The Care Bears, Roger Ver, and Tesla shenanigans: Bad crypto news of the week

Check out this week’s Bad Crypto podcast.

While Bitcoin stays under its $12,000 ceiling, you can take your pick of future price predictions. The Winklevoss Brothers say that the coin will reach $500,000 and maybe even $600,000 if governments start to include it in their currency reserves. The twins didn’t put a date on that prediction but Ecoinometrics, a data analysis firm, thinks that the post-halving pattern points to a $41,000 price before the end of the year. Bitcoin will then hit six figures in mid-April, they say. Or you can take the advice of Max Keiser. The RT host sees Warren Buffett’s recent investments in Japan as a sign that the Sage of Omaha is getting out of dollars. Bitcoin, he says, will soon see all-time highs. 

Buffett himself has called Bitcoin “rat poison squared” but he’s not the only person to be skeptical about digital currencies. Users on Reddit have uncovered a thread showing the response to Satoshi’s initial posts. It looks like no one liked it… except Hal Finney. 

Roger Ver feels the same way now about Bitcoin ABC. The new Bitcoin Cash fork wants to implement a “coinbase rule” that would move 8 percent of new Bitcoin Cash to a development fund. The question is who gets to keep the Bitcoin Cash name. Ver wants to be sure it’s not ABC.

In friendlier news, Indian exchange CoinDCX will hold an online training and blockchain certifications course. The company hopes to reach 50 million users in India. Portbase, a logistics solution provider, has completed the first phase of its integration with the blockchain platform Tradelens. The companies will manage operations and processes for ports in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. And Spartan Black, an Asian cryptocurrency fund, sees good things in store for Polkadot. The price of the new protocol’s DOT increased by 200 percent within eight days of launch, and analysts think it still has a way to go. The protocol scales fast, costs less than Ethereum, and is made by Gavin Wood who was responsible for much of Ethereum’s development. 

Polkadot isn’t the only blockchain protocol that might be useful in the future. FinID is a Brazilian project developed through CPqD, a telecommunications research and development center. The project aims to use the blockchain to create sovereign, decentralized digital IDs. 

Tommy Leas, also known as DJ PLS&TY, has used Foundation, the Ethereum-based art and culture platform, to launch his vinyl “Very Special” EP. The platform sells tokens that buyers can redeem for a physical good, raising the price in line with demand. Leas started his limited edition record at $50. Twelve sales later, it’s selling for $68.27.

If that price sounds like a steal, you’re hearing what one Tesla employee heard recently. The employee was approached by someone offering them $1 million worth of Bitcoin in return for placing malware on Tesla’s computers. The hacker planned to demand $4 million not to publish the company’s stolen data online. But the employee told the FBI and worked with law enforcement to trap the hacker. A Russian national, Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, has been charged.

Despite having such honest workers though, Tesla’s stock price has been less than stellar. The share fell 4.7 percent in a day, following the company’s decision to sell stock to raise capital. Zoom, however, zoomed up 41 percent in a day. That makes for a rise of 571 percent this year.

And finally, the Care Bears will be joining Cryptokitties and Atari on blockchain-based gaming world The Sandbox. The eighties toys will be releasing NFTs that players can use in the Care-a-Lot environment. Who would have predicted that?

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Joel Comm is an internet pioneer, New York Times best-selling author, futurist speaker and co-host of The Bad Crypto Podcast. That’s a fancy way of saying he writes words, says things and loves to play with cryptos.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.