Bitcoin is going to continue to make people rich, but on the unfortunate flipside the cryptocurrency will also cost people a lot of money.
And panellists at the AB Forum on Monday agreed that while there will always be rogue elements associated with crypto markets, education is key to sort the genuine opportunities from those that will prove costly mistakes.
The market, which had peaked at nearly $2.6 trillion in April, plunged more than 50 percent in total over 11 days.
Addressing the panel, entitled ‘Cryptocurrency – get rich or fool’s gold, Matthew White, digital trust leader at PwC Middle East, said: “Some people are going to make a lot of money out of this, out of crypto-trading, out of Bitcoin, and some people are going to lose money and that’s unfortunate. Circumstances that I think are unfortunate right now, we’ve got trading platforms that allow retail investors to jump in on a 100-times leverage. That isn’t really helpful for crypto because what you’re getting is people chucking their life savings into that and losing lots of money.
Matthew White, digital trust leader at PwC Middle East
“Some of what’s going on right now is unhelpful, and unfortunately I do think some people are going to get rich, the people that do their research, who look at how this is going to play out; and some people are going to jump on a meme, put loads of money into it and lose that when somebody says it’s a scam.”
The panel, which included Simon Hudson, CEO and founder of Cheeze, also discussed the recent controversy surrounding DubaiCoin, which jumped 1,000 percent within 24 hours of its launch last week, but was later deemed a fake – both its name and logo had been used fraudulently – according to ArabianChain Technology, the UAE-based blockchain start-up that started Dubai Coin in 2017.
“This is a fundamental question about the regulation of exchanges unfortunately and a lot of people that are in the crypto space don’t like the idea of regulation. I think it’s essential to stabilise what’s going on,” said White.
Arabian Business contributor Anthony Scaramucci, founder of Skybridge Capital, revealed recently he has $500m of Bitcoin under management now.
Simon Hudson, CEO and founder of Cheeze
And Hudson agreed that there are opportunities, despite the volatility of the market.
He said: “I would say where we currently sit is in a correction point. I think there’s been a lot of press, good and bad. I think the beginning of the year it was very wild, we hit $60,000-plus on Bitcoin, Etherium doubled and I think where we are not is a very equalisation and correction point. There’s going to be a lot of coins that drop off and there’s going to be new ones that come to market and I think going through this correction we’ll see some steady up and some will continue to rise.
“I would say if you are looking to buy, now is a good time to buy.”
Follow us on
