Week 13 - Yakov Wahnich - The Crypto Craze

For anyone that has been following this wave, you’ll probably find this blog interesting. If you haven’t, I’m sorry since this might be a little boring. 

The concept of cryptocurrency is simple - an unregulated digital asset created to enable secure, fast online transactions. What started in 2009 with Bitcoin took the finance world by storm years later. Today, cryptocurrency is not only used as fast payment for goods and services, but people have turned to Bitcoin and other cryptos as investments usually riskier than the stock market but, with the right strategies, more rewarding. For reference, Bitcoin was worth 8 cents in July 2010. Today, one Bitcoin is worth $37,760. So, obviously, cryptocurrency offers a very lucrative investment opportunity. 

Many people, my self included, believe that Bitcoin will eventually be worth over $100K, possibly before 2021 ends. However, there is one flaw with Bitcoin: payment transactions are slowww. To send money to a friend, or pay for an online purchase, transactions can take up to two hours. There’s another cryptocurrency that solves that problem. XRP, a less popular coin owned by the Ripple company, was created for payments under 5 seconds, and therefore, has gained a lot of popularity from individual investors and corporations alike. The most promising aspect of XRP is it’s “utility” as a fast payment that has the potential of becoming a world reserve currency for secure, international payments. 

Overall, cryptocurrency is not the arbitrary hoax so many once assumed it was, and in the coming years it will see unprecedented growth. For instance, XRP - at $0.28 per coin today - is estimated to reach between $5 - $26 by the end of this year, and will most definitely surpass that within 5 years.