Private Equity Moris Beracha Wuani

By Billy Bambrough  One of the world's largest bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchanges, the San Francisco-based Coinbase, is hoping to grow its footprint in Europe with digital gift cards, as users continue to struggle to get their hands on their crypto gains. Coinbase is rolling out the new feature, in partnership with London-based startup WeGift, that will give customers in Europe an alternative way to cash out their crypto coins. Users, initially only those in the U.K., Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Australia, will be able to convert virtual currency into gift cards from around 120 retailers including the likes of online giant Amazon, department store John Lewis, supermarket Tesco, and ride-hailing app Uber. Coinbase plans to eventually grow the service into other countries. "From converting bitcoin into Uber credits or ether into a Nike shopping spree, customers will have greater flexibility...

By Peter Stephens While stock markets across the globe have risen sharply in recent months, the price of Bitcoin has come under further pressure. The cryptocurrency has fallen by over 20% in the last four months, while the FTSE 100 has gained 10% and the S&P 500 is up by around 5% during the same time period. Meanwhile, gold has dropped by 6% in the last four months. However, this is at least partly due to improving investor sentiment, with defensive assets becoming less appealing to increasingly risk-on investors. As a result, the decline in Bitcoin is arguably even more worrying, since more confident investors should equate to higher demand for volatile virtual currencies. Investment potential Of course, Bitcoin’s journey has been filled with periods of intense disappointment. For example, in 2013 it came close to closing at $1,000 for the first time. At that point, it was becoming increasingly popular among investors, as it was outperforming a wide range of indices. Ho...

By Rakesh Sharma Slowly, but surely, bitcoin is making its way out of the woods. After the sudden spike in its price last week, the original cryptocurrency experienced another sharp increase Monday morning to post a two-month high. Two months ago, bitcoin was trading at $7502.56, with the cryptocurrency on a downward slide since then. At 08:00 UTC Monday morning, bitcoin reached a high of $7745.99, representing an increase of more than $300 in less than a couple of hours. And that increase hasn't stopped, with bitcoin sitting at roughly $8200 at the time of writing. (See also: Bitcoin Price And Crypto Markets Shot Up Earlier This Week. Why?) What Is Causing Bitcoin’s Price Increase? Bitcoin’s technical fundamentals were primed for an increase in its price. Several technical analysts had called out the rise because they spotted an “inverse head and shoulders” pattern in its price. According to this pattern, the price of a security alternates between successive troughs before br...

By iBankCrypto, Global Coin Report The trader’s mind is the same on any given marketplace. The fears and expectations regarding a commodities price at a particular time and period. But is there a direct correlation between the prices of Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum? The response to that question varies quite a bit depending on the combination of which digital asset and the period. From our observations, there are several times where the three virtual currencies have moved in tandem with one another in regards to price even though Bitcoin is the undisputed leader of virtual currency. For the past few years, the crypto space has witnessed several altcoins gaining relevance in the industry, among these altcoins include, Litecoin which was created in 2011 with the aim of being the second runners-up to Bitcoin’s gold. At present, Litecoin is the 7 th largest virtual currency by market capitalization after Stellar, EOS, Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, Bitcoin and Ethereu...

By Lubomir Tassev, Bitcoin.com Employees in Costa Rica can receive part of their salary in cryptocurrency and that wouldn’t be against the law. Certain provisions in the national legislation allow companies to pay their workers not only with fiat money but also with goods, and some legal experts believe cryptos can fit in this category. Besides, Costa Rican laws provide for the use of commonly accepted assets as means of payment.   Cryptos in Costa Rica Can Be Goods, Assets, Quasi-Money Workers in Costa Rica may soon start receiving a portion of their salary in cryptocurrency, local media reported. As far as Costa Rican law is concerned, there is no reason this cannot happen. The country’s legislation allows employers to partly remunerate their staff with goods that are not currency, as long as the legal minimum wage is paid in money. It also develops the concept of “quasi-money”, or any asset that can be used as a means of payment and has been widely accepted as su...

By Olga Kharif and Eric Lam in Bloomberg Cryptocurrencies extended their rebound on Wednesday as Bitcoin traded above $7,500 for the first time in a month, shrugging off security and regulatory concerns that have plagued the digital currency for much of this year. Bitcoin climbed as much as 3.1 percent to $7,543, according to Bloomberg composite pricing. Rival cryptocurrencies including Ripple, Ether and Litecoin also advanced. Bitcoin remains more than 60 percent below its all-time high in December. The cryptocurrency last traded above $7,500 on June 8, before getting caught in a sector wide sell-off that erased about $42 billion of market value the following weekend. Some observers pinned that retreat on an exchange hack in South Korea, while others pointed to lingering concern over a clampdown on trading platforms in China. Cryptocurrency venues have come under growing scrutiny around the world in recent months amid a range of issues including thefts, market manipulation and ...

BITCOIN has gained nearly $300 so far in trading today as the recovery from last week’s price plunge gathers momentum. Wallet holders are optimistic of a decent recovery period with analysis pointing to a "positive" return. By David Dawkins The leading cryptocurrency started last week at $6,723 and a return to $7,000 was thought to be on the cards before a sharp fall that started in Tuesday took the price down to $6,155 on Thursday. However, having gained $290 and nearly 3 percent so far today, the boffins at Bloomberg now predict that “positive times” could be on the road ahead for bitcoin, with analysis pointing towards the end to the current selling trend and a return to a “potential bull run”. Bloomberg write that Divergence Analysis Inc.’s (DVAN) Buying and Selling Pressure Indicator - a proprietary analysis charting the coin’s current price, trend line and ideal exit points - suggests the selling trend that began May 14 could end shortly, giving way to a potential b...

By Yohay Elam The price of Bitcoin shot higher on the news that Blackrock, the investment tycoon, has set a working group to see if cryptos have a potential. BTC/USD broke above key resistance levels that now turn into support. The Technical Confluence Indicator shows that BTC/USD is well supported at $ 6,549 which is the convergence of the Fibonacci 61.8% one-week, the Simple Moving Average 5-1h, the Fibonacci 38.2% one-month, and the Bolinger Band 15m-Middle.  Even stronger support awaits at the $ 6,360 -to $ 6,412 area. Here we see a congestion of the Bolinger Band 1d-Middle, the one-day high, the SMA 100-15m, the BB 1h-Middle, the SMA 50-4h, the SMA 200-1h, the BB 15m-Lower, the SMA 200-4h, the SMA 5-4h, the Pivot Point one-day Resistance 1, the Fibonacci 23.6% one-day, the Fibonacci 38.2% one-week, and the SMA 10-4h. The fact that BTC/USD broke above such tough resistance indicates it has momentum. So where next? $ 6,867 is the confl...

  The Kodak KashMiner appeared at CES in January BBC The company behind a Kodak-branded crypto-currency mining scheme has confirmed the plan has collapsed. In January, a Bitcoin mining computer labelled Kodak KashMiner was on display on Kodak's official stand at the CES technology show in Las Vegas. But critics labelled it a "scam" and said the advertised profits were unachievable and misleading. Now the company behind the scheme says it will not go ahead. Kodak told the BBC it was never officially licensed. What was the plan? Spotlite USA is one of many companies that licenses the Kodak brand to put on its own products. It showed off a Bitcoin-mining computer labelled Kodak KashMiner in January and told the BBC that it planned to let people rent the machines. To mine crypto-currency, computers are tasked with solving complicated mathematical problems in order to verify crypto-currency transactions. Successful miners are rewarded with bitco...

By Mark Kovac, David Burns and Jason McLinn Private equity funds have historically leaned heavily on a combination of cost cutting and multiple expansion to underwrite future value projections. But today’s macroeconomic and competitive conditions challenge either approach. In most markets, slowing economic growth or the outright threat of recession suggests that multiples are more likely to retreat from current record highs than to expand even further. At the same time, the most obvious cost-cutting opportunities are typically baked into inflated asset prices or have already been captured by a previous PE owner. What’s typically not baked into the price is the ability to deliver profitable organic growth—and to do it quickly. As discussed in Bain & Company’s Global Private Equity Report 2018, that involves focusing value-creation efforts on the top line and developing commercial excellence capabilities to help portfolio companies sharpen how they approach their chosen ...

  By Georgeta Gheorghe The strong momentum underway in Central Europe’s private equity markets is set to continue,  the latest Deloitte Central Europe Private Equity Confidence Survey shows. The high level of deal activity in Central Europe’s private equity markets is set to continue, with two-thirds of respondents expecting market activity to remain the same, the highest level in three years. Nearly a third (31 percent) expect activity to increase further from its currently high level, and just 2 percent expect activity to slow down – the lowest level in five years. It then comes as no surprise that two-thirds of respondents (69 percent) expect to focus mostly on deal-doing in the coming months, in line with the survey over the last two years. Expectations will be buoyed by liquid leverage markets, with three quarters of respondents (74 percent) expecting the availability of debt finance to remain the same over coming months. This is up from two thirds (67 percent) in the ...

By Kellie Ell, CNBC Bitcoin is still the best bet for crypto investors as people are "functionally using" it, Bart Smith told CNBC. "If you want to own the asset that you can actually use today and that people are functionally using, it’s bitcoin," Smith, head of digital asset at trading giant Susquehanna International Group, said on "Fast Money" Tuesday. "The use case for bitcoin is valid today, which is the currency of the internet," he added. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has been just one of many digital coins in the crypto universe that has been under increased scrutiny in recent months as regulators try to determine how cryptocurrency should be used. But the fact that bitcoin has established use cases is what gives it the competitive advantage over other cryptocurrencies, Smith said. Last fall, when bitcoin futures were announced, "people got very excited about bitcoin," he said. "They got really exc...

Its consumption is roughly the same as Ireland’s The Economist explains BITCOIN has been alarming people for years because of the amount of electricity needed to mint new virtual coinage. Alex de Vries, a bitcoin specialist at PwC, estimates that the current global power consumption for the servers that run bitcoin’s software is a minimum of 2.55 gigawatts (GW), which amounts to energy consumption of 22 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year—almost the same as Ireland.  Google, by comparison, used 5.7 TWh worldwide in 2015. What’s more, bitcoin “miners” consume about five times more power than they did last year, and orders of magnitude more than just a few years ago—and there are no signs of a slowdown. Why does bitcoin require so much energy to make something that exists only electronically? Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies are founded on the notion of an immutable ledger, called the blockchain, which comprises transfers of value from one party to another. Cry...