Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of Tron (TRX), the 15th biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, is investing in a number of cryptos other than Bitcoin (BTC).

In a Feb. 23 interview with CNN, Tron CEO said that he is a long-term believer in cryptocurrencies and owns a stake in many altcoins, including the two largest coins after Bitcoin Ether (ETH) and XRP.

When asked whether Sun has its crypto portfolio diversified, the Tron CEO answered:

I own a lot of XRP and Ethereum, too. Im like a long-term believer of the crypto so I want all crypto assets to succeed. So thats why I own a lot of other different cryptos as well.

As a major believer in crypto, Sun is bullish on the price of cryptocurrencies and confident that cryptos like Bitcoin are the future of money. In the interview, Tron CEO predicted that Bitcoin will cross $100,000 mark in 2025, emphasizing that other cryptocurrencies will follow the trend.

Justin Suns $100,000 Bitcoin prediction in his own words:

I definitely believe Bitcoin will pass $100K in 2025. I believe we can achieve this price before 2025. At the same time, I think a lot of other crypto projects like Tron, Ethereum and XRP will also see bull market.

In line with his bullish stance on crypto, Trons Justin Sun claimed in the interview that he invests all of his money to crypto. However, Sun still converts his crypto in fiat currencies like the United States dollar. In the interview, Tron CEO said that he only withdraws crypto to fiat when he needs to spend money in his daily life.

The news comes about a month after Sun had his charity lunch with Berkshire Hathaway chairman and known Bitcoin critic Warren Buffett. On Jan. 23, Tron CEO met with Buffett to finally have a long-awaited luncheon after postponing the event for medical reasons previously in 2019.

In the latest interview, Tron CEO revealed that he didnt exactly try to convince the famous billionaire investor that crypto will massively surge in the coming years. Instead, Justin Sun was trying to explain some crypto potentials to Buffett as he wanted him to understand basic fundamentals of blockchain and crypto such as instant crypto transactions.

Tron CEO also outlined that Buffett was very open to new technologies like crypto and blockchain, noting that the the known investor accepted Bitcoin and TRX from him. However, Buffett has claimed that he doesnt own any cryptocurrency and doesnt plan to invest in any crypto in a Feb. 24 interview with CNBC. In the interview, the billionaire investor reiterated his negative stance on crypto, arguing that cryptos have zero value and dont produce anything.

In another CNBC interview in 2018, Buffet predicted that crypto will come to a bad ending, declaring that Bitcoin is "probably rat poison squared.

Cointelegraph reached out to the Tron team for additional comments on the matter and will update if we hear back.

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Tron CEO: Bitcoin to Break $100K in 2025 and Pull Up Other Coins - Cointelegraph

One of the earliest Bitcoin proponents is facing criticism for publicly endorsing an alternative crypto asset. Trace Mayer, who recommended people buy Bitcoin back in 2010, appeared on a recent YouTube interview talking very highly of Mimblewimble Coin.

Industry observers have taken issue with the fact that Mimblewimble Coin launched with a 50 percent pre-mine. Many in the crypto industry believe Mayers sudden endorsement of the recently-launched project is aimed at his own personal enrichment.

Investor, entrepreneur, and general advocate of freedom Trace Mayer was one of the first people to openly promote Bitcoin. According to the Bitcoin Knowledge podcast hosts website, he actually started in 2010, when the entire BTC market cap was less than $2 million.

As well as hosting his own podcast on Bitcoin, Mayer has appeared on countless YouTube channels to talk Bitcoin. Being involved with BTC from almost the very beginning, and him not using his credibility in the industry to promote questionable initial coin offerings during the 2017 bull market, earned Mayer the respect of many.

So too did his efforts at promoting Bitcoin as the ultimate asset by which to realise true monetary sovereignty. Starting in 2019, Mayer advocated an annual bank run of sorts on crypto asset exchange platforms on Bitcoins birthday. The idea behind proof-of-keys was to simultaneously promote self-custody of digital currencies, as well as to check on the solvency of the exchange platforms themselves.

Recently, Mayer appeared on yet another crypto-focused YouTube channel. Only this time, he didnt just champion Bitcoin.

The interview with World Alternative Mediaopened with questions about the Bitcoin halving and its likely impact on price. As you might expect from one of the most enduring Bitcoin advocates, Mayer thinks the supply shock will result in a higher Bitcoin price.

The Bitcoin Knowledge host then, seemingly out of nowhere, starts to laud more privacy-focused projects, in particular Mimblewimble Coin. He describes it as potentially more disruptive than Bitcoin:

. scalability increase, privacy, fungibility, anonymity, they think Bitcoins a problem? You can actually see whats happening on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Mayer makes a clear effort to promote Mimblewimble Coin in the above interview. Even after the presenter attempts to change the subject away from the relatively new altcoin, Mayer brings it up again.

He suggests that Bitcoin and Mimblewimble Coin are actually complimentary to one another, describing the pair as a two-headed dragon.

Mimblewimble itself is a privacy and scaling protocol that coins like Grin and Beam use. Many long-time Bitcoin proponents are interested in the technology since it may solve perceived issues with the leading crypto asset if implemented in the future.

Although it shares the name, many have dismissed Mimblewimble Coin as a scam. Those critical of it have drawn attention to major red flags within the projects whitepaper.

The chief of these, as highlighted in the below tweet, is a massive pre-mine of around 50 percent of the 20 million tokens that will exist. The rest of the supply will reportedly be released over time in the form of mining rewards.

The projects website gives little information as to the actual distribution of the pre-mined coins. It states only that 7.4 million are currently circulating.

NewsBTC could not confirm whether Mayer himself was an actual beneficiary of the pre-mine or otherwise. However, many of the industrys most prominent names believe the sudden shilling of Mimblewimble Coin is for Mayers own financial benefit. Some go as far as to suggest that Mayer himself is in someway connected with the project:

Some within the cryptocurrency industry confirm that Mayer promoted Mimblewimble Coin directly to them. Popular author and economics professor Saifedean Ammous replied to someone asking if he knew that Mayer had been attempting to pump the crypto asset:

Above, Ammous says that advised Mayer to keep his interests in the altcoin quiet. He says he warned him that public shilling of the pointless scam would result in the destruction of his reputation. If true, with hindsight, the advice was right on the money as per the criticism Mayer now faces.

Related Reading: Bitcoin Craters to $9,500 After Fakeout: Heres Why Its Time to Pay Attention

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The Knives are Out on Crypto Twitter as Bitcoin OG Turns into Altcoin Shill - newsBTC

Bitcoin has a media problem. Or, perhaps, the media has a Bitcoin problem.

Mainstream media has often framed Bitcoin with the same scandalous curiosity that may publicize a troubled former child star or a controversial tech startup. Most journalists have viewed it as a sideshow, a distraction that warrants only so much attention lest it detract from the supreme spectacle of the 21st centurys historic advancements in technology, business and finance. By some combination of apathy, lack of curiosity and ignorance, Bitcoin is often misrepresented or represented poorly in mainstream news outlets.

Lets cut these career journalists some slack. After all, a traditional finance reporter may be daunted by this new and confusing world of decentralized digital currency. And fluent as they may be with the ever-evolving world, seasoned technology reporters may nonetheless view Bitcoin as a leviathan of the technically arcane.

Bitcoin is indeed a complex esoterica. So its little wonder that just four years after its creation (when Bitcoin was beginning to formally enter the international conscience), Vitalik Buterin opined in the seventh print volume of Bitcoin Magazine that a significant amount of disinformation about Bitcoin continues to float around the internet.

Read Vitalik Buterins Common Misconceptions About Bitcoin A Guide for Journalists.

In an article called Common Misconceptions About Bitcoin A Guide for Journalists, Buterin listed five prevalent misconceptions and attempted to set the record straight.

Whether a given story is unfairly biased against Bitcoin, or even unfairly biased in its favor, it is important to work together to make sure that the truth always comes out in the first case, not to needlessly scare potential Bitcoin adopters away, and in the second case, not to disappoint, he wrote.

When writing for the February 2013 print issue, Buterin admitted that things had gotten better from Bitcoins earliest years. But over seven years since Buterins original article was published, we clearly have a long way to go until even rudimentary Bitcoin literacy becomes prevalent in the circles of traditional journalists.

I say rudimentary because, to this day, some of the most glaring misconceptions about Bitcoin are still the easiest to dismiss. It would be unreasonable for us to expect journalists whose beat is typically anything but Bitcoin to parse the differences in the block size debate or have a fluent understanding of the Lightning Networks technical infrastructure.

But 11 years out from Bitcoins launch, its absurd to see the core tenet of Bitcoins architecture its decentralization so blatantly mischaracterized or outright ignored. Or, as one Motley Fool article from 2019 shows, Bitcoin is constantly contrasted with a corporate structure:

Heres the problem: Buying a cryptocurrency token (bitcoin or most any other) does not give investors any ownership in the underlying blockchain. If the underlying blockchain of a crypto token becomes the basis for innovation at a particular company or within an industry, its associated token isnt necessarily going to benefit (and neither will token-holders), the article reads.

When you buy bitcoin, you are not buying shares of a company, nor do you hold equity (as this excerpt laments); you are buying into a digital monetary system that exists outside of the current system. When you understand that Bitcoin is a monetary system (and thus also intrinsically a store of value, medium of exchange and a unit of account), the comparison to a corporation is as anathema to Bitcoins design as it is ignorant.

To be sure, this conversation has evolved. At least now, slightly more educated detractors know that Bitcoin is not owned by anyone and no corporation has de jure control over it. Altering their stance, many now argue that miners have de facto control of the network. Centralization of mining in China is a cause for concern, but what the alarmist viewpoints dont take into account are the complex social and technical mechanisms that check and balance mining centralization.

As Kyle Torpey has espoused, ultimately investors hold the keys to the kingdom, and as NO2X showed us, so too do the node operators something Satoshi intended from the start.

My next gripe with mainstream Bitcoin coverage is not one Buterin covered. In 2013, few altcoins existed, and the ICO boom, which Buterins Ethereum would ironically detonate, was a few years out.

But in the fallout of 2017s market hysteria, as snake oil and utopian promises flowed like sour mana from the marketing teams of a new class of crypto-hucksters, the idea that the real innovation is blockchain not Bitcoin has ossified in the minds of many who follow the cryptocurrency scene with marginal interest.

To answer why bitcoin has become so big, one Guardian columnist pontificated in 2018, we need to separate the usefulness of the underlying technology called blockchain from the mania of people turning bitcoin into a big dumb lottery. Blockchain is simply a nifty software invention (which is open-source and free for anyone to use), whereas bitcoin is just one well-known way to use it.

Imagine for a moment that people had said TCP/IP is just one well-known way to use it and that the real innovation was the internet, which must be co-opted to create a private, permissioned version of the real thing. People did this: the result was the intranet, a private version of the internet that is primarily used for private functions for businesses or other organizations today.

Of all Buterins observations in 2013, none ring so painfully true today as the ever-raging debate over Bitcoins security.

I have personally read numerous articles that misattribute an exchanges servers being compromised to a security breach in Bitcoins core software.

For a technology thats supposed to be hyper secure, in practice, its often proven itself to be, well, not, one Recode (Vox) article from 2019 states with snarky confidence. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have proven a prime target for hackers despite their characterization by proponents as super safe and impregnable.

This is an egregious mischaracterization of Bitcoins design. And even though the author later on distinguishes between Bitcoins blockchain and Binances own security (with Binances 2019 hack as the timely subject of the coverage), the lede suggests that Bitcoin itself was hacked. For the average reader, who might not get past the headline or first paragraph, this could be enough to cement in their mind that Bitcoins technical structure is shot full of holes. Indeed, the blunderbuss reporting of the likes of Vox are the forces that shred this security in front of the readers very eyes; even if this damage is fictional, the shrapnel is very real for readers who dont know better.

When the media frames bitcoin exchange hacks in this way, it has the same effect as when undereducated journalists harp on the virtues of blockchain technology or mistakenly frame Bitcoin as a centralized entity. The truth eludes all but the most critical observers, and non-Bitcoiners are left with rotten kernels of mistruths (or, in the worst cases, propaganda), which they accept as truisms: After all, didnt the Guardian publish the story?

One of these aphorisms is the ever-looming Bitcoin obituary. I hardly need to cite any examples here, as this phenomenon is burned into any faithful Bitcoiners consciousness. If misconceptions about Bitcoins decentralization and its security are the head and neck of our collective albatross, then this is the sagging torso it is constantly weighing us down.

Buterin wrote particularly about a myth in 2011 that bitcoins market price had fallen to $0.01. How prescient this gripe was would only become apparent following bitcoins meteoric race to $20,000. Ever since, the number of publications pronouncing Bitcoin dead has seemed to multiply; like a plague of cicadas, the death knells hum and rattle on with a pessimistic buzz.

Shy of transcending the $20,000 all-time high, we likely will not hear the end of these incessant wakes. Mainstream journalists tend to think that Icaruss wings have dissolved and the boy is now dead. They ignore bitcoin setting local highs, so they believe that it is effectively dead or as the New York Times Nathaniel Popper put it in yet another article extolling Bitcoins capacity to bankroll criminal activity that bitcoin has lost steam.

Even as bitcoin reaches local highs in value and as companies like Blockstream, Lightning Labs and others continue to push important protocol developments the reports of Bitcoins untimely death pour in.

Keep them coming, and Bitcoiners will keep our tally going.

Another primary misconception stems from Bitcoins utility and its branding as electronic cash.

Detractors often cite that no one is using bitcoin as a medium of exchange and that few retailers accept it. A wellspring of online theory and thought is remolding our perceptions of Bitcoin, though. Its not just a currency but an entire monetary system. Its not just cash, but its digital gold, as well.

Much like the gift of the internet became much more than sending messages, Bitcoin has evolved into more than a currency or rather, our perception of it has. The gold narrative, of course, is still subjective. Many people see gold as highly speculative and of little use, so selling them on the notion that Bitcoin is digital gold and by extension, valuable will be a harder sell still and will likely take some years to cement. Still, deriding bitcoin as useless because you cant buy coffee with it is an absurd and myopic view.

Not least because bitcoin has proven its utility as a permissionless and censorship-resistant form of currency. These are the key characteristics of Bitcoin, and as Nic Carter trenchantly observes in A Most Peaceful Revolution, this is what Bitcoin is all about: All of Bitcoins utility and significance, all of its appeal and all of its potency take root in its primary function as a monetary system that is parallel to and exists to undermine the state.

Hence why so many journalists, as evidenced by Buterins final objection in the 2013 article that persists even now, fixate on bitcoins utility in illicit markets. Indeed, the Silk Road catapulted bitcoin and its price to hitherto-unseen significance in 2010 and 2011. Bitcoin is first and foremost useful for edge cases like this, sectors of the economy that are illegal and cannot operate without a permissionless and pseudonymous means of exchange.

These are also the most interesting use cases for Bitcoin. For many journalists, they are the most sensational and salacious, so they crowd headlines in hopes of driving clicks in an industry that lives or dies on website traffic and SEO placement. Perhaps we could again cut these journalists some slack; after all, many of them are covering Bitcoin on an ad hoc basis on the whims of their editors.

But the common insistence that Bitcoin is only good for terrorism, drugs and other illicit activities is tragically overplayed. Fewer than 1 percent of Bitcoin transactions can be attributed to illicit activity, according to research by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. Even so, stories of exchange hacks, ransomware and drug markets have outsized representation in mainstream media.

Again, perhaps we can chalk this one up to an era of broken incentives for online media, where sensationalism dominates both attention and content. From their bully pulpit, these outlets harangue and taunt Bitcoin proponents and whip their readers into their biased points of view.

But even so, it seems like statistics such as the one above should be hard enough evidence to snuff out this coverage; or at the least, journalists could include the illicit transactions that drive Bitcoin adoption in countries choked by despotism or international sanctions, such as Iran and Venezuela.

Another often-ignored statistic is that over 70 percent of bitcoin mining is sourced from renewable energy. In 2017, the world seemed to awaken to the trade-off of proof of work: More activity on the network equals more energy expended. This has led to the common refrain (now something of an inside joke among Bitcoiners) that Bitcoin will boil the oceans.

Hardly. Not only is the vast majority of bitcoin mined using renewable energy, but it consumes fewer kWh annually than Christmas lights or every idle device running in U.S. households yearly not to mention that the carbon footprint is several magnitudes less than that of the global banking and finance industries.

Once again, we see a sensationalist narrative peddled with little regard for oppositional arguments or even hard statistics.

Now, Bitcoin literacy among some journalists has improved since Buterin first covered these misconceptions in 2013. Bitcoins features, such as the 21 million hard cap, its decentralized node architecture and even the Lightning Network, are starting to take hold. But even so, misconceptions abound, some of which as evidenced in this article are almost as old as Bitcoin itself.

Uneducated reporting on Bitcoin eventually gave way to Bitcoin-specific media, of which Bitcoin Magazine was the seminal outlet. Until mainstream media acquaints itself more thoroughly with Bitcoin, well be around to throw the FUD back in their faces and correct the record.

Some, as with their perceptions of gold, may never come to see the value that we do. Or, if they do, they may grudgingly succumb to the changing times as the old guard did with the advent of the internet.

No matter the scenario, Bitcoin needs a voice to right the fallacies preached by the mainstream. So, were not going anywhere.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

Originally posted here:
Beanie Babies and Black Markets: Where Mainstream Media Gets Bitcoin Wrong - Nasdaq

From 2012 to 2014, Bitcoin Magazine produced 22 print issues covering the burgeoning technology, its budding culture and potential impact.

This week, weve revisited some of those stories with updates, reflections and commentary.

And if youre really astute, youll notice that weve been experimenting with the format of Bitcoin Magazine over the past few weeks. As part of our new year planning, we decided that we should really shift our focus more toward storytelling instead of primarily publishing news.

While we arent horrible at producing news, there are other sites with more reporters that already do a great job at serving that need for our readers. At some point, it all becomes noise if theres no differentiation.

To help increase the depth of our stories, were doubling down on our non-written content to help support our stories in more formats. We now have multiple podcasts (Weekly Bits, Happy Hour, and our flagship Bitcoin Magazine Podcast) available on every major platform, plus were ramping up our video content on YouTube and Twitter.

If youre interested in writing/podcasting/producing video with us, drop me a note at flip at bitcoinmagazine.com. Were actively wanting to hear from new voices in the ecosystem.

2020 will be a banner year for Bitcoin and theres excitement in the air once again. As all of the precoiners rush to comprehend what is happening, we want to be a place for all of them to learn about the different aspects that reinforce how transformative Bitcoin will be to our lives. Its not just about number go up and orange coin good; true hyperbitcoinization will change in ways for which we are not prepared.

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The Stories of Bitcoin Magazine Revisited - Bitcoin Magazine

As U.S. stocks tumbled on Monday by the most in six months amid renewed coronavirus fears, bitcoin barely budged - at least in terms of the notoriously volatile cryptocurrencys trading history.

Bitcoin (BTC) was down 4.6 percent as of 6:17 p.m. UTC (1:17 p.m. ET) to $9,517. But a decline of that magnitude represents merely the biggest drop since last week; already this year, bitcoin has suffered six other single-day losses of 3 percent or greater. And due to a powerful rally in recent months, the cryptocurrencys price is still up about 32 percent in 2020.

Such a performance stands in stark contrast with the Standard & Poors 500 Index of large U.S. stocks, whose 3.6 percent plunge was the most for a single day since early August and wiped out investors gains for the year.

Theres certainly a bit of fear in the bitcoin market, but its not anything close to the panic were seeing on Wall Street today, with the clear flight to safety, said Mati Greenspan, founder of the analysis firm Quantum Economics, which specializes in cryptocurrencies and foreign exchange. Three percent is a very different figure for stocks and for bitcoin.

The episode could renew an ongoing debate among investors over whether bitcoin should trade as a risky asset like stocks and junk bonds, or if its more akin to a safe haven like gold or U.S. Treasury bonds. Theres also the possibility that its neither in a category of its own and largely uncorrelated with traditional asset prices.

Indeed, the coronavirus wasnt the only news potentially affecting bitcoin prices on Monday: Billionaire investor Warren Buffett asserted in a CNBC interview that he doesnt own any cryptocurrency and never will.

The plunge in stocks came as authorities globally struggled to stem the spread of the coronavirus beyond China, raising concerns the global economy will suffer a bigger hit from quarantines and delays in international trade and travel, according to Bloomberg News. The epidemic has now spread to more than 30 countries, including South Korea, Italy and parts of the Middle East.

Traditional safe-haven assets like gold and U.S. government bonds rallied on Monday. Gold rose 1.7 percent to $1,676.50 a troy ounce, the highest in seven years. U.S. Treasuries rose, too, as the yield on the 10-year note declined by 0.11 percentage point to 1.36 percent. Bond prices move in the opposite direction from their yield.

A jump in bitcoin prices in January after the U.S. killing of a top Iranian led to heightened concerns of geopolitical and economic turmoil prompted some traders to speculate that the cryptocurrency might be gaining acceptance among investors as a safe haven.

But in a report last week, the Norwegian analysis firm Arcane Research noted bitcoins correlation with gold had weakened since the start of this year.

Greg Cipolaro, co-founder of the crypto-focused firm Digital Asset Research, said in an interview he recently studied bitcoins price performance over the past nine years on days when U.S. stocks experience big swings, defined as a price move thats statistically two standard deviations away from average.

On the 13 times such daily moves occurred over the period, bitcoins price rose an average of 1.5 percent when stocks rallied. Bitcoin's price fell 0.34 percent when there was an unusually large selloff. Since 2011, bitcoin rose by 0.6 percent per day, on average.

On these kinds of days where you have these risk-off scenarios, bitcoin tends to be down on the day, Cipolaro said. Its not the same as owning Treasuries, and not the same as owning gold.

The takeaway for the bitcoin market might still be positive, he said, since hedge funds and other large investors are often hunting for assets that are mostly uncorrelated with traditional markets but boast a track record of high risk-adjusted returns.

Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer of the crypto-focused firm Arca Funds in Los Angeles, said in a phone interview that cryptocurrencies might be slower to react to global developments than stocks and bonds because theyre still largely disconnected from Wall Street; digital assets like bitcoin arent typically bought via traditional brokerage accounts.

It's irresponsible for anyone to say that bitcoin is truly a safe haven, Dorman said. Look at how gold and Treasuries and equities react instantaneously to global fears. Bitcoin and digital asserts live outside that work flow.

Federal Reserve officials led by Chair Jerome Powell have signaled recently they see the current stance of monetary policy as appropriate, but that the coronavirus could put the health of the global economy at risk. The implication is that the U.S. central bank might need to cut interest rates to stimulate markets and business activity if the contagion leads to a steeper-than-anticipated dropoff in growth.

Such monetary-policy easing might ultimately bolster the case for buying bitcoin, Dorman said, since many analysts believe that limits on the supply of new units of the cryptocurrency make it useful as a hedge against inflation.

I don't expect bitcoin to trade as risk-on or risk-off asset, he said. But over a longer period of time, anything that's inflationary, or said another way devalues other currencies, strengthens the purchasing power of bitcoin.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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Bitcoin's Coronavirus Selloff Throws Cold Water on Safe-Haven Argument - CoinDesk - CoinDesk