“To the extent it is used I fear it’s often for illicit finance. It’s an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions, and the amount of energy that’s consumed in processing those transactions is staggering,” the former Fed chairwoman said. Yellen’s comments have been cited as a reason for bitcoin’s recent losses. However, Yellen’s assessment of bitcoin as a inefficient medium of exchange is an important point and one that has already been raised in the past by bitcoin bulls. Using a volatile asset in exchange for goods and services makes little sense if the asset can tumble 10% in a day, or surge 80% over the course of a two months as bitcoin has done in 2021, critics argue. To put a finer point on it, over the past 12 months bitcoin has registered 8 corrections, defined as a decline from a recent peak of at least 10% but not more than 20%, and two bear markets, which are defined as falls of 20% or more, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
NEWS: Telegram supports Facetime video calls NOW!
Secure video calling is in high demand. As an alternative to Zoom, many people are using end-to-end encrypted apps such as WhatsApp, FaceTime or Signal to speak to friends and family face-to-face since coronavirus lockdowns started to take place across the world. There’s another option—secure communications app Telegram just added video calling to its feature set, available on both iOS and Android. The new feature is also super secure—like Signal and WhatsApp and unlike Zoom (yet), video calls will be end-to-end encrypted.
