Is the geopolitical tension turning into a conflagration?

Digital Asset News

Citadel founder Ken Griffin has changed his mind about crypto and his company will now enter the digital asset market. American hedge fund and financial services firm Citadel is ready to enter the cryptocurrency market this year.
Speaking on “Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein,” Citadel founder Ken Griffin commented on the state of the markets in light of the current geopolitical conflicts. He stated that the markets are at a “very volatile inflection point.”
“It’s safe to assume that we’ll be entering the cryptocurrency market in the coming months.”
That’s quite an about-face from November 2017, when Griffin said “bitcoin right now is a lot like the tulip mania that existed in the Netherlands hundreds of years ago.”

Running a crypto business is a difficult undertaking and not for the faint of heart. Accordingly, Stephen Ehrlich, the co-founder and CEO of Voyager Digital, says that patience is the key to success and that the returns are sure to come sooner or later.
Meanwhile, many companies have already invested a lot of time and money in crypto companies. As recent data shows, more than $30 billion of investment capital has flowed into the crypto industry in 2021 alone.
“In 2021, Bitcoin has outperformed all major financial products, whether oil, gold NASDAQ, S&P 500 or gold. Similarly, the number of crypto investors keeps going up, underscoring the long-term success of the asset class.”
In this context, the co-founder of a listed crypto trading platform points out that the overall growth of the crypto industry is also reflected, for example, in the fact that employees can now be paid proportionately in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC):
“Such mainstream adoption is a strong sign. Not only are people willing to buy and trade crypto, but they’re actually working for it. So as a society, we’re moving more and more in a direction that assigns value to cryptocurrencies.”

The city of Lugano is the economic capital in southern Switzerland, where Italian is spoken. Under a new partnership with stablecoin provider Tether (USDT), the city plans to use cryptocurrencies for tax payments.
Tether Operations Limited, the blockchain platform that powers the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization, USDT, has partnered with the Lugano administration, according to a joint announcement Thursday.
Tether and the city government have established a center of excellence for blockchain adoption. The goal here is to become a major, European blockchain center.

Fears of an attack by Russian forces on Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant have not only caused losses on crypto markets, but also put a damper on traditional financial markets. As a result, the U.S. S&P 500, as well as European stock indices before it, went down noticeably.
“Bitcoin is correcting lower in the face of rising tensions in Ukraine, with fear favoring gains for gold, as it were,” as Cointelegraph analyst Michaël van de Poppe notes to that effect.
Meanwhile, his colleague Pentoshi warns that the macroeconomic outlook is far from good, with a mix of goods inflation, shrinking central bank room for maneuver and the damage done by monetary policy during the Corona crisis meaning decidedly poor conditions.
“We are already seeing in some financial markets that there are massive cracks in the fundamentals, for example in Hong Kong almost all of the post-Corona gains have already been wiped out. So risk hedging and deliberate action are the keys to success in the current period.