Ripple, Ethereum And Bitcoin Crashes More, About $120 Billion Wipe Off Crypto Market

Cryptocurrency markets are swung wildly on Friday, after a major early morning crash gave way to an afternoon rebound.

During European morning trade on Friday, the price of virtually every major cryptocurrency dropped more than 15% as investors remained spooked following bitcoin's fall below the key $9,000 support level on Thursday.

"The wheels are coming off the bitcoin bandwagon," Neil Wilson, a senior market analyst with ETX Capital, said in an email this morning.

"The regulatory crunch appears closer than ever and sooner or later this market could be headed back down to earth. Selling pressure at the moment is intense as there has been nothing but bad news for bitcoin bulls of late."




Bitcoin crashed as low as $7,700 during the collapse, losing roughly 15% of its value at one point. Other major cryptos fell even further, with Ethereum down as much as 23% at one point.

By the European afternoon, however, prices have bounced back sharply, and by 4.50 p.m. GMT (11.45 a.m. ET) bitcoin was actually in positive territory on the day, trading at $9,130.

Although there was no immediately obvious catalyst for the rebound, it coincided with the East Coast of the USA waking up, suggesting that American traders were engaging in a bout of dip-buying.

Market capitalisation is an inexact measure of cryptocurrencies (as Business Insider Australia's Sam Jacobs has outlined), but it at least gives a good idea of the scale of the ongoing sell-off.

The crypto market has been on the back foot since the start of the year, hit by fears of a regulatory crackdown and slipping Asian volumes. Bitcoin is now at less than half its December peak of over $19,000.

More concerns have emerged about the sector this week as Facebook banned cryptocurrency advertisements and US regulators began investigating tether, a cryptocurrency that some fear has been used to inflate the value of bitcoin.

India's finance minister also said this week that the Indian government "does not consider cryptocurrencies legal tender or coin and will take all measures to eliminate use of these crypto-assets in financing illegitimate activities or as part of the payment system."

KFC Launches a Bucket That You Can Only Pay for in Bitcoin

KFC Canada has rolled out the Bitcoin Bucket, an offering that can only be paid for using Bitcoin.

“Sure, we don’t know exactly what Bitcoins are, or how they work, but that shouldn’t come between you and some finger lickin’ good chicken,” the company said in a tweet.

The offer, only available in Canada (“apologies, rest of the world,” the company says on its website), is a limited time offer—and the first wave has already sold out. For $20 worth of your digital currency, you’ll get 10 original recipe tenders, waffle fries, a medium side, gravy, and 2 dipping sauces. The company will even deliver it to buyers.




KFC Canada is having a good time with the promotion, even promising a free bucket to Bitcoin founder Satoshi—on one condition:

The move is a first in the restaurant world. While select franchise locations of other restaurant chains accept Bitcoin as payment, this appears to be the first time a parent company has embraced the digital currency.

While Bitcoin is the only cyrptocurrency KFC is accepting right now, the company did hint in a separate tweet that it’s considering expanding that for future promotions.

Warren Buffett Swears He will Never Invest in Bitcoin and Here is why he said so

Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway  widely venerated for his investing acumen, said Wednesday he is bearish on cryptocurrencies, and swore he would never buy Bitcoin.

“In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say almost with certainty that they will come to a bad ending,” Buffett said on CNBC, noting that he didn’t understand Bitcoin and other blockchain-based digital assets. “Now, when it happens or how, or anything else, I don’t know.”

The investor, nicknamed the Oracle of Omaha for his market prescience, didn’t think he’d ever warm up to cryptocurrencies.

“We don’t own any, we’re not short any, we’ll never have a position in them,” Buffett added Wednesday. “I get into enough trouble with the things I think I know something about. Why in the world should I take a long or short position in something I don’t know about?”

Still, while Buffett’s words often make waves in the stock market, cryptocurrency prices remained relatively stable following his comments. The Bitcoin price sank only slightly to about $14,400, while the price of Ethereum, the second most valuable cryptocurrency, rose to more than $1,300. Ripple, the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap, continued its multi-day slide, falling to less than $2 apiece amid concerns unrelated to Buffett’s comments.

It’s not the first time Buffett has dismissed cryptocurrencies. In 2014, the octogenarian investor dubbed Bitcoin a “mirage,” warning investors to “stay away from it.”

That sentiment echoes recent comments by other influential Wall Street figures including J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who in September called Bitcoin a “fraud.”

But while Buffett said he wouldn’t go so far as shorting Bitcoin, he suggested he might find other ways to bet against it. The stock-picker told CNBC he’d “be glad” to buy five-year put options on “every one of the cryptocurrencies.” Put options can be a way for investors to bet against an asset, as they become more valuable as the underlying asset’s price falls.

Such put contracts give buyers the option to sell an asset at a certain price at a future date—which can result in a windfall if the price of the asset declines below the previously agreed-upon price. Put options, however, come with more limited risks than simply shorting an asset, which can result in infinite losses if the asset’s price rises instead of falling as expected.

Though Buffett was speaking hypothetically and said he has not gone so far as to actually invest in any Bitcoin puts, there are now avenues for investors to pursue a similar bearish strategy. Derivatives exchange LedgerX, for one, offers both short- and long-term Bitcoin put options. But trading volumes have been relatively thin on the platform (just $1 million during its first week operating in October), making it less attractive for larger investors to get in the game.

On the other hand, there’s some reason investors might not want to take Buffett’s advice on Bitcoin. While the Oracle’s overall investing track record is unparalleled, Buffett has been notoriously reluctant to invest in new technology—a weakness that has cost him even better returns over time. At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting last May, for example, Buffett expressed regret for not investing in Google (now known as Alphabet)  and Amazon stock years ago, having failed to appreciate the tech companies’ great potential.

Analysis Reveals That Bitcoin Uses 30 Times More Electricity than Tesla Cars

As Bitcoin’s price has soared, so too has the energy consumption to produce it—to the point that Bitcoin mining now guzzles more electricity than all the electric cars in the world.

In 2018, Bitcoin’s power demand is set to more than triple, consuming as much energy in a year as the entire nation of Argentina, according to a new report by Morgan Stanley.

The bank’s analysts forecast that Bitcoin mining could use up more than 125 terawatt hours of electricity this year, a level electric vehicles globally won’t reach until 2025. Last year, Bitcoin consumed 36 terawatt hours of energy—as much as the country of Qatar, Morgan Stanley estimated in a research note published Wednesday.

By comparison, all the Tesla cars on the road (about 280,000 at the end of 2017, according to company statistics) likely used less than 1.3 terawatt hours of electricity combined for the year, a Fortune analysis found. The analysis assumed each car drove 15,000 miles—roughly the national average—at a rate of 30 kilowatt hours of electricity per 100 miles, based on the median mileage rate for Tesla Model 3 and Model S vehicles, according to figures reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.




That means it cost 29 times as much energy to produce Bitcoins last year as it did to power all the Tesla cars driving today.

“That’s freaking insane,” wrote one person, going by the username Frank99, who posted a similar calculation on Tesla’s online discussion forum.

Global energy consumption for all electric cars was about 6 terawatt hours in 2016.

The reason Bitcoin mining consumes so much electricity is that producing each new Bitcoin requires solving a complex mathematical puzzle, through a cryptographic process performed by high-powered computers. The mining computations serve to verify Bitcoin transactions on a digital ledger known as the blockchain, ensuring security; they also have the downside of being extremely energy intensive. (Most other cryptocurrencies are believed to require much less energy to mine.)

Morgan Stanley estimates that it costs $3,000 to $7,000 to produce one Bitcoin, including both energy and hardware expenses. The price of a single Bitcoin was about $13,500 Thursday afternoon, down from a high of nearly $20,000 last month.

“That said, mining is very profitable at today’s bitcoin price, and if cryptocurrencies continue to appreciate we expect global mining power consumption to increase,” the Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in their research note.

Still, the analysts did not find any correlation between the Bitcoin price and electricity costs—suggesting that cryptocurrency investors who buy Bitcoin are not factoring in how much it actually takes to produce it. This also means that while cryptocurrency prices are unusually volatile and sensitive to even minor news events, Bitcoin’s price is unlikely to be vulnerable to energy price fluctuations.

“We do not see cryptocurrency values being driven by electricity costs in the near term,” the Morgan Stanley analysts continued. “2017 shows that cryptocurrency pricing appears not to be fully based on fundamentals.”

The bankers, however, did offer an idea for how energy companies could use cryptocurrency to juice their own stock prices: “Perhaps global utilities should start accepting Bitcoins for payments,” the analysts concluded.

CEOs United To Blast Bitcoin Saying It's 'Dangerous'

The line of business leaders warning about a bitcoin bubble just got a lot longer.

Yale University’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute surveyed 87 corporate leaders last week on aspects of the economy and politics, from the U.S. tax bill to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Virtually nothing on the list brought them closer to consensus than hating the cryptocurrency.

Some 88 percent of participants labeled it a “dangerous” bubble, predicting it “will not end well.” An even higher 91 percent said exchanges don’t know how to properly regulate bitcoin, while 85 percent of those surveyed said cryptocurrencies are over-hyped and hazardous.

They’re in good company. JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon has called bitcoin a “fraud.” Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said it’s a “highly speculative asset” and “not a stable store of value.” But reports of its death have been wrong before. Warnings of a bitcoin bubble also surged in 2013, as the price jumped to $1,000. This week it surpassed $19,000.

An American Woman Has Been Accused Of Using Bitcoin to Send Money to Islamic State

A woman from New York City has been accused of stealing and laundering over $85,000 to send to Islamic State, using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, said the Department of Justice on Thursday.

The DOJ identified the woman as 27-year-old Zoobia Shahnaz, who was born in Pakistan and worked as a lab technician in the U.S. Shahnaz was charged with bank fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and three counts of money laundering. She is currently being held without bail.


“The defendant defrauded numerous financial institutions and obtained over $85,000 in illicit proceeds, which she converted to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies,” the DOJ explained in a statement. “She then laundered and transferred the funds out of the country to support the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (“ISIS”) … After consummating the scheme, the defendant attempted to leave the United States and travel to Syria. Shahnaz, a U.S. citizen, was arrested yesterday.”

Shahnaz allegedly obtained the funds by falsely representing herself and tricking banks into giving her a $22,500 loan and over a dozen credit cards. She then used these to buy around $62,000 in cryptocurrencies online, according to the district attorney’s office. After obtaining the digital dollars, she wired them to individuals and shell corporations in Pakistan, China and Turkey that were destined for the terrorist organization ISIS.

According to the BBC, prosecutors said Shahnaz got a Pakistani passport in July and attempted to board a flight at New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport for Pakistan on July 31, with a layover in Turkey. She was arrested at JFK airport because officials said her itinerary was suspect and prosecutors believed she was trying to leave the U.S. for Syria to join ISIS, according to the DOJ statement.

“Her itinerary included a multi-day layover in Istanbul, Turkey – a common point of entry for individuals traveling from Western countries to join ISIS in Syria,” the DOJ document stated. “The defendant’s return ticket had been booked for September 4, 2017 on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to JFK.”

The BBC says Ms Shahnaz faces up to 20 years in prison on each of the money laundering charges and up to 30 years for the bank fraud charge.

Her lawyer, Steve Zissou, claims she was sending money overseas to help Syrian refugees, reported the BBC.

“What she saw made her devoted to lessening the suffering of a lot of the Syrian refugees and everything she does is for that purpose,” Mr Zissou said outside the courthouse, to the BBC.

Head of Bankrupt Bitcoin Exchange Very Likely To Make Hundreds of Millions From Failure

Mark Karpeles, the former head of what was for a time the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, could wind up profiting handsomely from the portal’s ignominious 2014 collapse. Those who had owned Bitcoin on the site, on the other hand, stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars generated by the cryptocurrency’s rising value.

Mt. Gox was one of the first convenient platforms for buying and selling Bitcoin online. Much like a bank, it retained direct control of the Bitcoin that belonged to many of its users. But it shut down in early 2014, claiming that hackers had stolen hundreds of thousands of its customers’ Bitcoins. Karpeles, in addition to being publicly condemned for mismanagement, faces criminal charges of embezzlement in the case.

Nonetheless, according to the Wall Street Journal, Karpeles could make in the neighborhood of $1 billion from the bankruptcy, thanks to Japanese law’s treatment of the Gox Bitcoins.

Article 124 of Japan’s bankruptcy codes required that liabilities be registered at market values when proceedings were opened in April of 2014. At that point, one Bitcoin was worth roughly $500, but the price has since risen to more than $6,300. Mt. Gox later recovered some of the allegedly hacked cryptocurrency, and still holds 202,195 Bitcoins, now worth around $1.5 billion.

But at a Sept. 27 hearing, Karpeles’ lawyer argued that those market gains belonged primarily to the collapsed Bitcoin exchange, not to the users who lost them years ago. According to the Journal’s calculations, based on a higher Bitcoin price earlier this week, selling off Mt. Gox’s remaining Bitcoin holdings at today’s prices while paying back creditors at April 2014 prices could leave a $977 million surplus. According to the Journal, Karpeles’ holding company, Tibanne, owns about 88% of Mt. Gox, meaning he could pocket a large portion of those gains.

According to Fortune’s prior reporting, Japan’s bankruptcy code does allow for liabilities in a bankruptcy to be marked to market values, but the Journal reports that the period for creditors to dispute such decisions has ended.

Real life Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort slams Bitcoin as a ‘huge, gigantic scam’ and warns wannabe investors not to waste their money

THE real-life Wolf of Wall Street has slammed Bitcoin as a "huge, gigantic scam" and has warned would-be investers not to waste their cash.

Jordan Belfort believes the controversial cryptocurrency is a bubble and could be set to plummet in value soon.

The former stockbroker, whose market manipulation and fraud crimes in the 1990s were subject of the 2013 film starring Leonardo di Caprio, said:“Promoters are perpetuating a massive scam of the highest order on everyone.

“Probably 85 per cent of people out there don’t have bad intentions but the problem is, if five or ten per cent are trying to scam you.”

Belfort said he expected the price of Bitcoin to rise further in the short term before an eventual collapse in the market.

He likened it to Holland’s “tulip mania”, where the value of tulip bulbs grew exponentially in the 17th Century before a rapid fall in prices.

In an interview with CNN he said: “I think it’s a huge danger right now that people are looking at this as the next great thing, it’s a bubble for sure.

“The next stage, you will see it really skyrocket, there will be a short squeeze, it will go even higher and then eventually it will come caving in, it’s almost a guarantee."

“If you were the most disciplined person and get in and get out there is probably a short window to make some money.

“But that’s not human nature, people will get in and make some money and they want to make more.
“In the tulip bubble the beginning of the end was when they started trading futures on tulips, that was another move up and then all of a sudden it collapses and it’s over.”

His comments come after a businessman who made millions from Bitcoin also warned potential buyers not to waste their money.

Minted Grant Sabatier, 32, said throwing savings at the controversial cyber cash is a "terrible idea".
Sabatier, who reached his goal of making $1million by age 30, first invested $5,000 (£3,739) in Bitcoin in 2013 at $72 (£53.85) per coin.

And although his investment is now worth a staggering $1,148,720 (£859,081), he says people should think twice before following suit - because the Bitcoin is "impossible to value".

Writing for CNBC, he said Bitcoin is "short-term gambling, not investing".

Sabatier, who lives with his wife in Chicago, wrote: "I first invested $5,000 in bitcoin back in 2013 at $72 per coin and now own approximately 69.2 Bitcoins.
"I decided to buy as a long-term experiment and used less than one per cent of my net worth at the time to buy into Bitcoin. Sure, I wanted to make money on it, but if I lost everything, it wasn't going to change the course of my life.

"Bitcoin is trading at $16,600 (£12,414.48), which makes my Bitcoins now worth $1,148,720 (£859,081). It took me five years working 80-hour weeks to make over $1million (£747,860) saving and investing in the stock market.

It's by far, without a doubt, the easiest money I have ever made. But I don't recommend you invest in Bitcoin today."

Describing Bitcoin as a "global craze" that "even my barber who has no idea what a blockchain is buying", Sabatier added: "It's (Bitcoin) impossible to accurately value. When the price of anything fluctuates 20-30 per cent in one day, it's obviously unstable, so you could lose all of your money very quickly.  

"If you need your money in the next year, don't buy bitcoin. With the insane short-term fluctuations, Bitcoin is short-term gambling, not investing."
Sabatier, who is the founder of Millennial Money, where he writes about personal finance, also warned that cyber wallets could get hacked regularly.
He further said that, because there is no central governing body to guarantee Bitcoin, it can be disfficult to get back if lost. 

He said: "You might think that digital wallets are secure, but cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets continue to get hacked regularly. More than $70 million (£52, 502,000) in Bitcoin was hacked from NiceHash, a Bitcoin mining marketplace, last week.
"Just because exchanges like Coinbase have $200million (£149,572,000) in venture funding and a nice shiny marketplace doesn't mean that they can't get hacked either. 

"Because there is no central governing body guaranteeing your bitcoin, if you lose it, it can be difficult to get back. If it gets stolen, then you are out of luck. Hacks will continue to happen."

What Is Ripple and Why Is It Beating Both Bitcoin and Litecoin?

Forget Bitcoin. So long Litecoin. There’s a new cryptocurrency on the rise.

Ripple, which was designed for banks and global money transfers, has seen the value of its XRP digital currency skyrocket in the past three days. On Dec. 10, the company had a market capitalization of just over $9 billion. As of Wednesday morning, that market cap had more than doubled to $18.1 billion.

Prices for an individual Ripple XRP are considerably more affordable than its alternatives, making it even more attractive to cryptocurrency speculators. As of late Wednesday morning, a single XRP cost just 47 cents, a 66% jump from yesterday’s close, according to CoinMarketCap.

This surge has pushed Litecoin down to the fifth most valuable cryptocurrency. Both Ripple and Litecoin are still far below Bitcoin and Ethereum, however.

What is Ripple?

While it wasn’t released until 2012, Ripple is actually older than Bitcoin. The original version of the company was created in 2004, according to Bitcoin Magazine. It never really went anywhere, though, until it put a professional management team in place, which included E-Loan co-founder Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb, founder of MtGox.

Ripple’s cryptocurrency has been adopted by banks and other financial institutions. Those companies believe Ripple’s system offers both better prices and is more secure than other digital currencies, including Bitcoin. It allows users to send, receive, and hold any currency in a decentralized way via the Ripple network. The company is cash-flow positive and holds a vast store of XRP, which it periodically releases into the market.

But the real appeal of Ripple’s XRP for banks is its liquidity.

“The liquidity needs of banks today is managed with literally ten trillion of float that sits in these nostro and vostro accounts. We believe very strong this is an inefficient model. You can use digital assets to fund liquidity, and Ripple is uniquely positioned to capitalize on that. Bitcoin takes four hours to settle a transaction. XRP takes 3.6 seconds,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse told said this year

Why is Ripple surging?

Ripple’s rise seems to be a (pardon the pun) ripple effect from the surge of interest in Bitcoin. Investors who believe cryptocurrency may be reaching a peak are looking for others that could provide a greater return in the long term. The company has hit some notable milestones in recent months, though.

As of October, Ripple had licensed its blockchain technology to over 100 banks. Last month, American Express came on board. And Michael Arrington’s $100 million cryptocurrency hedge fund will be valued in Ripple’s XRP.

How much has Ripple grown in 2017?

Year to date, Ripple’s XRP has seen its value jump more than 7,000% and its market cap increase by nearly 7,700%.

Julian Assange Boasted He's Made a 50,000% Return on Bitcoin At The Expense Of The US Govt

Since he’s been running from the U.S. government, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says he was forced to become an early investor in bitcoin—resulting in returns of over 50,000%.

He took to Twitter to gloat.
“My deepest thanks to the U.S. government, Senator McCain, and Senator Lieberman for pushing Visa, MasterCad, Paypal, AmEx, Moneybookers, et al, into erecting an illegal banking blockade against @WikiLeaks starting in 2010. It caused us to invest in Bitcoin—with > 50,000% returns.” 

Many banking institutions, including Paypal and Bank of America, refused to process transactions for Wikileaks starting in 2010, when the organization leaked documents that revealed friendly fire and civilian casualties at the hand of U.S. forces during the war in Afghanistan.

After being locked out from the traditional banking institution, Wikileaks said its revenue slid by 95% between late 2010 and mid-2011, costing the organization “tens of millions of pounds in lost donations.” Wikileaks claimed that it received the equivalent of over 800,000 euros (or $944,000 based on today’s exchange rate) in December 2010 alone. That slid to nearly $0 by January 2011.

Assuming Wikileaks invested in bitcoin and did indeed receive over 50,000% returns, Assange would have received about $500 for each dollar invested. So had he put that entire 800,000 euros into the cryptocurrency, it would be the equivalent of about 400 million euros, or $472 million, today.

It’s unclear when exactly Wikileaks began its bitcoin investments, though it would have likely been in early 2011, when the coin hit parity with the U.S. dollar before rapidly accelerating in price. That was just a year after the first bitcoin exchanges appeared.

In recent months, the cryptocurrency has picked up steam, with bitcoin prices surging to about $5,700 thanks to growing optimism in the coin’s scalability. Still, it is no easy investment, with bitcoin prices capable of swinging hundreds of dollars over the course of a few hours.

Marketers Please Pay Attention to Cryptocurrency Now And Here's Why

Although the technology is relatively new, cryptocurrency is already making waves in multiple industries. In fact, there are some who argue that it will change the face of finance and marketing forever.

Despite its relative infancy, cryptocurrency has already impacted the marketing world pretty significantly, even as experts work to understand the risks and benefits involved. Here are some reasons you should be paying attention to cryptocurrency, as well as some explanations of this groundbreaking technology, to get you started on mastering it.

First off, what is cryptocurrency?
Before you dive into why cryptocurrency is important for marketing, you need to understand what it is in the first place.

Cryptocurrency is a form of blockchain technology, the technology that bitcoin and other distributed ledger systems are based on. Basically a gigantic ledger of transactions, blockchain is an open and shared database that operates in a decentralized network format. It allows users to transfer and add information to it anonymously, without security compromises.

In other words, cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, is an anonymous financial system that employs blockchain technology to operate. Instead of using a credit card to pay for an item online, users can use Bitcoin or another form of cryptocurrency. And it's getting pretty popular -- in November 2016, the market capitalization of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies reached$13.8 billion.

It's important to remember that many uses of cryptocurrency in advertising are still a few years away, as there isn't much happening in this area yet. However, there's no harm in being ahead of the trend.

Cryptocurrency may make it tougher to access consumer information.
The use of cryptocurrency might make it more difficult for marketers to collect the kind of data on consumers that often informs advertising strategies.In this regard, 86 percent of internet users have tried to remove or decrease their digital footprint online; and cryptocurrency will make this more possible than ever, because it will deplete the amount of consumer data available

Currently, it's pretty easy to collect huge amounts of information on potential customers to attract leads. This is largely because the platform you use, like Facebook or Google, owns the data and sells it to you. Marketers can use this information to figure out audience segments, test which ads work better than others, predict customer behavior and more.

With cryptocurrency, however, many leads and buyer information will become anonymous, secure and encrypted -- making it difficult for marketers to figure out who bought what, and how customers are responding to marketing tactics. Individuals will be in more control over their personal information, which could make it nearly impossible for marketers to gather it and design marketing strategies accordingly.


For these reasons, marketers need to start figuring out new ways to collect information to inform their strategies, if they want to keep up with consumer wants and needs.

Consumer attention and information may cost more.
One way marketers could navigate the potential lack of consumer data is by paying users directly for their personal information, to be allowed to market to them online, instead of paying the platforms they use.

Since the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrency means that no single entity can own or control networks, users will be in control. Cryptocurrency itself further complicates this picture, as businesses eventually will be unable to tell who bought what product or service. Companies may need to pay users directly for their information and for the opportunity to market to them, instead of platforms like Facebook or Instagram.

For instance, new social media platforms like 21.co and Steem (which has over 30,000 current user accounts and is growing) allows marketers to engage with users for the opportunity to get the purchasing and other personal information about them that would otherwise be unavailable due to cryptocurrency. Businesses have to do the legwork to reach out to users, and the users can then decide if they want to engage.

The tricky part here is that the average customer is going to want more compensation for his or her purchasing and other information than a platform might charge for that same information now. The plus side, however, is that if the customer allows you to access his or her information, that person is more likely to be interested in your brand.

Final thoughts
We know that discussions on cryptocurrency involve a lot of hypotheticals, largely because we don't yet completely understand what it's going to do to marketing.

However, although cryptocurrency may not affect your own business marketing model, it's a strong representation for where digital trends are heading in the next few years. Even if the changes aren't as dramatic as now believed, it's a good idea to prepare and explore the potential of cryptocurrency so that you aren't taken by surprise.

What are some other ways you think cryptocurrency might affect marketing in coming years?