Bitcoin’s Enemies List | Lightning Strikes Miami

MOVING AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

At a Bitcoin 2022 conference devoid of market-moving announcements, the biggest trend is the growth of companies integrating Bitcoin’s Lightning Network into their operations. Lightning is a peer-to-peer network sitting on top of Bitcoin that can support instantaneous and virtually free transactions. Companies to announce support this week include Block’s Cash App, Robinhood, BitPay and Shopify.

However, the most significant news in the long term may be the $70 million raised by Elizabeth Stark’s Lightning Labs, which has built a new protocol to put other types of digital assets such as stablecoins and NFTs onto Lightning, aiming to turn the network into a worthy competitor to Visa. “That’s really significant because the potential here is for all the world’s currencies to route through Bitcoin over the Lightning Network,” Elizabeth Stark, CEO and cofounder of Lightning Labs, told Forbes ahead of the announcement.

CROW ON THE MENU IN MIAMI

While the event this week served as an unofficial launch to spring, the crypto conference schedule and megaphone for partnerships, many bitcoiners used the opportunity to take valedictory bows for their long-term support of bitcoin. MicroStategy CEO Michael Saylor and Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood argued the case that the environment has never been more bullish for bitcoin.

Walking through the current landscape with lenses focused on the macroeconomic environment, regulatory issues and the level of capital markets acceptance, or capitulation as they see it, Saylor and Wood see a world where bitcoin will succeed no matter what happens in the world. In fact, Wood repeated a prediction made by her firm that each bitcoin will be worth $1 million by the year 2030. They also basked in perceived about-faces of previous skeptics such as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Wall Street bulge bracket banks. Saylor recounted a story of how he got laughed out of Merrill Lynch when he wanted to buy bitcoin, but now gets crypto research from the very same analyst that rejected him. In a keynote later on Thursday, Valar Ventures CEO Peter Thiel unveiled what he called an “enemies list” of anti-crypto investors and named Warren Buffett the top enemy of the people, calling him a “sociopathic grandpa.”

Wrapping up the conference, Adam Back, CEO of bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream, announced that the firm’s joint project with Jack Dorsey’s Block, announced in June 2021, is finally getting off the ground. It will involve the construction of a new open-source bitcoin mining facility at one of Blockstream’s U.S. sites in Texas and will be powered by Tesla’s solar and energy storage products.

BITCOIN BARELY BUDGES

Despite the optimism of this year’s event, markets have not responded in the matter in which investors hoped. Bitcoin is down 5.1% so far this week, sitting at $43,882. Ethereum has fallen by 4.4% to $3,290, and other major assets such as Solana, Terra and Avalanche have also posted negative returns for the week, with all three shedding more than 4.0%.

Source: Forbes Digital Assets, powered by Nomics.  Prices as of 4:00 p.m. on April 8, 2022.

BLOCKCHAIN 50 SPOTLIGHT

A.P. Moller-Maersk: The world’s second-largest container shipper ($54.5 billion trailing 12 months) now counts 250 ports and 20 ocean carriers using its proprietary TradeLens blockchain, which cuts time and reams of paperwork out of tracking containers as they move through global seaports. Sportswear giant Puma, which ships out of northern Germany, can now track a specific container in seconds rather than hours, according to Maersk. TradeLens, which Maersk co-developed with IBM in 2018, has tracked more than 55 million container shipments and is now being used by other shipping giants such as Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd and Singapore’s Ocean Network Express.

ELSEWHERE

Why OpenSea’s NFT Marketplace Can’t Win [Wired]

Crypto Platforms Ask For Rules But Have A Favorite Watchdog [Bloomberg]

Facebook Owner Meta Targets Finance With ‘Zuck Bucks’ [Financial Times] 

Steven Ehrlich
Editor 
Forbes CryptoAsset & Blockchain Advisor

Nina Bambysheva
Reporter
Forbes Money & Markets

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