Did an April Fools joke cause bitcoin to breach $5K?

At one point in the 2013 comedy “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Matthew McConaughey’s character Mark Hanna – a slick, coke-snorting stockbroker – tells Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, “Nobody – I don’t care if you’re Warren Buffett or Jimmy Buffett – nobody knows if the stock is going to go up, down, sideways or in circles.” While many in the financial services world might disagree, we can probably all agree that this accurately describes the current crypto market. Just replace “the stock” in that sentence with “bitcoin.” (Originally published 4/8/2019 at John Lothian News.)

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Crypto cybercrime crosses into the physical world

Last week, the alleged kidnappers of Anne-Elisabeth Hagen, the wife of the Norwegian multi-millionaire real estate investor Tom Hagen, demanded a ransom of €9 million worth of Monero (XMR), a cryptocurrency known for allowing blockchain transactions that are exceptionally private, and therefore extremely difficult to trace. (Originally published 1/17/2019 at John Lothian News.)

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