• Eswar Prasad, senior professor of international trade policy at Cornell University, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” earlier this month: “Bitcoin itself may not last that much longer.”
• Bitcoin’s price has been highly volatile over the last few years and in the last month the price of a bitcoin has fallen from around $58,000 to less than $48,000.
• While there used to be just a few cryptocurrencies, today there are hundreds and some of them are more useful and more environmentally-friendly than bitcoin.

The future of bitcoin is anyone’s guess, but one academic has warned that the world’s most popular cryptocurrency could fade out in the near future.

Eswar Prasad, senior professor of international trade policy at Cornell University, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” earlier this month: “Bitcoin itself may not last that much longer.”

Bitcoin’s price has been highly volatile over the last few years and in the last month the price of one coin has fallen from around $58,000 to less than $46,000. At 10:15 a.m. ET on Friday, the price of a bitcoin was $45,637.

While there used to be just a few cryptocurrencies, today there are hundreds and some of them are more useful and more environmentally-friendly than bitcoin.

Blockchain is the underlying technology behind most cryptocurrencies. It’s essentially a digital ledger of virtual currency transactions which is distributed across a global network of computers.

“Bitcoin’s use of the blockchain technology is not very efficient,” said Prasad, who is the author of “The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance.”…read more.

England’s central bank has said that Bitcoin (BTC) could become “worthless” and people investing in cryptocurrencies should be prepared to lose everything.

In a warning over the potential risks for investors, the Bank of England questioned whether there was any inherent value in Bitcoin, the most prominent digital currency, which has soared in value this year as high as $68,000 U.S. a piece.

However, since peaking in November, Bitcoin has suffered a steep selloff after news first broke of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. The digital coin now trades at just over $48,000 U.S.

The market capitalization of cryptocurrency assets has grown tenfold since early 2020 to about $2.6 trillion today, representing about 1% of global financial assets.

The Bank of England estimates that 0.1% of British households’ wealth is in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency assets such as Ethereum (ETH). The central bank’s financial policy committee, set up in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to monitor risks, says there is little direct threat to the stability of the British financial system from cryptocurrency assets.

However, the Bank of England warned that, at the current rapid pace of growth, digital assets could become more interconnected with traditional financial services and are likely to pose a number of future risks…read more.