Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has no curiosity in investing in Bitcoin, however remains to be very a lot in exploring blockchain.
Cryptocurrencies have but to seize Qatar Wealth Fund’s curiosity despite their dominating recognition, Chief Executive Officer Mansoor Al Mahmoud revealed.
The blockchain know-how itself, nevertheless, has turned some heads.
“Our team in the technology space are exploring opportunities in the blockchain,” Al Mahmoud mentioned in an interview on the second Qatar Economic Forum in Doha on Tuesday.
“This is the space that we’re interested in, not the currency itself.”
The most generally used cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, witnessed a dramatic plunge final week after quite a lot of platforms blocked withdrawals. The foreign money was buying and selling at round $21,000, down greater than 3% in the previous day, in keeping with information from CoinMetrics.
Once dubbed ‘the currency of the future’, Bitcoin has seen a drop of greater than 20% in the final week alone and greater than 60% from its all-time excessive in November, which noticed a top of about $69,000.
This yr witnessed one of many worst drops in the cryptocurrency market after the collapse of the token luna and the so-known as algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD. The distribution sparked a number of issues globally amongst traders who dumped 1000’s, if not thousands and thousands, into the foreign money for an opportunity to revenue.
Stablecoins are a subset of cryptocurrencies that should be linked to tangible property. Many seem like tied precisely to the American greenback. Some cryptocurrencies, like tether and USD Coin, are backed by tangible property like fiat cash and authorities bonds.
However, a number of algorithmic stablecoins lack a reserve of property, like TerraUSD. Instead, an algorithm controls the $1 peg.
Meanwhile, the Ukraine conflict has additionally taken a toll on Bitcoin’s funding after Russia’s aggression on its neighbouring European nation.
In August 2021, Russia was the second-largest mining hub after Kazakhstan, contributing round 11% of the overall processing energy required to create new bitcoins, in keeping with the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.
For that, and amongst a number of different causes, the Qatar fund is just not trying into investing extra into Russia, although it nonetheless has some holdings in the nation, Al-Mahmoud mentioned.
The Gulf nation’s sovereign wealth fund is, nevertheless, on the lookout for companions to take a position in African infrastructure, and is optimistic about Europe in the lengthy-time period, he added.
