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A Bitcoin Whale Shorted $100M BTC – Bitcoin Still Climbing!

A Bitcoin Whale Shorted $100M BTC: Why are Whales Selling at $16,000?

According to the pseudonyms trader CL, a Bitcoin whale has placed a short position worth $100 million on the Bybit exchange. This information came after various on-chain data pointed toward a whale-driven sell-off that occurred throughout the past week.
Even though the overall sentiment around Bitcoin remains strongly bullish, many reasons make $16,000 a very attractive area for sellers.

The $16,000 level provides significant liquidity, primarily due to it being a heavy resistance level. The level has seen quite a high buyer demand, as stablecoin inflows show. However, buyer demand is significantly lower at higher levels at the moment. Due to the clash of buyers and sellers at this level, this area of high liquidity makes it even more compelling for sellers.

Whales are taking profits

An unknown seller aggressively sold Bitcoin on Bybit on Nov 15. Order flows show that they sold approximately $100 million worth of Bitcoin in $3.5 million increments. These increments showed up in the order books on average consecutively over a couple of hours.

Based on the abrupt, though seemingly incremental, large-scale sell order, CL suggested that this could result in two possible scenarios.
The seller could get engulfed, thus causing a squeeze, which might cause the Bitcoin price to increase. The sell orders could continue to apply selling pressure on BTC even after the seller finishes selling his portion of Bitcoin.
“Someone aggressive sold almost $100 million on Bybit, a 3rd of the sell positions are open; personally, I’m pretty curious to see what happens if the seller does get engulfed, or if he will be let free,” – said CL.
Meanwhile, other major exchanges have spotted several large deposits during the time of the short-selling. United States-based crypto exchange Gemini saw a 9,000 Bitcoin deposit, according to the data coming from CryptoQuant.


Whales typically choose exchanges with strict compliance and strong regulatory measures, such as Coinbase and Gemini. Considering the large Bitcoin deposit to Gemini, which is worth around $143 million, a pseudonymous researcher better-known as “Blackbeard” said this is the time to be cautious.

Perhaps… Just Weekend Volatility?

As CL stated, Bitcoin’s current market structure is quite different from the previous cycle. As an example, when Bitcoin was at $16,000 in 2017, the market was more than just a bit overheated and experienced extreme volatility.

He said: “Back in 2017, when Bitcoin pumped from 10k, 15, into 20k, we had OKEx’s weekly futures trade in 1000$ contangos. Now we’re here with quarterly futures trading only 100$ above.”
This time around, the rally seems to be more sustainable and gradual. Bitcoin has continued to see, with a few minor setbacks, a staircase-like rally over the past six months. This kind of rally has allowed it to evolve into a prolonged uptrend. On top of that, rather than sudden spikes and no consolidation, Bitcoin has seen upside followed by consolidation, which is a much healthier way of gaining ground.

One thing to note is that, while it is true that institutions are getting into crypto at the moment, data such as Google Trends show that there is still little interest from retail investors, a complete opposite from late 2017.
There is a very strong argument to be made that the ongoing rally is fundamentally different from the one in 2017 despite the current market sentiment, which is reaching “extreme greed.” The available supply has decreased due to the 2020 halving, and the reserves on exchanges over the past year have reduced drastically.


The Bitcoin futures funding rates are also neutral, coming at around 0.01%, meaning that the market is not as overheated or overcrowded as it was in 2017. This trend could make the downside potential limited, especially in the medium term. Market maturity is certainly one thing that has changed since 2017, and whether Bitcoin goes up or down in the short-term, its upside potential, in the long run, is tremendous and very likely.

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JP Morgan – Institutions Ditching Gold ETFs For Bitcoin!

Institutions Ditching Gold ETFs For Bitcoin – JP Morgan Opens Up

The demand for Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust has increased so much lately that it has surpassed all gold ETFs combined, according to JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the US.
JPMorgan noted that Bitcoin is eating away at gold ETFs demand very quickly. The news came out in a report shared by Michael Sonnenshein, who is currently the managing director of Grayscale Investments.

More and more institutional investors, such as family offices, are now viewing the world’s largest cryptocurrency as an alternative to the yellow metal used to be a hedge and the go-to safe-haven.
The Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust flow trajectory in October became significantly steeper, while all gold ETFs remained basically flat. “The contrast between gold ETFs and Grayscale Bitcoin Trust lends support to the idea that investors that invested in gold ETFs previously, such as family offices, maybe looking into Bitcoin and seeing it as an alternative to gold.”


Bloomberg’s report dating from September showed Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust is outperforming 97% of all US ETFs. The bullish report regarding Bitcoin’s adoption caps off an amazing week for the crypto asset management firm. Sonnenshein stated that his company had recorded the largest raise across its suite of products, totaling $237 million.
While GBTC remains the most popular investment vehicle for Grayscale, the Ethereum Trust is also gaining a lot more traction lately, with a record-shattering $58 million.

Last month, Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust became an SEC-reporting company, which means that it now has to file quarterly as well as annual disclosures with the US securities regulator. The company had over $1 billion worth of inflows in its third quarter of 2020. Its inflows in 2020 are now nearing a whopping $3 billion. Overall, Grayscale has over $9.1 billion worth of assets under management.

All in all, the trend of crypto surpassing traditional asset classes in terms of performance is becoming a trend, which is certainly bringing more and more investments to the sector. With so many institutions joining the movement lately, cryptocurrency is poised to receive the attention of the broader masses in the short future.

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Should You Trade Forex With A Smart Phone Or Tablet? Our Free Signals App In The Description!

Should you trade forex with a smartphone or tablet app?

 

In this session, we will be looking at whether or not new traders, in particular, should trade with a mobile phone or tablet app only?

Regulated brokers in the United Kingdom must display the following message on their website, giving the updated statistics on the percentage of retail investor accounts, which lose money when trading spread bets or contracts for difference.

This is one we copied from IG index.
β€˜β€™Spread bets and CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 76% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how spread bets and CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.’’
The message is stark; three-quarters of retail traders burning their accounts is huge. And so most brokers rely on a revolving door of new traders coming in, while others bow out having lost their funds.
The reason is simple, a lack of knowledge by retail traders, the majority of whom are not much more than gamblers, and the house always wins in the end.

Let’s get back to the topic headline, should you trade forex with a smartphone or tablet app only.
More and more people are downloading trading apps as provided by brokers, trading, often on the go, maybe at work in an unrelated industry, or while at the gym or going for a walk or perhaps shopping, and spot a trade on their app and have a punt.

Now they might get lucky, occasionally, and think they have picked up a great new secondary source of income. Still, the whole thing about trading is that it is not like gambling, if you go into a casino and have a punt on the roulette wheel, maybe you will pick the right number, or maybe you will pick black, and the ball falls on the right black number, and you’ll be lucky, and that will be: all it is luck. However, with trading, it’s all about learning about fundamental analysis, learning about technical analysis, keeping abreast of economic data releases, speeches by key policymakers, and considering market analysis by professional traders and economists. Now traders are stacking the odds in their favor in order to have much more chance of a successful outcome.

And so, 25% of traders who are not losing money are highly likely those who do not trade on mobile phones or tablet apps. They will probably have at least two decent size computer screens for analysis purposes, perhaps also a tablet to keep them up to speed with economic news, where they are constantly juggling between technical analysis setups and market-related information in order to be informed.
A mechanic would not work on a car engine with only a screwdriver, and a surgeon would not operate on a person with only a scalpel to hand.
In conclusion, the more tools a trader has at his or her disposal, the better chance they will have of being on the 25% side of the above statistic.

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Crypto Mining With Renewable Energy Part 2!

Crypto Mining and Renewable Energy Part 2 – Renewable Energy Producers

En+ Group, the world’s largest producer of low-carbon aluminum as well as the largest private-sector hydropower generator, has entered its first crypto mining venture.
The new venture, named Bit+, will focus on creating crypto mining facilities that utilize alternative energy sources and have a low carbon footprint.

En+ Group has partnered with Bit+, a subsidiary to the Russian company BitRiver. BitRiver provides hosting services as well as turnkey solutions for institutional and large-scale crypto mining operations.

BitRiver is currently operating the largest data center offering colocation services for Bitcoin mining in Russia. It offers similar services across the country as well as to CIS neighbors.
The first effect of the venture Bit+ made is the installation of a brand new facility close to BitRiver’s existing data center in Bratsk, which is located in the Irkutsk region of Russia. En+ Group has committed 10MegaWatts of electricity to the facility, which is already operational and is composed of modular crypto-mining units. The two companies have plans to scale this facility’s capacity to roughly 40MegaWatts.
The facility is composed of 14 modular units for its initial phase. Each of the units is a converted shipping container as large as a full-scale cryptocurrency mining data center. Each unit should accommodate up to 400 of Bitmain’s S19 Pro miner devices.

En+ Group provided some context regarding how they chose the Irkutsk region and how this region is extremely viable for lower-carbon solutions to cryptocurrency mining in the recent statement:
“Our energy assets in the region produce low-carbon, as well as inexpensive electricity from renewable sources. We are able to offer a surplus of energy to these partnerships. On top of that, the low average annual temperature of the region reduces the energy required, making the process more efficient and further decreasing the carbon footprint.”
As we said in our previous article on renewable energy, high energy consumption remains a major Achilles’ heel for the crypto sector, particularly for proof of work consensus algorithms such as the one Bitcoin has.

Several energy experts have attempted to steer the debate on Bitcoin’s energy problems to another topic. Instead, they have tried to argue that it is extremely important where that energy is produced and how it is generated. They have argued that it is most important to make sure that less harmful choices are made when picking the source of power rather than to argue the whole premise of the whole proof of work consensus algorithm.
With financial and geopolitical forces now entering the sector, it remains to be seen how far renewable energy will improve Bitcoin’s standing if this slow but certain change will be enough to make the mining sector truly sustainable.

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Bitcoin Over Gold in the Long Run – JP Morgan’s Stance!

Bitcoin Over Gold in the Long Run – JP Morgan’s Market Analysis

 

Bitcoin’sΒ 2020 surge is poised to continue in the long run as the digital cryptocurrency is a direct competitor to gold, as it can now be classified as an “alternative” currency, JPMorgan stated in a public statement.
Bitcoin has surged more than 90% year-to-date, and the announcement thatΒ PayPal would enable its users to buy, sell, hold, and even use cryptocurrenciesΒ served as yet another high-level endorsement for the sector.

Earlier this in October,Β Square purchased $50 million worth of BitcoinΒ as proof of further commitment to viewing the cryptocurrency as a long-term investment. On top of that, Microstrategy has invested over $250 million in Bitcoin, stating that investing in the largest cryptocurrency by market cap is not a speculation or a hedge, but a deliberate corporate strategy.
However, Bitcoin is still a relatively small asset, and the crypto sector as a whole a small asset class. It has been, up to recently, mostly favored by millennial investors rather than the older generations that predominantly favor gold or other precious metals.

The physical gold market, according to JP Morgan, is currently worth around $2.6 trillion, and that number includes assets held within gold ETFs as well. If Bitcoin wants to catch up to gold in terms of market value, the cryptocurrency would have to increase its market capitalization over ten times from current levels.
“Even a modest branching out of gold as an ‘alternative’ currency and into Bitcoin over the longer term would imply Bitcoin’s price doubling or tripling,” JPMorgan said.
Over time, crypto could be held for reasons other than being a store of value as gold is, according to JPMorgan.

“Cryptocurrencies have intrinsic value and derive it not only because they serve as stores of value but also due to their utility as a means of payment. As the world adopts cryptocurrencies as a means of payment in the future, their utility and value will grow” JPMorgan explained.
Putting it simply, the risk is to the upside for Bitcoin.

The potential upside in the long-term for Bitcoin is considerable as it competes more intensely with gold as an ‘alternative’ currency. JP Morgan came to this conclusion as they see Millenials becoming a more important component of investors’ universe as time passes.
The long-term technicals are also pointing to a surge in Bitcoin.

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Bitcoin Is Digital Gold & Not Currency: Mike Novagratz!

 

Bitcoin is Digital Gold, Not a Currency – Mike Novogratz

Billionaire investor Mike Novogratz has recently doubled down on a call that Bitcoin serves as digital gold rather than as currency, at least at the moment.
“I don’t think that Bitcoin is going to be used as a currency anytime in the next five years,” said Novogratz, Galaxy Investment Partners’ founder and chief executive officer, in an interview with Bloomberg TV. He added that Bitcoin is currently being used as a store of value, similar to gold, and that it will most likely remain that way for some time.

Crypto fans have argued that Bitcoin can serve as currency as they raised concerns about central banks worldwide printing money during the pandemic and about the potential for inflation to shoot much higher. They point out that central banks are looking into creating CBDC’s, their own digital assets, while China is at the forefront of development as it is already testing its digital yuan.
“And Bitcoin as a gold-like asset, as digital gold is going to keep going higher and higher,” said Novogratz. “As time passes, more and more people are going to want Bitcoin as some portion of their portfolio very soon, if they don’t want it already.”


Bitcoin has rallied more than 93% in 2020, climbing beyond $13,000 and even reaching past $14,000 at one point, just a week after PayPal Holdings Inc. announced that it would allow its customers to buy, sell, hold, and eventually use cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is currently preparing for a big move as it has recently failed to break the $13,900 resistance and stay above it with confidence.

Novogratz, as well as many other crypto fans, heralded the PayPal news as game-changing, mostly citing PayPal’s large user base that can be used to gain mass adoption. Customers on the platform will have the option to buy, sell and hold several cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin, as well as use these cryptocurrencies to shop at the 26 million merchants on its network, including its popular payment app Venmo.

Novogratz forecast that companies including Visa, E*Trade Financial, Mastercard, as well as American Express will follow PayPal’s initiative “within a year” and that they will offer platforms where their merchants will have the option to transact in stablecoins as well as non-stable cryptocurrencies.
“It’s no longer a debate of whether crypto is a thing, if Bitcoin is an asset, or if the blockchain is going to be a part of the financial infrastructure,” said Novogratz. “It’s no longer a matter of if, it’s when, and every single company has to have a plan very soon.”

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Microstrategy Will Hold $250 Million Worth Of Bitcoin For 100 Years!

 

This company will hold $250 million worth of Bitcoin for 100 years!

Microstrategy has announced that it has purchased a whopping 21,454 Bitcoin (worth $250 million) on Aug 11. The company’s CEO, Michael Saylor, announced publically that he will hold his company’s Bitcoin for 100 years, and that he has no intention of selling it.
This investment is now worth more than $290 million, representing a 16% increase in just over two months. On top of that, Microstrategy has purchased even more Bitcoin since.
In an interview with Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal, Saylor stated that the investment was not speculation, nor a hedge, but rather a deliberate corporate strategy with the goal of adopting the Bitcoin standard. The decision to invest over $250 million was discussed between its board of directors and the firm’s investors, as well as auditors.

Microstrategy decided to restructure its investment strategy in response to recent global economic uncertainty. The company is looking to explore assets better-suited to providing a long-term store of value, and they stated that Bitcoin is one of them.
After considering a variety of options and looking at it from a 100-year investment perspective, Saylor decided that Bitcoin was the only option. Taxes and fees kill almost all other assets, he concluded, and those that remain are instead severely crippled because they are controlled by either a CEO, government, or country.

Bitcoin, however, is evolving and gets harder, stronger, and faster over time, Saylor concluded. He described Bitcoin as a “hive of cybernetic hornets that are protected by a wall of encrypted energy.”
When asked about Ethereum as an alternative to Bitcoin, Saylor told Pal that it didn’t compare, as Ethereum is “still chasing after functionality.” He added that “it still has to be proven, as there are centralized competitors to it.”
Saylor’s bullishness on Bitcoin is clear, especially when he said that the fact that Bitcoin is so big when compared to all other cryptocurrencies, literally, “the market is screaming to you that this is a winner and that it’s eating the world.”

Saylor asserted that Bitcoin is the world’s best collateral and that it doesn’t even compare to gold or any other commodities in the long run. He said that if you hold $100 million in fiat currency for 100 years, you will lose 99% of it. If you held gold, you would still lose 85% at best.
Saylor described Bitcoin as an asset that is performing similar monetary utilities as gold, except better and without the fear of dilution.
Among many things he likes about Bitcoin, Saylor said that he thinks it’s important that anybody can inspect the fact that he owns the Bitcoin in one second and that it can be sent anywhere in the world for not even $5. He added that he could if he wanted, liquidate $100 million Bitcoin on “a Saturday afternoon.”

His thoughts about the crypto community were that many people believe he has weak hands, as they were saying that he will dump it very soon. However, Saylor added that the people calling him out don’t understand the mindset of long.
Saylor finished the two-hour-long interview by stating that his executives are paying close attention to developers in the crypto space and that any further opportunities will be exploited by him and his team.

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The UK Bans Retail Investors From Using Crypto Derivatives!

The UK Bans Retail Investors From Using Crypto Derivatives Starting January 2021

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has banned the sale of cryptocurrency derivative products to retail investors. This move was followed by the statement that the ban will save its targeted customers Β£53 million (or $68.9 million) of losses each year. The ban will be in effect starting Jan 6, 2021.
In a statement that came out on October 6, the FCA declared that the sale, marketing, as well as distribution of any derivatives by any local or foreign company operating in the UK is banned. This includes contracts for difference, futures, options, and exchange-traded notes.
The Authority said that derivatives based on digital assets such as Bitcoin or Ethereum are β€œill-suited for retail consumers due to the risk they pose.” The FCA outlined numerous risks that it considers are originating from trading such products, including a lack of β€œreliable basis for valuation,” possible market manipulation, as well as β€œextreme” price volatility.

It stated that retail clients generally lacked a β€œlegitimate investment need to invest in these products,” as well as that the average retail investor did not fully understand derivatives trading. The ban was first proposed in July 2019, and it doesn’t affect the trading of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which are not FCA regulated, but only the derivatives of such assets.
Retail investors currently holding crypto derivatives will be allowed to keep them for as long as they want. Sheldon Mills, FCA’s interim executive director of strategy and competition, said that the significant price volatility, combined with the difficulties of valuing crypto assets reliably place retail consumers at a high risk of suffering major losses from trading crypto derivatives.

Shares of companies that offer the banned derivatives plummeted in London trading on Tuesday, Oct 20. CMC Markets dropped 2.8%, Plus500 fell 2.1%, while IG Group Holdings slid as much as 3.3%. An executive at Coinshares, a UK-based exchange that offers a variety of crypto derivatives, criticized the FCA’s decision. They also stated that the ban β€œwill not result in more savings and benefits, but it will rather simply drive UK retail investors to unregulated crypto exchanges.”

The FCA ban can be seen as further evidence of the UK turning its back on innovation and on regulatory coordination with other jurisdictions,” said the aforementioned executive.

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Why Bitcoin Is suddenly Exploding – Investors HODLing Bitcoin For 2021 Bull Run!

 

Investors HODLing Bitcoin More in Anticipation of 2021 Bull Market

bitcoins upward trend growth chart vector

New data shows that Bitcoin’s current price action shows much higher levels of ‘hodling’ Β activity than the levels during previous bull cycles.
According to Willy Woo, a well-known on-chain analyst, an indicator called “reflexivity” has been on the rise in recent months. Woo explained that the reflexivity indicator measures Bitcoin investors’ tendency to hold their BTC as its price rises. This is essentially an alternative way to estimate the hodling activity of retail investors.


The next bull run may lead BTC above $20,000
Several reasons caused retail investors to hold onto their Bitcoin even more so than during previous bull cycles.
If Bitcoin manages to rally in 2021, most investors would see the event as a post-halving bull run. Historically, Bitcoin has rallied 12 to 15 months after each halving and managed to record a new all-time high each time. Based on Bitcoin’s tendency to rally after a halving, many retail investors might be holding it to avoid being priced out in case of a strong sustained rally.

Also, Bitcoin has shown a surprising level of resilience throughout several potential black swan events. After its initial recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic-induced crash in March, its price has stayed above $10,000 despite numerous negative events.
Looking at the most recent example, Bitcoin’s price went down slightly after the US CFTC charged the crypto trading platform BitMEX with violating the Bank Secrecy Act.
After CFTC’s announcement, BTC price instantly fell below $10,500 but quickly recovered to the $10,700 support level. According to Willy Woo, this is most likely due to the confluence of the two key factors. He then explained:

“Reflexivity represents the HODLers’ tendency to hold onto their crypto harder as price increases. While I had expected reflexivity to increase during the craze of bull markets, it looks quite constant from the last two cycles… However, this cycle is interesting, as reflexivity increases rather than static compared to the last cycles. Even though we now need more capital invested to get a similar % gain in price, more and more HODLers are holding even tighter than before.”

The US presidential election may push Bitcoin price higher


Industry executives and prominent investors in the crypto space foresee the upcoming US presidential election in November benefiting Bitcoin.
CEO of Three Arrows Capital Su Zhu said a Democratic sweep would almost certainly catalyze Bitcoin due to various macro factors. He also suggested that a Trump’s second term could also benefit Bitcoin. He wrote:
“Biden is extremely bullish for Bitcoin because the democrat blue wave will most likely usher in the unprecedented installation of MMT agenda with the corresponding dollar weakness and deficits. That being said, Trump is also bullish for Bitcoin, though to a lesser extent.”

As it stands now, Bitcoin is less affected by the negative news than by the positive ones, which is one of the main indicators for identifying a bull market. While we are not there yet completely, most analysts believe that 2021 will be a great year for Bitcoin, regardless of what happens around the world.

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Best Free Bitcoin Indicator Ever Gaining Over 5000% Returns! Free Indicator In The Description!

 

Best Bitcoin Indicator Ever? 5000% Returns

Bitcoin’s mining is adjusted for difficulty every 2016 blocks, which translates to roughly every two weeks.
However, Bitcoin’s effective Hash Rate is being calculated daily and is based on the number of blocks found by the miners each day. Because when the hash rate and mining difficulty are calculated, the difficulty effectively may lag behind the hash rate by a maximum of two weeks. The difficulty is, therefore, a somewhat lagging indicator for miner capitulation.

When looking at how ribbons work, we can notice the green and blue simple moving average lines of the difficulty and hash rate on the ribbon indicator. When they cross each other, miners are considered to be β€œcapitulating.” On top of that, most times, the chart will show that there is roughly a two-week lag from the hash rate identifying miner capitulation to the difficulty identifying capitulation. The simple moving average periods chosen are not that important, and the same effect can be seen regardless of the periods used.
However, miner capitulation periods can last for weeks. As a result, the lag between mining difficulty and hash rates doesn’t have such a huge impact on the Bitcoin investor, but rather just on traders.

The hash ribbon indicator

Because of the effect of negative sentiment as well as price action during bear markets and times where miners reach capitulation, the best time to buy Bitcoin is somewhere in the middle of the β€œminer capitulation” period. However, this cannot be fully known until after the fact.
A simple 1- and 2-month period simple moving average of Bitcoin’s Hash Rate can be used to, with great accuracy, identify market bottoms, miner capitulation, and even great times to buy Bitcoin. The moment when the 1-month hash rate SMA crosses over the 2-month hash rate SMA, the worst of the miner capitulation is over most of the time, and the recovery has begun. Initiating a buy at these points in time yields incredible results so far.

Of the 9 historic buy signals in the table shown, the average gain to the next market cycle peak, which was historically less than 3 years away, is over a whopping 5000%. Returns are even greater than shown in the table for positions held indefinitely.
What is interesting is the drawdown through all time. The average maximum drawdown for each of these entries is a mere 11%. These results are achieved without considering anything else but this indicator. No indicators, metrics, or intelligence, rather just two simple moving averages on Bitcoin’s hash rate.
We have to note that there is one β€œbad” purchase, which dates to January 2015, where a maximum drawdown of 42% occurred. However, this is still considerably less than half of Bitcoin’s various 80%+ drawdowns. Nonetheless, the majority of drawdowns can be eliminated by simply adding a price action indicator. This indicator could include the famous Bitcoin 10-day and 20-day SMA cross over, for example.

Purchasing Bitcoin during miner capitulation, as the hash rates are starting to β€œrecover” combined with buying only once price momentum has gone positive, yields insanely good results.
As shown, the maximum drawdown is reduced significantly, while the returns have stayed relatively the same. The difference between the first and second table is made possible with the simple addition of the price momentum indicator and using these two indicators as a signal to purchase Bitcoin.

This brings us to the question of can you use this indicator often. Miner Capitulation doesn’t happen that often: in fact, it happens only once per year on average. However, it has started to occur a bit more often in 2020, which may be a great thing for Bitcoin investors.

This indicator has proven itself a great tool for finding Bitcoin bottoms, while it does need help when it comes to timing the sale of the previously bought coins. Hash ribbons should be one of the key components of every Bitcoin trader’s tool belt, simply due to its amazing track record.

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The Amazing Chainlink – Solving Real-World Problems!

 

Chainlink – Beginners Guide

During the long and hard crypto winter of late 2018, many projects failed to stay afloat, but during all this, Chainlink managed to actually keep growing and defied the bearish market. At the moment, Chainlink is one of the leading cryptocurrencies in the DeFi sector. How did it manage to grow as consistently, and what sets is apart?

Problem

Blockchains use math–cryptography and practically guarantee security, trust, and decentralization. However, the problem is that each blockchain is its own universe, which means that getting information from and to another blockchain would require a trusted source. To retrieve information about event outcomes or even something as simple as Bitcoin’s price meant that you are required to trust a source to tell the truth.

What is Chainlink?


Chainlink figured out how to get any type of information in and out of a blockchain while remaining secure and decentralized, but also trustless. Sources of data between the blockchain and the “outside” world, known as oracles, are no longer a single point of failure for a smart contract. Chainlink created a network of nodes that can provide information to and from the blockchain, which created a vital part of smart contract infrastructure as a result. This “blockchain middleware” meant that Chainlink oracles could provide essential information without sacrificing on decentralization or security.
Chainlink essentially created a secure bridge to the “outside” world.
To minimize the potential failure of the aforementioned oracles, Chainlink focused on the distribution of data sources, distribution of oracles, as well as the use of trusted hardware.

Origins of Chainlink

Chainlink was founded by the current CEO Sergey Nazarov and the current CTO Steve Ellis. The project started in Sept 2017, when the project raised $32 million in an ICO, thus creating 1 billion LINK tokens. In May 2019, Chainlink launched on the Ethereum mainnet. At the moment, Chainlink is the 7th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, as well as the largest DeFi cryptocurrency by market cap, and is very close to the $4 billion dollar mark.

Use Cases

Chainlink is different from most projects in terms of having real use cases, as it is demonstrated by its list of partners, with most notable being Polkadot and Synthetix from the crypto sector and SWIFT and Google coming from the traditional business world.
As an example, Chainlink could be used to send a real-world money transfer from SWIFT and via Chainlink. The proof the payment could then be sent back via Chainlink to SWIFT. This use of Chainlink by SWIFT has created a seamless interaction between the traditional world and the crypto world, all while minimizing the potential points of failure.

So how does it all work?

Chainlink can be defined as a decentralized oracle network that consists of purchasers and data providers. Purchasers request data, while providers return it in a secure way.
Purchasers select the data they want to obtain, while providers bid to provide that data. Providers have to commit a stake of LINK tokens when making a bid, which serves as proof that they are honest. Once providers are selected, their job is to bring the correct answers on the chain.

Chainlink uses something called “oracle reputation system” to aggregate as well as weigh the data provided. If everything goes well, providers get paid, and everyone is happy, but if the providers misbehave, they lose their stake.

How do you get Link tokens?

The Chainlink network uses an Ethereum-based ERC-677 token that inherits the ERC-20 token standard’s functionality while allowing token transfers to contain a data payload. This token protocol is also used for payment of data providers who are bringing and translating data into the blockchain.
Besides earning LINK tokens by being a provider, you can also buy LINK tokens on various exchanges, such as Coinbase, Binance, and Huobi.

The Future of Chainlink

Two of the key objectives Chainlink focused on to ensure the security of its network are the distribution of data sources and the distribution of oracles. Like all networks, Chainlink’s main goal is to add more people and operators to become more robust and valuable.

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New Wave Of Crypto Banks Will Destroy Fiat Banks in 3 years!

“Crypto Banks Will Eat Fiat Banks in 3 years β€” or even less” – Opinions of a CEO


Mark Binns, the CEO of BIGG Digital Assets Inc., believes that the future of crypto will be a bit different than what most people think. He believes that the crypto sector will become a safe, compliant, and regulated environment. He voiced his opinions in an article published by Cointelegraph, where he spoke of the future of crypto he imagines.
Binns said that a future where customers are going to be able to walk into any bank and gain access to credit products, investments, and savings accounts that can host both crypto-assets and fiat assets.

Kraken, a San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange giant, has become the first-ever cryptocurrency business in the US to become a bank. At the moment, being an officially chartered bank would mean that Kraken will be able to offer even more banking and funding options to existing customers than it is offering now. It also means Kraken Financial will be able to operate in multiple jurisdictions without any fear of having to deal with state-by-state compliance.

Kraken is currently working with Silvergate Bank in hopes of offering its US customers SWIFT and FedWire funding options. More and more partnerships such as this one will become the status quo in the future. Binns is calling out traditional banks, saying that now is the time for the ones lagging behind to start paying attention to the market development.


Silvergate Bank is one step ahead of the rest at the moment, as it is currently having almost 900 digital asset companies as clients. Those clients have made deposits of over $1.5 billion with the bank. While this is still a small amount of money in relative terms, clients dipping their toes in the crypto sector will almost certainly choose this bank. Consumers will most likely define a “full service” bank as one that offers financial services in fiat as well as crypto.

Blockchain forensics tools

 

Just like crime scene investigators can use a black light or fingerprint powder to detect all kinds of evidence, blockchain forensics investigators can do similarly to Bitcoin and other blockchains. People claiming that Bitcoin is completely private has been dispelled again and again. In fact, blockchain-based cryptocurrencies are much more open to investigative methods than regular fiat currencies. Binns said that, as it is certainly possible to uncover blockchain transactions’ origins, blockchain will become a part of the traditional banking system rather than “putting banks out of business.”

Blockchain forensics tools already exist. They allow investigators to follow digital paper trails across multiple addresses, wallets, transactions, blockchains, and other digital entities, all by using clustering and heuristics techniques. Companies in the blockchain forensics space are developing proprietary searching algorithms designed specifically to detect concealed funds’ origins. On the other hand, traditional fiat is still the currency of choice for most money laundering professionals, simply because it is very hard to track.

DeFi is not for everyone


The decentralized finance sector has been the hot topic of the crypto sector for a while now, as it holds virtually endless promise. While yield farming may be all the rage, the DeFi sector is so much more than just that.
Some examples of DeFi usage are:
ο‚· Allowing you to take technical and fundamental trading advice from experienced traders and only pay a fee if the call is correct.
ο‚· You can put your capital into various digital investment portfolios without having to pay fees to mutual funds.
ο‚· Investors can hold derivatives of their desired cryptocurrencies without having to switch between blockchains.
These innovations are just some of the opportunities that DeFi provides. As the market continues to mature, more DeFi projects will allow us to do things that we aren’t even thinking about right now.

However, there is one fundamental problem with all the benefits decentralized finance provides: the average banking customer isn’t going to engage with DeFi protocols for decades. While the most avid crypto enthusiast knows how to dig up the contract address of an ERC-20 token, then trade it on decentralized exchanges, and then invest that token through lending platforms or liquidity pools, the average person will still likely want to talk to a banker from time to time. On top of that, governments around the world are already working on their own government-backed digital currencies, which the average consumer will go for instead of DeFi, at least at first, and simply due to the trust people have in the government.

What if banks don’t comply?

Binns said that any bank that is still approaching cryptocurrency with fear over the next 18 months is at great risk of finding itself dead in the water, while Kraken and other banks that enter the market will create a huge advantage for themselves.

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Crypto Videos

OneCoin Scam Getting It’s Own Movie & TV Show!

 

Kate Winslet Starring in a Movie About OneCoin

HOLLYWOOD, CA/USA – JULY 9, 2016: Kate Winslet star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

Even though the well-known OneCoin Ponzi scheme is still being processed through the courts, a movie on how this project came to be is in development. Not only that, but its lead star is the lead from the movie Titanic.
As reported by Deadline, a famous Hollywood actress Kate Winslet has signed on to both star and produce Fake!, a movie based on the unpublished book written by Jen McAdam and Douglas Thompson. McAdam, as a writer of this book and a victim of the OneCoin scheme, will produce the film.

Fake! will be written as well as directed by Scott Z. Burns, the man who helmed The Report, a political drama that was based on the CIA’s report on torture after the 9/11 event. He is also known for writing the 2011 pandemic movie Contagion, also starred by Kate Winslet.

OneCoin was founded in 2014 during the expansion of the crypto industry. It was created by Ruja Ignatova in Bulgaria. The project followed the typical structure of a multilevel Ponzi marketing scheme but had a cryptocurrency twist. It was promised OneCoin is the next Bitcoin, even though it wasn’t backed by a blockchain or a decentralized network. Despite several warnings coming from the crypto industry insiders and government agencies, OneCoin became one of the most popular projects, fostering an ‘us vs. them’ mentality. Even after OneCoin failed, it left the market with several “clones” which did pretty much the same thing it did, but with a twist here or there.


McAdam, who started a support group for numerous OneCoin victims, said that both she and her friends and family invested and lost over 250,000 euros, equating to around $300,000, before she learned its server was not even a blockchain and that it was all a scam.
Ignatova was charged with multiple charges, including wire fraud, securities fraud, as well as money laundering, on May 7 of this year, but she has not been seen ever since 2017. Her brother Konstantin Ignatova, an ex-executive in OneCoin, was also charged with the same in March of this year. He has since agreed to testify against his sister on the matter. Defrauded investors have sued OneCoin, alleging losses of up to $5 billion.

The movie Fake! is not the first artwork inspired by the OneCoin Ponzi scheme. A TV show coming from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) about Ignatova and OneCoin is also in development.

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Crypto Videos

BitMEX Lost Over 45k Bitcoin – Is BitMEX Going Down?

 

BitMEX Lost Over 45k Bitcoin Since US Government Charges; Other Exchanges Are Taking Over

More than 45,000 Bitcoin has been withdrawn so far from the crypto trading platform BitMEX since the US government levied charges against the exchange as well as its leadership. October 1 brought two crushing blows to BitMEX. First, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Department of Justice brought charges against the exchange and its practices. Shortly thereafter, its founders (including the CEO Arthur Hayes) were indicted by the US government. As expected, the market reacted to the breaking news with a sharp decline across many cryptocurrencies in the sector.

This isn’t even the first time in recent months that the trading platform giant has contributed to a downward turn in crypto sector prices. The exchange first began losing its users’ trust following a blackout on Black Thursday, which, for a short period, prevented users from trading or retrieving their own assets. While users slowly moved away from the platform and withdrew over 100,000 Bitcoin in the six months between that event and these most recent charges, the exodus that happened after October 1 appears to be unprecedented in scale.

The data coming from Crystal Blockchain shows that, in less than 48 hours, the net outflows from the BitMEX platform have exceeded 45,000 Bitcoin, by no means a small amount. However, traders are traders, and the Bitcoin withdrawn from BitMEX didn’t just vanish, but simply moved platforms. Gemini and Binance appear to be the most prominent beneficiaries of these outflows, closely trailed by OKEx and Huobi. More than 20,000 BTC has been transferred out of the BitMEX platform and into the latter four exchanges.

It is yet unclear whether BitMEX will just disappear into the abyss of time like many failed crypto exchanges before it, or if the company will manage to find a way to comply with the government body and survive to trade another day and. Lance Morginn, CEO of Blockchain Intelligence Group and an ex-supervisory special agent at the Department of Homeland Security, said that the most likely outcome would be that BitMEX will receive monetary penalties. On top of that, BitMEX will most likely have to make a promise on the part of its executives that it will not engage in unlawful activities in the future. However, he thinks that BitMEX is too big to fall at the moment and that it is less likely that the company will just vanish.

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Crypto Videos

The Only Sustainable Way To Make Money Mining – 76% of Crypto Miners Use Renewable Energy!

76% of Crypto Miners use Renewable Energy

 

Green planet earth with solar energy batteries installed on it

The rising energy demand to operate proof-of-work cryptocurrency mining, especially for Bitcoin, has been a hotly debated topic in the most recent months. However, interesting and unexpected news came from the research of the 3rd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study performed by the University of Cambridge. This study shows that 76% of crypto miners actually use electricity from renewable energy sources as a part of their energy consumption mix.

The study found that more than 39% of the total energy consumed by proof-of-work cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and others comes from renewable energy sources.
This finding contrasts with a previous study regarding proof-of-work crypto mining done by the same university, which found that only 28% of the total energy consumed for crypto mining came from renewable resources. Taking a look at the data from 2018, 60% of the miners used renewable energy sources as a part of their energy mix.
According to the latest study, the most common energy source for miners is hydroelectric power, with almost 62% of miners reporting that they are using hydroelectricity. Hydroelectric power is followed by coal and natural gas sources that take the second and third spots at 38% and 36%, respectively.

Crypto miners also reported that they use wind, oil, and solar energy, which are common but to a lesser degree than the aforementioned three sources.

The report also worked on dividing miner energy consumption by region, noticing that miners from Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Europe, as well as North America use close to an equal percentage of hydroelectric power when compared to electricity from other sources, such as natural gas, coal, wind, and oil.
Using coal as an energy source is most common in the APAC region, where it contributes almost an equal amount of electricity to crypto miners as hydroelectric sources. Miners from Latin America, on the other hand, reported that they do not use coal-fired electricity to mine cryptos at all.

The study also notes that miners from the APAC region contribute almost 77% of the Bitcoin hash power, all while using the lowest amounts of renewable energy sources. On the other hand, while North America adds only 8%of the total Bitcoin hash power, 63% of the energy consumed in mining Bitcoin in that region came from renewable sources. Europe is a bit behind North America, with close to 30% of its crypto mining powered using renewable energy. Europe contributes nearly 10% of the worldwide Bitcoin hash power.

While using renewable energy as a main or only source of energy for mining is still far away, more and more miners are starting to use alternative sources in search of cleaner and better ways to make a profit.

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Crypto Videos

Forex Fundamental Analysis for Novices – Trading The UK Claimant Count!

 

Fundamental Analysis for Novices: The UK Claimant Count

 

Thank you for joining this oryx academy educational video for novices. In this session, we will be looking at with claimant count and studying an example from Great Britain to try and establish what it might mean for trading the British pound.

If this is the first time you have viewed one of our fundamental analysis videos and you happen to be a new trader, we recommend that you use a financial calendar every day in order to plan your trading activities around the fundamental economic releases which governments statistics departments and other economic specialist firms release on behalf of governments. These are usually released on a weekly, monthly quarterly, and annual basis. The majority are subject to a time embargo.
This is typically what you might expect to see on an economic calendar, and these are available by most broking firms.

The most critical components of an economic calendar are the day and date, the time of the economic statistical release, the type of event, and the likely impact that this release could have on the market, which typically has 3 levels, low, medium, and high. High impact economic data releases can cause significant volatility in the market post-release, and it is essential that you are not caught offside because you didn’t know it was happening. This could cause significant losses for you and therefore adds weight to the fact that you must use an economic calendar every day. The other information that the economic calendar will provide you with is the previous data release, a general consensus, which will have been put together by leading economists. The actual figure will be quickly populated on to the calendar shortly after its release. This information can then be compared to the consensus and the previous data release in order to try and establish if the information is better, worse, or the same for the particular country’s economy.

Here we can see that on Tuesday, September 15th at 7 a.m. BST, the Great Britain claimant count rate for August is expected, along with the claimant count change for August. These are both predicted to have a medium impact on the market. We can also see the previous figures for July. However, there is no consensus. Please note that this information will also be simultaneously released with unemployment and average earnings, and where traders will take all of the released information into consideration before trading in accordance with the data. Because the unemployment rate is a high impact event, we must take this into consideration even though the claimant count is set as a medium.

So, what is the claimant count? This statistic is released by the National Statistics body, and it is a monthly measurement of unemployment within the United Kingdom. It is essentially a barometer for the health of the UK Labour market. Traders will be looking for higher rates of employment because this means that the economy is expanding. In this circumstance, it means the UK is bouncing back from the covered pandemic and indicates that the UK economy is expanding. Therefore, traders will be looking for a lower number in the claimant count than the previous month, which is seen as bullish or good for the Pound, while an increase in the number of claimants is seen as negative and both bad for the UK economy and the Pound, which might fall against its counterparts.

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Crypto Videos

RUON AI Digital Currency – Crypto In Space!

RUON AI digital currency certainly isn’t lost in space

 

Thank you for joining this Forex Academy educational video. In this session, we will be looking at the RUON AI digital coin and how the concept is helping people in need all over the planet.

SovereignSky, RUON AI, and Sovereignaid bring together space-based technology and blockchain in an AI app, which provides banking, chat in a social mobile application that will allow RUON AI to help disadvantaged people from all over the world; the aim is to eradicate extreme world poverty.

The concept is to run the technology from space, which really does take decentralized finance to a new level. Two microsatellites were launched from Vandenberg Air Force base on December 3rd, 2018, by Space Quest, their satellite strategic partner.

One of the principles is Tim Burke. Tim is a movie producer and has a love of Si-fi, so he is bringing his love for this into the real world. Tim used to be a producer on MTV and personally interviewed more A list of celebrities than anyone else. He counts many of them as his friends.

So, what is it?Β 

RUON AI is pronounced Are You On, and is a social app which is available on Android and IOS and received $20M Round A closing investment and expects to launch in Q4 2020 and are planning an IPO in 3 years.

It allows users to post on certain social media platforms using patented technology and where the user is paid in RUON coins. Users can also get paid in this way by selling products on social media hubs such as TikTok and Instagram, plus Amazon and Alibaba. The money can then be spent via a RUON debit card. Users get the option to divert a portion of their income to charity, and where they claim that at least 97% of that will go directly to the people who need it.

RUON AI has partnered with RUONwallet,Β  Open Transactions, and Zapple to provide a crypto-friendly bank with sort code connected smart card allowing users to spend Fiat currency digital assets and cryptocurrencies wherever MasterCard is accepted.

The Social Media platform is designed to make money for users while offering full privacy, encryption, transparency, and control over users’ data. RUON AI gives its users the choice to earn revenue using data points and splits the revenue 60/40 in favor of the user.
In December 2018, Sovereignsky launched the first of eight satellites to provide Wi-Fi connectivity to the third world. In December 2019, it was one of the first companies to successfully process a blockchain transaction in space for its mission to eradicate extreme poverty.

Other Partners in the venture include Stan Larimer, founder of Bitshares, Larry Castro founder and CEO of Stealthgrid, who has an awful lot of experience in quantum cyber security Technologies, JC Oliver, and Michael Taggart.

We look forward to bringing you more details about this exciting new digital coin in the future.

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WARNING! Crypto Exchanges Are NOT Safe!

WARNING: Crypto Exchanges Are NOT Safe!

 

More than half of all the crypto exchanges worldwide have weak or even no KYC identification protocols β€” with exchanges in Europe, the US, and the UK being some of the worst offenders, according to a new study done by blockchain analysis firm CipherTrace.
CipherTrace conducted an analysis on more than 800 decentralized, centralized, as well as automated market maker exchanges, and concluded that 56% of them did not follow KYC guidelines at all, despite the anti-money laundering regulations. The highest number of exchanges that don’t adhere to the regulations are in Europe β€” a region known for stricter regulations. Also, 60% of European Virtual Asset Service Providers do not have sufficient KYC practices.

The US, UK, and Russia are the three countries that host the highest numbers of exchanges with weak KYC procedures. Singapore is also at the top of the list, both when it comes to weak and porous VASPs.


CipherTrace study also found that many exchanges do not even bother to mention the country of its origin on its website or in its terms and conditions. This lack of transparency appears to be deliberate, as 85% of these exchanges had a frail KYC procedure framework. This implies that some exchanges are purposefully hiding their jurisdictions to avoid registering or complying with any form of AML regulation.
The report notes that 70% of crypto exchanges registered in Seychelles have poor-to-none KYC norms, making the small island country a potential base for money launderers.

The study also examined 21 decentralized exchanges and found that a whopping 81% had either weak or no KYC practices. However, looking at the bright side, DEXs aren’t necessarily good venues for money laundering due to how they operate. CipherTrace noted that although $7.9 million of crypto stolen in the KuCoin hack was sold on the decentralized exchange Uniswap, it wasn’t actually laundered there.


Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson said that “The hacker isn’t using DEXs to hide their tracks, but rather so they can sell their stolen tokens.”
DeFi projects offer a variety of traditional financial activities such as lending, borrowing, and earning interest. This means they could fall under the same regulatory framework as banks and other regulated financial institutions.
“DEXs offer financial activities, and are, by doing so, likely subject to various laws already, including securities law, and potentially banking and lending laws, and most definitely AML laws,” said SEC Crypto Czar Valerie Szczepanik in early October.

Dave Jevans, CipherTrace’s CEO, said he didn’t believe that DeFi protocols would accept regulations easily, but that he doesn’t think that DeFi can escape regulations for long.

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Crypto Going Mainstream In 2021 As Paypal Adopts Bitcoin – Go Get Your Lambo!

Crypto Going Mainstream in 2021 – MAJOR Adoption by PayPal and Venmo


PayPal has officially confirmed on Wednesday, October 22, that it is entering the cryptocurrency market. The payments provider giant, with over 346 million active accounts all around the world, has pledged to make cryptocurrency not only an optional feature but rather “a funding source for purchases at its 26 million merchants worldwide.” PayPal also plans to expand this service to its peer-to-peer payment app Venmo in the first half of 2021.

The public already knew that PayPal was planning on moving into crypto in June, but the information came from anonymous sources, and nothing was certain. A month later, the Paxos exchange had been selected to act as support in PayPal’s crypto endeavors.
In a blog post that came out on Wednesday, PayPal said that the current pandemic had made it clear that people need digital payments of all sorts.
Starting in early 2021, PayPal’s customers will be able to instantly convert one of the supported cryptocurrencies to fiat currency, with no added incremental fees, PayPal said. Merchants will have no additional fees or integrations as all transactions will not be settled in crypto but rather in fiat currency at their current PayPal rates.

“Cryptocurrency simply becomes another funding source in the PayPal digital wallet, adding more utility to cryptocurrency holders, while addressing concerns surrounding volatility, cost as well as the speed of cryptocurrency-based transactions,” PayPal announced.
PayPal will initially have a $10,000 weekly buying cap as well as a $50,000 limit per 12-month period. All trades must be executed in US dollars, PayPal stated.

Everything sounds good… But!

As bullish the Bitcoin market has proven to be about this news at the moment, an initial review of the crypto services PayPal offers has a couple of cons. First off, the company will take a go-slow mindset, which is the complete opposite of how the markets reacted to the most recent adoption news. Critical caps limit who the buyers are, how much they can actually buy, and what they can do with their PayPal- sourced crypto. While this is not necessarily bad, crypto enthusiasts should take everything slow and with a grain of salt rather than instantly calling for the moon and ordering their Lambos.

However, there is completely bad news, rather than just a slight setback. PayPal is refusing to hand its customers’ crypto keys over, meaning that you own the cryptocurrency you buy on PayPal. Still, just like on centralized exchanges, you will not be provided with a private key,” PayPal casts this restriction as a loss-prevention tactic.
Another bad thing is that the users will not be allowed to send their crypto around or even withdraw it. PayPal stated that “you can only hold the crypto that you buy on PayPal in your account. The cryptocurrency in your account cannot be sent to other accounts on PayPal or off it.” This brought a lot of questions on whether PayPal’s crypto feature will have “paper Bitcoin” or if it will be covered by real cryptocurrency.


However, PayPal’s partnership with Paxos should be good enough proof that the crypto held on the payment provider will be the real deal. The New York State Department of Financial Services announced that it had granted the “conditional BitLicense” to PayPal, the first of its kind. The BitLicense was granted for a partnership with the Paxos Trust Company, enabling PayPal customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. Four DFS-approved digital assets that will be initially available are Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ether, as well as Litecoin, according to the DFS statement.
The service rollout also faces quite a few real-world restrictions. Out of the 50 US states, only 49 have coverage at launch, as Hawaii is excluded from the list.


Conclusion

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rallied following this announcement, which is just one of several major recent mainstream corporate adoption signs in 2020. The PayPal event happened following Microstrategy’s $425 million Bitcoin investment, as well as a similar but more modest move by Square.

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Crypto Videos

Uniswap Monthly Volume Surpasses Coinbase!

Uniswap Monthly Volume Surpasses Coinbase; The DeFi Craze Continues


Data coming from Dune Analytics shows that Uniswap DEX has processed over $15.3 billion in volume in September only. In the same period, reports show that the centralized exchange giant Coinbase processed only $13.6 billion.

The significant spike in volume Uniswap had can be attributed to two major factors:
First, the explosive growth of the decentralized finance sector and yield farming of various governance tokens caused decentralized exchanges to thrive. Second, the launch of Uniswap’s own governance token has led to a frenzy on the platform.

The month of June marked the start of a DeFi governance token frenzy, with Compound’s COMP token being at the forefront of it. The process is relatively simple: DeFi users stake various cryptocurrencies and “farm” new governance tokens by doing that. The DeFi protocols that release the underlying governance tokens in a decentralized manner distribute them to the users who are staking funds. Once users successfully obtain the new tokens, they typically hold them until they are listed on a centralized exchange, where it could be easily sold.

Top cryptocurrency exchanges have to take various factors into consideration before listing tokens. The criteria for listing coins can include liquidity, developer activity, and track record. For new governance tokens and DeFi-related cryptocurrencies, it has proven to be a nearly impossible feat to meet those requirements.
Uniswap has, mostly for the aforementioned reasons, eventually evolved into the go-to platform when it comes to trading DeFi tokens, and the surge in total value locked in DeFi translated into intensified growth of Uniswap’s volume as well.

DEX Volume VS. Yield Farming

Uniswap’s volume has first surpassed Coinbase Pro in daily volume on August 30. Ever since then, it has continuously remained very competitive with the top US exchange. Uniswap creator Hayden Adams said in late August:
Wow, Uniswap’s daily trading volume is higher than Coinbase for the first time ever. Uniswap: $426M, Coinbase: $348M. It’s hard to express how crazy this is.” The consistently high performance coming from Uniswap occurred despite a very considerable slowdown in the yield farming craze. This suggests that, while the yield farming craze has been tamed, the uptrend of decentralized exchanges is sustainable over the long term.

The last couple of weeks brought a slight price drop of DeFi tokens, which also caused a drop in user activity in the yield farming space. The researchers at Dune Analytics are, however, not interpreting this as a bearish signal. Instead, they said:

“Despite the yield farming craze calming down, decentralized exchange volumes crushed old records in September, with $24 billion traded, up 100% from August. While the last few weeks were down when compared to the beginning of the month, all weeks in September were well-above the peak week from August.”

Ethereum analysts Anthony Sassano said that it also reflects the overwhelmingly positive sentiment that investors have for Ethereum. He said: “They told you that the decentralized exchanges on Ethereum were a fad – but they were so incredibly wrong. DEXs did $23.5 billion in volume in September alone! Betting against Ethereum has, is, and always will be a bad move.”

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Crypto Videos

Crypto – Dash Is NOT A Privacy Coin!

Dash is NOT a privacy coin.

Dash was once viewed as one of the crypto sector’s top privacy-focused projects. However, it no longer operates under that classification, according to the Dash Core Group, the group overseeing Dash and its development.
When asked if Dash should be considered a privacy asset, Fernando Gutierrez, Dash Core Group’s CMO, said:
“No, Dash is a payment operator cryptocurrency, with a strong focus on usability, which includes speed, ease of use, cost, and user protection through optional privacy.”

Dash started off as a fork of Bitcoin all the way back in 2014. It was originally called XCoin, only to change its name to Darkcoin, and ultimately Dash. The asset positioned itself on the market as a privacy-focused asset and competed with the likes of Monero and Zcash. Its whitepaper even said that “Dash is the first privacy-centric cryptographic currency that is based on the work of Satoshi Nakamoto [the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin].”
In addition to Dash, there were two of the market’s other main anonymity-based assets, Monero and Zcash, which came to life in 2014 and 2016, respectively.

As can be concluded from Gutierrez’s comment, Dash is no longer fully and mainly focused on privacy, but it rather only specifies that it has privacy as an optional feature. The asset’s optional privacy feature is called PrivateSend, giving its users the option of greater anonymity than they would have when transacting without it. The technology that Dash utilizes in its PrivateSend function is called CoinJoin, a technology that “complicates” transactions to the point of being extremely difficult for analytics firms to analyze the transactions.

The CoinJoin approach was introduced in 2013, essentially letting Bitcoin users mix their transactions into a group of transactions, therefore making any form of tracking difficult. Dash took this exact same approach and made it more convenient by making it a built-in option for Dash senders.


In recent days, privacy coins have faced significant scrutiny from governing bodies all around the world, as seen by the IRS’ bounty rewards of $625,000 for successfully cracking Monero. In order to mitigate the possible pressure from the government bodies, Dash Core Group pivoted from the privacy coin sector to the transaction sector, now stating that the privacy regulation doesn’t apply or threaten Dash in any way. Gutierrez added that Dash’s blockchain is public and that there is nothing to break or crack because Dash’s approach to privacy is fully probabilistic, not based on encryption like on projects like Monero.

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Forex & The Brexit Conundrum!

The Brexit Conundrum

 

Thank you for joining this forex academy educational video.

In this session, we will be looking at the Brexit situation and how it is unfolding, and the disparity between the British pound and the FTSE 100 index.
Here is the FTSE 100 index and where we can see 3 peaks that are falling, from a high of 6,500 to the current level, at the time of writing, at 5,960: a gradual trend lower since June 2020

Here is a chart of the British pound against the United States dollar and where we can see during the same time period the pound has been extremely bullish against the dollar from 1.2200 to up to a peak of 1.3400 to its current trading range at 1,3284 at the time of writing.
This tells us a story that the pound is bullish, and this is largely due to US dollar weakness and where traders have been riding the wave upwards, following the trend, in a which has been fairly typical where US dollar weakness has been seen across the board and particularly with the other major currencies. So, we have bad continuing economics from the USA and bad US dollar sentiment.

However, if we revert back to our ftse100 chart, the same sentiments cannot be applied to the British economy, and this is typical because of one reason: fund managers do not act out of sentiment in the same way as currency traders so. Fund managers will typically take a more long-term view, and this, of course, must factor in the Brexit situation. And herein lies our conundrum: one set of traders is buying the pounds, and another set is selling UK equities, and mostly because of the risk of no trade agreement being reached between the European Union and British governments regarding a future trade deal. This has largely been put down to the European Union wanting more leeway regarding fisheries and European fishing vessels being allowed to fish in British waters and also so with regard to standards being maintained across the board between Britain and Europe within the financial services sector and other areas such as food. Both sides have red lines, which neither are prepared to budge from and where there seems to be a breakdown in the negotiations with Michel Barnier and his British government counterpart, David Frost.
Time is of the essence, and it is said that a deal must be reached by the end of October in order for the future trading relationships, including zero tariffs on either side, being implemented. Should an agreement not be reached, Britain will be left to trade outside of Europe on world trading organisation rules, which are not as favourable to Britain as they would be with no tariff arrangement with Europe.

Michel Barnier has made it clear that unless standards are unified across the board, and the UK are willing to move their red lines on fisheries, it could cause trading problems and frictions, even where buy British lorry drivers might not be allowed to pass through Europe.

So, where does this leave things? Pretty much hanging in the air. The strength of the pound belies the uncertainties regarding the future arrangements with the European Union. Both sides are up against it in terms of time, and if neither side will budge, there is a distinct possibility of a no-deal trade arrangement between the two nations.
And so what might we expect? If it comes down to the 11th hour, so to speak, and there is absolutely no trade agreement between Great Britain and the European, the party might be over for the British pound, which could suffer to the downside against counter currencies.
We might also see a further sell-off on the FTSE 100. AS time gets closer, it will be wise for traders to be extremely cautious while trading both of these assets. Incorporate tight stop losses and reduced leverage.

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Crypto Videos

Beware of God Mode Admin Keys! Avoid Crypto’s That Have Room For Corruption!

Beware of the “God Mode” Admin Keys – What are DeFi Projects Even Thinking?


Review platform DeFi Watch shows that twelve out of fifteen of the most popular decentralized finance projects still have access to a ‘God Mode’ admin key. These full-access control keys allow developers to modify or replace anything in the smart contracts underpinning their projects, and even make adjustments to user balances.
While admin keys are a common thing early in the project’s life, they are defeating the concept of decentralization and rendering the whole project unsafe. While the “God Mode” keys have been justified as the way to protect users’ funds, and are mostly used with security features such as timelocks and multi-sigs, many analysts argue the validity of the claims.

Author and educator Andreas Antonopolous has defined a truly decentralized project as one that has no custodial control over the funds, adding that “This is a very important criterion. I think that’s the foundational criterion of decentralization.”
By that standard, most DeFi protocols fall well short. Out of the fifteen projects reviewed on DeFi Watch, only Uniswap, Makerdao, and InstaDapp have no admin keys associated with their product, while the remaining projects β€” which include Compound, Aave, DDEX, Nexus Mutual, Yearn Finance, and Synthetix β€” all have admin keys that allow varying degrees of control.
Aave’s admin key, which consists of just five members, only requires three of the five members to vote “yes” in order to make sweeping protocol changes. Aave, as the third among all DeFi projects by total value locked, should not allow such a form of centralization.
However, several projects, such as Compound, have implemented security features that protect the integrity of the admin keys, with many more projects planning to migrate to fully decentralized governance systems in the future.


While many users did state that Aave and other projects have been somewhat upfront about their admin keys, DeFi Watch founder Chris Blec said that DeFi protocols need to be completely explicit if they retain the option to possess the God Mode feature. He also added that even when projects acknowledge admin keys’ existence, only a few clearly outline the ramifications. As an example, while Aave claimed that they have the “God Mode” keys, nowhere does it say that ‘Aave can change your account balance.’
Synthetix smart contracts are, similar to Aave, fully upgradeable via the admin key, with the core team possessing the “vast power to do just about anything, including adjusting user balances and draining funds” – as DeFi watch stated. Despite Synthetix’s core team acknowledging the project’s centralization, the protocol has attracted immense funds and numerous investors.

Unlike Aave, Uniswap does not have any admin keys. Still, a blockchain analytics firm Glassnode has suggested that the DeFi project has essentially created their own unique backdoor through the distribution of their UNI governance token, which is equally as daunting.

The team potentially has immediate access to close to 40% of the entire supply, which is, at the moment, over double the amount held by the rest of Uniswap’s community. This would put them firmly in control of the whole decentralized protocol.
Once again, while having “God Mode” keys is somewhat a standard for new and emerging projects, it is expected for them to get rid of it or suffer the consequences of being deemed as a centralized project.

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Crypto News – Founder of OKEx Exchange Arrested!

Founder of OKEx Exchange Arrested

OKEx suspended all withdrawals at noon on October 16. They stated that the reason for the withdrawal suspensions was their cooperation with an investigation. Eventually, the news about the reason for the investigation made it out to the public. It turns out that Mingxing Xu, the founder of OKEx, was arrested at least a week ago.

Although the OKEx team’s official announcement states that an individual in possession of the exchange’s private keys of the cold wallet is currently cooperating with a public security bureau in investigations. In short, this means that the person arrested is so important to the company that withdrawals could not happen without him around. Jay Hao, the CEO and co-founder of OKEx, stated that the issue was over a personal matter. He didn’t say much, and the whole announcement was very vague.


According to a recent report coming from Bloomberg, the Chinese police have launched an investigation directly linked to OKEx, but it’s still unknown what exactly prompted the investigation. The exchange has made several statements in which they were assuring clients that the funds are completely safe and other activities will continue as normal. One such announcement came from OKEx CEO Jay Hao, stating that: We understand that the suspension of withdrawals impacts our users’ experience on OKEx directly, and we wholeheartedly apologize for this.” He added that all other activities, such as deposits, spot trading, staking, derivatives, etc. remain completely unaffected.
However, while the OKEx team ensures its customers that everything is okay, analysts claim that Bitcoin’s most recent drop to the $11,300 support is caused by the market being afraid of another centralized exchange fiasco.

While many things are still unknown, it does seem that the arrest of Mingxing Xu might not be directly tied to OKEx and its operations. According to a non-official report that appeared online, Xu was already released on bail, while his arrest happened because he was ordered to assist in the investigation that was related to a backdoor listing of the European Group in Hong Kong in 2019.

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Earn Passive Income With Yield Farming Part 2!

 

Earn Passive Income With Yield Farming – Part 2/2


While the previous part of our yield farming series talked about the definition, threats and opportunities of DeFi yield farming, this part will talk more about specific projects and what they offer, as well as how to choose the right project for you.

Compound and Aave

Compound and Aave are currently DeFi’s primary lending and borrowing protocols. These two platforms together account for over $1.1 billion of lending and $390 million of borrowing. The easiest and most straightforwards way of earning a return in DeFi is lending capital on the money market.

Aave generally has better rates than Compound, as it offers its borrowers the ability to choose a stable interest rate rather than a variable rate. The stable rate is, in most cases, higher for borrowers than the variable rate, therefore increasing the marginal return to lenders.

On the other hand, Compound introduced a new incentive for its users through the issuance of its COMP native token. Anyone that lends or borrows on the Compound platform earns a certain amount of COMP, translating into more rewards.

Security from Financial Risk

DeFi money markets work by employing over-collateralization, meaning that a borrower must deposit assets that have more value than their loan. When the collateralization ratio (which is the value of collateral divided by the value of the loan) falls below a threshold, the collateral is liquidated and instantly repaid to lenders.

Yield Farming Liquidity Pools

Uniswap and Balancer are the two largest liquidity pools in DeFi. They offer liquidity providers a reward in the form of fees for adding their assets to a pool. Liquidity pools are between two assets that are configured in a 50-50 ratio in Uniswap, while Balancer allows for up to 8 assets in a single liquidity pool.
Whenever someone takes a trade through the liquidity pool, liquidity providers who contribute to that pool earn a small fee to facilitate the transaction. Uniswap pools have offered liquidity providers healthy returns over the past year as decentralized exchange volumes picked up. However, optimizing profits requires investors to also consider impermanent loss, the loss created by providing liquidity for an asset that suddenly appreciates.
Balancer pools are somewhat mitigating impermanent loss, as pools don’t need to be configured as a 50-50 split between two assets. They can be set up in a 90-10 or 80-20 allocation to minimize impermanent loss. However, the risk cannot be completely eliminated.

However, there is a liquidity pool that completely eliminates impermanent loss. Curve Finance facilitates trading between assets that are pegged to the same value. As an example, there is a Curve pool with USDC, USDT, DAI, and sUSD: all stablecoins pegged to the USD. There’s also a liquidity pool that consists of sBTC, RenBTC, and wBTC: all pegged to Bitcoin’s price. As all of the assets are worth the same amount, there is no impermanent loss. On the other hand, trading volumes of those pools will almost always be lower than the regular liquidity pools like Uniswap and Balancer.

Incentive Schemes

The Synthetix project first introduced an sETH-ETH pool as the original incentives scheme, offering liquidity providers an added incentive of SNX rewards. While this pool has deprecated, this idea expanded to other liquidity pools.
Taking advantage of these incentives can show to be incredibly lucrative. However, investors should ensure that they aren’t earning a dud token, but rather something that holds value. Nobody wants to take part in an incentive scheme that gives rewards in tokens equivalent to BitConnect tokens.

What to Choose

For the slightly risk-averse investors who just want to earn a yield on their stablecoins, there are many options, with money markets or providing liquidity on projects such as Curve Finance being the best option for lower-risk interest. For those with large cryptocurrency holdings and want to use them to earn even more, liquidity pools such as Uniswap or Balancer are certainly a good choice. Added incentives on top of the regular rewards are just icing on the cake.

That being said, the perfect yield farm is different for each individual varies based on their amount of capital, the investment time horizon, as well as how risk-averse they are.

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Earn Passive Income With Yield Farming!

 

Earn Passive Income With Yield Farming – Part 1/2

The hottest buzzword in crypto at the moment is surely “yield farming.” Yield farming allows people to earn fixed or variable interest simply by investing crypto in a DeFi project. As an example, investing in ETH is NOT yield farming, but lending out ETH on the Aave platform for a return IS yield farming.Β As the newest trend in crypto, investors are still a bit skeptical as they do not understand what it is and how it works.

Yield Farming – Explained

Yield farming is the practice of staking cryptocurrencies in return for monetary gain. While the expectation of earning a yield based on investments is nothing new, the concept of yield farming has arisen directly from the decentralized finance sector. The idea is that individuals can earn tokens in exchange for participating in DeFi applications. Yield farming is often called liquidity mining.

How It All Works

The precise mechanics of yield farming vary based on the terms and features of the individual DeFi application. Most projects started out by offering users a small share of the transaction fees in exchange for contributing liquidity. However, the most common yield farming method at the moment is to use a DeFi application and earn the project token as a reward.

This practice became popular during the summer of 2020 when Compound announced that it would start issuing its COMP governance token to both lenders and borrowers who use the Compound application. This was extremely well accepted, pushing Compound to the top of the DeFi rankings.
Since then, several projects created DeFi applications with associated governance or native tokens and started rewarding users with their tokens.
The most successful yield farmers try to maximize their returns by deploying more complicated strategies. These advanced strategies usually consist of staking tokens in a chain of protocols, intending to generate maximum yield.

Pros/Cons of yield farming

The benefit of yield farming is apparent immediately, and that is profit. Yield farmers who adopted a new project early have the privilege of benefiting from token rewards that can quickly appreciate in value. If they choose to sell those tokens at the right time, they can make significant gains.
Yield farmers generally have to invest a large sum of initial capital in order to generate any significant profits, with even hundreds of thousands of dollars being at stake. Due to the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies and especially DeFi tokens, yield farmers are exposed to the risk of liquidation, which occurs in case their project is plummeting in price. On top of that, the most successful yield farming strategies are extremely complex, meaning that the risk is higher if you don’t know all the yield farming space’s ins and outs.
Another risk of being a part of the DeFi and yield farming space is that the projects you invest in may have bugs that can crash the whole system, therefore rendering your funds non-existent. There have been several examples of such things happening, with the most prominent one being bZx, which suffered a series of hacks due to a single misplaced line of code.

Challenges and Opportunities

Almost every single DeFi application is currently based on the Ethereum blockchain, which creates two problems. The less important one is that, as Andreas Antonopoulos says, is that if projects support only Ethereum-based cryptocurrencies, they are slightly centralized in that manner. However, this is not as important as the next challenge, which is the overload of the Ethereum network. The network is currently struggling with a lack of scalability as it did not anticipate DeFi and its rapid expansion. As yield farming becomes more popular, Ethereum will get clogged up with more transactions, leading to slower confirmation times and skyrocketing transaction fees.

However, with new scaling propositions and alternative DeFi platforms, these problems aren’t fatal to DeFi, and the practice of yield farming could end up being around for quite some time.
Check out the next part of our DeFi passive income guide to learn how certain projects do business, how to earn passive income with them, as well as which project is the right for you.

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Ethereum Is Still Not Ready For DeFi! – What Does This Mean For Investors?

 

“Ethereum Still Not Ready For DeFi” – Critics Claim

As almost every single DeFi project flocked to Ethereum, experts warn that the network is not yet ready to support the frenzy that is DeFi.
Martin Froehler, a former hedge fund manager, mathematician, and founder of Austrian crypto trading platform Morpher, said that although Ethereum is surely the “best thing the blockchain industry can offer” to DeFi, its current network capabilities are still not enough:
“Ethereum can, at the moment, only handle about 15 transactions per second, and has a block time of 15 seconds, which is an eternity in finance. As people go into DeFi, they have to interact with Ethereum, meaning that everyone interacting with it needs Ether on their wallets. That is a huge barrier to entry, which may slow down mass adoption.”

Froehler considers Ethereum to be the most decentralized smart contract platform. However, because the network still has issues, many developers have had to look for solutions to counter them.Β  Froehler then added:
“There is cryptographic proof for everything happening on the sidechain on Ethereum, meaning that people are able to trade without actually needing Ether. They don’t pay any fees while enjoying a settlement time of one second, and being completely independent of the many congestions that the Ethereum network may cause.”

Many industry players feel like Ethereum did not anticipate the DeFi hype properly and that even with the much-discussed upcoming network upgrade, Ethereum 2.0, it will still not be ready to service DeFi and its appetites.

Ethereum 2.0 is implemented in order to improve performance, but its high gas prices may just scare off new users. Sergej Kunz, CEO of decentralized exchange 1inch, spoke about the issue and said that the Ethereum infrastructure currently lacks the capacity to host the DeFi environment:

“You will have to rethink everything. It’s true that you can migrate smart contracts to the code, but that’s not scalable. To be able to scale, you would have to create standards and bring new protocols that are based on the new sharded architecture, something like NEAR, which is similar to Ethereum 2.0.”

Mounir Benchemled, founder and CEO of ParaSwap, pointed out that the sheer complexity of explaining how a layer-2 works to end-users “and the risk of not being able to actually pay the funds immediately to these users” cause a lot of concern. Benchemled added that it is not practical for all DeFi projects to instantly swap to Ethereum 2.0:

“For it to work, all applications would almost be required to move towards one single platform. While major projects might have consensus, there are other projects who have their own agendas, and it might be hard for them. New bridges will have to be built to allow interoperability.”Β Despite all the challenges ahead for the Ethereum blockchain, everyone agreed that “DeFi is here to stay.”

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UNI Token Explained! Uniswap In Depth Analysis Part 4

 

UNI Token Explained: Uniswap In-Depth Analysis (Part 4/4)


Uniswap has finally introduced its native token, after months of anticipation. The token is meant to enable shared community ownership by implementing an on-chain governance system. This governance system will facilitate protocol development, as well as the development of the broader Uniswap ecosystem.

Who received UNI tokens?

Uniswap has a total supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens, split between community members, team members, investors, and advisers. Sixty percent of the UNI supply will belong to the Uniswap community members. At launch, Uniswap released 15 % of UNI tokens β€” 150,000,000 UNI – to be immediately claimable by historical users totaling 400 per unique address, as well as liquidity providers and SOCKS redeemers and holders.


Less than 24 hours of its launch, and the UNI token has already become the second-most widely distributed DeFi token, counting over 67,000 unique token holder addresses. That’s more than triple theΒ size when compared to its community fork SushiSwap, while only Aave’s LEND token is more widely distributed at the moment.
With so many users claiming their UNI tokens at the same time, Ethereum’s gas prices spiked substantially and rendered the Ethereum blockchain practically unusable at the time.

Total supply and distribution

One billion UNI tokens have been minted at genesis, and they will become accessible over the course of four years. The four-year token allocation looks like this:

ο‚· 60% to Uniswap community members – totaling 600,000,000 UNI
ο‚· 21.5% to team members as well as future employees with 4-year vesting – totaling 215,101,000
UNI
ο‚· 17.8% to investors with 4-year vesting – totaling 178,000,000 UNI
ο‚· 0.07% to advisors with 4-year vesting – totaling 6,899,000 UNI
Initial Liquidity Mining
Mining UNI token will initially be available through four liquidity pools to incentivize and bootstrap liquidity provision. UNI holders will be able to vote to add more liquidity pools starting October 18.
The initial liquidity mining program has started on September 18 at 12:00 am UTC, and will last run until November 17 at 12:00 am UTC.

Inflation

After the 4-year vesting schedule, UNI token will have a perpetual inflation rate of 2% per year. This measure is put in to ensure continued participation in the Uniswap operations from the community, but at the expense of passive UNI holders.

The UNI token’s future
Uniswap does not directly take any part of the trades fees for itself. However, the governance proposals for trading fees will likely be implemented by the community in the future, all to benefit from the extremely high trading volume.

Conclusion

Uniswap is certainly one of DeFi’s strongest and most innovative players at the moment, and it is undeniable that it has a future in the crypto sector. However, investors have to beware of how they trade and use the platform just as much as with any other platform, as unforeseen events might influence the potential gains they make.

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Is DEFI Doomed To Be The Next ICO!

 

DeFi is like ‘trying to fly to the moon in a cardboard box’

While DeFi is almost certainly the future, that future may not be today, according to Richard Byworth, the CEO of digital finance company Diginex. He added that the crypto, and especially the DeFi sector, has been bursting with innovation, exuberance, and speculation in recent months. However, the niche is still very much in its infancy.

“I do believe that DeFi is potentially the future down the road,” Byworth said during an interview with the co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital Anthony Pompliano. “But it’s very early,” he added, further elaborating:

“It’s like flying to the moon in a cardboard box. You are going to get yourself into trouble along the way, and things are going to break and burn up, as we have already started to see.”
These dramatic attempts, trials, and failures are not making the industry look great regarding various mainstream entities peering into the cryptocurrency sphere and its emerging DeFi niche.

“I definitely look back to 2017, and the whole DeFi thing is probably not what we all need right now,” Byworth said. “We have MicroStrategy coming in, we have Paul Tudor Jones coming in, we have some really serious hitters slowly but surely starting to pay attention to this industry. I just hope that DeFi doesn’t become just another ICO craze that makes people go, ‘you know what, everyone is crazy in crypto,’ and stay away from it for another couple of years.”

Taking a look back, the entire crypto industry reached its peak bubble status in 2017 due to the uptrend of initial coin offerings (ICOs for short), which were an attempt to improve the IPO model. However, this model turned into a fad and later got stomped out by various regulatory bodies. In recent weeks, DeFi’s growth and optimism surrounding it have given off similar vibes, with many completely random assets spiking in the price for no apparent reason.
Byworth is not the first one who compared the DeFi sector to the now-dead ICO sector from back in 2017. Ryan Selkis, the founder of digital asset data site Messari, recently expressed very similar thoughts.

Additionally, as Byworth mentioned, multiple very important mainstream giants have recently placed big bets on crypto and Bitcoin, possibly putting the industry at a pivotal point in life thus far.

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How To Use Uniswap In Depth Analysis part 3 of 4

How To Use Uniswap: In-Depth Analysis (part 3/4)

While the previous parts of the guide talked more about the premises of the platform and what it’s used for, this part of the guide will be a bit more practical, as it will explain how to actually use the Uniswap exchange.
How to use Uniswap
Uniswap is an open-source protocol, which means that anyone could create their own application for it. However, most people just use the already created ones, with https://app.uniswap.org and https://uniswap.exchange being the most popular.

While stepping into the DeFi sector might sound daunting, using Uniswap is quite straightforward. First off, you will need to go to the Uniswap interface and connect your Ethereum wallet, such as MetaMask or Trust Wallet. After you’ve done that, you will have the option to select the token you would like to exchange from and to. By clicking swap, the transaction pop-in window will show up.

After confirming this transaction request in the wallet, the transaction will start on the Ethereum blockchain and can be trackable via https://etherscan.io/.
As we mentioned in our previous articles, if you want to earn income from Uniswap, you would need to deposit two tokens of equivalent value to the pool.

Uniswap’s market position

Before using Uniswap, we need to know how does it compare to other decentralized exchanges. Uniswap is by far the leading decentralized exchange in terms of both volume and liquidity, and rivaling even centralized exchanges in that regard. It stands on the cusp of topping $10 billion in monthly traded volume. The traded volume in September only stands at over $9.9 billion, accounting for around 66% of all DEX trading volumes.

Uniswap’s success can mostly be attributed to the ease of liquidity provision. The protocol’s liquidity has steadily increased since the start of 2020, while it has recently seen several enormous spikes due to liquidity mining events from competing forks such as SushiSwap.
Uniswap’s user base has grown in sync with the DeFi boom of 2020, which makes sense as this protocol is a foundational component of the overall DeFi infrastructure due to it having integrations across hundreds of applications.
Despite extremely strong competition from its recently launched fork SushiSwap, Uniswap outperforms SushiSwap from both a volume and liquidity perspective.

Summary

Uniswap is an innovative decentralized exchange protocol built on the Ethereum network. It allows anyone that has an Ethereum wallet to exchange tokens without any involvement of any central party.
While it certainly does have its limitations, this new technology may have some exciting implications for the future of decentralized, trustless token swapping.

For information on Uniswap’s UNI token, check out our next part of the Uniswap in-depth guide series.

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Uniswap In Depth Analysis Part 2 of 4

Uniswap: In-Depth Analysis (Part 2/4)

Our previous article on Uniswap touched upon how the protocol works and what it is exactly. This part of our guide will talk about the impermanent loss effect as well as about how Uniswap can make money.

What is impermanent loss?

As we’ve discussed in our previous part of the Uniswap guide, liquidity providers earn fees for providing liquidity to traders that swap between various tokens. However, there is another thing that liquidity providers should be aware of, and that is the impermanent loss.

Impermanent loss is basically an opportunity cost pooling a token that is gaining value. This effect is best illustrated by an example.

Suppose Bob deposits 1 Ether and 100 USDT in the Uniswap pool. As the token pair needs to be of equivalent value, this would put the price of Ether at 100 USDT. At the same time, the pool has a total of 10 Ether and 1,000 USDT. This means that Bob has a 10% share of the pool, which has total liquidity of 10,000.
1 Ether = 100 USDT + 100 USDT = 200 USDT
If the price of Ether increases to 400 USDT, the ratio of Ether and USDT is disrupted. As the total liquidity in the pool has to remain constant, that means that there is now 5 Ether and 2,000 USDT in the pool. Arbitrage traders will add USDT while removing ETH from the pool until the ratio reflects the price.

0.5 Ether = 200 USDT + 200 USDT = 400 USDT
If Bob decides to withdraw his funds at the current ratio, he will get the promised 10% of the pool, which is 0.5 Ether and 200 USDT, totaling 400 USDT. While it seems like he made a nice profit, if he held on to his funds instead of pooling them, he’d have 1 Ether and 100 USDT, which would come out to 500 USDT.
1 Ether = 400 USDT + 100 USDT = 500 USDT
In this case, the impermanent loss is the opportunity cost of pooling a token that suddenly appreciates in price. By depositing funds into Uniswap for the purpose of earning fees, Bob may lose out on other opportunities. This effect works regardless of the price change direction from the time of the deposit.

All that is left to explain now is why this effect is impermanent. If the price of the pooled tokens manages to return to the initial price, the effect is nullified, and since liquidity providers earn fees, the losses from this occurrence should get balanced out over time.
Now that we know how we can earn or lose money, we should know how Uniswap makes a profit.Β The answer to this is: it doesn’t. Uniswap is a decentralized protocol, where all fees go to liquidity providers.

Founders do not get a cut from the trades through the protocol. However, Uniswap’s UNI token has recently gone live, presenting an opportunity for the founders to earn some money.
At the moment, the transaction fee paid out to liquidity providers is flat 0.3% per trade. These funds are added to the liquidity pool by default, but liquidity providers can redeem them at any point in time. The fees are distributed according to the liquidity providers’ share of the pool.
For more information on Uniswap, its token, and how to use it to earn income, check out the next part of our in-depth guide.

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CRYPTO! A Closer Look At Tether’s $1 Billion Bitfinex To Binance Swap!

A closer look at Tether’s $1 billion Bitfinex-to-Binance swap

A Tether swap worth $1 billion and involved Bitfinex, Binance, and Tron blockchain happened on Aug 20.
Tether stablecoin burned some of its supply on one blockchain only to mint it anew on another one. While this may sound easy enough, in reality, this operation involves quite a bit of planning as well as, more importantly, trust.

How was this performed?

During the six-transaction swap that occurred between two blockchains and took 1 hour and 1 minute to bring to completion, the Tether and Bitfinex side was never at risk. This was due to Binance being the initiating party. On the two occasions – right after the first transaction and then after the fourth one, Binance, as the initiator, was down $400 and $600 million, respectively. This type of risky operation either shows great trust among the involved parties, or perhaps the possibility of some additional mechanisms that were involved and that the public was are not aware of.

Another necessary condition for this swap was the fact that Binance had to have a surplus of $1 billion TRON-based USDT, which it was willing to trade for the equivalent amount of Ethereum-based USDT. Even though Binance has met this criterion, it is unclear whether the funds used belonged to the exchange or consisted of user deposits.

Tether, Binance, and controversy

Tether has been at the forefront of controversies in the cryptocurrency space, as the crypto community knows well by now. On top of that, Binance has been accused of making shady deals with many projects. While this particular example is most likely nothing to worry about, the crypto space has to be aware of centralized institutions traversing the crypto sector.

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What Is Uniswap? In Depth Analysis part 1!

 

What Is Uniswap: In-Depth Analysis (part 1/4)

Centralized exchanges have been the foundation of the crypto market for years. They offer extremely fast settlement times, high trading volume, as well as continually improving liquidity. However, it is clear that they defeat cryptocurrencies’ purpose, as they are centralized and hold your keys. Over time, developers have come up with a solution in terms of decentralized exchanges. These exchanges require no custodians or middlemen to facilitate trading.

Due to blockchain technology’s current limitations, building DEXes that can actually compete with their centralized counterparts is extremely difficult. One of the pioneers in the decentralized exchange sector is Uniswap. As a result of the innovation they brought to the sector, Uniswap has become one of the most successful DEX projects.

Uniswap – Explained

Uniswap is a decentralized exchange built on the Ethereum blockchain. To be even more precise, Uniswap is anΒ automated liquidity protocol. What’s important to know is that no order book or centralized party is required to make trades. Uniswap allows its users to trade without intermediaries and provides a high degree of decentralization as well as censorship-resistance. It is also open-source, which is one of the pillars of the decentralized finance space.
Uniswap users can seamlessly swap between many ERC-20 tokens without any need for an order book.
Unlike centralized exchanges, Uniswap protocol doesn’t list certain tokens on the exchange, while denying it for others. Any ERC-20 token can be listed on it as long as there is a liquidity pool available. As a result, Uniswap doesn’t charge listing fees.

So how does it all work?

Uniswap completely leaves behind the traditional architecture of digital exchanges in that it has no order book. Instead, it implemented a Constant Product Market Maker design, an iteration of an Automated Market Maker model.

An automated market maker is a smart contract that holds liquidity reserves that traders can trade against. They are being funded by liquidity providers. Liquidity providers are users who deposit an equivalent value of two tokens in the pool. When trading, traders pay a fee to the pool distributed to liquidity providers, all according to their share of the pool.
If you want to learn more about Uniswap and its token, how it all works, and how the platform makes money, check out the next part of our guide.

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John McAfee Arrested For Tax Evasion! Promoting S**t Coins!

 

 

John McAfee Arrested For Tax Evasion

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed suit against the creator of McAfee antivirus and a long-term player in the crypto field, John McAfee. McAfee was charged with allegedly promoting initial coin offerings without ever disclosing that the ICO issuers were paying him. As this is a direct violation of the US securities law, the SEC has filed suit against this eccentric investor on Monday.

When taking a look at what the suit claims, McAfee allegedly leveraged his fame to make over $23.1 million in undisclosed compensation from November 2017 to February 2018. He earned the aforementioned amount by recommending at least seven “initial coin offerings” to his Twitter followers, claiming he was the Chief Technical Officer or Technical Advisor of the projects, or that he at least performed a thorough inspection of how well-built these projects actually were.
The SEC mentions seven unidentified ICOs and their issuers who privately communicated with McAfee’s crypto team to get him to publicly endorse their ICO projects in exchange for payment. The payments were denominated both in the native ICO coins as well as Bitcoin.

This is highly illegal and has previously provoked the authorities to go after celebrities that acted as ICO promoters, such as DJ Khaled and Floyd Mayweather, who both promoted ICOs without ever disclosing their financial interests.
In this case, the SEC’s complaint refers to a time period where McAfee was predicting not only the price of Bitcoin but also which ICO will “pump,” which turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy simply due to the following he had.

While the market soon discovered what’s behind McAfee’s ICO promotion scheme, the outlandish Bitcoin prediction stayed. He ultimately walked back on the prediction that Bitcoin will reach $1 million by the end of 2020, claiming he had only been trying to draw the public’s attention to BTC.


Authorities have been quick on their feet for this one, as the Justice Department reported that John McAfee has been arrested in Spain for the tax evasion charges and is awaiting extradition to the US. His arrest came only a day after the suit was filed.

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When Will Bitcoin Push Towards $20,000

 

When Will Bitcoin Push Towards $20,000?

Bitcoin remaining relatively stable above $10,000 despite a major cryptocurrency exchange getting hacked is certainly a positive sign for the market’s maturity. While major volatility was expected several times throughout the past couple of weeks, this didn’t really happen, even with all the macro-economic uncertainty surrounding the sector.
The question remains, is boring price action becoming a new reality for Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is range-bound on the daily chart

Sometimes, charting can be quite simple and straightforward, and this is one of those cases. Bitcoin’s price fell below $11,090 resistance at the start of the month, establishing new support at $10,000-$10,360. The $11,090-11,300 zone that has been lost is now confirmed resistance.
When taking a look at the downside, a potential drop towards the $9,300-$9,600 zone wouldn’t be completely unexpected as the level around the $9,600 mark is still untested with the lingering CME futures gap.

Crypto sector market capitalization looking for support

The 1-week chart of the crypto sector market capitalization is showing a clear pattern by posting a higher high in the previous months, marking the potential start of a brand new uptrend.

After a higher high, the market needs to set a new higher low in which a range-bound structure can be defined. While the new possible higher low might be the $300 billion mark, it is also possible for the sector to pull back to the previous resistance zone, which is between $250-275 billion.
However, the price has possibly found resistance at the $320 billion mark, which is where it hit the 100-day moving average. While this bounce is extremely bullish and unexpectedly high, the move is not over yet, and the crypto sector market cap might end up going lower.

If the given area holds, it also shows how the beginning of a new cycle can be relatively dull. With each new start of a fresh market cycle, levels are flipped as support and resistance, after which we can see months of range-bound trading periods. We can use the price movement of Bitcoin in 2016 as an example, as that year was also a halving year.

During these periods, Bitcoin’s price stabilized in an accumulation range all throughout 2015. After the accumulation range has ended, Bitcoin’s price broke out and pushed towards the next zone of resistance.
This rally ended up with a sideways range that lasted for six months. A new breakout occurred, followed by another sideways range that lasted for six months. The current market sentiment, as well as price movement, is comparable with that period.Β The real excitement will come only when the total market capitalization of the sector, as well as Bitcoin itself, break into price discovery, as new potential parabolic runs can come back into play at that point.

A Bull case for Bitcoin

It should be noted that the scenarios shown here are based on lower time-frames (specifically the 4-hour time-frame) and, therefore, should be considered a short-term outlook.
As Bitcoin’s price is currently stuck in a range and is currently facing strong resistance, it’s more likely to anticipate a pullback to the $10,360 area, which is the vital area to hold for any form of bullish continuation.
If Bitcoin’s price holds at least that level and creates a higher low, we can expect a strong push towards the upside. If the price decides to just shoot up, the crucial breaker would be the $10,850 area. If Bitcoin breaks that area with confidence, we may see a rally towards the $11,090 or even 11,300 area.
While it would be unexpected to see a massive breakout that would surpass the aforementioned area, that would warrant an even stronger case for the Bitcoin bulls, and even possible highs of above-$20,000.

A Bear case for Bitcoin

The same levels surround the bearish scenario as well. A failure to break the $10,800 zone with confidence would present a potential test of the $10,360 area.
As we discussed in the bullish case for Bitcoin, a potential higher low can fuel the bulls and rally, even more buying power. However, if Bitcoin falls below the $10,360, further downward momentum should be expected, even including the still-open CME gap.Β However, very few people are expecting Bitcoin to fall below $9,000 any time soon, if ever.

WASHINGTON, DC – SEP. 27: U.S. President Donald Trump reacts to a journalist question during a news conference in the Briefing Room of the White House. Trump is planning for the first presidential debate with Democratic Nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden on Sep. 29 in Cleveland, Ohio. Joshua Roberts/Getty Images/AFP

Bears are mostly making their case based on the economic and political events, such as the U.S. presidential elections, U.S. President Donald Trump announcing that he is ill from COVID-19, as well as events in the crypto space such as the BitMEX platform fallout due to the U.S. government charges against it.

Who is in the right?

While we have no way of finding out who is currently in the right and where Bitcoin will head in the short-term, we can look at its day-to-day price movement as well as fundamentals and sentiment to get a clearer view.
Bitcoin is on track for its best Q3 ever, as Skew’s data shows. According to this on-chain analytics resource, Bitcoin’s Q3 closing price will be stronger than any Q3 before.

BTC/USD traded at somewhere in the $10,700 range on Sep. 30. That number very comfortably beats any other Q3 close on record, with the next highest one being 2019’s close of $8,310. On top of that, Bitcoin has sealed the second-best quarterly close in general, as it beat Q2 of 2019, which had a closing price of $10,590.
On top of that, network fundamentals also speak to Bitcoin’s overall strength, with the network difficulty itself at all-time highs and set for another push towards the upside. Hash rate, a measure of the estimated computing power that is being directed to mining, is also trending back towards its all-time-high levels.

Conclusion

While there are many discussions on whether Bitcoin will retrace to sub-$9,600 levels or push past $11,000, one thing is certain: Bitcoin’s dull price movement will not remain like this for good. Whether its short-term movement will be tilted towards the upside or downside is irrelevant, Bitcoin is here to stay, and good times remain ahead.

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What Are The Key Components of DeFi?

 

Key Components of DeFi

The crypto and DeFi sectors are growing exponentially, and there are currently more DeFi apps than ever. These projects are already saving businesses and customers both time and money. In fact, DeFi platforms started to emerge across nearly every branch of the financial sector. As the DeFi sector expands, it is important to understand what characteristics all DeFi applications have in common, and what they offer.

Open-Source

DeFi applications have to be open-source, or they are not truly decentralized. Open source coding means that the project’s code is made public. By being open-source, these apps can be audited it and its functionalities, security, and capabilities validated. Open-source codes are more stable and secure than fully-private codes simply because of community interaction. Additionally, being open-source provides more confidence in the platform as users can rest assured that no malicious coding is hidden in the background.

Transparent

DeFi projects provide the world with new levels of transparency. As most DeFi apps operate on public blockchains such as Ethereum, all transactions are fully available on the public ledger. As a matter of fact, all activity on the blockchain is completely public. The main difference in this approach vs. a traditional bank account is that the accounts are not bound to anyone directly. Instead, user accounts are pseudo-anonymous and list only a numerical address rather than show identity.

Global

While this characteristic is not only bound to Dapps, it is an extremely important one. Anyone can participate in DeFi platforms from anywhere across the globe. All you need is a smartphone with internet access.
Consequently, DeFi Dapps have the ability to solve the problem of certain areas being unbanked or underbanked, as they can bring them the financial services they are looking for. This openness is a major upgrade from the current banking system, which leaves around 40% of the population without any form of banking.

Permissionless

The DeFi sector operates without gatekeepers. As such, anyone can create a DeFi application and offer it to the world. On top of that, anyone can participate in DeFi apps without any concern for approval. This strategy is a massive change from the current financial system that requires every single potential user to be a part of many regulatory verification systems before even participating in the global economy.

Interoperable

Another trait of the DeFi space is interoperability. Interoperability is critical as it ensures that, as more developers enter the space, all the previous work is not suddenly lost. Instead, users can stack their own DeFi products to expand exposure. As an example, it’s common for a single user to utilize stablecoins, decentralized exchanges, as well as wallets. This strategy is only possible due to the seamless integration that DeFi applications possess.

Flexibility

Due to the open nature that DeFi provides, developers are able to exercise way more flexibility in their platforms than they ever could. Users gain considerable options by integrating third-party application integrations as well. If the current options are insufficient, users can even choose to build their own interfaces.
Check out the next video in our DeFi series, where we will show examples on how DeFi is used.

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What Is DeFi Used For?

 

What is DeFi used for?

The Decentralised finance sector has been flourishing in the past few months, with more and more interest coming both from the side of retail and institutional investors. However, the current system isn’t exactly clear on what DeFi actually brings to the table. This video will hopefully bring a bit more clarity on how DeFi works.

DeFi in Lending

One of the sectors affected the most by the introduction of DeFi is certainly the lending sector. If you have ever applied for any type of loan, you surely know the process is both intense time-consuming. Worst of all, you are forced to use lending companies specifically designed to maximize their returns. On the other hand, the DeFi community produced some interesting ways to improve this sector.

Compound

A good example of a DeFi lending platform is Compound. The Compound platform showcases the true power of DeFi and its ability to transform how the world envisions the financial market in the future. Compound allows users to lend their cryptocurrencies out to other users. In exchange for providing the loan, these users receive interest in the form of cryptocurrency. The platform utilizes smart contracts that match lenders and borrowers. Additionally, these smart contracts make interest adjustments based on the market’s current state automatically.

Decentralized Exchanges

Many consider decentralized exchanges (DEX’s for short) as the logical next step in the evolution of the crypto exchange sector. DEX’s are peer-to-peer trading platforms that provide users with a more streamlined UX, tighter security, as well as more flexibility. Traditional exchanges operate via a centralized organization that monitors, facilitates, and approves all trades within the platform, which defeats the purpose of cryptocurrencies. On top of that, users of centralized exchanges are vulnerable to attacks and hacks, as history has shown us. There were numerous occurrences of exchange hacks in which the central organization, as well as its users, suffered huge losses.
DEX’s eliminate many of these concerns. The platform doesn’t include the assets directly, but rather via a smart contract. This way, there is no “weak spot” that a hacker could exploit.

Uniswap

We will use the Uniswap platform as our example of a decentralized exchange. It introduced an innovative mechanism now known as Automated Market Making. This new protocol enables near-instant settlement between different parties. The protocol will try to close trades as close as possible to the current market value.

DeFi Prediction Platforms

Another interesting development in the DeFi sector is the creation of prediction platforms. These platforms are used to analyze the current public opinion regarding a certain event.
Guesser
One good example of this type of decentralized application is Guesser, as it allows you to make various predictions and examine other people’s results in the pool. You even earn crypto for participation by being right with your prediction.

DeFi is Here to Stay

As the main systems of our society are currently undergoing a transformation towards decentralization, the demand for DeFi applications will rise. These new applications continue to disrupt the financial space in remarkable ways.
Decentralized applications are certainly something that is able to set the new standard for the worldwide economy moving forward.

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The Craze Behind DeFi – Explained!

 

The Craze Behind DeFi – Explained

There are many reasons that the DeFi sector has been experiencing a surge of interest lately.
First off, we need to mention that the regulators have been behind the curve in terms of DeFi, which has been able to flourish in this vacuum. As an example, in traditional unsecured lending, a legal requirement that lenders and borrowers know one another’s identities exists. On top of that, the lender always assesses the borrower’s ability to repay their debt. In DeFi, on the other hand, there are no such requirements. Instead, every part of the process is about mutual trust and preserving privacy.

Regulators always have to weigh the delicate balance between deterring innovation and failing to protect society from risks. In July, the US SEC made a major shift towards embracing decentralized finance by approving an Ethereum-based fund called Arca.
This is welcome and extremely important since one of the major challenges with financial innovation is the hostile environment that is created by archaic regulations. This had caused many cryptos and DeFi projects to fail, including major ones such as Basis, which returned $133 million to investors back in 2018 when it concluded that it couldn’t work within the SEC rules.


The second reason for the DeFi craze is that mainstream players are not-so-slowly and surely getting involved. Many financial institutions are beginning to accept DeFi, as well as seeking ways to participate. Seventy-five of the world’s biggest banks are now trialing blockchain technology to speed up their payment system as part of the Interbank Information Network, led by JP Morgan, Royal Bank of Canada, and ANZ. Even though most of these banks are testing centralized versions of blockchain, this is one step closer to DeFi than the current system.
Major asset management funds are starting to get interested in DeFi seriously as well, with the most prominent one being Grayscale, the world’s largest crypto investment fund.

The third reason for the craze is the effect of COVID-19. The pandemic has evidently driven global interest rates even lower, with some jurisdictions, such as the eurozone, now offering negative interest rates.
DeFi potentially offers much higher returns on investment to savers than high-street institutions. As an example, Compound has been offering an annualized interest rate of 6.75% for people that save with stablecoin Tether. Not only do you get the interest, but you also receive Comp tokens, which adds to the attraction of this offer. With as much as two-thirds of people without bank accounts having a smartphone, DeFi also has the potential to offer its services to the so-called unbanked.

One final reason for the surge in people putting money into DeFi projects is FOMO – fear of missing out. Many tokens are worth nothing or very close to nothing in terms of their utility, so we see a lot of irrational investment and pure speculation. But, people see certain tokens rise in value exponentially and want to turn their life around as well.
Like it or not, we are certainly heading towards a new financial system that will be more liberalized and decentralized than before, and DeFi will be at the forefront of these changes.

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What Is DeFi – Beginners Edition!

 

What Is DeFi –Beginners Edition

One area in cryptocurrencies that have recently attracted huge attention is certainly DeFi or decentralized finance. DeFi refers to financial services using smart contracts, automated enforceable agreements that work without intermediaries like banks or lawyers. Instead, they use online blockchain technology.
Between September 2017 and now, the total value locked up in DeFi contracts managed to go from $2.1 million to over $7 billion. The hype it has gotten in the past couple of months has risen over $3 billion.

This has, in turn, driven a massive rise in the valuation of all the tradable tokens that are using DeFi smart contracts. The total market cap of DeFi projects now exceeds $15 billion, almost doubling the value it had in July. Numerous tokens have exploded in value this year. For example, Synthetix Network Token has increased its valuation by more than 20-fold, while Aave did an almost 200-fold increase. So if you had bought $1,000 worth of Aave tokens in August 2019, your position would now be worth nearly $200,000.

So why is DeFi so disruptive, and what does it bring to the table?

DeFi projects are mostly built on the Ethereum blockchain network. They are the next step in the financial technology revolution that began 11 years ago with Bitcoin. One area in which these decentralized applications have taken off is cryptocurrency trading on DEX’s (short for decentralized exchanges) such as Uniswap. These exchanges are entirely peer-to-peer, without any person, company, or other institution behind the platform.
Other DeFi services allow you to:
Borrow and lend cryptocurrencies in order to earn interest using platforms such as Aave or CompoundΒ Bet on the outcome of certain events using AugurΒ Create and exchange real-world asset derivatives such as currencies or precious metals on platforms such as Synthetix.
Buy stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrencies that are pegged to the value of a particular currency or commodity.

DeFi is often called “Lego money” because you can stack decentralized applications together to maximize your returns. As an example, you could buy a stablecoin such as DAI and then lend it on the Compound platform to earn interest.
Though many of today’s decentralized applications are niche, future applications could have a massive impact on everyone’s day-to-day life. As an example, you will probably be able to purchase a house or a piece of land through a DeFi platform under a mortgage smart-contract whereby you repay the price over a certain number of years.

The deeds would be tokenized on a blockchain ledger as collateral, and they would shift to the lender automatically in the event of you defaulting on your repayments. Because no lawyers or banks would be required in the process, it could make the whole process of buying and selling houses cheaper, smoother, and easier.

To learn more on how DeFi works, check out our next video where we will talk about the current DeFi craze and how it came to be.

 

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Blockchain Can Shield Banks From Trade Scandals! The Banks Mass Adoption Of Blockchain Is Coming!

 

Blockchain Can Shield Banks From Trade Finance Scandals

Blockchain word as symbol cryptocurrency in chrome chain.

The pressure created by the ongoing economic crisis, mounting geopolitical tensions, and obsolete trade finance systems is pushing the trade finance industry all across the globe down a rabbit hole.Β To add fuel to the fire, recent trade finance scandals that involved major players such as Hin Leong, Agritrade, ZenRock, and Hontop Energy netted a combined loss of almost $6 billion.Β To limit exposure to such threats, major banks such as ABN Amro, SociΓ©tΓ© GΓ©nΓ©rale, and BNP Paribas have all withdrawn completely from the sector, while others stayed in the sector but raised the bar on their funding processes.

Samir Neji, founder, and CEO of Dltledgers, said: “For traders and other businesses that involve moving goods around the world, capital is now much harder to come by. This is bringing the sector that is already in difficulty further down.” By implementing blockchain, Neji pointed out. Traders can negate the paperwork, email exchanges, and phone calls that are now required to secure trade finance.
Distributed ledger technology (DLT for short) has the potential to bring transparency to the process of trade execution by sharing information in real-time, he added.

When all sides immutably record everything from trade participants, goods, documents, contracts, and payments on a single safe platform that provides tracking and authentication, the chances of a trade being fraudulent would plummet, or perhaps disappear altogether. Neji also said: “If banks see their trades carrying less risk, which they do when using DLT, the trader will be in a much better spot to get financing, and in many cases, will even end up paying lower rates.”
Apart from regaining the banks’ trust to fund global trade, blockchain would also allow traders to easily, smoothly, and safely execute their trades during the ongoing pandemic.

Conclusion

Regarding the adoption of blockchain technology by trade finance and supply chain players, Neji stressed that it was important to stop just talking about blockchain to customers and that they should just see the benefits the technology would offer themselves.
According to the exec, just as with using a smartphone, it is not important for people to know all the technicalities of the underlying technology if they want to actually benefit from it. He said that his company, as well as other companies in the sector, are working to incorporate blockchain in trade finance, but that they need to work together more so they could fight the common foes, such as paper documents, outdated processes, as well as fraud.

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Binance Is Entering the DeFi Space!

 

Binance Entering the DeFi Space

Crypto exchange giant Binance has announced that it will be delving deeper into the world of DeFi products with its latest offering, which is an automated market maker named Binance Liquid Swap.

Aimed directly at its competitor Uniswap, as well as at its clones, Binance will launch an AMM liquidity pool that will allow its users to provide liquidity by depositing tokens. Just like Uniswap, which is the world’s most popular decentralized exchange, newly-created Binance Liquid Swap will also enable users to earn interest as well as a cut of the trading fees for the pool.

Binance’s product is the first AMM pool on a centralized exchange, and will, as such, be integrated into the Binance.com exchange. This will allow users of the Binance platform to pool tokens in their wallets to earn rewards.

The AMM pool will use a pricing module instead of an order book so they could provide more stable prices as well as lower transaction fees according to the announcement Binance made. The company is currently prioritizing liquidity for its own tokens, which means that the first pools offered on launch will be BUSD/DAI, USDT/BUSD, and USDT/DAI.

Earnings from the AMM pool will be accrued with a corresponding seven-day annual percentage yield (APY for short) with returns converted into the assets in their respective pools. Transaction fees, as well as prices, will be determined by the number of assets gathered in the liquidity pools.


Binance CEO stated that the new product is aimed to attract more volume and participants. He said:

“We hope we can further the growth of the DeFi space and empower our users with more earning power and easy liquidity through a centralized AMM pool. The pool’s main characteristics are credibility, safety, and security, which are all provided by Binance,”

Uniswap is, at the moment, the world’s most popular token swapping protocol as well as a decentralized exchange, with more than $1.8 billion in liquidity.

Binance Liquid Swap is actually the second venture into DeFi that the company has made within a week. On Sept 1, the crypto exchange took aim at Ethereum by launching ‘Binance Smart Chain,’ a new Ethereum smart contract that is compatible with the existing Binance Chain.

The company stated that the blockchain was optimized for DeFi, with the goal of low-cost transaction fees that can go as low as 1 cent.

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Ethereum Developers Discuss Transaction Fees! The Death Of Ethereum?

Ethereum Developers Discuss Transaction Fees – Is It Too Late?

An Ethereum All-Core-Developer call was held on Sept 4 to discuss a variety of proposals that could improve the Ethereum network. However, this call was mostly prompted by gas fees on the network remaining historically high.
The call agenda included several discussion points, most notably about high gas prices as well as ways to mitigate the problem. Alexey Akhunov, an independent Ethereum researcher, opened the conversation with a comment on the existence of gas tokens and how they are pushing the prices higher than predicted.

He highlighted how the mempool is often full of transactions bidding a certain amount of gas to mint these tokens. He also compared this approach to order book exchanges where the traders fish for dips with low price orders. However, according to Akhunov, the fact that gas bidding orders cannot be simply and easily canceled could mean that the prices remain artificially high as any possible dip is bought by default.
While there was mention of elimination of the refund mechanism that underpins the gas tokens, Akhunov acknowledged that the magnitude of gas minting only accounts for around 2% of current gas usage. This would, in turn, suggest that any negative contribution that this problem may cause is limited in size. However, he noted that he would need to find more data before discussion options to eliminate this mechanism formally.
The remaining topics were less important in terms of gas price discussion. One of the topics brought to the conversation was a recently introduced EIP supported by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin as well as core developer Martin Swende.

Main Proposals

Filed under the name EIP-2929, the proposal substantially increases gas costs for a couple of storage operations. On the other hand, this is being done as a protection against Denial of Service attacks. This change will also mean that some operations could actually be cheaper than before.
While raising gas costs appears counterintuitive at the moment, doing so could help Ethereum devs feel more confident about the gas limit increases in the future.

A further EIP that could have the biggest impact on the general user experience is the one named EIP-2711. This proposal could let one account pay for someone else’s transaction fee, as well as create batched transactions that have a guarantee to be executed in the exact order they were submitted.
The latter change could also result in savings in gas costs, as we have seen on platforms like Uniswap, where this system was already implemented.

Conclusion

Overall, the changes brought up during a developer call are being discussed primarily for inclusion in the Berlin hard fork, that was originally expected to come this summer. However, as many proposals still need to be tested and approved, the hard fork is most likely still some time away.
For the time being, the Ethereum fee market will remain without changes and entirely at the mercy of surging demand, which drives the gas prices up.

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Apple Stock Market Cap Dwarfs Crypto!

Apple Stock Market Cap Shows Us How Small Crypto Still Is

While it is undeniable that the crypto space has seen tremendous growth both in value and adoption terms over the past decade, the asset class is still very tiny when it comes to value in relative terms. When compared to mainstream markets, and especially when pitted against giants such as Apple, the value of cryptocurrencies is easily dwarfed.

Apple vs. Cryptocurrencies

Apple stock (AAPL) currently holds a staggering $2 trillion market cap, essentially dwarfing all the speculative capital that is held within the entire crypto space, which, at the moment, totals a mere $327.6 billion according to CoinMarketCap.

The cryptocurrency industry has grown from merely a concept in 2008, with the inception of Bitcoin’s white paper, all the way to hosting billions of invested dollars and millions of people that believe that crypto will revolutionize the future. Bitcoin went from less than $1 per coin, all the way up to $20,000 at its all-time high in December 2017. It is currently carrying a market capitalization of roughly $189 billion.
The entire crypto industry, however, is still only a fraction of the size of Apple’s total stock shares. Even if the market cap of the whole Blockchain industry would triple, it would still not reach Apple’s market valuation.

Apple is a tech company, well-known for pushing the smartphone revolution with its iPhone series phones. It currently holds the biggest market capitalization on the US stock market, based on data shown by TradingView. Apple also has the record of being the first publicly traded US company to ever reach a $2 trillion market cap.

An image of Bitcoin and US currencies is displayed on a screen as delegates listen to a panel of speakers during the Interpol World Congress in Singapore on July 4, 2017.
The three-day conference on fostering innovation for future security challenges is taking place from July 4 to 6. / AFP PHOTO / ROSLAN RAHMAN (Photo credit should read ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Conclusion

While some people may say that crypto is, in its current state, too small to be taken seriously, many believe that crypto is a great investment at the moment precisely because it is small but with immense potential. The room to grow as well as the possibilities in terms of finance solutions are what fuels the year-over-year growth of cryptocurrencies.
The key takeaway from the comparison with Apple would be that, while Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are extremely small in relative terms, they provide solutions to real-world problems and have the potential to change the world as we know it.

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Avoid Having Your Crypto Stolen!

WATCH OUT FOR THIS CRYPTO SCAM: Copy & Paste Exploit Exposed

A Reddit user operating under the nickname “seraf1990” warned crypto holders of a copy & paste scam that stole his crypto holdings. This copy & paste scam works by replacing a wallet address he copied from Coinbase with the one belonging to scammers. In his post, seraf1990 added that he lost about $350 worth of Bitcoin. This money, as he noted, was meant to go towards his next month’s rent.
The post explains how exactly seraf1990 got scammed. He was attempting to cash out some Bitcoin by sending it from Binance to his Coinbase account. After copying the exchange’s Bitcoin wallet address, the Reddit user pasted it into the appropriate field on the Binance exchange and completed the transaction “without a second thought.” It was only later that he actually realized the address had somehow been switched out.

This type of attack is not new. In fact, it is fairly common, except for one major difference. When a bad actor swaps out the address for one of their own, the two addresses are usually completely different from one another, therefore making the exploit reasonably easy to spot. However, in this case, however, the first four digits of the two addresses were the same.
The fact that Coinbase only displays the first couple of digits of the wallet on the user’s device only compounded the issue.


In the post, seraf1990 said that the device used in this particular transaction was a computer using Windows OS. Some replies on the thread speculated that some form of malware could be behind the crypto scam, though the exact method was never directly confirmed.
Since the method of spreading this particular malware is not known, we can only speculate on how to defend against it. However, it is safe to say that clicking on unknown links and downloading unsafe files is a sure way to get your crypto stolen.

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Is Bitcoin rising because the US Dollar is falling? #correlated

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Is Bitcoin rising because the US Dollar is falling?

 

Thank you for joining this educational video by forex.academy. In this video, we will be looking at the rising bitcoin and the falling US dollar.


Let’s take a look at the US dollar currency index, also known as DXY, on this daily chart where we can see that at the beginning of March, there was a high of 103.00 when measured against other currencies which make up the major pairs, including the Euro, GB Pound, Swiss Franc, Japanese Yen, Australian dollar, and the New Zealand Dollar, and the Canadian Dollar, and where since then the DXY has fallen to its current level of around 93.00. this is entirely due to the American economy suffering at the hands of the covered virus.

And although the recent economic data from the United States, including upbeat retail sales and non-farm productivity for July, were better than expected, and where the initial jobless claims for August was also lower than expected, all depicting a slightly healthier economy then was forecast by market economists, the dollar remains very much on the back foot. This will likely continue until such time as the democrats and republicans agree to a relief stimulus package to aid those unemployed Americans and struggling companies.


Now let’s look at this bitcoin futures chart on the Chicago mercantile exchange, or CME, going back to June of this year and where we can see that prices failed to fall below the key 9,000 to the US Dollar support area and since the latter part of July, prices have increased almost exponentially up to its current level of 11,870.
And so we can clearly see that in this extra time of market turbulence and volatility, the dollar is clearly falling, and bitcoin futures are clearly rising. Historically the markets typically do not use a correlation mechanism – in this case, a negative correlation – in order to trade one against the other. However, is that about to change?

It is a widely held belief that the highest ever spike in bitcoin to around 20,000 was driven by the fear of missing out or the FOMO effect.
However, some institutions and market analysts are fearful that the biggest single currency in the world, the United States dollar, will continue to take a battering, and that holding just one currency at such times of market turbulence and uncertainty may have inflationary pressures within the United States, and therefore there is a trail of thought is that some long-term speculators are moving out of the US dollar, even in these risky times, preferring to diversify into bitcoin, where market upside potential is possible on the basis that bitcoin has seen a previous high of 20,000 and whereby a floor seems to be established of around 9,000. This will give investors some comfort in believing that the coins will not go down to a few dollars, for example, and this will likely fuel the FOMO effect and thus the continued trend for both assets.

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Big Hit To The US – Digital Yuan vs the US Dollar!

 

Digital Yuan vs. the US Dollar – Will the Takeover Happen?

Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of Trade Policy at Cornell University, believes that, while China’s digital yuan will enhance the role of the renminbi as an international payment currency, it will most likely not impact the dollar’s status as the dominant currency.
Parsad stated his opinions in a piece published in Project Syndicate, where he said that the Chinese government should keep reforming its financial markets and remove restrictions on the capital flow, all in order to put both China’s national cross-border payments system and CBDC in the global sphere.

According to the professor, China’s national currency has made significant progress in recent years, both as a reserve currency and as a means of payment. He says that this can mostly be attributed at the expense of currencies such as the British Pound and the Euro:
Even when the IMF added renminbi to the four existing currencies in the SDR basket, and then gave it a 10.9% weighting, it was most likely the euro, the pound, as well as the Japanese yen that gave way, not the US dollar.
The People’s Bank of China still influences the renminbi exchange rate, said Prasad, who added that such policy most likely won’t change “significantly anytime soon.”

On the other hand, the professor clarified that as other developing countries are making solid trade and financial links with China, they “could start to invoice and settle their transactions directly” in their national currency, which could easily lead to the adoption of the digital yuan when it’s officially launched.
China’s Commerce Ministry made an announcement on Aug 14 that it will expand the trials of the nation’s CBDS to include Beijing, as well as Tianjin and Hebei provinces.

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Brazil’s Central Bank Joins the CBDC Race! Crypto!

 

Brazil’s Central Bank Joins the CBDC Race

The Central bank of Brazil has begun laying the groundwork for its own Central Bank Digital Currency with an official statement revealing that it has already formed a dedicated group who’s job is to study the crypto industry and potential benefits of Brazil having its own CBDC.
According to the central bank officials, the team consists of 12 members that form an intergovernmental group that will assess how the CBDC could fit the national payments ecosystem, as well as what its impact could be on Brazil’s economy and the society as a whole.

Previous reports showed that Brazil spends around 90 billion reals or $16 billion annually to ensure a functional supply of cash in circulation. This amount of money represents between 1% and 2% of Brazil’s GDP.
The central bank said that the new group would examine and state how much money will be saved by issuing Brazil’s own CBDC, as well as if it will be net beneficial for the national economy.

Information Technology Department of the Brazilian central bank’s official Rafael Sarres de Almeida made a public statement, saying:
“The subject of digital currencies that are addressed by central banks has been on the research agenda of many central banks across the globe for some time. However, in 2020, there was a greater focus on an approach that was more practical.”

He added that China has already led the way by entering the final testing phase of its CBDC, but that many other monetary authorities have announced new projects as well.

In May, Ripple had a closed-door meeting with the Brazilian central bank, where officials from both sides discussed “institutional matters.” According to the bank, this meeting included its president Roberto Campos Neto, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse, as well as three other representatives of the crypto firm. However, but no other details have been provided on the specific topics of the meeting.

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Crypto News – DeFi Adoption Two Ways Ahead!

 

DeFi Adoption – Two Ways Ahead

As decentralized finance starts to gain ground, co-founder of Chainlink Sergey Nazarov believes that there are two ways for more DeFi mainstream adoption.
Nazarov spoke about DeFi at the Smart Contract Summit, where he said he sees two main ways the new technology “crosses the chasm” and makes more Web 2.0 companies actually adopt these technologies.
“The transition can occur in two different key dynamics. The slower path would be the interest yield. We are, at the moment, in a low-interest environment, and the appetite to combat yield will become massive. The second, faster path, is through counter-party risk. This is where the solvency of the brand-based guarantees erodes and where the math-based contractual guarantees come in. While the slow case is compelling, the fast path is scary, but we should be seeing both.”

He also added one of the exciting possibilities for DeFi, which is when people start thinking of blockchain when looking for financial products. This would effectively transition the idea that blockchain is for tokens only into something much larger. He said that the industry would eventually see investors openly talking about their crypto holdings, but that this will only happen after crypto proves that it has superior value over other financial products. Also, this is the time where people would stop holding crypto only as a means of diversification.
Nazarov noted that information, such as market data, is always essential, but stressed that privacy is as well. He pointed to its newest acquisition, called DECO. The DECO protocol uses zero-knowledge proofs and advanced cryptography to provide enhanced privacy to users.

Nazarov is a well-known crypto bull and one of the people behind Chainlink. Its LINK token saw a meteoric rise in 2020 as interest in it, as well as DeFi, is at an all-time high. Chainlink is currently holding the 5th place when it comes to crypto market cap, just recently surpassing Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.

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The IRS Coming Down on Crypto Users!

IRS Coming Down on Crypto Users

Every American citizen filing taxes for the year 2020 will have to tell the Internal Revenue Service whether they used cryptocurrencies this year, according to new drafts coming from the tax agency.
The IRS released drafts of how its income tax forms will look like for the year 2020 on Aug 19. As the draft shows, the IRS requires every American filing income for the year to declare whether or not they used crypto over the course of the year.

Early into its very first page, the new and updated 1040 form asks: “At any time during 2020, did you receive, send, sell, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency?”

Thoughts on crypto regulation

The founder of crypto tax software firm Cointracker, Chandan Lodha, spoke about the draft of the 1040 form, saying that “The cryptocurrency question is now the front and center on the IRS Form 1040 for 2020. This pretty clearly shows that the IRS is taking crypto taxes even more seriously.”

With an increasing number of people starting to use crypto, it is only natural that governments all around the globe would be interested in possibly taxing crypto usage. As one of the countries with the most strict taxing rules in the world, the US is a frontrunner in designing taxing forms and trying to regulate the usage of crypto.
While people may argue whether cryptocurrencies should be regulated at all, or in what way they should be regulated, it is a fact that everyone must comply with their countries’ tax policies.

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Restaurant Owner Converts All Spare Cash To 𝐁𝐒𝐭𝐜𝐨𝐒𝐧 During Covid19!

 

Middle Eastern Restaurant Goes All-in Into Bitcoin

 

A Canada-based Middle Eastern restaurant chain announced that it had converted its entire fiat reserves into Bitcoin.
According to an Aug 19 tweet that came from a Canada-based Middle Eastern restaurant Tahini’s, the decision to switch its fiat reserves to crypto was fueled by the March’s crash, as well as by the CanadianΒ government starting to provide assistance programs for businesses that were unable to stay open due to the pandemic, causing further inflation of the national currency.


With the United States and Canada constantly printing money to prop up their injured economies, Tahini’s owner Omar Hamam decided to look at the financial system as, as he said, “a game of musical chairs being played where the music will stop at some point and some people will get left out.”

Hamam then said he was concerned that the handouts that were made possible only by money printing would severely devalue fiat currency. “It was apparent that cash didn’t have the same appeal, and that eventually, with all the excess cash circulating, the currency would be worth less.”
Hamam heard people in the Bitcoin community talking about bitcoin and then looked into it. He decided to convert his company’s entire savings into Bitcoin because it “offers a better alternative to saving cash.”

Bitcoin accepted here

Tahini’s is following roughly the same financial planning strategy as MicroStrategy, which announced that it had adopted Bitcoin as its primary reserve asset. MicroStrategy has purchased 21,454 BTC for roughly $250 million last week.
The restaurant’s decision to switch to crypto received enthusiastic support from the community. Podcaster Anthony Pompliano tweeted his support, while Peter McCormack, host of the What Bitcoin Did podcast tweeted he is also considering a conversion of all his non-working capital into Bitcoin.