Bitcoin News of News For Bears and Bulls

Bitcoin has been turned into a stablecoin. Who done it is unknown, but the currency is currently in one of its longest period of consolidation.

It trades at $58,000 at the time of writing, about as much as in February, two months ago, with it unclear whether it plans to ever get out of this $50k foreva peg.

In contrast, bitcoin exchanges are seeing huge growth. Starting with India where Sathvik Vishwanath, the CEO of Unocoin, said:

“We have seen at least 2x the number of users in Q1 2021 as compared to the last quarter of 2020…

The new money flowing in is fueling the entire crypto industry worldwide and the interest among millennials is at an all-time high.”

That’s despite rumors of India speculating of banning the whole thing, but NFTs apparently have checkmated them because their media now is effectively shouting at their government to not even think of daring banning cryptos.

In the west, Robinhood has seen a six fold increase from the previous quarter, with 9.5 million users trading crypto in Q1 2021.

“2021! Revolut’s year of crypto,” says their competitor. “You’ll now be able to trade Cardano, Uniswap, Synthetix, Yearn Finance, Uma, Bancor, Filecoin, Numeraire, Loopring, Orchid, and The Graph,” they say.

“Some 85% of European investors and managers with an existing bitcoin exposure plan to increase their investments over the next two years.

A survey of 50 institutional investors and 50 wealth managers with a combined $110 billion in assets, conducted in January, found that European investors anticipate growth in bitcoin’s valuation over the next two years. All of the investors and managers already had some allocation to bitcoin, a spokesman said. The survey didn’t note the breakdown of assets among institutional investors and wealth managers.

The survey also found that the market has reached a minimum size for institutional investors to enter, at about $1.07 trillion.”

That’s just for bitcoin. So eth has to get to a trillion before these grandpas? Makes sense if we’re playing reverse the crumbs.

“SEBA Bank has entered the ballooning cryptocurrency exchange-traded product (ETP) space with the launch of four strategies.

The Bitcoin Tracker Certificate USD (SBTCU). Bitcoin Tracker Certificate CHF (SBTCC), Ether Tracker Certificate USD (SETH), and SEBAX Tracker Certificate USD (SEBAX) are set to list on the SIX Swiss Exchange on 9 April. SBTCU and SETH will have total expense ratios (TER) of 0.75% while SBTCC and SEBAX will have TERs of 1.50%.”

More competition can only be good with the most prominent of them in Europe, BTCetc which offers physical bitcoin redemption for their shares, increasing their assets under management by 30% to $1.3 billion.

“Cryptocurrency marketplace FTX has been named the exclusive cryptocurrency exchange partner of the Miami Heat. AmericanAirlines Arena will be renamed FTX Arena beginning with the 2021-22 season as part of a 19-year sponsorship agreement worth $135 million.”

Wow, that’s a lot of money to just have some Basketball team wear your brand and some square be named after you, but it’s a good way to reach mainstream awareness with the Southampton football team in UK now apparently to receive performance bonuses in bitcoin.

Southampton chief commercial officer David Thomas said: “The team at Sportsbet.io have built a successful business by challenging convention and disrupting the market, but in a responsible way, and their approach to our partnership with them has been no different. In a short timeframe, they’ve proven to be innovative, forward-thinking and extremely supportive of the club, our fans and the wider community, and we’ve welcomed the opportunity to develop and promote safe gambling messages together. As such they have become valued partners and we look forward to the next chapter together.”

Matrixport, a leading digital asset neobank, announced today that it had passed $10 billion in assets under custody (AUC).

Never heard of them but apparently they by the former Bitmain co-founders Jihan Wu and Yuesheng Ge with it being a sort of crypto exchange and bank that “announced the support of TRC20-based USDT deposit and transfers on its platform and launched USDT 30% APY fixed-income products and lucky draws for new and existing users.”

30%. Our bank still barely manages 0.5% but these guys somehow nearly 100x that. Which is maybe why Caruso Properties now wants your coins for rent.

Apparently they own The Grove in Los Angeles and The Americana at Brand in Glendale, California in addition to luxury apartments. 

They have also invested 1% of their treasury reserves in bitcoin, but as a private company, we couldn’t quite ascertain just what 1% means exactly.

However it appears somewhat clear that we’re maybe at the early stages of a boom here, with the economy expected to go nutsy this year, as may do inflation in some developing countries.

In USA it should probably temporarily reach 4%, not least because supply chain disruptions have led to some shortages, especially for semiconductors.

Car prices may well rise thus, with food prices reaching decade levels in some poorer or developing countries.

The trick will be getting wages up too, and the massive investment in US infrastructure should go some way towards it.

In Europe, much of this couldn’t come at a worse time as the continent tries to streamline its continent level management.

Some European Citizens Summit is coming ‘soon’ and that should provide legitimacy for what needs to be done, including direct election by the citizens of the European Union of the EU president and thus cabinet.

If such thing was in place then Europe could have grabbed some very low hanging fruits in building train-line connections through the Balkans to Turkey and through the western Balkans to Italy, and so re-rout shipping, cutting down traveling times or increasing tourism, so tapping into the 5% to 10% growth of developing countries while putting their own people to work to build all this, forcing in the process wages to rise due to increasing demand for employees.

This most basicness however is probably not even in the conception of the still very nationalist euro-state governments who for some reason – maybe because they boomers – appear to be incapable of comprehending continental level strategic thinking.

Quite unfortunately this may well risk shaving off perhaps even 10% potential growth over a decade from the continent, but it’s just a matter of time until they get a grip.

Starting with the inevitable necessity for the EU executive to derive legitimacy from the direct election of the citizenry, without which arguably there is no EU executive.

Only then can what would be a new civil service attract the best of talent, and since it would be new, arguably it would also be the most advanced in thinking and tools.

So Europe probably will roar at some point, but how long it will take to get there, is for time to say.

Hopefully not as long as bitcoin’s attempt to conquer $60,000. At least though we can enjoy the calm here with little trepidation, for such pause is very rare and thus very sweet.

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