The blockchain/crypto week in quotes

“Crypto is to money what Amazon was to retail.” Nigel Green, founder and CEO, deVere Group

“After a difficult year, price trends are indicating that the crypto winter is finally coming to an end. Interest in the crypto market is increasing again, with financial and tech businesses looking again at how they can implement crypto and blockchain into their models.

Facebook’s move to integrate crypto into its payments system is the latest example of this and is yet another positive move which will bring crypto closer to a mainstream audience. I expect that this interest will continue for some time and more enterprises will begin to explore uses for crypto, as Bitcoin’s lack of correlation with other assets, and the macro demand for growth, will continue to drive institutional investment. From our point of view, we’ve seen a lot more demand for services around IEOs and STOs in recent weeks, as businesses explore how they can offer crypto services to their customers.” José Maria Macedo, Head of Advisory, AmaZix

“We don’t see much in the Ripple bank digital currency, but there is definitely still much hope that we can remove a lot of inefficiency…when it comes to cross-border payments.” Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)

“The Commission anticipates new applications for clearinghouse registration resulting from the explosion of interest in cryptocurrencies; an area in which protection of the cryptocurrencies will be one of the highest risks.” US Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Christopher Giancarlo 

“As grocers are being held to higher standards of visibility and traceability they will lead the way with the development of blockchain, but we expect it will extend to all areas of retail. Similar to how the financial services industry has used blockchain, grocers will evolve best practices as they apply blockchain capabilities to their ecosystem. Grocers also have the opportunity to be part of the advancement of blockchain as they develop new use cases for important causes for health, safety and sustainability.” Joanne Joilet, Senior Research Director, Gartner

“Last year was a terrible year for crypto, a massive bear market, and we published a piece this week just highlighting 11 signs that historically only take place in a bull market. So I think the evidence is mounting that there’s a bull market.” Fundstrat Global Advisors founder Tom Lee

“The news of free-to-use cash machines disappearing in the UK and nearly 1,700 machines in the first three months of the year now charging is a worrying sign and seemingly a trend that isn’t going to go away. For many of us, and particularly the Millennial generation, cash use is reducing as we crave faster ways of paying and ease of use, which almost every major retailer is supporting now with PoS systems. More worrying though is the obvious barriers that can be put in place to prevent free access to our own money.

Communities around the cryptocurrency industry have seen the benefit of decentralisation and payments directly between individuals without a corporation sat in between, where access to and control of funds is directly down to the user. Next generation technologies that have evolved from the likes of Bitcoin, like temtum, are not only free to use but transactions will always be free as well. This is still at a time where cryptocurrencies are struggling for regulatory clarity and adoption, but this ATM news just continues to promote the benefits of crypto that will eventually shine through.” temtum Founder and Senior Cryptography Advisor, Richard Dennis 

“The world will not be built by crypto Twitter. Nothing will. Which is why I prefer LinkedIn. It merely sits on the sidelines noisily opining about why things are not possible and everything is a scam, watching the ebb and flow of an asset class currently uncorrelated to actual innovation or adoption.” Jamie Burke, Founder and CEO, Outlier Ventures 

“Many players in the automotive industry are already considering blockchain technology usage that goes way beyond swapping tokens for data, and which include enabling the registration of car ownership, service records, and mileage securely and immutably on public blockchains.

Another opportunity for the use of blockchain technology in the automotive industry is to use the same type of encryption schemes in various ways to enhance ownership control. If a token should be used in a blockchain system, it´s important for the user that it is helping bring costs down and users should not be at the mercy of potential outswings in the value of such a token.” Lone Fønss Schrøder, CEO of Concordium and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Volvo Cars