Optimism abounds as Bitcoin halving approaches.
Paris Blockchain Week, a three-day insider event featuring panels, discussions and presentations from global industry leaders, has just concluded its fifth annual meeting.
Cointelegraph was on hand to capture the highlights, and there were many. As we turn the page in our calendars and start preparing for the next big event – Bitcoin's halving predicted to happen on or around April 20th – here's a recap of what you missed during Blockchain Week in France.
Will BTC reach $250K?
Venture capitalist and Tim Draper, whose list of unicorn investments includes notable companies such as Tesla, Baidu, Coinbase and Twitch, believes that Bitcoin could destroy its current all-time high of $72,000 per coin by the end of the year.
“If I had to predict, we'll probably see $250,000 by the end of the year. I mean, it looks great,” Draper told Cointelegraph in an interview.
Will the Crypto Market Reach $100T?
If Draper's cool quarter-million prediction for BTC wasn't enough of a bombshell, Yoni Asia, the CEO of Etoro, told Cointelegraph that he believed that the global kriptovalyutnoy market would reach a capitalization of 100 trillion dollars in the next decade. For comparison, gold, the precious metal, has a global market value of $16.18 trillion as of this writing.
But that might not be the most exciting prediction Asia has given us. They also told us that “the crypto community will be the first to recognize the Singularity,” a future artificial intelligence (AI) entity in human history that will be more competent (or intelligent) than any human, “because it's so hard to define what consciousness is.”
Binance turns the page.
Many companies aren't expected to pay $4.3 billion to the US government with optimism and hope, but Binance continues.
According to Binance CEO Catherine Chen, the company is looking forward to the challenges it will face during the settlement process. During a panel discussion moderated by Cointelegraph editor-at-large Christina Koerner, Chen said the surveillance restrictions imposed on the company will ultimately be positive for the industry.
“It's a challenge, but it's an interesting challenge, and we fully embrace it because we know that's going to be good for the market.”
ETF flows are unregulated.
According to Jan Van Eyck, CEO of American investment management firm VanEyck, 90 percent of Bitcoin ETF revenues are still in retail. The traditional banking and institutional investment sectors, so far, seem reluctant to dive into the BTC ETF market.
“You had some Bitcoin whales, and some other institutions put in some assets, but they were already exposed to Bitcoin,” Van Eck told Cointelegraph, adding that he could see more inflows by non-traditional investors in late April.
Dubai to lighten the burden for small investors
Matthew White, CEO of the Dubai Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA), told Cointelegraph that the new system, if implemented, would place the biggest regulatory financial burden on the biggest players:
“The cost of compliance is covered by the big players in the system, which allows the smaller players to come into the ecosystem, to comply, but the costs of compliance don't have to reach the same level that we've found.
Ubisoft teases a new game.
AAA Gaming Ubisoft, the publisher behind Assassin's Creed, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six and several other game franchises, took the stage to discuss its new Web3 title, a blockchain-based competitive PVP turn-based role-playing game it says is “Tactics of Champions.”
“We need to understand the market and how we started this kind of game,” he said. “That's really what we want to achieve here. We want to empower players to visualize the game and understand what it means to own your game assets.
Ultimately, Paris Blockchain Week turned out to be another optimistic gathering of like-minded entrepreneurs and professionals highlighting the challenges, opportunities and triumphs in our industry.
