The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced Wednesday it has invested $715,000 worth of lumens (XLM) tokens in DSTOQ, a security token platform that provides traders with access to global markets from their smartphones.
The investment arm of cryptocurrency project Stellar has made its first enterprise bid on a security token platform that provides emerging economies with access to traditional assets and cryptocurrencies.
The foundation’s CEO and executive director, Denelle Dixon, said DSTOQ’s goals clearly aligned with Stellar’s aim to make financial services more accessible. «It deeply resonates with our mission, which is creating equitable access to the global financial system,» she said in a Twitter video post.
This is the first investment SDF has made from its enterprise fund, which was created in September to support projects that contribute to the broader Stellar ecosystem. DSTOQ, which is domiciled in Liechtenstein, already leverages the Stellar protocol to create security tokens that users can buy and sell peer-to-peer.
In a statement, DSTOQ CEO and co-founder Craig Mc Gregor described the SDF investment as a «vote of confidence» for its vision to use blockchain technology to develop new financial products as well as to improve accessibility into global markets.
Built on the blockchain, DSTOQ says it can tokenize blue-chip stocks, like Apple or Google shares, and make them available to investors irrespective of where they are in the world. The company opted to use Stellar in October 2018, saying its consensus algorithm made the protocol secure against 51 percent attacks.
DSTOQ says that it plans to use the SDF investment to develop new technology and help fund the platform’s expansion into the Vietnamese and South African markets.
Silk Road Darknet Marketplace Founder: BTC Will Reach $100,000 in 2020
The price of Bitcoin will skyrocket up to $100,000 in the coming year, according to the founder of infamous darknet marketplace Silk Road.
In a series of blog posts on Dec. 10, Ross Ulbricht – the founder of now-defunct anonymous marketplace Silk Road – predicted that BTC’s price will reach $100,000 in 2020. The blogs were published based on letters he wrote in prison, using a type of market analysis known as Elliott Wave Theory.
Ulbricht claimed the possibility to carry out such an analysis even without knowing Bitcoin day-to-day price movements and the general condition of the market. To forecast the highs and lows in financial market cycles, Ulbright identified extremes in investor psychology. In terms of Bitcoin, investors’ emotions purportedly play a more significant role as opposed to traditional markets.
As such, Bitcoin price could be artificially increased by investor expectations combined with mass psychology and through a positive feedback loop of buyer optimism
Industry players predict BTC price
Some other industry players have also made predictions in regards to Bitcoin price movements in the upcoming year. Sources told Cointelegraph that Andy Cheung, head of operations at cryptocurrency exchange OKEx, sees Bitcoin surging above $14,000 in 2020. According to Cheung, a Bitcoin ETF listing in the United States could be a catalyst for the price increase.
Robert Beadles, president at blockchain company Monarch, reportedly suggests that Bitcoin’s halving in May could spike the price to $11,000 around this time. “I would further venture to say Bitcoin will hit $2 million a coin in the next 5 years so long as the core dev team doesn’t destroy it accidentally from within”, Beadles added.
The mastermind behind the Silk Road
Operating under the pseudonym ‘‘Dread Pirate Roberts”, Ulbricht was the mastermind behind the Silk Road, which let users buy and sell anything, regardless of legality. Although the site listed weapons, stolen credit card details as well as legal products, illicit drugs were by far the most common listing.
The Silk Road pioneered the use of Tor, the network software used to access the darknet, and Bitcoin escrow to conceal purchaser and seller identities and their activity. Ulbricht was arrested and sentenced to life in prison in 2015, convicted of money laundering and aiding in the distribution of drugs, computer hacking and fraud, among other charges.
Earlier in December, Tim Draper, one of the most successful investors in the world, called for Ulbricht’s release.
