The executive director of the international fast-food chain Starbucks, Howard Schultz, surprised several colleagues when he raised the issue of cryptocurrencies during a conference call, discussing the company's last quarterly profits. The former CEO told the audience that, in his opinion, the publicly received cryptocurrency will come in the next few years, says the CCN edition. Schulz also doubted that Bitcoin would become one of such currencies, saying: "I do not believe that Bitcoin will become a currency today or in the future." Schultz joins a group of well-known Bitcoin skeptics, such as the legendary investor Warren Buffett, Nobel Laureate in Economics Robert Shiller and JP Morgan Chase executive Jamie Dimon, who went so far, calling Bitcoin a "fraud", although later he apologized for such comments.

Financial consultant Sebastien Meunier suggested seven possible (and unlikely) scenarios for the collapse of Bitcoin, which could be realized in the next few years. Before we proceed to the assumptions, let's start with the facts - Bitcoin was declared dead more than 200 times. Despite the fact that the first cryptocurrency in the world for more than 9 years works practically without fail, it is still fashionable to predict its demise. Many experts are known for continuing to predict the death of Bitcoin, despite the fact that every day the network refutes their assumptions. However, if we assume that these people still have a certain level of intelligence, the only explanation for the failed predictions and emotional statements is that they did not devote enough time to studying the work of the network.

Recently it was discovered that hackers trying to take over the computers for cryptocurrency mining now use commercials on YouTube for mining at the expense of viewers. Nowadays, cryptocurrency mining can become a highly profitable enterprise, and hackers try to maximize their profits. According to Ars Technica, many Internet users on social networks complained that their antivirus software detected malicious software for mining cryptocurrency when they visited YouTube. Even after users switched to another browser, the antivirus program again displayed a warning when visiting YouTube.

Last week there was a major hacking of the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck, as a result of which 523 million NEM coins were stolen. This forced the site to stop operations to withdraw all funds except Bitcoin. The total value of the stolen coins was about $ 534 million at the time of the theft. Although the cryptocurrency market stabilized quite quickly, experts believe that this break-in is just the beginning. In an interview with CNBC, analyst Nicholas Colas said that in the near future, we expect more attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges.

The company CashBet is trying to raise the value of its ICO by signing a sponsorship agreement with Arsenal - the top football club of the English Premier League. This week, the UK press reported the news that the football club Arsenal signed an agreement with a technological blockchain company. The company CashBet, which is preparing for the initial placement of coins (ICO), created to raise funds necessary for the company to develop "a unified mobile platform for real money, social and professional skills based on interactive games."

A new research by Ernst & Young argues that more than 10% of funds received during the initial placement of coins were stolen or lost. The results and conclusions are combined with a report detailing what Ernst & Young considers a risk of investing in such a little regulated market. In conducting its research, Ernst & Young cooperated with the iB group to analyze 372 ICOs in the cryptocurrency area, but the professional service company did not determine the time frame in its conclusions. According to the report, the research groups received data from "public sources through exchanges, data aggregators, ICO reports, ICO trackers, news sites, blockchains of network scanners / platforms and specialized social networks."

As the Japanese source MineCC reports, the management of the crypto exchange Coincheck officially announced the breaking and stealing of NEM tokens for $532 million. While it remains unclear, whether other cryptocurrencies were stolen. NEM developers and the community of open source developers have confirmed that there will not be a hardfire for the restoration of lost funds. NEM Foundation President Lon Wong said that there should be no complaints against NEM, and laid overall responsibility for the incident at Coincheck.

The preliminary primary location of the tokens of the TON blockchain-platform has been completed

January 27, World Trade Center in Moscow will host the World Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Summit (#WBCSummit). The organizer of the event is the International Decentralized Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain (IDACB). The summit will bring together more than 400 world-class professionals - participants in the market for block-technologies, representatives of crypto-associations - IDACB partners, authorities, funds, investment companies and banks.

The general director of the InfoWatch group of companies and the co-founder of Kaspersky Lab, Natalya Kaspersky, considers Bitcoin the development of a group of American cryptographers who worked on behalf of the special services. She said this, speaking at the St. Petersburg University ITMO, where Kaspersky presented a presentation on "Modern technologies - the basics of information and cyber-wars." In her opinion, the group of American cryptographers is hiding under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, the Bitcoin creator, but did not name any concrete people and evidence of their involvement in the development of Bitcoin.