2020 has created more than a brave new world. It’s a world of opportunity rapidly pressuring organizations of all sizes to rapidly adopt technology to not just survive, but to thrive. And Andrew Dugan, chief technology officer at Lumen Technologies, sees proof in the company’s own customer base, where “those organizations fared the best throughout covid were the ones that were prepared with their digital transformation.

” And that’s been a common story this year. A 2018 McKinsey survey showed that well before the pandemic 92% of company leaders believed “their business model would not remain economically viable through digitization.” This astounding statistic shows the necessity for organizations to start deploying new technologies, not just for the coming year, but for the coming fourth industrial revolution.

This podcast episode was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not produced by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.Lumen plans to play a key role in this preparation and execution:

“We see the fourth industrial revolution really transforming daily life ... And it's really driven by that availability and ubiquity of those smart devices.” With the rapid evolution of smaller chips and devices, acquiring analyzing, and acting on the data becomes a critical priority for every company.

But organizations must be prepared for this increasing onslaught of data.

As Dugan says, “One of the key things that we see with the fourth industrial revolution is that enterprises are taking advantage of the data that's available out there.” And to do that, companies need to do business in a new way. Specifically, “One is change the way that they address hiring.

You need a new skill set, you need data scientists, your world is going to be more driven by software. You’re going to have to take advantage of new technologies.

” This mandate means that organizations will also need to prepare their technology systems, and that’s where Lumen helps “build the organizational competencies and provide them the infrastructure, whether that’s network, edge compute, data analytics tools,” continues Dugan.

The goal is to use software to gain insights, which will improve business.When it comes to next-generation apps and devices, edge compute—the ability to process data in real time at the edge of a network (think a handheld device) without sending it back to the cloud to be processed—has to be the focus. Dugan explains:

“When a robot senses something and sends that sensor data back to the application, which may be on-site, it may be in some edge compute location, the speed at which that data can be collected, transported to the application, analyzed, and a response generated, directly affects the speed at which that device can operate.

” This data must be analyzed and acted on in real time to be useful to the organization. Think about it, continued Dugan, “When you’re controlling something like an energy grid, similar thing. You want to be able to detect something and react to it in near real time.

” Edge compute is the function that allows organizations to enter the fourth industrial revolution, and this is the new reality. “We’re moving from that hype stage into reality and making it available for our customers,” Dugan notes. “And that’s exciting when you see something become real like this.

”Business Lab is hosted by Laurel Ruma, director of Insights, the custom publishing division of MIT Technology Review. The show is a production of MIT Technology Review, with production help from Collective Next.This podcast episode was produced in partnership with Lumen Technologies.

Show notes and links

“Emerging Technologies And The Lumen Platform,” by Andrew Dugan, Automation.com, September 14, 2020


“The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond,” by Klaus Schwab, The World Economic Forum, January 14, 2016


“Why digital strategies fail,” by Jacques Bughin, Tanguy Catlin, Martin Hirt, and Paul Willmott, McKinsey Quarterly, January 25, 2018

Full transcript

Laurel Ruma: From MIT Technology Review, I’m Laurel Ruma, and this is Business Lab, the show that helps business leaders make sense of new technologies coming out of the lab and into the marketplace. Our topic today is building a connected platform for the fourth industrial revolution, which, granted, is a concept that is still being refined in practice, but is undoubtedly here, as data, artificial intelligence, network performance, and devices come together to better serve humans. Two words for you: next-generation apps.My guest is Andrew Dugan, who is the chief technology officer for Lumen. He has more than 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry and, unsurprisingly for his time as an engineer, more than 20 patents filed. Andrew, welcome to Business Lab.

Andrew Dugan: Thanks Laurel. I’m very happy to be here.Laurel: So, launching a new company during a pandemic may not be the most ideal situation, but a great opportunity to rise to the occasion. How has the covid-19 pandemic helped Lumen prepare for, perhaps unexpected, customer needs?Andrew: Well, covid has been difficult. It’s certainly had a terrible impact on the world, but one of the positive parts of it is that I’ve been really pleasantly surprised at how our team has responded and how our customers have responded. And covid gave us a really good opportunity to show how our infrastructure and our services are scalable by being able to turn up emergency bandwidth for our customers in a record time, surprisingly quick. Covid has also had a measurable increase in our customers’ understanding of how important digital capabilities are because those organizations that fared the best throughout covid were the ones that were prepared with their digital transformation.

We’ve watched how our customers’ needs have changed throughout covid. Early on, we did surveys and found the early concerns were around supply chain. “Will I be able to get the things that I need to be able to continue to run my business? Will I be able to keep my employees safe?” And we’ve seen a shift towards more of the digital concerns. “Is my new way of operating secure? Do I have the right type of security measures in place? Do I have the right type of network for my remote employees or maybe for my customers to be able to consume my services?

” A lot of businesses are looking forward and saying, “How do I create new forms of revenue in this covid world?” And so they’re looking at technology to help them with that. And we’re finding that the services that we have available at Lumen can really help them with that need. So, it’s been a difficult time, but also one that's exciting from a technology perspective.

Laurel: It has that, hasn’t it? We interviewed the CIO at Boston Children’s Hospital and he said that in the early days of covid telehealth visits skyrocketed from 20 visits a day to 2,000. Obviously, there's been a bit of a decrease as patients returned to in person visits, but clearly this is a huge disruption to the way that things were done. What opportunities during this time of great global disruption do you think could be actually accelerated?

Andrew: As I mentioned, I think businesses have really recognized the power of digital capabilities in today’s world. And I think covid has helped accelerate a lot of businesses in that digital transformation. The longer-term cultural changes that I think will result here, those usually take generations to occur. And when you’re forced into an environment like covid has put us into, it can help accelerate some of those changes. Whether it’s more work from home, the way that health care is provided through more virtual and online services, the way that people market and sell their services. Who would have thought that the number of home sales or cars that were sold through virtual visits would be a normal way of doing things? Also, the way that people interact. From my own personal experience, I’ve done more social interaction through game nights online. I even did an online wine tasting myself with my family and it was quite fun. So, I think we will see continued evolution of products and services, new revenue streams for companies as they embrace the possibilities of what technology can bring to them.

Laurel: Do you have any examples of what you’re hearing from your customers? Just kind of those, “Oh, we didn't know we could do X, but now we can and maybe it’ll work out.” Just those off-handed conversations that sometimes you have.

Andrew: Well, I think a lot of our customers were surprised at how quickly they were able to transform to a remote work environment. So, they were able to move the majority of their workforces home with little or no disruption to their business. We certainly found that in our business.

So I think that was one thing that was surprising for our customers was the usefulness of online learning. I’m not sure that many people before this would have expected that we could support this level of online learning or online healthcare. So I think those sorts of things, many people did find surprising at how quickly and how ready the technology was to support them.

Laurel: Yeah, to be able to do that, whether it’s education or telehealth, a complex and fast edge network needs to be built in most places, right? And expanded in others. So when you think of these complexities, how do companies best handle their plans for not just the edge, but also growing data infrastructure that's needed to support all of these services?

Andrew: One of the key things that we see with the fourth industrial revolution is that enterprises are taking advantage of the data that's available out there. There’s a lot more data being generated through things like IoT and smart devices, and the way that enterprises, I think, get to take advantage of those is they are going to have to do a couple things. One is change the way that they address hiring. You need a new skill set, you need data scientists, your world is going to be more driven by software. You’re going to have to take advantage of new technologies. Edge compute is one of those that’s emerging and becoming more available. And they're going to have to learn how to build that into their applications and their processes. And they're going to have to look at how the data can make them more efficient, what sort of new revenue streams they can create. So, those are going to be challenges that they may not have faced before. They may not have had to learn how to use AI and machine learning tools. But I think that those will become more critical as the fourth industrial revolution develops for enterprises to be successful.

Laurel: And that’s one of those things where if the old saying is true, that if every company is a technology company, then the technology demands today have advanced pretty greatly, pretty quickly, especially in the face of covid, but in general as devices get smaller and faster and edge compute becomes more real.

Andrew: Yeah, I think that statement is really true that every company is a technology company. I’ve got a family member that owns hair salon business, and you wouldn’t think that that’s a technology company, but how you interact with your customers, you need to have a digital presence. You need to have digital tools that may be less data-driven, but over time will become more data-driven. So, I think you’re absolutely right, that almost all businesses are becoming technology businesses to some extent.

Laurel: Especially with AI and ML [machine learning]. You add this all together with edge compute, AI, better devices, faster devices [and you have something new]. So, the World Economic Forum says the fourth industrial revolution isn’t just accelerating but exponentially advancing technological breakthroughs. How specifically does Lumen, or do you, define the fourth industrial revolution?

Andrew: We see the fourth industrial revolution really transforming daily life, not just people’s personal life, but organizations, as we talked about enterprises are becoming technology companies. And it’s really driven by that availability and ubiquity of those smart devices. Those smart devices are generating data, and enterprises and businesses, their ability to be successful is really being driven by their ability to acquire, analyze, and act on the data coming from those smart devices, to be able to improve their products and services, improve their outcomes as a business and differentiate themselves from competitors. And for us at Lumen, it’s about how do we enable those businesses to use that data and help them build the organizational competencies and provide them the infrastructure, whether that’s network, edge compute, data analytics tools, to help them implement insights using software to improve their business.

Laurel: So, thinking about that acquire, analyze, act on the data, what are some of those challenges that enterprises have with data and processing it?

Andrew: One of the biggest challenges as this transformation occurs, and as it’s centered around that data, it really does come back to that skill set. If your business is being driven by the data, you have to have the people that are able to understand that data and extract value from it. And that’s data science, and more businesses are going to require a data scientists, that skill set to be able to acquire, analyze, and figure out how to act on that data. That’s going to be driven by software, so I think there will be an increasing need for those software skill sets. Those are certainly challenges that they’re going to face. They’re also going to face technology challenges. How do you deal with the new architectures that are going to be required, whether that’s edge compute or more of the AI machine-learning technologies, to be able to deal with all of that data and extract that value. And then how does that affect their processes? A lot of times their processes today aren’t built around data. Those processes can be too slow. Data provides them a real opportunity to improve that efficiency, improve the speed, give them more of an ability to make real-time decisions as they automate the analysis of that data. So, having skills for things like robotic process automation across the organization to help take advantage of that, I think are going to be important, too. So, improving their people’s skill set, how they take advantage of technology, and how that affects their process are all going to be challenges that they have to deal with.

Laurel: That’s an excellent point. It’s not just one thing, is it? You really do have to improve the entire system down the line. And the focus on some companies may be hiring. And then on some other companies may be those apps and solutions and deployment because they have the infrastructure already built. As we know, the data has come out, and the companies that have done better during this time are ones that have already started or are in process with their digital transformation. So what specifically are some of those characteristics you can see forward-looking companies or companies who have started their digital transformation or in the process of it? What kind of technologies and thinking are they using and deploying?

Andrew: Yeah, I think that varies by industry. We talk to a lot of larger enterprises. People who are building smart factories as an example, and they’re dealing with, how do they make better use of robotics? How do they build that infrastructure? How do they run that infrastructure? How do they make it more secure? We see other enterprises out there that are looking to collect information about how their services are used, what their customers want to do with it and collecting that data and trying to figure out how to use AI and machine learning to better predict what their customers will need. So, it really varies by industry, but it’s the software tool sets that are out there to help them solve their business problems through data, but also the infrastructure that they’re going to need to be able to run things like smart factories with robots that are connected through wireless technologies. Feeding data back through sensors to their applications, which may not be located on-site. How do you run and operate those applications? How do you connect it all together and make it work seamlessly? Those are some of the things we’re seeing.

Laurel: And it’s a very complex issue for sure. So, speaking of robots, there’s always this discussion about automation in the work that robots can do instead of people, specifically those “tedious tasks,” that allow humans to do more creative work. What kind of opportunities do you see with robotics and automation?

Andrew: Oh, I see quite a bit. That’s a way for businesses to become more efficient, produce a better quality product, have a safer environment. Going back to that smart factory example, we’re talking with customers who are trying to figure out, how do they take advantage of the advancements in robotics and how do they build out the infrastructure? One of things that we found is that customers need help with deploying and managing those applications. They need help with the connectivity of those robots, to the network. They need to ensure that the infrastructure that’s supporting them can support the real-time processing. That’s so important in these robotics applications and looking for somebody who can help them design these solutions end-to-end from their enterprise locations where the factory is through the edge to the centralized cloud is something that we’re in a good position to help them with and has been a more recurring conversation as those enterprises try to figure out how to take advantage of the automation that robotics provides.

Laurel: Yeah, speaking of that competitive advantage, where are you seeing it? Smart factories and those edge devices? Are there any unexpected places that you’re starting to see that advantage come through?

Andrew: Yes. There are. There are some things that I think are less obvious. One of our customers is a retail food chain, and you wouldn’t think that these technologies and the applications, the processing of data would be as important as it is. When you drive up to a restaurant, you want to go through the drive-through and get something. And you see the line wrapping around the building. There are certain restaurants where you look at that and you say, “Oh, that line is going to take me too long, but there are other restaurants where you look at it,” you say, “Yeah, that line does wrap around the building, but I know from my experience that I can get through that line in just a few minutes.” The fact that those restaurants run an efficient line like that, it’s not by accident, it’s not by necessarily just hard work with the employees, although they do work hard. It’s because the applications that they’re using have created a more efficient operation, whether that’s automation of the food preparation inside, how they collect the orders from customers, how they process the orders, the process that it allows them to operate as a business. So, it is affecting every parts of the business. Even those that you wouldn’t think are highly dependent upon data, highly dependent upon applications, like a retail food establishment. Their business success is becoming increasingly more dependent on the things that are enabled by the fourth industrial revolution.

Laurel: That’s really interesting because when you think about just that one example, there are so many edges there, right? And that doesn’t even go into supply chain and efficiency across the entire retail chain, across a certain geographic area. When we think about this kind of real-time response rate, yes we have this example in a retail food chain, but why is it so important? Why is real-time processing that key component to the fourth industrial revolution?

Andrew: I think there’s a couple of reasons why. One is that the lifetime of data in many cases has a very short useful life. And whether it’s that robotics example or other examples like smart energy grids, you’ve got sensors out there. Those sensors are collecting information. The applications that are being written to react to those sensors are being written for real-time response. Whether it’s in going back to the robotics example. When a robot sensors something and sends that sensor data back to the application, which may be on-site, it may be in some edge compute location, the speed at which that data can be collected, transported to the application, analyzed, and a response generated, directly affects the speed at which that device can operate. And so the ability to manage that data process, that data in real time is critical for those types of applications. When you’re controlling something like an energy grid, similar thing. You want to be able to detect something and react to it in near real time. Other examples of safety examples, where you’ve got video processing managing the movement of something around a campus. The ability to see something in the camera sense it, detect ,and react to it is critical for safety. So we’re seeing a lot of applications that their dependency on fast processing of data is becoming very important to them.

Another reason for real time is the amount of data being generated out there is just huge. And that data is moving quickly and you don’t have necessarily to store it over a long period of time. And as that data is coming in, you want to be able to process it as quickly as you can, extract whatever value you can out of it, and then dispose of that data. And so you don’t want to get behind in that processing and the ability to handle it in real time is also important.

Laurel: Yeah. Kind of focusing on that sense, detect, and react that of course has a lot to do with the security as well. So the attack surface of what enterprises are looking at now is growing, right? So it’s every device, every network connection, every point. How is security tackled and how is this a priority for businesses?

Andrew: Yeah, this is a really interesting problem, I think. Years ago, an enterprise would build a private network and they would protect it largely with perimeter based security. You make sure that data or people getting into that network are the people and data that you want there. And you could protect a lot using a perimeter model like that. As applications distribute, as they become available on the public internet, that perimeter based security is not the only thing that you can rely on. You have to think about security at every layer. And the layers that I think you have to worry about today is your network.

One, operating system, application security and your data security. From a network perspective, you want to ensure that you’re operating on a network that is inherently secure. One of the things that we do at Lumen to help with that is we have a group that we call Black Lotus Labs. It’s a research group inside the company and their job is to analyze data available through the internet. Through analyzing internet traffic patterns and detecting malicious actors out there, and then build that protection into our networking and enterprise security products. By doing that, we can make the network inherently more secure at the operating system level and application level. You need to make sure that you’re continually patching. That you’re understanding what exposures might exist in that operating system that’s running your applications and the applications themselves. And ensuring that you’re continuing to close any gaps that are found. And as data becomes more available, as we’re extracting more and more valuable information about our customers and users using that data analytics, data privacy and security are becoming even more important. And so, use of data encryption where appropriate, ensuring that you have the right data security and controls in place is also critically important. So yeah, we’ve changed quite a bit from a perimeter model to one where you need to think about it at every layer of the network and layer of your application.

Laurel: And that makes sense as everything becomes much more integrated and like you said, the data at every layer demands that sort of response. So when I’m thinking about customers, that’s a broad category. And Lumen obviously is a bit behind the scenes to their customers’ customers, but still very important. You need to care about how everyone is using the network devices. And how do you instill that curiosity into your organization where you look out and you are responsible for the experiences of many different people and many different applications. And it’s hard to, I guess, sometimes square what a smart factory does with a food retail outlet, but at the same time, you’re still reliably giving them that network connectivity securely, quickly to allow them to do what they need to do.

Andrew: Well, I think you hit on it there. Even though it’s our customers’ customers that have a lot of the experience that we’re trying to drive, we really do have a direct effect on that. As you outlined, it’s the network experience. We provide a lot of the underlying infrastructure and the performance of our network directly affects those end customers’ experience. So, that’s really important. How secure we make our network, how secure we make our infrastructure also directly affects those end customers. So, we try to instill in our employees, in our products and services, that recognition that we are here to create a great customer experience for our customers and indirectly to their customers. And I think we do a good job of that. I think everybody recognizes how critical the services are that we perform and provide and that our customers rely on us.

Laurel: Absolutely. So one last question, as an engineer yourself, we’ve touched on so many different aspects and we could easily talk for days about certain parts of this conversation, especially security, but what are you most excited about or curious and what gets you just really happy to read the news, to get going, to do the hard work that really helps companies do those amazing things?

Andrew: Well, I get excited about technology being an engineer. There’s so much that we can help our customers do to improve their businesses but improve society overall. I look at that technology as being a real tool that we can make available to our customers to make things better. And it’s really fun for me to be involved in the development of the technologies that empower them to take advantage of this fourth industrial revolution. One of the ones that gets me up on a daily basis recently is the developments around edge and edge compute and supporting these applications that are becoming more performance sensitive. How do we build and manage the infrastructure that lets those applications operate with a high degree of performance so that they can provide that real-time feedback to our customers and real time improvement?

So, it’s pretty exciting that the edge compute part of what we’re building is relatively new. The conversation’s been around in the industry for a couple of years, but it’s now becoming real and we’re moving from that hype stage into reality and making it available for our customers. And that’s exciting when you see something become real like this.

Laurel: It is. Anything to get away from the hype and into the reality. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me today in what has been just a fantastic conversation on the Business Lab.


Andrew: Thank you very much. Enjoyed it.

Laurel: That was Andrew Dugan, who is the chief technology officer for Lumen, who I spoke with from Cambridge, Massachusetts, the home of MIT and MIT Technology Review, overlooking the Charles River. That’s it for this episode of Business Lab. I’m your host, Laurel Ruma. I’m the Director of Insights, the custom publishing division of MIT Technology Review. We were founded in 1899 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And you can find us in print, on the web and at dozens of events each year around the world. For more information about us and the show, please check out our website at technologyreview.com.

This show is available wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, we hope you’ll take a moment to rate and review us. Business Lab is a production of MIT Technology Review. This episode was produced by Collective Next. Thanks for listening.

For the nearly 100 million people around the world who’ve been infected with the coronavirus, new science offers some comfort: Reinfections appear to be rare, and you may be protected from Covid-19 for at least five months.

The study, the largest of its kind, followed more than 20,000 health workers in the UK, regularly testing them for infection and antibodies. Between June and November, the researchers — from Public Health England (PHE) — found 44 potential reinfections out of the 6,614 participants who had tested positive for antibodies or had a previous positive PCR or antibody test when they joined the study. (The full results aren’t yet published, but PHE told Vox a preprint would soon be shared online.)

Meanwhile, of the 14,000-plus people who had tested negative for the virus at the start of the study, there were 409 new infections.Only two of the 44 potential reinfections were designated “probable” and the rest were considered “possible,” “based on the amount of confirmatory evidence available,” the health agency press release said.

According to the BMJ, 15 people — or 34 percent — had symptoms.So if all 44 reinfections are real, that translates to an 83 percent lower risk of reinfection compared to health workers who never had the virus. If only two are confirmed, that rate of protection goes up to 99 percent.

Either way, it means natural immunity provides a similar level of protection as the approved Covid-19 vaccines.As with the vaccines, it’s not yet clear how long immunity after an infection lasts. Antibodies may fade after five months or last much longer, something the researchers behind the ongoing study, which will run for a total of 12 months, plan to investigate.

“This [new] study does provide some comfort that naturally acquired antibodies are pretty effective in preventing reinfections,” Akiko Iwasaki, an immunobiologist at Yale University, told Vox. The findings also square with another paper on health workers, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in December:

Researchers found people who had Covid-19 antibodies were better protected from the virus for six months than people who did not.

That said, Iwasaki said, “You can also interpret these data to mean that protection against reinfection is not complete — especially for people who had Covid during the first wave, say in March-April 2020.”

People who had the virus may still be able to pass it on if reinfected

The good news for individuals who have had Covid-19 also comes with a warning about the risk they can still pose to other people. While antibodies might protect against a second case of Covid-19 in most people, “early evidence from the next stage of the study suggests that some of these individuals carry high levels of virus and could continue to transmit the virus to others,” PHE warned in the press release.

“We now know that most of those who have had the virus, and developed antibodies, are protected from reinfection, but this is not total,” Susan Hopkins, a senior medical adviser at PHE and the study lead, said in a statement, “and we do not yet know how long protection lasts.

”In other words, even if you’ve had Covid-19, while you’re unlikely to get really sick again anytime soon, you should still consider yourself a potential risk of spreading it to others if you catch the virus again and may be asymptomatic. That means continuing to take precautions — like mask-wearing and social distancing, Iwasaki added. And it’s one reason why immunologists have said people who’ve already been infected with the virus should still plan to get the vaccine when their turn comes.

There’s also still a lot we don’t know about immunity after Covid-19: How exactly does it compare to immunity after vaccination? How will the new coronavirus variants affect it?Who is most likely to have a lasting immune response? We do have some evidence that different individuals mount different antibody responses after Covid-19 infections. And it’s possible factors like gender and disease severity influence the strength of a person’s immune response.

For now, though, the research suggests that survivors of the virus might just help us get to herd immunity faster — if their immunity lasts long enough. But given the virus has only been known to humans for a little over a year, it may take a while to authoritatively answer the question.

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Sarah O’Connor is absolutely right (“Workplace surveillance may hurt us more than it helps”, Opinion, January 12) when she says workplace surveillance must be subject to greater oversight and collective bargaining.

Workplace surveillance is creeping into all of our lives, and it’s not just in warehouses and factories owned by “bad” employers.

The explosion in homeworking has meant a huge management challenge, not only logistically but also in terms of how you ensure you are getting the most out of your employees.

It is perhaps not a surprise that managers whose idea of productivity is being glued to your desk all day are turning to surveillance software to keep an eye on their workforce — measuring keystrokes, time on calls, emails sent and so on.


 The FT has been a champion for what responsible capitalism looks like. The challenges around privacy, data and surveillance go to the core of that.

Often it is not referred to as “monitoring” technology.

For example, Microsoft’s Productivity Score function within Office 365 sounded innocent enough to most people, but when unions and campaigners looked under the hood it quickly became apparent that this was monitoring technology in all but name.

Microsoft has since removed this functionality.

This is not an isolated incident and it demonstrates the need for greater oversight of tech and of the data companies hold on their workers.

Prospect has called for the Information Commissioner’s Office to update its Employment Practices Code to make sure workers are informed and involved when our data is being used to manage us.

The UK’s General Data Protection Regulation rules make it clear we should be consulted, but this does not always happen.

We now consider data rights as the new “health and safety” rules. Just as we trained our workplace reps to negotiate safer workplaces, we are now training them to talk to their employers about data and surveillance.


 New technology is a fact of life. Employers need to work with unions to make it a success, and government needs to use the forthcoming employment bill to update our rights at work so they keep pace with the modern world.

Andrew Pakes
Research Director, Prospect
London SE1, UK

• Bitcoin slid on Friday as investors took profits from the volatile trading week.
• The cryptocurrency fell as much as 11%, to $34,409.04, at intraday lows.
• The slide closes out bitcoin's second most volatile week in the last three years. Choppy trading saw the token climb as high as $41,440 and fall as low as $30,324.
• The week also saw more voices dismiss the cryptocurrency as a dangerous market bubble.
• Billionaire investor Mark Cuban likened it to the internet stocksof the dot-com era, and European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde deemed it a "highly speculative asset which has conducted some funny business."
• Watch bitcoin trade live here.

Bitcoin dipped on Friday as less volatile trading pulled prices back below $35,000 after clearing $40,000 the day prior.BThe cryptocurrency fell as much as 11%, to $34,409.04, at intraday lows..

The week's choppy price action saw the cryptocurrency rise as high as $41,440 and fall as low as $30,324. The market froth made for the second most volatile week in the last three years.

After clearing its 2017 peak in December and doubling to nearly $42,000 in the new year, bitcoin has fluctuated as investors weigh securing profits against missing out on additional gains. The token currently trades roughly 25% higher year-to-date but about 11% below its early January record.

Read more: The CIO of a $500 million crypto asset manager breaks down 5 ways of valuing bitcoin and deciding whether to own it after the digital asset breached $40,000 for the first time


A growing chorus of voices deemed the crypto trade a bubble throughout the week, likening it to the dot-com boom of the 1990s. Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban said the token has traded "exactly like the internet stock bubble" that surged to extreme valuations before crashing in the early 2000s.

European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde, who sees a digital euro becoming reality in the next couple of years, said this week Bitcoin is not a currency but a "highly speculative asset which has conducted some funny business.

"Strategists have also tamped down on some of the hype surrounding bitcoin's rally. 

Read more: 'I don't believe that we've really left the recession yet': Bond king Jeff Gundlach lays out the 2 risks that investors should watch nearly a year into the pandemic - and shares the 4 components of a balanced, winning portfolio

"Wall Street just drools over the word 'crypto' any time it sees it without understanding any of this at all. It's not a surprise Wall Street does so, as anything that shows an exponential price increase would get their interest," Michael Every, a global strategist at Rabobank, said.

Technical analysts have said the price is fluctuating between support levels that could pave the way for record highs or a far deeper retreat. The Relative Strength Index for bitcoin - which tracks momentum over the last 14 days - only recently fell below levels indicating the token was overbought.

"While $35,000 may provide an interesting test, the only level that really matters is $30,000. A break of this could trigger a much sharper correction," Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda Europe, said.

U.S. banking powerhouse Goldman Sachs has issued a request for information (RFI) to explore digital asset custody, according to a source inside the bank.When asked about timing, the Goldman source said the bank’s custody plans would be “evident soon.”

Goldman’s digital asset custody RFI was circulated to at least one well-known crypto custody player toward the end of 2020.

“Like JPMorgan, we have issued an RFI looking at digital custody. We are broadly exploring digital custody and deciding what the next step is,” said the Goldman source, who asked not to be named. (An RFI on crypto custody was issued by JPMorgan in October 2020, as reported by The Block.) 

The Goldman insider said the bank’s digital assets initiative was “part of a broad digital strategy,” citing stablecoins in relation to recent missives from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

A tectonic shift took place in the world of crypto custody this week, as San Francisco-based Anchorage attained conditional approval from the OCC to become a national digital bank and “unequivocally” meet the definition of “qualified custodian” in the process.

Anchorage President Diogo Mónica said in an interview this regulatory approval will invite many large and risk-averse institutional players into crypto. When asked about JPMorgan, Goldman and Citi – the three big U.S. banks most are watching in relation to crypto custody – Mónica said: “We are talking to all these guys.”

There has been chatter about Goldman perhaps offering something akin to prime brokerage services involving crypto. However, the Goldman insider said the bank is looking at custody but not prime brokerage.

“Anchorage, BitGo and Coinbase have quite grand plans in crypto prime brokerage and we would not be looking to duplicate those,” said the Goldman source.

It has stated a variety of reasons for why the products cannot be “reliably valued” by retail consumers, such as financial crime, volatility and an inadequate understanding of crypto assets being the main ones. It was estimated that retail investors will save $53 million due to this ban.

This is despite the FCA releasing a research stating that U.K. consumers have invested an estimated $2.6 million in crypto assets.

Although the main intention of this ban is to protect retail investors from the complexity of these products, the assumption that retail investors in the U.K. have an inadequate understanding of crypto assets might be incorrect.

Jesse Spiro, global head of policy and regulatory affairs at Chainalysis — a blockchain analysis company — told Cointelegraph:

“Given the amount of available information and market intelligence that is now regularly produced on the cryptocurrency ecosystem, there are many retail investors that have a high degree of technical expertise and knowledge.”

Derivatives growth driven by institutional investors

Last year saw crypto derivatives go through an enormous growth phase, where the open interest in Bitcoin options multiplied threefold in 100 days, reaching a yearly high of $6.8 billion on Dec. 31 before growing even further in early January amid a bull run, reaching an all-time high of $10.5 billion on Jan. 7.

Even though this growth must include an increased interest from retail investors as well, there are several indicators pointing to the fact that it has mainly grown due to the involvement of institutional investors.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange is one of the most important exchanges for institutional investors to give themselves exposure to digital assets through Bitcoin futures and options.

The platform has reported that Bitcoin’s (BTC) average daily volume grew 114% year-on-year in 2020, which took the average daily open interest on CME up by 252%.

The unique active accounts also rose to 6,700, showing an 84% growth year-on-year. The main indicator of institutional interest, the number of large open interest holders, grew to a record of 110 in December as evident from the chart below.

The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority banned the sale of crypto derivatives and exchange-traded notes to retail investors effective Jan. 9, 2021. The FCA’s main underlying reason for this is the products are “ill-suited for retail consumers due to the harm they pose.” 





Jay Hao, CEO of crypto and derivatives exchange OKEx, told Cointelegraph that “crypto assets are indeed volatile as the FCA points out, and many investors have lost a lot of money when trades don’t go their way.” However, he added:

“The problem is that when retail traders make a loss, they are not in a position to absorb it as comfortably as high-net-worth individuals or institutional investors.”

Regulated access to retail investors?

The reduced risk appetite of retail investors as compared to institutional investors is one of the reasons that retail investors need protection from a regulatory body. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that all retail investors are unsophisticated and that they shouldn’t have an option to use derivatives to hedge risk in their portfolio.

Haohan Xu, CEO and founder of Apifiny — a global liquidity and settlement solutions provider — told Cointelegraph:

“Derivatives do more than amplify gains and losses. They also help investors hedge risks. Just because someone is unsophisticated does not mean that someone should be denied certain options to hedge risks.

”The risks in the crypto derivatives market are comparable to the risks of the foreign exchange markets, which are also highly leveraged. In these markets, governments and regulators all around the world step in and enforce maximum leverage limits for investors. The FCA could resort to solutions like that instead of a blanket ban, according to Hao:

“It is incorrect to assume that all retail investors are unsophisticated. Many of them have been in the crypto space for a long time and have a very good understanding of digital assets. Rather than a blanket ban on crypto derivatives for retail traders, which adds an additional layer of gatekeeping to the crypto space, we believe that education is key.”

Another issue that a blanket ban brings up is that retail investors who are persistent in investing in these banned products will need to circumvent this rule and invest in markets that are not under the FCA’s protection. Hao further stated:


“These investors would be outside of the purview and protection of the FCA — which is obviously counterproductive.

”Xu alluded to another method to circumvent the ban using decentralized finance markets, which have seen 30% growth since the beginning of this year:

“Although not favored by regulators across the world, DeFi derivatives platforms are always an option for crypto derivatives since most of them can be accessed by anyone from anywhere with just a wallet.

”It seems evident that there might be a better solution than a blanket ban, as it could possibly do more harm than good at this point, leading U.K. investors to marketplaces with no regulations or to lowering Know Your Customer standards, which brings more risk to retail investors who don’t have the same safeguards as institutional ones.

Retail education and regulatory engagement

Even after announcing the blanket ban on crypto derivatives and exchange-traded note products, Bitcoin’s price drop to $33,000 on Jan. 11 led FCA to issue a public warning about the high risks underlying all crypto assets and assets linked to them. The agency has also stated:

“If consumers invest in these types of products, they should be prepared to lose all their money.

”Hao elaborated on how education would be a more effective method to protect retail investors than outright bans:

“Education is key, and giving investors the chance to demonstrate their level of knowledge and skill before accessing complex products is crucial.

” He further stated: “Unfortunately, if retail investors are forced onto exchanges with lower security standards in virtual asset storage, they could end up suffering more harm from this ban.

”The crypto community has been contributing to these initiatives on education by establishing points and platforms for retail investors to be educated of any risks that are involved in trading within leveraged derivatives markets. Various exchanges have education and blog sections on their website tailored for retail investors to educate them on all these aspects.

There are also exclusive blockchain and cryptocurrency education platforms, such as Blockchain Education Network, which was started by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan.

It’s also essential for the crypto community to engage with governments and regulatory bodies to establish frameworks that enable retail investors to navigate these markets with ease. Spiro stated:

“The regulators’ priorities lie in protecting the financial ecosystem and consumers. Working collaboratively is the best way to pacify regulatory concerns while avoiding onerous regulation.

”Due to the size and volumes of the U.K. retail market in comparison to the global crypto derivatives market, it is highly unlikely that this ban will have a significant impact on the accelerated growth of the crypto derivatives that continues into 2021. According to Hao:

“The directional growth of derivatives is clear, and it will surpass the spot market in the near future. Exchanges have clients based all over the world, and as interest in cryptocurrencies rises, the jurisdictions that are more open and understand how best to regulate will end up being the winners in this race.”

• Bitcoin surged as much as 7.5% on Thursday, to $40,094.81.
• The red-hot cryptocurrency has seen immense volatility in recent days, with thousands of dollars per coin added and wiped out across short periods.
• Thursday's surge comes after European Central Bank boss Christine Lagarde called for more regulation the prior day.
• Morgan Stanley analysts say bitcoin focus "unsurprising" given low bond yields
• Sign up here our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell.

Bitcoin rose sharply once again on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, climbing past the $40,000 mark.It has been a volatile few weeks for bitcoin, with its price hitting an all-time high of close to $42,000 last week before paring.

The price has consistently swung around 10% a day as investors buy in and cash out of the cryptocurrency, which has surged more than 330% in a year.

Bitcoin climbed as much as 7.5%, to $40,094.81. Its smaller rival Ethereum rose 7.2% over 24 hours to $1,160.The dramatic rise in the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has sharply divided market opinion, pitting much - although not all - of the financial establishment against a new breed of online investor.


On Wednesday, European Central Bank boss Lagarde said Bitcoin needs to be regulated on a global level and linked it to "totally reprehensible money laundering.

"Read more: The CIO of a $500 million crypto asset manager breaks down 5 ways of valuing bitcoin and deciding whether to own it after the digital asset breached $40,000 for the first time

She said bitcoin is not a currency, as many of its proponents argue, but a "highly speculative asset which has conducted some funny business".Bambos Tsiattalou, a financial crime lawyer at London's Stokoe Partnership Solicitors, said tighter regulation would be a major problem for cryptocurrencies.

"Many people buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies because they are worried about and don't trust fiat currencies," so greater regulation would demolish much of their appeal, he said.

Read more: Cathie Wood's ARK Invest runs 5 active ETFs that more than doubled in 2020. She and her analysts share their 2021 outlooks on the economy, bitcoin, and Tesla.

Yet despite raised eyebrows from regulators and central banks, the soaring price has caused some institutional investors to buy in.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley said in a note:

 "With the large decline in the dollar, deeply negative real yields and continued policy uncertainty, investors have been looking for alternatives to traditional cash holdings.

"They added: "Innovation in digital assets continues rapidly and will likely drive increased
institutional participation over time."Yet the analysts cautioned that "the perception of 'value' and demand can vary materially, for example due to changing regulations."

The former chief technology officer of a prominent blockchain company has forgotten the password to a fortune in bitcoin.

• Almost a decade ago, Stefan Thomas, the former CTO at blockchain company Ripple Labs, was given 7,002 bitcoins worth $2-$6 each for making a cryptocurrency explainer video, reports the New York Times.
• The bitcoin (BTC, +4.99%) had been stashed away in a digital wallet and Thomas has used eight of his most frequently used passwords in an attempt access his IronKey hard drive and his now multimillion-dollar fortune but has had no luck.
• Two attempts now remain before the device auto-encrypts its contents, leaving Thomas’ fortune in limbo. Just call it Schrödinger's bitcoin.
• “I would just lay in bed and think about it," Thomas told the New York Times. "Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again,” added Thomas.
• Bitcoin prices have climbed from  $10,000 to $41,000 over the past three months. The price of bitcoin was at $34,290 at the time of publication, making Thomas' inaccessible stash worth an estimated $240 million.
• It seems Thomas will have to HODL on for a little while longer until he finds a way to access the bitcoin.

European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde says bitcoin has facilitated “funny business” and needs to be regulated at the international level.

• In an interview at a Reuters online event Wednesday, Lagarde said the “highly speculative asset” has led to "some reprehensible activity," including money laundering, and any loopholes need to be closed, according to a report from Reuters.
• “There has to be regulation. This has to be applied and agreed upon ... at a global level because if there is an escape that escape will be used,” she said.
• The European Union central bank chief added there will be a digital euro, hopefully in no more than five years, according to other reports.
• The ECB has been looking into the benefits and risks of a euro-based digital currency since the Facebook-backed diem (formerly libra) project was announced in June 2019.

UPDATE (12:40 UTC, Jan. 13 2021): Added further detail from Reuters report.Read more: Lagarde Seeks Public Comments About a Digital Euro, Implying a Broad Retail Offering Is Now on the Table

New York (CNN Business)Bitcoin prices surged to a new all-time high of nearly $42,000 on Friday, only to plunge all the way back to about $31,000 Monday morning. That's a more than 20% drop -- which means bitcoin is now in a bear market, as bizarre as it sounds.

Bitcoin is still up a lot over the past few months, not to mention from where it was trading just a few weeks ago. But the drop highlights how the stunning rise has raised alarm bells among some on Wall Street.

"It's scary when the price of bitcoin just goes straight up," said James Putra, vice president of product strategy for TradeStation Crypto. "This pullback was needed."

Just last week a strategist at Bank of America said bitcoin's surge may be the "mother of all bubbles," noting that the recent spike is larger than other notorious manias of the past few decades: gold in the 70s, dot-coms/tech in the late 1990s and housing in the mid-2000s.

So the drop of the past few days is a "healthy correction" that "was due a long time ago," according to Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at AvaTrade.Bitcoin first surpassed the $20,000 level in mid-December and soared above $30,000 earlier this month -- a huge rebound from a low of just above $4,000 as the Covid-19 outbreak sent global financial assets plummeting last spring.





Bitcoin rally may be the 'mother of all bubbles' says BofA

Even with the drops over the weekend and Monday, bitcoin is still up more than 10% already in 2021 -- and it has soared about 300% in the past 12 months.close dialog

Aslam said in a report that bitcoin might fall to the $28,000 to $30,000 level before bottoming out.

"This is not the time to panic but to look at this opportunity from a more optimistic lens," Aslam said, "as the bull run is not over yet, and it is still likely to make its journey to the upside."

Many bitcoin bulls remain optimistic about the future of cryptocurrencies, citing the fact that digital payment giants Square (SQ) and PayPal (PYPL) let users buy and sell it, and many top institutional investors including Paul Tudor Jones, Stanley Druckenmiller and Anthony Scaramucci are investing in it.

A top executive at BlackRock (BLK), the world's largest asset manager, recently said bitcoin could supplant gold as the main asset that investors can use to hedge against inflation and a weaker dollar.

• Bitcoin and other digital coins tanked on Monday, wiping off some $200 billion from the entire cryptocurrency market.
• Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, fell around 12% from a day earlier to $32,576.
• The sell-off in cryptocurrencies comes after a huge rally and perhaps signals some profit-taking from investors.

A visual representation of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin on November 20, 2018 in London, England.

Jordan Mansfield | Getty Images News | Getty Images

GUANGZHOU, China — Bitcoin and other digital coins tanked on Monday, wiping some $200 billion off the cryptocurrency market.

The market capitalization or value of the cryptocurrency market was $880 billion at 9:20 a.m. ET, down from $1.08 trillion a day earlier, according to Coinmarketcap.

Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, fell over 12% from a day earlier to $32,576, according to Coin Metrics data. It earlier sank to an intraday low of $30,863. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, was down 23% to $1,005. It briefly tumbled below $1,000, hitting an intraday low of $945.

Veteran investor explains why he likes cryptocurrencies and goldThe sell-off in cryptocurrencies comes after a huge rally and perhaps signals some profit-taking from investors.

Bitcoin is still up over 300% in the last 12 months and last week hit an all-time high just below $42,000.

“The correction we saw was expected as we believe the BTC price surge recently from under $20,000 to $40,000 in the past four weeks will induce sell pressure,” said Simons Chen, executive director of investment and trading at cryptocurrency financial services firm Babel Finance.

The $40,000 mark could have been a trigger for profit-taking, Chen said.Bitcoin’s resurgence has been attributed to a number of factors including more buying from large institutional investors.

And it has also been likened to “digital gold,” a potential safe-haven asset and a hedge against inflation. In a recent research note, JPMorgan said bitcoin could hit $146,000 in the long term as it competes with gold as an “alternative” currency. The investment bank’s strategists noted, however, that bitcoin would have to become substantially less volatile to reach this price. Bitcoin is known for wild price swings.

But some bitcoin critics — such as David Rosenberg, economist and strategist at Rosenberg Research — have called bitcoin a bubble.Long-term bullishness around bitcoin remains however.Jehan Chu, founder of cryptocurrency-focused venture capital and trading firm Kenetic Capital, said the pullback in bitcoin could be a buying opportunity for new investors.

“This short term correction is both natural and needed, and is a great entry point for long-term investors as we quickly reach $50k this quarter and $100k by year’s end,” Chu told CNBC.Last week, Social Capital’s Chamath Palihapitiya said bitcoin could go above six digits.

“It’s probably going to $100,000, then $150,000, then $200,000,” Palihapitiya told CNBC’s “Halftime Report.” “In what period? I don’t know. [Maybe] five or 10 years, but it’s going there.”

Investing.com - Bitcoin was trading at $36,804.7 by 15:15 (20:15 GMT) on the Investing.com Index on Sunday, down 10.52% on the day. It was the largest one-day percentage loss since September 3, 2020.

The move downwards pushed Bitcoin's market cap down to $695.4B, or 67.61% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, Bitcoin's market cap was $758.5B.Bitcoin had traded in a range of $36,804.7 to $41,362.4 in the previous twenty-four hours.

Over the past seven days, Bitcoin has seen a rise in value, as it gained 14.35%. The volume of Bitcoin traded in the twenty-four hours to time of writing was $70.6B or 41.27% of the total volume of all cryptocurrencies. It has traded in a range of $28,204.4961 to $41,921.7188 in the past 7 days.

At its current price, Bitcoin is still down 12.21% from its all-time high of $41,921.72 set on January 8.

Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading

Ethereum was last at $1,234.26 on the Investing.com Index, up 0.44% on the day.Tether was trading at $1.0002 on the Investing.com Index, a loss of 0.13%.

Ethereum's market cap was last at $143.5B or 13.95% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, while Tether's market cap totaled $24.2B or 2.35% of the total cryptocurrency market value.

Last year certainly qualifies as one of the most volatile in stock market history. Investors navigated their way through the widely followed S&P 500 losing over a third of its value in about a month. They also enjoyed a bounce-back rally for the ages, with the S&P 500 hitting new highs less than five months after finding a bottom on March 23.If there's one figure that stands out above all else, it's that 10% of the roughly 3,700 stocks with a market cap of at least $300 million ended 2020 higher by at least 100%.

That's a head-scratching number considering the magnitude of the recession caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.There's no question that select equities and assets got ahead of themselves over the trailing nine months since the stock market bottomed. However, one investment looks to be the most dangerous of all.

That investment, which I strongly believe should be avoided at all costs in 2021, is cryptocurrency bitcoin.

This investment is nothing but trouble

The largest digital token in the world by market cap hit an early morning high on Jan. 3 of $34,000. For some context, bitcoin has doubled since Nov. 27, is up 200% since mid-October, and has risen 363% over the trailing-12-month period.

Bitcoin's implied market cap of $628.2 billion now accounts for nearly 73% of the $866.3 billion in value tied up in more than 8,100 digital tokens.Why is bitcoin rallying? Search any number of social media platforms and you'll get no shortage of responses from enthusiasts.

Bitcoin bulls often suggest that its competitive edge, community consensus, and game-changing potential to transform payment processing made this rally easy to predict.

Dollar-cost averaging:

A crucial investing strategy for a potentially rocky yearInvesting apps make it easy for beginners:Here's how I started.

As for me, I don't believe bitcoin is unique in any way, save for being one of the preferred investment mediums on cryptocurrency exchanges. In other words, if investors want to buy a less-popular token, they'll usually need to exchange their fiat currency to bitcoin first before making their purchase. That, my friends, is the only true utility that bitcoin serves.

The concept of scarcity has been pulled out of thin air

Bitcoin bulls often point to its so-called hard cap of 21 million tokens as proof of its scarcity. Simple economics tells us that if demand for a good exceeds supply, and supply is limited, the price of that good should rise. Case closed, right?Not exactly.



You see, we're not talking about a physical good being in limited supply. Bitcoin's token cap is nothing more than an arbitrary figure plucked from thin air. Physical gold is considered scarce because we can't make any more gold than what can be found and mined on planet Earth.

That's not the case with bitcoin. Community consensus could lead to an increase in the token limit. The chance of this happening might be small, but it's not 0%.Bitcoin offers the perception of scarcity, and this falsity has helped drive its valuation higher.

There's minimal utility

You'll also hear about bitcoin being the future of global payments. Again, this isn't entirely accurate or possible.While the number of businesses accepting bitcoin as payment is climbing, the actual percentage of businesses willing to accept bitcoin is tiny.

According to financial services company Fundera, only around 2,300 U.S. businesses accept bitcoin as payment. Yet, the U.S. Census Bureau finds there are 32.5 million businesses in the U.S., including sole proprietorships. Even if we just counted businesses that have an employee, that's 2,300 out of 7.7 million companies accepting bitcoin.



Plus, approximately 40% of bitcoin tokens are held by investors and kept out of circulation. That leaves about 11.2 million bitcoin for transactions. The value of these tokens is close to $380 billion. In 2019, global gross domestic product totaled $142 trillion.Bitcoin has no path to game-changing utility.

It's not a store of value

No matter how much bitcoin enthusiasts want to equate bitcoin to gold, it's never going to be a store of value.

Store of value assets usually have identifiable relationships to government-backed fiat currencies, and they aren't all that volatile. For instance, gold has an identifiable inverse relationship with the U.S. dollar, and it's buoyed by physical scarcity.

Bitcoin doesn't have any identifiable relationships to government-backed fiat currencies. Enthusiasts would like you to believe that an inflated U.S. money supply is good news for bitcoin, but that would only be true if it had some sort of like-for-like federal government backing and had true scarcity – neither of which is true.

Bitcoin has also lost 80% of its value multiple times over the past decade, including a handful of instances when it was halved in roughly a 24-hour period. That's not how store-of-value assets behave.

You have no ownership in the underlying blockchain

Bitcoin bulls are also quick to point out how bitcoin's blockchain is revolutionizing the payment and settlement process.

While it's true that blockchain offers plenty of intrigue, buying bitcoin doesn't give token holders any ownership in the underlying architecture that might actually be worth something.Money tips for the new year:

Here are 21 ways to reduce debt, build an emergency fund in 2021

What's more, it's foolish (small f) to assume that bitcoin's blockchain is superior. Bitcoin may have first-mover advantage, but there are hundreds of ongoing blockchain projects that offer possibilities beyond the financial space.

There's virtually no barrier to entry

It's also important to note that the cryptocurrency space has virtually no barrier to entry. All it takes is some time and money to develop blockchain with or without a tethered digital currency. There are exactly zero guarantees that blockchain will be adopted on a broad scale, or that bitcoin will be in any way necessary.

There are a number of blockchain projects in development that may work with fiat currencies, or without a digital token at all.

It's not just bitcoin that's dangerous

Keep in mind that owning bitcoin isn't the only way you can gain exposure to this dangerous investment. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (OTC: GBTC) owns 607,038 bitcoin and essentially acts as a basket fund that investors can buy. Of course, those investors will pay a ridiculous 2% fee annually for the right to buy the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, and may have to buy in at a premium, as in years past. 

Likewise, business intelligence company MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) sunk more than $1.1 billion in balance sheet cash into bitcoin. This cryptocurrency stock issued debt just to buy extra bitcoin. Meanwhile, MicroStrategy's sales through the first months of 2020 were down 1%, while its operating losses widened.Put plainly, bitcoin is dangerous.

It's driven by short-term emotions, technical analysis, and misinformation about its scarcity, utility, and long-term potential. It's the one investment you should strongly avoid in 2021.


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Sean Williams has no position in any of the stocks or cryptocurrencies mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends MicroStrategy and has no position in any cryptocurrencies mentioned.

The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.The Motley Fool is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news, analysis and commentary designed to help people take control of their financial lives. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

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