The Bitcoin rally has nothing to do with the pandemic. The exchange rates are going up, due to the increase in mainstream adoption (PayPal responsible for most of it). Even the stock market indices are at ATH levels. So what does this indicate? I would interpret this as a sign that the pandemic had a positive impact on some of the sectors, and this has neutralized the negative impact on the other sectors.

Surprisingly, Ashwin has taken two out of the five wickets. It is possible that India could restrict Australia to a sub-200 score. If that happens, then they will be probably able to get a first innings lead. Ajinkya Rahane is having a very good start to his captaincy in this series. But during the first test also, India lost the match despite taking the first innings lead. They should avoid making the same mistake.

Bitcoin will definitely reach 100k at some point in the future. But the most important question is how long it is going to take. I don't know whether the investors will be happy with holding their coins for another 4-5 years. And corrections can always happen during this period, and as we have seen from 2015 and 2018, the prices can decline by as much as 85%. Some of the investors may be looking at the possibility of selling their coins now, to purchase when the prices go down.

As a currency, it is true that Bitcoin has struggled to achieve acceptability. And the reasons are well known. High transaction fee and volatile exchange rates are the biggest obstacles to the usage of Bitcoin as a mode of payment. But at the same time, the usage of Bitcoin as a speculative investment asset is gaining traction. Many of the big players have accumulated BTC recently, for the purpose of long-term investment.

First of all, India should have a proper India A team, which will tour countries such as Australia, South Africa, New Zealand or England at least two times a year. BCCI can include potential national team pickups such as Siraj, Saini and Natarajan in this team. Let them play against Australia A or England A, and prove their potential. It will be more justifiable than picking these players directly from the IPL and pushing them to the test squad.

Why can't India follow the system in England and Australia, where the coach/captain doesn't have the monopoly in team selection? As long as the selected players perform consistently, no one is going to complain. The issue arises when players such as Siraj gets selected ahead of the other well deserving players and they are unable to perform. Anyway, two days to go for the second test match and let's see how the Indian team perform.

I can give you an example of one such coin. It is Deep Onion. I was a participant in the Deep Onion bounty campaign of 2017-18, and till date it was my most profitable bounty/signature campaign. However in 2018, similar to most of the other altcoins the exchange rates crashed by 98%-99%. However what differentiates the Deep Onion team from others is that they are still working hard on the development, unlike other shitcoins where the promoters have already made their exit. Currently, not many people are using Deep Onion for its intended purpose (for making anonymous payments). But there is a good chance that in the future this coin may find some level of acceptability.

Everyone will sing praises for Bitcoin when the prices are going up. What I want to see is their reaction when the prices go down. Will these trolls go back to their old ways in case the prices crash? If that is the case, then this "conversion" of haters to believers doesn't make any sense. I am someone who has remained loyal to Bitcoin for more than 8 years now. Ever since I got my first coins in 2012, I have been a firm believer. Corrections have occurred multiple times since then, but they never had any impact on my belief in BTC.

Both sides needs to be considered here. An efficient vaccine is desperately needed, as the death toll is about to pass the 2 million mark. Major pharmaceutical companies poured in billions of USD into vaccine research, so that a working vaccine could be invented in a relatively short period of time. Now who is going to compensate them for their effort and expenses, if the vaccine is not patented?

Initially the altcoins also went up, along with Bitcoin. But now the trend has reversed. Bitcoin prices are stable, while many of the altcoins are crashing. For example, XRP (Ripple) has lost more than half of its value during the last few days, and many of the alts were also affected by its drop. But Bitcoin prices seems to be stable and it was not influenced by the SEC lawsuit against Ripple.

From what I have seen, the Bitcoin prices have remained stable at $22,500-$23,500 range. Whatever happening with XRP is having very minimal impact on the Bitcoin exchange rates. And I have also noticed an increase in the USDT/USDC trade volumes recently. This means that even if there is mass dumping of XRP, the sellers are mostly doing it against stablecoins rather than selling their holdings for BTC/ETH.

I am glad that the other cryptocurrencies are not much affected by the SEC lawsuit. And regarding XRP, this was something that was waiting to happen. The XRP market cap was always inflated, thanks to the promoters who kept away most of the tokens from the trading platforms. XRP has the potential to become one of the biggest scams in the history of cryptocurrency.

Adding cryptocurrencies is good, but then Monero is not a coin that can boast of a lot of liquidity. And there are several cryptocurrency exchanges, which don't accept Monero, due to its association with dark markets. IMO, they should have limited their acceptance to top cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. Accepting too many coins increases the maintenance expenses as well.

LOL.. why only 2020 March? Why can't you go back to 2010 and purchase Bitcoin at $0.001 per coin from the first ever cryptocurrency exchange (New Liberty Standard)? IMO, we should be satisfied with what we got. We are still among the early adopters of Bitcoin. 5 years later, you will see a lot of posts here, from noobs who regret about the fact that they didn't purchased the coins in 2020 or 2021.

The current spike was resulted solely from Bitcoin and the altcoins don't have any role in the bull run. And this is the reason why the Bitcoin dominance rose from 57% to 68% in less than three months. I won't be surprised if the Bitcoin dominance increases to 80% or above in the next few months. Altcoins survived for so long, but their time is up. Users don't want to invest in coins without real usage.

XRP is one of the most volatile cryptocurrencies, if we take the top 20 or 25 coins. The main reason is that only a small fraction of the XRP circulating supply is in free-float. Most of the remainder is kept in cold storage by the promoters. So despite having the market cap of around $17 billion, the amount of coins that are available for trading is very low. And this causes an increase in volatility.

Middle order was looking OK. But the decision to replace Saha with Pant can have an effect on the team balance, and this can weaken the middle order as well. BTW, Ajinkya Rahane will be captaining the side for the second test, since Virat Kohli is absent. It will be interesting, as these two are very contrasting personalities. Recently, Kohli's captaincy has been disappointing and therefore I have a lot of hopes on Rahane.

To tell the truth, I am perplexed. The SEC seems to be going after the centralized coins with links to the mainstream banking sector, such as XRP and Libra/Diem. I was thinking that the SEC would first target the decentralized coins which would be difficult to trace back to the users. Is there any reason why they are targeting the centralized cryptocurrencies?

You are right. What we are witnessing now is a reversal of the situation we had in 2017. Back in 2017, there was fund inflow from Bitcoin towards altcoins. Now it is the reverse, as users are selling their altcoins and moving to Bitcoin. And looking at the history of Dogecoin, it is one of the riskier options out there. It doesn't have any real life usage, and originally it was invented to mock the idea of cryptocurrency.

Another round of hammering for the altcoins.

As of 23rd December 2020:

Total market cap: $644,601,851,260 (-1.04%)

Bitcoin: $435,559,726,820 (67.570%)
Bitcoin forks: $9,063,510,413 (1.406%)
Stablecoins: $26,412,377,495 (4.097%)
Altcoins: $173,566,236,532 (26.926%)

This is the change compared to my last post:

Bitcoin: +2.170%
Bitcoin forks: -0.049%
Stablecoins: +0.117%
Altcoins: -2.238%