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The best Software as a Service (SaaS) companies of the 2010s decade – TechRepublic

November 30, 2019 | Author: admin

Thousands of SaaS companies provide cloud services to customers all over the world, but some stood out from the crowd during the decade that started with 2010.

Image: Iurii Motov, Getty Images/iStockphoto

The widespread adoption of cloud-based computing services by businesses and organizations around the world continues to accelerate at a remarkable clip. According to Gartner, total worldwide cloud revenue will reach $214.3 billion by the end of 2019. Contrast that amount with TechJury's estimate that the same worldwide cloud revenue amount was only $24.65 billon in 2010. Nearly a complete order of magnitude better in 10 years.

Drilling down on Gartner's statistics, one can see that the Software as a Service (SaaS) market is expected to reach nearly $100 billion in 2019. Obviously, the growth of the SaaS market during the 2010 decade has contributed substantially to the overall growth of cloud computing services. But of the 12,000 or so SaaS companies offering services, which few stood out during the decade?

SEE: Top cloud providers 2019: A leader's guide to the major players (TechRepublic Premium)

Before we start naming names, let me state for the record that this list of best SaaS companies is purely a personal choice and not based on any firm set of measurable criteria. There are literally tens of thousands of SaaS companies providing exceptional services to customers all over the world. If your favorite is not listed here, feel free to tell us why it should be in the discussion below.

For the purposes of this list we are also going to skip over the obvious big three players in the cloud computing services spaceAmazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. In this article, we will consider those companies' collective offerings to fall into the Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) categories.

You would be hard-pressed to find a company that epitomizes the SaaS category over the past decade as well as Salesforce. Since its inception in 1999, Salesforce has been on a mission to provide quality CRM services for its customers and has seen its revenue grow from $1.4 billion in 2010 to $13.28 billion in 2019.

Perhaps even more noteworthy is Salesforce's commitment to cloud computing as a service that can transform also-ran businesses and organizations into industry leaders. In many ways, Salesforce has been the decade's primary cheerleader for the benefits of the SaaS and cloud services industry.

When CEO Satya Nadella took over at Microsoft, he committed the company's product line and services to the business enterprise and the cloud. That transition and refocusing of resources has paid off in many ways, including the aforementioned Azure and the venerable productivity suite Office 365.

By making the primary components of Office cloud-based services, which are accessed on a per user subscription model, Microsoft has been able to maintain and even grow its market share in the productivity space. The cloud nature of Office 365 means that the productivity suite can be updated with new features and security patches at willa model businesses have come to expect from all cloud-based services.

As a cloud-based system, Office 365 can tap into the growing mobile workforce trends of the 2010s. For example, collaboration through cloud services like text, video conferencing, email, shared documents, etc., are now, after a decade of transition, standard operating procedure for many enterprises. Microsoft Office 365 caters to these trends and can therefore maintain its relevancy.

SEE:Office 365: A guide for tech and business leaders (free PDF)(TechRepublic)

While an established tech company like Microsoft had to transition to the cloud, Slack's trajectory was organic and powered by a perceived need. Slack grew from a small, internal grass-roots idea of making a better collaboration tool to a major cloud-service company in the span of about seven years.

Launched in August 2013, Slack and the products and services it developed have defined an entire new genre of business softwarethe collaboration hub. The success of Slack is part of the reason there is such a thing as Office 365. Slack became a publicly traded billon-dollar company in 2019 and is now a primary player in the all-important team collaboration space.

Like Slack, Zoom Video Communications burst on the scene in 2011 to change the way businesses and collaborating teams hold meetings, especially video conference meetings. Zoom provides remote conferencing services using the power of cloud computing.

Before Zoom, video conference systems were expensive, clunky, and often failed to work as advertised. By removing that bulky and unreliable infrastructure from the equation, Zoom has been able to make video conferencing a productive reality for many businesses that could not afford such niceties before.

By adding additional collaboration, scheduling, and educational tools, Zoom has become an integral part of the team collaboration space. Many Zoom services can be accessed for free, with the basic business package available for about $15 a month.

SEE:More Decade in Review coverage (TechRepublic on Flipboard)

Another company operating in the collaboration marketplace is Dropbox. The company was founded in 2007 but earned its prominent standing in cloud-based SaaS circles during the 2010s. Dropbox went public in 2018 and has more than 14 million paying customers as of November 2019. The standard plan sells for $12.50/month/user.

Dropbox provides a shareable cloud-based file storage system that is simple to use and is not reliant on the IT infrastructure of the customers it serves. If a user can access the Internet, they can access their Dropbox stored files. A team that can access the same document at the same time can collaborate on the contents of that document. A simple, but important, concept with a simple solution.

The success of the subscription payment model for so many cloud-based SaaS companies has led many "old-tech" companies to change the way they do business. Adobe, for example, now offers its familiar set of business products online, with access granted by subscription. This change of pricing philosophy took place in the latter half of the 2010s decade and can be attributed to Adobe's renewed success.

By offering Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat for about $30 a month instead of requiring thousands of dollars up front, Adobe has become affordable to more users, raising profits, and raising the profile of the company. The prominence of collaboration as a standard business practice has also inspired the company to create new products for a new generation of users.

Another old-tech company to find renewed success in the 2010s by embracing the cloud is the Oracle Corporation. While still concentrating on large business enterprises and their need for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and databases, Oracle has modified its approach away from expensive hands-on installations of new hardware with long-term maintenance contracts toward cloud-based SaaS services that more customers can afford. The transformation, started and completed during the past decade, has made Oracle relevant again.

During the 10 years that make up the 2010s, cybersecurity attacks have skyrocketed to become a daily problem for any business connected to the internet. It is practically impossible for an individual business to keep up with ever-changing cybersecurity protocols. This is where a cloud-based SaaS like Sophos can step in to help.

Using the power of cloud computing, Sophos can offer businesses security protections and protocols ranging from an improved firewall to threat detection to breach responses. By outsourcing these security measures organizations can focus on their daily business while Sophos worries about keeping ahead of criminal cybersecurity activity.

Looking at the list of best SaaS companies in the decade of the 2010s, you will notice several trends that will continue to be relevant in the 2020s.

Without a doubt, the most successful businesses in the next decade will be the ones that embrace the capabilities and predilections of the modern, always-mobile workforce. As younger employees enter the workforce, their affinity for mobile devices will continue to pervade day-today operations, and businesses must be prepared to take advantage. Contracting with prominent SaaS companies may be the most cost-effective method.

The other major trend to be gleaned from the 2010 decade is cybersecurityor rather the lack thereof. With ransomware and other attacks, criminals have found a lucrative form of security breach that is not likely to go away any time soon. Cybersecurity attacks happen every day, and businesses will likely need help from dedicated cloud-based services just to survive the onslaught.

Your go-to knowledge base for the latest about AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Docker, SaaS, IaaS, cloud security, containers, the public cloud, the hybrid cloud, the industry cloud, and much more. Delivered Mondays

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The best Software as a Service (SaaS) companies of the 2010s decade - TechRepublic

Microsoft, not Amazon, is going to win the cloud wars – IT PRO

November 30, 2019 | Author: admin

Brace yourselves, because Im about to share a theory that may be a little unpopular: I believe its only a matter of time before Microsoft Azure overtakes AWS as the dominant force in the world of public cloud.

I know that may sound crazy, and many of you are probably already reaching for the close tab button, but hear me out.

Its no secret that Bezos cloud computing division is currently sitting pretty as market leader, having capitalised incredibly effectively on its first mover advantage while its rivals initial efforts stalled. By cementing its reputation as the biggest force in the cloud industry, it has attracted a number of high-profile customers, but it has struggled to make a major splash within large, established enterprises.

You know who hasnt, though?

Microsoft.

While AWS has always been a favourite of startups and developers, Microsoft has concentrated firmly on the enterprise and met with remarkable success. To sweeten the deal, Microsoft has also been busily releasing a number of business-friendly features, such as its Azure Arc platform, which is designed to make it easier to consume and deploy its services across a large enterprise estate. In fact, any time Ive spoken to a CIO who hasnt yet moved to the cloud but is planning to, Azure has been a key part of their roadmap.

The stated reason for this is usually well, it works with all of our existing systems, which is a simple yet compelling point; if your on-prem servers are primarily running workloads like Active Directory, SQL Server and Exchange Server instances, opting for Microsofts cloud platform is sort of a no-brainer. Add in the fact that most large businesses are likely to be using Microsofts Office and Windows software (and even potentially Windows Server) and the logic becomes apparent.

More importantly, however, Microsoft has learned how to play nicely with others. Azure has always been a more open platform than most have given it credit for, but the addition in recent years of full native support for the likes of Linux and VMware show just how far its come. Its making a real effort to be as flexible as possible, allowing customers to run the workloads that they want in the way they want to run them.

This includes multi-cloud environments, which is the new hotness for businesses that want to avoid vendor lock-in and increase redundancy protection. Microsoft is more than happy to support multi-cloud deployments, if thats what the customer wants.

Amazon? Not so much. As we discussed on this weeks episode of the IT Pro Podcast, there have been recent reports that suggest that AWS partners are banned from even using the term multi-cloud, presumably on the basis that as the current top of the pile giving customers the option of using multiple providers only increases the risk that theyll ditch AWS for a better option. Note that in that scenario, the emphasis is not so much on giving customers the best possible option but on trying to hide from them the fact that other providers exist.

Amazon is undoubtedly on the cutting edge as far as tech development goes; its pioneering work on machine learning, serverless computing and function as a service tools are evidence enough of that. Its enterprise support that will determine the true winner of the cloud wars, however, and in this area, AWS is leagues behind Microsoft.

Infarm plants its blend of vertical farming and cloud computing in QFC grocery stores – GeekWire

November 30, 2019 | Author: admin

Lelaina Beyer, one of Infarms urban farmers in the Seattle area, harvests greens at the kiosk-sized farm in the produce section of the Kirkland Urban QFC store. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

KIRKLAND, Wash. The Seattle area offers a rich smorgasbord of geeky tech-as-a-service offerings ranging from software as a service, to gaming as a service, to pizza as a service.

Now you can add farming as a service to the list.

Thats what Infarm is going for, with hydroponic plant-growth cabinets that shrink the acreage needed to grow fresh greens to fit in a grocery-store aisle. The startup, based in Berlin, Germany, has just opened up its first North American farms inside a pair of QFC supermarkets east of Seattle, at Bellevue Village and here at Kirklands Urban Plaza.

Its a merger of agriculture and technology, Emmanuel Evita, Infarms global communications director, told me during todays first harvest in Kirkland.

The process began a few weeks earlier at a distribution center in Seattles Georgetown neighborhood, where the seedlings for herbs, kale and lettuce got their start. After about a week, Infarms urban farmers transferred the plants to on-site grocery cases, where theyve been spending the past few weeks reaching maturity in a closed, temperature-controlled environment..

LED lights shine with a magenta glow thats optimized for growth, while a hydroponic system feeds and waters the greenery. The plants sit in circular trays that are designed to give the roots more room as they grow. Infarm says its process uses 95% less water and 75% less fertilizer than soil-based agriculture.

Infarms cloud-connected sensors keep track of more than 200,000 plants that cycle through the system every month.

The idea is to have a global network thats also hyperlocal, Evita said. Its grown in stores, hyperlocal. But its global: Each of these farms is connected to the cloud, if you will, where we collect data from all of our farms around the world. At any farm, at any time, we know the pH, the temperature, the nutrient levels. We know everything about whats happening to the plants, and we can adjust accordingly.

Infarm was founded in Germany back in 2013 by a trio of entrepreneurs, and has since spread out to supermarkets across Europe. Among its partners are retail heavyweights including Amazon Fresh in Germany, Marks & Spencer in Britain, and Metro in France. In June, Infarm announced a $100 million funding round led by London VC Atomico.

The company is one of several ventures aiming to capitalize on vertical farming, with varying degrees of success. One such startup, Plenty, has attracted funding from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and other high-profile techies but announced earlier this month that it was putting its plans to build a 100,000-square-foot indoor farm in the Seattle area on hold.

About a year ago, QFC executive Suzy Monford came across Infarm during a visit to Europe. She sold her colleagues at Kroger, the grocery chains parent company, on the idea of forming the first U.S. partnership. Infarms cabinets are due to start popping up at about a dozen more QFC stores after the holidays and could put down roots with Krogers other divisions as well.

The value proposition focuses on getting fresh produce including salad staples such as lettuce and kale as well as basil, cilantro, dill, mint and parsley to customers who rarely get out of the city or down to the farmers market.

We are hoping to shorten the distance between where food is produced and where its consumed, Evita said. In 2050, therell be 7 billion people living in cities, and we want to do what we can to help feed these people in a sustainable way. What you see here is the beginning.

He offered me a snippet of the just-harvested cilantro with gloved hands. After rolling the leaf to release its aroma, I chewed the sample and was reminded of the fresh leaves of clover and lambs quarters that I munched on when I was a farmboy in Iowa. It was enough to make me believe Infarms claim that conventionally grown greens lose 45% of their nutrients by the time they arrive at the supermarket.

But dont just take my word for it: Christiane Leibrandt, a German-born transplant to Kirkland, was the first shopper to sample the basil and give a review. Really delicious, she said. I love basil and use it a lot. The flavor is really rich.

Freshness comes at a premium: Infarms lettuce sells for $2.99, compared with the $1.99 price for a head of organic leaf lettuce on the next aisle over. But that $2.99 compares more favorably with the price charged for other brands of living, hydroponically grown butter lettuce.

The acid test came when I brought a head of Infarms caravel lettuce home and pulled off a leaf for our canaries. The birds love the lettuce we grow in the back garden, but theyre not so crazy about store-bought stuff.

For what its worth, the leaf was pecked down to the stem in a half-hour.

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Infarm plants its blend of vertical farming and cloud computing in QFC grocery stores - GeekWire

What to expect from AWS Re:Invent 2019 – IT PRO

November 30, 2019 | Author: admin

The card tables at las Vegas will have to make way for cloud computing this week, as AWS is in town for Re:Invent 2019.

Last year the conference took place in eight venues, with some 50,000 cloud computing enthusiasts descending on the city of sin. There was a lot to take in too, from new blockchain and machine learning service to even satellite data platforms, the announcements came thick and fast.

AWS is the leading provider of public cloud services, so naturally its annual conference is gargantuan. It cant afford to rest on its laurels, though, as its rivals are building up their own offerings and gaining on Amazon fast. In just the last year Microsoft has invested heavily in Azure with a string of acquisitions for migration services, while IBM has changed focus with its massive Red Hat deal and Google is ploughing so much into its cloud its hurting Alphabet earnings.

This is without mentioning the biggest cloud computing deal of the last two years, the Pentagons JEDI contract, being awarded to Microsoft, despite AWS being the clear favourite for much of the bidding.

Bearing all this in mind, I do expect to see a slew of new products and services unveiled throughout the week.

AWS tends to do marathon keynotes that run on for three hours and overflow with announcements. Last year CEO Andy Jassy fired through new products and special guest customers with the same stamina that saw Eliud Kipchoge recently break the world record over 26.2 miles.

Jassy is, of course, back again this year, for not one but two keynotes. On Tuesday he will deliver his main opening day presentation, while on Wednesday he will join the head of worldwide channels and alliances, Doug Yeum for a fireside chat.

CTO Werner Vogels will be on stage on Thursday with an in-depth explainer on all the new products. This two hour deep dive is definitely one for the diehard fans of cloud architecture, with all the technical underpinning you crave. For the frugal, get there early the first 1,000 guests in the keynote line will get a special piece of swag, according to the website.

Last year, machine learning and the AWS Marketplace took precedence and 2019s event should hold more of the same. Recently, the company announced the launch of the AWS Data Exchange, a new hub for partners to share large datasets that customers can use for their machine learning and analytical programmes.

The customer element is key for AWS, as it often integrates and shares these innovations. Last year, head of Formula 1 Ross Brawn joined Jassy on stage keynote and showcased what his sport had done with AWS Sagemaker and other machine learning services. Interestingly, the basic idea for the prediction models they used came from a London-based startup called Vantage Power that developed the technology to predict the lifespan of electric batteries in buses.

Doubtless there will be some kind of machine learning update, but what it is could depend on what AWS customers have innovated. Last year the company announced a partnership with NFL app Next Gen Stats, the automation of NASCARs video library and multiple services with US-based ride-hailing firm Lyft. Vegas is all about gambling, but its a safe bet that at least one of these companies will be in attendance to talk through case studies.

Bitcoin Has Wall Streets Love. But a Lack of Utility Means It Doesnt Have Investors. – Barron’s

November 30, 2019 | Author: admin

Bitcoins price may be evaporating, but Wall Street players are embracing it like never before. The owner of the New York Stock Exchange has begun Bitcoin futures trading, Fidelity is expanding its Bitcoin custody business, PricewaterhouseCoopers is auditing crypto funds, Davis Polk & Wardwell is giving them legal advice, and Marsh & McLennan is helping companies get insurance. All the boldfaced names are on board.

Those developments would seem to be bullish for the digital currency. And yet, Bitcoin has been languishing, and not just in terms of its price, which is down 16% over the past month, to $7,700. The digital currency simply isnt useful, and there is no clear path to it getting there.

There needs to be greater utility, said Adam White, the chief operating officer of Bakkt, the cryptocurrency custodian launched by NYSE-owner Intercontinental Exchange (ticker: ICE). White was speaking at a conference put on by a New York company called BlockWorks Group that aims to educate investors about cryptocurrencies.

Theres an argument that Bitcoin is a store of value, and acts like digital gold, and that is its use case, White said. That may be true. Its our thesis that the size of that pie will never be big enough to justify the aspirations and the opportunities that this technology brings.

A recent survey of crypto and blockchain CEOs and founders connected to venture-capital firm Digital Currency Group came to a similar conclusion about Bitcoins use cases. Of those leaders, 71% expect Bitcoin will mainly be used as a store of value over the next five years, and another 7.6% say it wont be useful for anything.

Bakkt is trying to push Bitcoin into the real world, working with Starbucks (SBUX) to let people pay with it at the register. But even that experiment shows Bitcoins limitations. When the service launches next year, Starbucks wont actually be accepting Bitcoinsoftware will turn it into cash before it hits the companys balance sheet.

Others have similar hopes for larger adoption. Konstantin Richter, CEO of blockchain company Blockdaemon, said at the BlockWorks conference that the biggest impact for all of us would be somebody like Square accepting Bitcoin for payments. That would probably double the price of everything. But Square (SQ) already tried to allow merchants to accept Bitcoin in 2014, before pulling the plug because of a lack of interest. Despite now allowing users of its Cash app to invest in Bitcoin, it hasnt brought Bitcoin back for merchants.

Wall Street has built a robust structure around cryptocurrency. The walls, electricity, and pipes are secure, but the building remains a shell where few want to live. In part, this is simply a matter of timing. The infrastructure had not been there in 2017, when Bitcoin was having its moment, doubling monthly and drawing millions of new retail investors. The washout that followed drove many of those investors out.

There may be no way to convince those investors to crawl back in given the rout they experienced in 2018, when Bitcoin lost 70% of its value. But some fund managers think there is another demographic that will soon get comfortable with crypto.

If you think about the wealth of this country, its in the hands of 50- to 80-year-olds, not 20- to 30-year-olds, said Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital Holdings, a crypto-focused merchant bank. We havent had this group participate in a big way yet.

A Galaxy affiliate introduced two new funds aimed at that crowd in November, with one demanding a minimum investment of $25,000. Fidelity, Bloomberg, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, and Davis Polk are all on board to track and provide custody for the products. For the first time we can actually create a fund that has institutional service providers, institutional feel, Novogratz said.

Still, one challenge to getting those 50-to-80-year-olds involved is that Bitcoin remains subject to remarkable volatility, with price moves that can be difficult to explain. Optimists say the idiosyncratic moves show that Bitcoin is uncorrelated to the rest of the market. But its one thing to invest in an uncorrelated asset, and quite another to invest in an irrational one.

Despite the pedigree of the firms now backing crypto, Bitcoins drastic price moves continue to rattle the market, including an 18% plunge in a matter of hours on Sept. 24. Explanations for the moves often seem pasted-on after the fact. People do try to reverse engineer it to link it back to an event thats perhaps caused it, says Simon Peters, an analyst with brokerage eToro. He adds that Bitcoins recent weakness has been caused by a lack of demand. Miners are looking to offload Bitcoin on exchanges, but they arent finding enough buyers, he says. Investors may be rattled by Chinas decision to ban many cryptocurrency exchanges.

Even with the recent drop, Bitcoin nears the end of 2019 in stronger shape, its price having doubled since January. In its 10th year of trading, the digital currency hit several significant milestones and drew in major new playersmost prominently, Facebook (FB) announced its Libra project to create a new digital currency that would make payments cheap and easy around the world.

Going forward, it will need a new narrative. Bitcoins most distinctive attribute is that it allows money to be transferred over the internet by people who wish to remain anonymous. Proponents call this censorship-resistance, but it also means that Bitcoin is used to fund things like child pornography rings, blackmail schemes against local governments, and subverting elections. Its no surprise that Bitcoin made several cameos in the Mueller report.

Bitcoin remains an elegant technology, with real potential. But to catch the eye of those 50-to-80-year-olds who havent yet invested, it will need a clearer purpose beyond just Wall Streets approval.

Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com

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Bitcoin Has Wall Streets Love. But a Lack of Utility Means It Doesnt Have Investors. - Barron's

Bitcoin Isnt Dead But One Day You Will Be – Forbes

November 30, 2019 | Author: admin

Reports of bitcoin's demise may have been exaggerated but everyone who's currently holding bitcoin is going to die one day (probably).

What happens to our digital remnants when we die has been a problem the likes of Facebook and Google have already had to grapple withbut digital currency like bitcoin makes the problem far more pressing.

Now, U.K.-based Coincover, founded just last year, has teamed up with Palo Alto-headquartered bitcoin storage company BitGo to offer bitcoin and cryptocurrency willshoping to solve the problem of what happens to your bitcoin when you die.

Bitcoin has only been around for just over 10 years but it will likely still be around long after ... [+] we're gone.

When access to a bitcoin wallet is gone, the bitcoin is gone forever. Coincover reckons around 4 million bitcoin (worth some $30 billion at current prices) has been lost as a result of people dying without letting their next of kin know how to access it.

And as bitcoin and crypto become more mainstream (eventually), the number of bitcoin being lost forever into the ether is only like to rise.

"As bitcoin becomes more mainstream and its value continues to increase, considering how to manage it as part of an estate planning exercise is becoming increasingly difficult," said David Janczewski, Coincover's cofounder and chief executive, adding that, with bitcoin, "theres no bank manager to ask, and no one can break in for you."

Earlier this year, in perhaps the worst case of posthumously lost bitcoin, the chief executive of Canadian bitcoin and crypto exchange Quadriga, Gerald Cotten, died suddenly while on vacation in India, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies apparently unrecoverable.

Bitcoin's epic 2017 rally meant many bitcoin holders became overnight millionaires, with many ... [+] worried about what will happen to their bitcoin when they died.

Though Coincover's service does little more than hand out pseudo-wallet keys to people's next of kin, bitcoin and cryptocurrency remains so clunky and tricky to use that most spouses, children, or parents of bitcoin holders would be unable to recover it on their own.

It may be that as crypto and digital asset services improve there won't be a need for this kind of service, but for now those with extensive bitcoin and crypto holdings are understandably worried.

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Bitcoin Isnt Dead But One Day You Will Be - Forbes

Bitcoin Could Be an Alternative to Endless Money Printing – BeInCrypto

November 30, 2019 | Author: admin

Money printing should be big business at a time where many central banks are in the process of affecting quantitative easing. But, the fact that money printing is still a necessary act proves how dated fiat currencies really are. Bitcoin could be an alternative to this.

It has been seen that the US Federal Reserve is not shy toprintbillions of dollars in a day. Still, the current economy and the business of money printing is actually showing just how outdated this is as a form of payment.

UK banknote printer De La Rue has recently become a potential target for a takeover after the companys share priceplummeted. The company announced there was material uncertainty surrounding its future, triggering its shares to plunge almost a quarter.

If there was a better indicator that the future of money might not be tangible, it is that money printers despite being in high demand are unsure of their own future.

Cash, although a staple of money and payment for hundreds of years, was never going to be the final solution. The world has witnessed the evolution of money in the past few hundred years, and it appears as if the next revolution is upon us.

Bitcoin has yet to quite prove itself as the answer to the evolution of money, but it would be fair to say it has helped catalyze the digital drive towards a cashless society. In fact,Swedenhas already started its move away from cash in pursuit of being a society that only uses digital cash.

Now, with De La Rue as another indicator of this global movement away from printed money, a new era is being reached where the old way of doing things is starting to appear obsolete.

According to theTelegraph, CEO Clive Vacher said De La Rue has gone through an unprecedented period of change in which many senior executives have jumped ship.

The fact that this money printing business is embattled also shows the exorbitant parts of the current traditional financial system. Many are quick to point out that Bitcoin uses large amounts ofelectricity to run, but the system is probably far less damaging than the entire financial ecosystem, which includes mints, money printers, banks, and other financial institutions.

More so, Bitcoin operates intangibly, meaning there is no need for resources like in the printing of paper money, or the minting of coins. Also, the energy usage in the accumulation of those materials, as well as the production of the money, should also be taken into consideration. The worlds first cryptocurrency does have a few issues to work out, but it is on a path to try and fix those concerns.

On the other hand, the legacy system of fiat currency is starting to grind to a halt and struggle in the modern era. If those who are creating the money are starting to struggle, what does that say about the money itself?

Images are courtesy of Shutterstock.

Move Over Jack Dorsey And Elon Musk, Theres A New Bitcoin Believer In Silicon Valley – Forbes

November 30, 2019 | Author: admin

Bitcoin's epic 2017 bull run was at least partly inspired by interest in bitcoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain from the world's biggest banks and financial institutions.

This year it was the turn of tech companies to boost bitcoin. After falling sharply in 2018, the bitcoin price rallied hard in the first half of 2019 due to tech companies from social media giant Facebook to iPhone-maker Apple eyeing bitcoin and crypto.

Now, with the likes of Tesla's Elon Musk and Twitter's Jack Dorsey talking up bitcoin, PayPal chief executive Dan Schulman has revealed he's a bitcoin believer.

PayPal's CEO Dan Schulman said he holds bitcoin and only bitcoin.

"Yes, only [bitcoin]," Schulman told Fortune magazine in response to being asked whether he holds any cryptocurrencies.

Schulman's attitude to bitcoin and crypto reflects the wider market, with many increasingly confident bitcoin will remain the largest and most popular cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin's dominance, its value compared to the whole cryptocurrency market, has risen this year as so-called altcoins are sold off. Bitcoin dominance now sits at around 65%, up from around 50% at the beginning of the year, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Schulman, who was speaking to the magazine after he pulled PayPal out of Facebook's troubled libra cryptocurrency project, also confirmed earlier reports the company has teams working on blockchain and cryptocurrency.

"We think theres a lot of promise to blockchain technology," Schulman said. "Its intriguing to us, but it really needs to do something that the traditional rails cant do."

"On the crypto side, its still very volatile, and therefore, we dont have much demand for it by merchants because merchants operate on very small margins.

"That doesnt mean that I dont think crypto is an interesting idea ... more commodity-like than it is cash-like right now. But you can think of use cases in different countries and different places where it can be more stable than the alternatives."

Many in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry were excited by Schulman's revelation, taking it as an endorsement of bitcoin and its potential.

"PayPal CEO owns bitcoin. Thats it. No other crypto. Only bitcoin," said crypto investor and co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital Assets, Anthony Pompliano, via Twitter, adding a fire emoji.

The bitcoin price was sent sharply higher this year as some of the world's biggest technology ... [+] companies began to develop their own bitcoin rivals.

In June, PayPal was revealed to be one of Facebook's 28 founding members of the Libra Association but the company backed out in October along with payments rivals Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe.

Facebook, the world's largest social media network that includes messaging app WhatsApp and image-based Instagram,is scrambling to make its June 2020 launch date for its bitcoin rival libraagainstmounting regulatory scrutiny and internal strife.

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Move Over Jack Dorsey And Elon Musk, Theres A New Bitcoin Believer In Silicon Valley - Forbes

Bitcoin Gets a Big Boost in Germany After Banks Allowed to Offer Cryptocurrencies – BeInCrypto

November 30, 2019 | Author: admin

The regulatory constraints that previously prohibited German banks from offering Bitcoin-related services to clients could soon become a thing of the past.

New reports are coming in that once the fourth EU Money Laundering Directive comes into effect, financial institutions in Germany will have the legal and regulatory approval to offer and hold cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin.

While details regarding a definitive timeline are yet unknown, the move is likely to be fully implemented sometime in 2020.

This is indeed an exciting development for the Bitcoin community not just in Germany, but pretty much all throughout the EU and beyond. After all, having a wide range of conventional banking and financial institutions offering cryptocurrencies will make the asset class more appealing to some skeptics and first-time investors.

Meanwhile, its a win-win situation for banks too given that they now have a whole new market to tap into. Up until now, no regulated German financial institution was allowed to offer cryptocurrency-related services directly to clients. The best they could do was to redirect the clients to a subsidiary or external custodians.

With the new regulations kicking in, German investors will be able to invest in Bitcoin and other digital assets via domestic funds rather than the old approach of turning to offshore funds. In other words, investing in cryptocurrencies via a German bank could become as easy as investing in any conventional asset such as stocks and bonds.

Meanwhile, not everyone seems convinced about the merit of this latest pro-crypto move by the German central bank. Some critics are arguing that it is a bad idea to allow banks to directly sell cryptocurrencies and related services to customers.

According to them, this could pave the way for unwarranted scenarios wherein banks would be keen on directly selling Bitcoin or other digital assets just the way they sell other financial products such as credit cards. Under such circumstances, it is possible that some banks will sell these digital assets to their clients without properly disclosing the risks associated with the asset class.

Meanwhile, the politician and financial commentator Fabio De Masi of the Left Party has warned that banks should not prioritize making a profit out of the cryptocurrency space at the expense of customer protection, according to a local media report.

Of note here is that German banks seem to be of the view that the use of virtual currencies as a viable financial instrument is inevitable. As BeInCrypto reported earlier last month, more than 200 German banks united to propose a pan-European digital currency along the same lines as the DCEP in China.

Images are courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Bitcoin Gets a Big Boost in Germany After Banks Allowed to Offer Cryptocurrencies - BeInCrypto

Bitcoin Gives the World Democratization of Savings Hedge Fund Exec – Cointelegraph

November 30, 2019 | Author: admin

Bitcoin (BTC) can bring the worlds population out of debt thanks to its ability to allow consumers to save without permission.

That was according to Misir Mahmudov, the author and operations associate at cryptocurrency hedge fund Adaptive Capital, in his latest advocacy of Bitcoin on Nov. 27. Mahmudov is the brother of Murad Mahmudov, the well-known Bitcoin proponent.

Writing on social media, Mahmudov argued saving in BTC permitted anyone to bypass the barriers to traditional methods of saving such as stocks and real estate.

Bitcoin is the democratization of savings, he summarized.

As a result, Mahmudov continued, large numbers of prospective savers would benefit:

Today, you can stack sats & store your wealth in the scarcest asset. The ability to save wealth in bitcoin will bring millions of people out of debt.

According to the latest statistics, the United States national debt alone equals around $70,000 per capita. Global debt is now so large that for every Bitcoin that will ever exist, there is currently $12.1 million of debt.

Bitcoins status as sound money has long seen support from academics such as Mahmudov, with others highlighting its specific benefits over phenomena such as fiat currency.

In particular, Saifedean Ammous, author of the popular book The Bitcoin Standard and formerly a professor at the Lebanese American University, continues to point out that fiat represents the antithesis of saving mentality.

Through issuing money which they can inflate at will, governments and central banks foster a culture of spending and borrowing while demonizing saving.

In what is known as a high-time-preference mentality, consumers who use fiat are taught to spend it, not save it, as its inflationary nature means it will buy less in the future. For Ammous, it is John Maynard Keynes, one of the architects of modern economic policy, who is directly to blame for the damage.

The Bitcoin Standard quotes Keynes infamous soundbite about the long-term impact of his advice: In the long run, we are all dead.

With Bitcoin, a provably scarce form of money with a fixed supply which is impossible to manipulate, the opposite is true for savers.

As Cointelegraph noted, analysts even predict that Bitcoin price models will become less useful in time due to fiat losing its value. Since the U.S. Federal Reserve was established in 1913, the dollar has lost over 96% of its value in real terms.

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Bitcoin Gives the World Democratization of Savings Hedge Fund Exec - Cointelegraph

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Bitcoin Has Wall Streets Love. But a Lack of Utility Means It Doesnt Have Investors. – Barron’s

Bitcoin Isnt Dead But One Day You Will Be – Forbes

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Move Over Jack Dorsey And Elon Musk, Theres A New Bitcoin Believer In Silicon Valley – Forbes

Bitcoin Gets a Big Boost in Germany After Banks Allowed to Offer Cryptocurrencies – BeInCrypto

Bitcoin Gives the World Democratization of Savings Hedge Fund Exec – Cointelegraph

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