THE BOSS of the world's biggest hedge fund has blasted bitcoin as having "no inherent worth".

Luke Ellis, the chief executive of Man Group, compared bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to the 17th-century craze for tulips in The Netherlands.

Known as 'Tulip Mania', a period in the mid-1600s saw the price of tulips – which was considered a luxury good – rise nearly ten times its original worth before dramatically collapsing.

"If you look at cryptocurrencies as a whole, it is a pure trading instrument," he told the Financial Times.

"There is no inherent worth in it whatsoever. It is a tulip bulb."

Mr Ellis said, however, that cryptocurrencies are great trading opportunities for his company because of the dramatic changes in prices.

He told FT that cryptocurrencies were one of the “probably 800 markets we trade today on top of 15,000 stocks and thousands of credits”.

It comes after the price of bitcoin skyrocketed by 20 percent yesterday after Amazon said it would be accepting the cryptocurrency as a payment by the end of the year.

After the e-commerce giant confirmed that it has posted a job for a digital currency and blockchain expert to join its payments team, Bitcoin's value shot up – recording its greatest surge in more than six weeks.

After suffering heavy falls in May, Bitcoin's price has generally stabilised at around $30,000.

BIG PLANS

An unnamed insider has claimed that Amazon is looking to accept Bitcoin payments by the end of 2021.

She told London-based business paper City A.M. that the e-commerce giant appears to be taking a step closer to accepting the cryptocurrency.

The source said: “This isn’t just going through the motions to set up cryptocurrency payment solutions at some point in the future – this is a full-on, well-discussed, integral part of the future mechanism of how Amazon will work.

"It begins with Bitcoin – this is the key first stage of this crypto project, and the directive is coming from the very top… Jeff Bezos himself.”

Amazon also reportedly has plans to consider taking payment in other big cryptocurrencies, once it's set up with a fast and secure way to accept Bitcoin payment.

The insider explained: "Ethereum, Cardano and Bitcoin Cash will be next in line before they bring about eight of the most popular cryptocurrencies online."

She predicted that it "won't take long" because plans for cryptocurrency payment "are already there, and they have been working on them since 2019".

Amazon doesn’t currently accept cryptocurrencies as payment for its products.

However its cloud-computing unit, Amazon Web Services, offers a service called managed blockchain, reports CNBC News.

Bitcoin records transactions in blockchain – a kind of database used to record transactions.

Amazon hasn't as yet released a statement in relation to Bitcoin.

Source: Read Full Article