamped and linked to the one generated before it in time, creating a linear chain of blocks — hence the term blockchain.

Each of these blocks contains 3 types of information:

• Data on transactions
• The block’s hash
• The hash of the previous block

This is really important, so bear with me while I explain what a hash is. Essentially it’s like a block’s fingerprint — a unique string of numbers that identifies each block. The numbers are automatically calculated based on the information stored in the block. If you change the information in the block you change the hash, and therefore the block’s identity.

The hash of the previous block also sits in each block, which is what creates the chain of blocks, and is what makes a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin so secure.

Take a look at this graphic:

Each block contains the three elements listed above. But watch what happens when I try to tamper with the information in block 2 to give myself that extra bitcoin:

Block 3 contains the hash of block 2, but when block 2 is changed, so does its hash, meaning everything in block 3 and beyond becomes invalid, breaking the chain.

I’d then need to re-calculate the hashes of every block that has changed.

But it doesn’t stop there. The Bitcoin network makes it intentionally difficult to find these hashes. On average, the hash for a block is found every 10 minutes by computers constantly guessing random numbers and seeing if one fits (it’s actually a lot more complicated than this). This process is called ‘proof-of-work’ (PoW), and is done by powerful computers called miners.

So for every block I stuffed up, it would take me 10 minutes of intense calculation to mine each block and find the correct hashes.

And that’s just for my copy of the ledger.

The Bitcoin ledger exists on thousands of computers all over the world, so to fake that transaction, I’d need to somehow get access to over 50{63f8a48abbc3b6ed1c546c5062d19c645307100b58edcd524ad62028ad26658a} of the computers, and repeat the mining process for all the ledgers I control.

This is insanely expensive from a computational standpoint, as I’d need an almost impossible number of computers to pull it off.

But by the time I did, and was able to give myself bitcoins at will, the rest of the network will have noticed. They would either try to kick me off, or would desert Bitcoin in droves, crashing the price and leaving me with control over a worthless currency.

So it’s pretty easy to see that blockchains are incredibly resistant to fraud, and why they’re considered ‘trustless’ — it’s in everyone’s best interest to play by the rules.

So why is all this important?

That’s a good question. Blockchain technology is still very much in its infancy, but promises to revolutionise many different industries, such as:

Banking and payments

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like Litecoin, Monero and Zcash are making the storage and transfer of value simpler and cheaper by removing the need for middlemen such as banks.

Governments

Governments can use blockchains to implement secure and accurate voting, public record keeping, citizen identification (IDs) and border control.

Healthcare

Medical records are notoriously inaccurate and difficult to transfer. If they were hosted on a blockchain they would be secure, accurate and easily accessible by approved parties.

Supply chain

Want to know if those apples are actually organic? Or if that diamond ring is sourced ethically? Putting goods like these on the blockchain would allow consumers and businesses to gain greater transparency on the lifecycle of their products.

Insurance

No more calling up and hassling your insurer for weeks before getting your payout. With the implementation of smart contracts on the blockchain, insurers would be able to instantly accept and pay out claims to customers based on predefined rules.

This is just a taste of what blockchain is capable of.

All, some or none of this may eventually come to pass, but the technology is fascinating and exciting nonetheless.