guys between bells and cheddar news and baker Machado and new york seems to sell,
Cryptocurrency is now at a crossroads.
As many can't seem to shake off rising bond
yields as investors continue pulling money out of Cryptocurrency funds
now for the fifth straight week.
Bitcoin soared last year from around 33,000 at the start of the year
to as high as 69,000 in november before falling to
the end of the year at roughly 46,000 now,
as of this morning,
the crypto trading below $42,000. Meanwhile, ethereum falling more than 3%.
So to make sense of all this is nick day managing Editor,
global regulation and policy over at coindesk.
Nick such a pleasure to have you here.
So what's your take on these crazy swings we've seen so far in the crypto markets.
Good afternoon and thank you for having me uh crypto has, you know,
been pretty volatile for a lot of its history.
And you know, more recently we're seeing, I think, you know,
even a little bit less volatility than some might expect.
But
what kind of really interesting to me is that even
though we've seen a lot of the main cryptocurrencies,
Bitcoin ether, etcetera,
you know, kind of
not, you know, stay sustained at their levels,
we're not seeing this money necessarily exit the overall crypto market,
we're still seeing a lot of money flowing around through N.
F. T. S and other, you know aspects of the digital ecosystem,
There's a real chance and there's a live look for our
viewers right now at the price of Bitcoin as I mentioned,
just barely above 42,000,
but there's a real chance we could get basically back a year ago
at 33,000 pretty soon here. How much lower do you think this is going to go nick?
So I can't really predict prices,
but you know my senses crypto has been cyclical in the time,
I've been covering it for a little over four years now,
so it's very possible that it could go, you know, to, you know,
I think you mentioned the bear market or you know,
we've seen Crypto Winters pop up before and
it's very possible that we could see that.
But What kind of strikes me is a year ago, $37,000 is still
a lot more than
Big Bitcoin's peak price at its last bull market in 2017
when it only got close to $20,000 before that crypto winter began
nick.
I want to get your take also in some companies that are planning to
get into the space walmart announced yesterday
that they're gonna jump into the metaverse,
They're going to create their own crypto and a collection of N. F. T. S.
I mean is this going to basically be a common theme and a common practice?
We're gonna see from a lot of companies
some sort of of iteration and movement into the metaverse metaverse,
but also Crypto space.
So what really strikes me about, you know,
the metaverse is walmart is one of the
first companies I've seen that announced the metaverse,
but also actually has some, you know, crypto aspect to it.
A lot of what we've seen as the metaverse or whatever,
what we've heard is being described as a metaverse
has been kind of this virtual reality world,
you know, facebook most famously kind of kicked off this trend,
but they haven't necessarily talked about crypto as part of it.
So the thing that really kind of strikes me is we
don't have a clear consensus definition of what a metaverse is.
And so what wal mart is doing seems so far kind of unique to that company.
Let's move and talk about block Jack Dorsey's company block
because they're working on building an open Bitcoin mining system.
We know
the sort of climate aspects to this in terms of the
fact of how much energy is used to Bitcoin mine here.
And Jack Dorsey has given interviews in the past,
somehow believing that down the road,
we're going to find some sort of way technologically to
offset this sort of energy that is produced to mine.
Bitcoin,
What's your take on what block is trying to do here?
I think finding ways of offsetting the energy used,
especially if it's coming from non renewable resources is pretty laudable goal,
but I'm going to reserve judgment until I see
how exactly they accomplished this right right now,
we're seeing a lot of mining facilities,
you know, sub shop in places where they can access either cheap guests or
uh you know, recovering coal from recovering coal plants to have, you know,
previously shut down.
We're also seeing a lot of plants set up in
places where there is cheap hydropower or you know,
other relatively environmentally friendly sources.
So, you know,
the big issue here seems to be less kind of the
system itself and more where you're going to get this energy from
or what kind of tools they can implement to offset the
carbon emissions that are generated trying to power to use minors.
Yeah, good questions because again, yeah, there's no details in any of that.
So really good point.
Meanwhile,
coin based says their customers are not gonna be able to use
Mastercard to make purchases on their website regarding N F T s.
Is this sort of the next sort of iteration to allow more mass adoption
here when you have payment processors like Mastercard not taking part in this.
So what's really interesting is, you know, we've seen payment processors,
Mastercard and Visa in the past have difficulties allowing
allowing their own users to buy cryptocurrencies with credit and debit cards.
So, you know,
N F T s are just another form of crypto
and I'm curious what's changed whether it's just because NF TSR
kind of this mainstream thing now that everyone's talking about or
if they are more comfortable with crypto as a whole.
And does this mean that you can you can buy
Bitcoin and ether and other cryptocurrencies more easily with a Mastercard
going forward or is this going to be restricted to just N F T s on the coin based N F.
T marketplace.
And so you know, it's a it's an interesting first step but I'm really curious to see,
you know,
where does leads?
Well where do you think could it potentially lead?
Like do we need more of these payment processors
like Mastercard and Visa to get in on this?
That way it brings more mass adoption here?
I think if massacre does allow, you know,
easier purchases of KryptoS then its user base will
probably be more willing to take advantage of that.
You know,
one of the big concerns in years past about trying to
buy crypto is there's just no easy way to do it,
coin drake's entire you know, kind of value proposition is that it created this,
you know, easily accessible marketplace.
But even then, you know, the payment processors have been kind of this,
you know, I don't want to say they've been like a block here, but they have been,
you know,
they have had a fair amount of influence
in preventing sodium purchases or driving people to try
and find ways of connecting bank accounts or
you know using other types of payment processors.
So to your question. Yeah, I think it might be it might make it easier for,
you know, more mass adoption to occur,
but it's going to depend on how flexible massacred is with,
you know what they're actually allowing here.
Yeah, good point.
Nick Day Managing editor, Global regulation and policy over at coindesk. Nick.
Great to have you here. Thanks so much for joining us.