The five-day Unitize virtual blockchain conference organized by BlockShow and San Francisco Blockchain Week ended with the final session on Friday. The event saw appearances from Heath Tarbert, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum; and Tim Draper, a serial blockchain investor, as well as other speakers from a diverse pool of market segments both within and outside the crypto space. Blockchain adoption, decentralized finance, central bank digital currencies and the future of Bitcoin (BTC) dominated the conversation in many of the panels. The event also saw speakers chart possible paths forward for …

The first two days of Unitize, the virtual conference organized by BlockShow and San Francisco Blockchain Week, have come and gone with speakers from various sectors of the emerging crypto and blockchain space. Developments around central bank digital currencies, as well as the impact of COVID-19 on the industry, have taken center stage during the first two days of the event. Crypto and blockchain adoption amid the pandemic The COVID-19 outbreak continues to dominate discourse across the social, political, economic and several other facets of human life. Thus, it was unsurprising to see the novel coronavirus featured in multiple panels …

Tim Draper, a famous American venture capitalist and serial cryptocurrency investor, believes that initial public offerings, or IPOs, are not the best source of funding for industry firms. The billionaire investor joined the Unitize conference on July 6 to talk about investing in early stage blockchain startups. Draper’s thoughts on IPOs During the Unitize panel, Draper highlighted that existing regulations make it difficult for blockchain companies to go public. “I don’t recommend going public to anybody right now unless your company is worth at least $10 billion,” the investor said. Draper continued that it makes more sense for blockchain entrepreneurs …

Lending platform Defi Money Market (DMM) — backed by Tim Draper’s Draper Venture Network — has had a difficult birth. The Initial DEX Offering (IDO) has completed successfully, raising $6.5 million in 48 hours, but investors reported problems with completing transactions, a confusing interface or raised trust issues around the company’s background. Separately Telegram scammers made off with $40,000 from users trying to buy — although DMM kindly made up for the lost tokens — and there were claims of privacy problems. Despite the issues, DMM’s DMG token is currently trading at $0.87, over double the initial sale price of …

As the world discovers more ways to implement blockchain technology, the billion-dollar gaming industry is leveraging the technology to bring transparency, trust and ownership of digital assets to players. A new vision for blockchain games is emerging — one that aims to bridge the gap between virtual worlds and reality through user commerce. This notion is being demonstrated by blockchain game developer Uplandme. On May 21, Uplandme announced a partnership with Linden Lab’s Tilia division for leveraging Tilia Pay to enable fiat payments for virtual properties traded within the Upland game marketplace. Currently, the virtual San Francisco properties listed on …

The latest research from Flipside Crypto purports to disprove Tim Draper’s assumption that the advancements in DeFi will displace the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The report starts off by quoting Draper: “The DeFi world is almost as technologically advanced as the dollar, and when it is, there will be no one who will want to accept politically manipulable currencies like dollars anymore.” Not fiat replacement The report focuses on two stablecoins: crypto-backed Dai (DAI) and fiat-backed USDC (USDC). It comes to the conclusion that stablecoin users are not looking to these instruments as replacements for the dollar, …

Google searches for “Bitcoin halving” have hit an all-time high, far exceeding the spike associated with the previous halving event by 350%. Searches for the Bitcoin (BTC) halving event have reached 100 on Google's normalized scale, indicating their highest-ever value. At the time of the last halving in 2016, this value was at 28. This means that the current level of interest is nearly 360% higher than it was four years ago. Google searches for “Bitcoin halving.” Source: Google Trends. Still a bear market The previous halving, which decreased the block reward from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC, happened on …

Over the past week, Cointelegraph has participated in Virtual Blockchain Week — a pandemic-proof crypto conference that invited participants from all over the world to join talks with some of Blockchain’s greatest luminaries. At the start of the week, famed venture capitalist, Tim Draper, doubled down on his prediction that Bitcoin (BTC) will reach $250K per coin by 2023. “That's my prediction. Sticking with it. I'm very confident that that is going to happen.” said Draper, when pressed on the topic. He believes that massive commercial adoption around the world will send Bitcoin’s price into the stratosphere. This gels well …

Speaking at Virtual Blockchain Week, famed venture capitalist Tim Draper confirmed that he is sticking to his six-figure Bitcoin (BTC) price prediction. Back in 2018, Tim Draper made a bold public call that the price of Bitcoin would reach $250,000 by the end of 2022 or early 2023. As of today, he’s sticking to it: “That's my prediction. Sticking with it. I'm very confident that that is going to happen. That’s happening. It's kind of funny.” He cites a couple major reasons that might drive that kind of price action. Draper believes that the US government’s massive stimulus package will …

Blockchain startup incubator, Draper Goren Holm, launched what it claims to be the first crypto decentralized exchange, or DEX, plugin for leading website backend software, WordPress. According to an April 22 announcement, the plugin is “the easiest way for anyone, not just engineers, to launch their own cryptocurrency exchange.” Venture capitalist Tim Draper commented: “Everyone, not just engineers, can now launch their own crypto exchanges on WordPress using the plugin our team built.” With the plugin, websites can now feature an on-site DEX that allows users to exchange between a long list of cryptocurrencies, tokens, and stablecoins. At the same …

Among industry participants and investors, India is emerging as a market to watch for following the overturn of a crypto ban that was placed by the Reserve Bank of India back in April 2018. The prominent investors looking to get a piece of India’s nascent crypto space include Tim Draper, a billionaire investor who obtained thousands of Bitcoin from 2014’s Silk Road auction. Draper recently said that he has “met several Bitcoin and crypto startups” from India and that he “hopes to be able to fund a number of them.” He also recently showed his excitement for the move by …

Ross Ulbricht turns 36 years old today. This will be his seventh birthday in incarceration. Ulbricht is the convicted felon serving two life sentences plus 40 years for his role in creating the Silk Road, the online contraband market notorious for its associations with cryptocurrency. Ulbricht says Silk Road was initially envisioned as a libertarian paradise, but it eventually went sideways: “Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness, however they individually saw fit. What it turned into was, in part, a convenient way for people to …