13 May 2025, 14:09

Bitcoin Will Replace U.S. Dollar In 10 Years, Says Billionaire VC Tim Draper

Within a decade, bitcoin will replace U.S. dollar dominance and become the standard currency underpinning the international economy, according to billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper. “10 years, something like that. It may be a little less,” Draper said in a wide-ranging Spotlight interview with CoinDesk. Draper reiterated his prediction that bitcoin will rise to $250,000 by the end of 2025, and that after a decade it will be “infinity against the dollar because there won’t be a dollar.” “Once I can buy my food, my clothing, my shelter, pay my taxes, all in Bitcoin and it's a better way to collect taxes. For sure, there won't be any reason to hold onto any [dollars] and bitcoin will be the primary source of owning wealth,” said Draper. “The good news here is that banks can now hold your bitcoin and your fiat currency… but you don't want to be in line at the banks trying to get your dollars out to put them into bitcoin when there is a transformation.” Draper warned there will be a run on fiat banks and a global shift to the Bitcoin standard as trust in governments wane and decentralized technology replaces the traditional banking system. This was especially evident when Silicon Valley Bank (“SVB”) collapsed in March 2023. “I got calls from 15 companies, portfolio companies, and they were all saying, I can't make payroll,” said Draper. “So every treasury of every company that I fund, I recommend that they have bitcoin along with fiat in banks, so that when there are bank failures, or if people stop taking fiat, then they'll be able to make payroll anyway.” SVB’s shuttering was followed by the collapse of Signature Bank and preceded by the liquidation of Silvergate Bank. All three financial institutions had ties to the digital assets industry and were impacted by “contagion effects” in the aftermath of failed crypto exchange FTX, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation . But crypto companies have found evidence their demise was accelerated by a covert government debanking campaign, known as Operation Chokepoint 2.0 , after a previous government effort to sever controversial but legal businesses from banking. Draper views bitcoin as a better technology and software that will replace banks and government-issued currency. At an early age, he learned there is precedent in the U.S. for currency crisis when his father gave him a million dollar confederate bill that was essentially worthless. “Confederates lost the war to the Union and so there was huge inflation in Confederate money and people were paying a million dollars for just $1 of Union money,” said Draper. “In effect, we're going through a similar time now.” Bitcoin vs. Stablecoins Draper is a bitcoin maximalist who believes stablecoins are a bridge to bitcoin that will onboard people to utilize digital currencies, but ultimately they are as flawed as the governments that sanction them. “Stablecoins are subject to inflation. They will inflate if the government prints too much money. They will be worth less and less and less over time, whereas bitcoin is not subject to that,” said Draper. Even though U.S. President Donald Trump’s global tariff policies go against Draper’s belief in free trade, they hasten his prediction that the U.S. dollar will weaken. The dollar index has dropped almost 8% year to date to 99.96, its lowest level since April 2022. The Trump administration is widely speculated to be analysing ways to devalue the dollar further to make U.S. exports more globally competitive. Nevertheless, Draper is hopeful the U.S. government will negotiate levies down so that trade partners buy more U.S. goods and resume an open market. Within the U.S., Draper is more confident about domestic tech innovation now that the Securities and Exchange Commission and other federal regulators are “more open to creativity” and have stepped away from the practice of regulation by enforcement. “Let's start communicating with animals” Other technologies he is invested in include genetics. His early investment in Colossal Biosciences made headlines when the genetics lab created a new species of dire wolf and gene-edited “woolly mice” into existence using a mix of mutations modelled on woolly mammoths. These efforts to “de-extinct” species aim to restore earth’s biological diversity, but Draper believes they will eventually help humans communicate with animals. “Dogs can smell 10,000 times as well as we can,” said Draper. “My theory is that it's usually when they're really happy and they like you, they sneeze on you. What they're doing is telling you a story, they sneeze on you and then, ‘[Here] are all the things that I've done. These are all the things I've smelled.’” Draper believes advances in genetics and artificial intelligence will eventually decode the language of birds that “must have 500 different words for wind” and a better understanding of the weather. Humans could also learn from talking to ants about their population management. “Let's start communicating with animals. I think it'll be great and we are getting there,” said Draper. “It's slow. That's 50 years out.” As for artificial intelligence, the most cynical programmers warn that AI’s will eventually dismiss humans as mere carbon bodies with limited use as energy sources, but Draper remains the perpetual optimist. “I think that humans are going to adapt,” he said. When artificial intelligence replaces human labor, Draper trusts people will resiliently find new jobs with their newfound productivity, make greater impact, and “gain in quality of life.” Draper believes humans will eventually merge with AI by programming embryos and linking human brains to wifi and other technologies. “I think it's going to be incredibly amazing for somebody today who's still alive 50 years from now, because they're gonna look back and say, ‘God, those poor people, they were all stuck on earth, just earth,” said Draper. “They had to actually ask their phone for knowledge instead of having their mind anticipate the need for knowledge.”

13 May 2025, 14:04

Bitcoin builders defend role of venture capital in layer-2 growth

Venture capital firms remain critical to infrastructure development in the Bitcoin ecosystem, despite pushback from some in the community, according to builders speaking at the Token2049 conference in Dubai. Charlie Yechuan Hu, CEO of Bitcoin layer-2 protocol Bitlayer, shared his insights on venture capital (VC) firms in the Bitcoin ( BTC ) ecosystem. Hu told Cointelegraph that he views many VC firms in the space positively, as they offer support to early ventures that need capital to build infrastructure. “You need developers, you need to open up the whole ecosystem foundation, everything,” Hu said. “You need to pay for the cloud, like AWS or RPCs, all that, servers So, we have to have VC on that.“ Hu argued against the usual Bitcoiner ethos that argues against outsider capital, saying, “It’s difficult to say, okay, let’s do a fair mint, and then have a very successful, healthy treasury, and you have to pay all this stuff.” “It doesn’t work that way,” he said. Related: StarkWare researchers propose smart contracts for Bitcoin with ColliderVM Lightning-only stance sparks debate Not everyone agrees. Mike Jarmuz, a managing partner at Bitcoin venture capital firm Lightning Ventures, told Cointelegraph that Lightning is the only L2 his company has invested in and is interested in. He said, “Anything with a ‘token’ that allows for ‘staking’ and earning some absurd APY interest on your Bitcoin should be avoided.” Jarmuz said that Lightning Network , on the other hand, is growing very quickly and makes Bitcoin transactions instant, nearly free and scalable. Bitcoin Visuals data shows that the Lightning Network has a cumulative capacity across all channels equivalent to almost $452 million at the time of writing. He added: “There is no ‘token’ when using the Lightning network. It’s Bitcoin. That to me is the only real L2, at least as of right now.“ Lightning Network capacity chart. Source: Bitcoin Visuals Jarmuz said that projects not meeting his criteria are “masquerading as useful” while doing nothing for Bitcoin. He claimed that sidechains like the Liquid Network and newer protocols such as e-cash and federations or Ark “are not widely used” but “are at least interesting.” He recognized that those “do not involve a staked token, promising yield,” with projects that have those features, “just waiting for rug pulls and issues.” “We don’t invest in that area,“ he added. Related: Spar supermarket in Switzerland starts accepting Bitcoin payments VCs seen as enablers of Bitcoin growth According to Hu, VCs bring liquidity, resources and experience to new startups while opening “up all the institutional ideas and connections.” He said that those were important additions to Bitlayer’s resources as well, noting that “we wouldn’t have that if those people didn’t invest in us.” He also argued that VCs tend to back long-term infrastructure efforts rather than speculative projects like memecoins or non-fungible tokens. That experience was echoed by Walter Maffione, lead engineer at Lightning Network-based decentralized exchange (DEX) Kaleidoswap, who told Cointelegraph that the protocol started as an open-source project and raised a pre-seed investment from Fulgur Ventures and Bitfinex Ventures. “Those funds were used to pay open-source developers and accelerate protocol development, not to build a token or capture governance rights,“ he said. Hu claimed that VCs have contributed significantly to developing layer-2 scalability solutions, wallets, Bitcoin lending and staking protocols. He added: “All of them are VC-backed, including us. And some of them are listed on top exchanges.” Vikash Singh, principal at Bitcoin VC firm Stillmark, told Cointelegraph that when selecting Bitcoin layer-2 protocols to invest in, they consider demonstrated security and robustness, proliferation and adoption of non-speculative use cases and growth of the application layer. Much like Jarmuz, he said that Stillmark believes that proof-of-work is the superior consensus model. Still, unlike Jarmuz, Singh said proof-of-stake or Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus “may be suitable for Bitcoin sidechains and rollups.” Magazine: ‘Bitcoin layer 2s’ aren’t really L2s at all: Here’s why that matters

13 May 2025, 14:02

Yeti Ouro Challenges Dogecoin (DOGE): Who Will Hit $10 First?

Memecoins rode a surge in the past 24 hours. The presale of Yeti Ouro (YETIO) hit above $4 million at $0.041 per YETIO, and Dogecoin (DOGE) reached above $0.25 as a result of whale attention. While the retail traders are waiting and speculating on whose coin will reach $10 first, today’s on-chain statistics imply a shocking competition. DOGE Market Momentum Crypto mood turned “greed” overnight, lifting liquidity all around. Dogecoin price paced large-cap gainers with a 24% surge to $0.2571 following whales piling 600 million DOGE into cold storage—the biggest two-day inflow since February’s local peak. Intraday order books now indicate clustering of bids around $0.23, the round-bottom pattern neckline many experts signaled up on this morning. The up-move fueled discussions of DOGE at $1 prior to mid-2025 despite quants observing the coin needing to add approximately $130 billion in market cap to achieve it. Model algorithms released today still forecast a median spot range of $0.24–$0.26 through next week. DOGE/USDT 4h chart displays a strong positive deviation with the price action crossing above the upper Bollinger Band backed by high volume. Subsequent to the volatility expansion, a consolidation phase at 0.23503 above the 20-SMA hints at a respite. Yeti Ouro’s GameFi Advantage Yeti Ouro takes the meme narrative in a different direction: utility-first GameFi. The flagship racer, YetiGo, is developed using Unreal Engine 5 and promises elimination-style PvP with victors rewarded directly in-game with YETIO. By combining console-class graphics with a native reward loop, the group is targeting a user base wider than usual meme-coin collectors. Most importantly, the public beta of YetiGo is slated to hit the existing roadmap timeframe, providing the token with a playable proof-of-concept month ahead of centralized exchange listings. The game invites players into a sleek, high-speed world where every element is crafted for impact. Created alongside the celebrated developers behind Call of Duty, Spider-Man, The Witcher, and Dead Space, the game delivers a cinematic experience packed with detail and momentum. The soundtrack, developed by sound engineers with credits alongside Grammy-nominated artists like Major Lazer, Vybz Kartel, and Kabaka Pyramid, amplifies the action with energy and emotion. Presale traction supports the thesis: 239 million tokens sold and $4.075 million raised as of this morning @ $0.041 per token, with the next-stage price already confirmed to have a steeper increase than the price increase from Stage 3 to Stage 4. Early bird investors have seen a 242% ROI and enjoy a 20% bonus on token purchases. An additional 5% is added to purchases over $500. Tokenomics and Strategic Burn YETIO has a fixed billion supply, half of which drips into circulation through the multi-stage presale and community incentives. A portion of all season launches in YetiGo goes towards a permanent burn wallet, bestowing the ecosystem with a deflationary tailwind missing from most meme competitors. The liquidity, marketing, and team allocations are capped at a single-digit percent, keeping work capital thin while ensuring long-haul scarcity. Fully-diluted valuation at the presale price is around $41 million—paltry alongside large cap memes, but small enough that a single exchange listing might make a difference. YETIO’s Road to $10 A $0.041 to $10 swing requires a rally of 24,250 %, but the arithmetic appears less sensational when plotted against the project’s runway. A $10 price tag would set YETIO’s fully-diluted market cap at about $10 billion—a magnitude less than the 2021 peak of Dogecoin and comparable to second-rank gaming behemoths. Incentives already scheduled to appear in the next year are: A platform-crossing YetiGo beta that dispenses tokens to players First CEX listing to happen in Q2 2025 as per the live roadmap, and The initial season burn aligned with beta launch traffic. Every milestone directly reduces supply or increases demand, compressing distance to double-digits. Assuming presale allocations are used up and the community holds even 30 % of beta users, on-chain velocity models look to a theoretical year-end goal higher than $1 with compound monthly increases of 35 % propelling the token to two-figure levels before the next Bitcoin halving. Who Reaches the Summit First? The race is open. Legacy memes are dependent on renewed hype; Yeti Ouro counters by creating demand through gameplay and controlled scarcity. Dogecoin has liquidity, exchange depth, and cultural mind-share. Yeti Ouro responds with capped supply, deliberate burns, and a near-term Unreal-Engine title that turns playtime into buy pressure. If DOGE sustains its whale-led rally it might flirt with $1 in the next bull wave, but a sprint to $10 still depends on an unprecedented market-cap surge. YETIO, however, is early in its curve: a 250-fold increase from presale prices today stamps the same milestone—possible if GameFi uptake follows past breakout success stories and all roadmaps fire on cue. Join the Yeti Ouro Community Website: https://yetiouro.io/ X (Formerly Twitter): https://x.com/yetiouro Telegram: https://t.me/yetiouroofficial Discord: https://discord.gg/YtUsEZ2ZrV

13 May 2025, 13:59

Coinbase's inclusion in S&P 500 is a 'watershed moment,' analyst says

More on Coinbase Coinbase: Q1 Miss Was Expected, Time To Excel Beyond Forecasts Coinbase Stock: Q1 Earnings Review, I Was Wrong Initially (Rating Upgrade) Coinbase Global, Inc. (COIN) Q1 2025 Earnings Conference Call Transcript Biggest stock movers Tuesday: COIN, HTZ, and more Coinbase to join S&P 500 index, shares surge 9% after hours

13 May 2025, 13:32

Binance Amplifies Web3 with New Token Generation Events

Binance Wallet enhances participation in Web3 through Token Generation Events. Privasea AI (PRAI) Token is the focus of the latest TGE initiative. Continue Reading: Binance Amplifies Web3 with New Token Generation Events The post Binance Amplifies Web3 with New Token Generation Events appeared first on COINTURK NEWS .

13 May 2025, 13:28

XRP futures open interest surges by more than $1 billion in a week

Summary ⚈ XRP futures open interest surged 41.6%, rising from $2.42B to $3.42B. ⚈ Price climbed to $2.54 amid legal optimism and $7B market cap growth. ⚈ Whale activity and rising exchange reserves pose short-term sell-off risks. XRP futures open interest has increased from $2.42 billion to $3.42 billion over the course of the past week. This 41.6% surge coincides with a steady rise in overall XRP derivatives open interest , which is near 1-month highs. Moreover, as the increase has coincided with a price rally from $2.14 to $2.48, the development signals growing bullish directional conviction, as highlighted by crypto analytics platform Glassnode in a May 13 X post . XRP futures open interest 1-month chart. Source: Glassnode XRP price analysis XRP’s rally has extended beyond the timeframe highlighted by the analytics platform. By press time on May 13, the cryptocurrency was trading at $2.54, having marked a 3.15% gain on the daily chart. Year-to-date (YTD) gains currently stand at 22.38%. The token added nearly $7 billion to its market capitalization since the start of the week, defying a cryptocurrency market-wide pullback. XRP price 1-day and year-to-date (YTD) charts. Source: Finbold On May 8, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a settlement letter, marking a huge milestone in the longstanding Ripple v. SEC case . While the legal minutiae will still take a while to be fully resolved, XRP has added nearly $100 billion to its market cap since the legal tide began turning in Ripple Labs’ favor, indicating a strong degree of institutional interest. With that being said, not all of the signals currently at play are positive. XRP exchange reserves are near a 1-month high — which often coincides with increased selling pressure. Whales have also transferred large amounts of the token to exchanges, and are potentially preparing to dump large holdings . However, none of the recent bearish developments has proven enough to overturn or even slow down XRP’s bull run. Provided that the current rally lasts, or, at worst, establishes new support zones at higher levels, an overall uptrend could be sustained in the longer term, particularly as the SEC’s decision regarding spot XRP exchange-traded funds ( ETFs ), which could ignite another move to the upside, is due in June . Featured image from Shutterstock The post XRP futures open interest surges by more than $1 billion in a week appeared first on Finbold .