[Elon Musk became the “Technoking”, and the CFO of Tesla – the “Master of Coins”]

The market capitalization of Bitcoin has exceeded the total volume of Visa and Mastercard. Inside Tesla there were “grandiose promotions” – Elon Musk received the title of “Technoking”, and the CFO became the “Master of Coins”. Investors have filed a petition to participate in the SEC lawsuit against Ripple, and the robot Sophia has created paintings in the form of NFT and is going to sell them at auction. Read more about the cryptocurrency market this week in our review.



Elon Musk became the “Technoking”, and the CFO of Tesla – the “Master of Coins”
Elon Musk “bullied” again. This time, the US Securities and Exchange Commission fell under the distribution (SEC). On March 15, Tesla filed a report with the SEC, in which new titles of management positions appear. Elon Musk now bears the official title of the “Technoking of Tesla “, and Zach Kirkhorn, the company’s chief financial officer, is “Master of coin”. There is a note in the document that the positions of Tesla’s CEO and CFO, respectively, also remain with Musk and Kirkhorn.

Elon Musk and the SEC have been looking askance at each other for several years in a row. Back in 2018, the SEC banned Musk from making public decisions that could mislead Tesla shareholders. Then Musk had the imprudence on Twitter to joke about his desire to make Tesla a private company and his readiness to buy back all shares from minority shareholders. As a result, Tesla’s securities soared 11%, investors who were short on the stock exchange lost millions of dollars, and Musk received a $ 20 million fine from the SEC for his antics.

According to some reports, Musk has now come to the attention of the SEC because of his “reverent attitude” towards Dogecoin and its influence on the price of the coin. As we know, Musk has the superpower to send DOGE “to the Moon” by tweeting a few words about the coin.

Bitcoin overtook Visa and Mastercard in market capitalization
Bitcoin can be congratulated on another achievement – the flagship cryptocurrency has “pushed” the leaders of the financial market in the market capitalization rating.

With an all-time high of $61,700, Bitcoin’s market cap skyrocketed to $1.12 trillion. The great value of this indicator can be properly felt in the context of comparison: the total capitalization of the world’s three largest banks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is $1.08 trillion.

Bitcoin also looks good against the background of payment giants Visa and Mastercard, whose combined capitalization reaches $871 billion. The dynamic of Bitcoin is impressive: the cryptocurrency was able to increase from zero to 1 trillion dollars on a market scale 3.6 times faster than Microsoft. Analysts estimate that Bitcoin must trade at $590,000 to bypass Gold in terms of market capitalization.

Despite the price pullback to $56,000, Bitcoin continues to hold onto its long-awaited trophy – a capitalization of $1 trillion. Analyst Willie Woo is convinced that Bitcoin will no longer fall below its predetermined level, as investors show consistently high interest in buying cryptocurrencies, even at the highs.

The Court rejects the petition for the participation of investors in the Ripple case
The relationship between Ripple Labs and the SEC continues to heat up. While both sides bombarded each other with accusations of injustice, the deliberate substitution of facts, a third person involved in the case appeared in the arena. These are the investors who have been hit by the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple.

Deaton Law Firm founder John Deaton has filed a petition on behalf of 6,000 XRP token holders to participate in the Ripple lawsuit. Against the backdrop of the Ripple scandal, XRP retail investors were virtually “left with nothing”– according to the lawyer, they suffered losses of $15 billion.
After the SEC announced a lawsuit against Ripple, the token price fell by more than 60% from $0.58 to $0.21 in December 2020, some major exchanges delisted the coin. Soon, MoneyGram and Grayscale, and other major market players also distanced themselves from Ripple.

The District Court dismissed the motion based on “no compelling reasons” for participating in the trial. But the court left the opportunity to re-petition for the participation of investors as a third party in this litigation. According to independent experts, the outcome of the “Ripple case” is still far from the final. Preliminary, the court proceedings may drag on until the end of June 2021.

Tesla has already earned more than $700 million on Bitcoin
Tesla bought Bitcoin just over a month ago for $1.5 billion. It’s time to summarize how much the corporation was able to earn on the purchase of the flagship cryptocurrency.

Notably, Tesla did not indicate the size of the BTC purchase in the SEC report. Given that Bitcoin traded in the region of $29,000 to $37,000 in January, Tesla’s $1.5 billion spendings could mean that the company has at least 40,000 BTC on its balance sheet. It is hypothetically, of course.

The Bitcoin rally played into Tesla’s hands perfectly: at the current rate, 40,000 BTC is now worth about $2.2 billion. Thus, the corporation received about 700 million in profit in more than a month of holding Bitcoin, or $19 million daily.

Tesla has already earned more from investing in Bitcoin than selling electric cars. According to data for 2020, Tesla sells an average of about 1,368 vehicles per day, making a profit of $1.98 million. To achieve the same profit from car sales as from holding Bitcoin, the corporation needs to increase its daily sales by more than 860%. Well, Tesla can be congratulated on a successful purchase.


Will US wealth tax become another crypto driver?
The tax on the super-rich is a hot topic for the United States (and not only). Once again, this bill was submitted to the Senate. A Democratic group led by Elizabeth Warren has proposed a 2% annual tax on the net worth of any household of $50 000 to $1 billion and a 3% tax for those business owners with more than $1 billion in profits.

Will this tax push millionaires to accept Bitcoin? The opinions of financial market participants were divided on this issue. In particular, billionaire Leon Kuperman believes that the wealth tax encourages business owners to look for assets that will be “less visible to the government than assets held in bank and brokerage accounts. “

Some experts agree that the tax on the super-rich is not correctly considered as a determining factor in the acceptance of digital assets by billionaires.
However, taxing excess wealth can have an indirect effect on the rise of interest in cryptocurrency. Hypothetically, the tax could induce billionaires to invest in cryptocurrencies and crypto derivatives to offset stagnating returns from more traditional assets.

Robot Sofia will auction her artworks as NFT
The excitement around NFT is rapidly gaining momentum. Sophia, a humanoid robot with artificial intelligence, has joined the new digital mainstream.

An auction will take place on March 23rd, which will display digital paintings in the form of Sophia’s NFT robot To create her artworks, Sofia was “inspired” by the works of the famous digital artist Andrea Bonaceto. What was the creative process like? The developers uploaded Bonacheto’s paintings to Sofia’s neural networks. Using her “life experience”, the robot interpreted them into her own paintings.

The artist Bonaceto himself praised the creative abilities of the robot. He is convinced that this collaboration can become a powerful impetus for a new stage in the development of art.
Considering that crypto artist Beeple sold NFT for $69.3 million last week, Sofia’s paintings have the potential to be a big hit. In addition to artists, show business quickly took up the mainstream NFT. Tokenized album? Why not? – thought the musicians from Kings of Leon and sold the album in March for $1.45 million.

[Welcome, Aavegotchis!]

This week has been eventful. The long-awaited launch of Aavetgotches took place, Bitfarms signed a contract for the purchase of 48,000 mining rigs, and a “cryptocurrency” section appeared on the Google Finance platform. Elon Musk is again teasing the crypto community with tweets about DOGE and the possible “landing” of a coin on the moon with the SpaceX Starship team.  Read about these and other events in our weekly review.




Welcome, Aavegotchis!
For gamers and crypto enthusiasts, the long-awaited “X-Day” has arrived with the launch of Aavegotchis, a DeFi-enabled NFT crypto collectible on  March, 2nd. The Tamagotchi-inspired project (a popular portable toy from the early 2000s) is an experiment in tying digital collectibles to real value.

Aavegotchis are very sweet pixel ghosts, each one unique in its way. The value of a ghost is determined by a set of characteristics, such as appearance traits, equipment (for example, sword, glasses, Bob Marley’s shirt – and there is such a thing:), the number of tokens (aToken) that it collaterals.

To get Aavegotchi, you need to purchase a portal. But not everything is so simple: in each portal, there are 10 ghosts, of which the user can revive only one. On Tuesday, 10,000 portals were sold in less than 1 minute for 100 GHST. At the time of the sale, this token was trading for about $1.70. On this day, the site was have visited by more than 25 000 unique users. As a result, many NFT fans did not have time to buy their “ghost kit” and are now urging the development team to open the sale of additional portals.

Bitfarms goes to add 48,000 rigs to its mining park
Bitfarms, one of the largest Bitcoin mining companies, announced that it has signed a contract to buy 48,000 new mining rigs by 2022. As before, MicroBT will become the equipment supplier for Bitfarms.

Bitfarms’ decision to buy as many installs as possible was driven by several reasons. First, the company intends to significantly increase the overall hashing power (EH). Today Bitfarms has a capacity of 1 EH. Thanks to the purchase of equipment, by the end of 2021 the company plans to increase this figure to 3.0 EH, by the end of 2022 – to 8 EH.

The second reason is the global shortage of semi-conductor chips, which are an extremely important component in the production of mining rigs. Due to the growing demand, there is a shortage of these chips, which, in turn, has already provoked a serious rise in the price of mining equipment.

Dogecoin will go to the moon?
Elon Musk continues to tease the crypto community with new tweets about Dogecoin. He has hinted repeatedly that Dogecoin could be the first cryptocurrency to go to the moon… literally.

None of the 12 astronauts who reached the lunar surface had no money. Of course, why do you need money in space? But Elon Musk can break this “tradition” and still send his “favorite cryptocurrency” to the moon. So far, the CEO of SpaceX is doing it in the DOGE pump format. Over the past 30 days, the DOGE price has risen more than 60% to hit 0.0508 at the time of writing.

On March 4, millions of SpaceX fans were able to watch a flight test of the Starship SN10 prototype spacecraft. As always, the launch of the ship was enchanting. Starship SN10 successfully climbed 10 km. But the landing was not as soft as planned – after landing on the surface of the earth, the spacecraft exploded.

BlockFi clients receive over $35M in interest payments
Cryptocurrency loans are gaining momentum, and those who decided to join this game have already received good dividends. About it, said Zach Prince, CEO of crypto-lending company BlockFi.

In February, BlockFi customers received over $35 million in interest payments. According to Zach Prince, the interest payments consisted of 450 BTC, 5,000 ETH, and $6 million in stablecoins. According to the report, BlockFi’s annual percentage return on assets is 8.6%.

Earlier, the startup received a fairly serious amount of $30 million from investors. Significant crypto players such as Morgan Creek Digital, Winklevoss Capital, and Arrington XRP Capital have invested in the company. With this solid backing, BlockFi is considering going public within the next 2 years.

The company has a $1.5 billion cryptocurrency on its balance sheet. Zach Prince does not hide that BlockFi has ambitious plans for the future: back in December 2020, the company announced the start of cooperation with Visa to launch a credit card cryptocurrency on the market. The main feature of this card will be the ability to earn BTC for purchases, and not for airline miles or cash. It is assumed that cardholders will be able to receive a cashback of 1.5% of the purchase amount back in BTC.

Ethereum and DeFi are key drivers for the development of smart contract platforms

This week, a study was presented that once again confirmed the colossal role of DeFi and Ethereum in scaling smart contract platforms.

We have witnessed unprecedented growth in 2020 DeFi, the birth of countless new tokens, and a surge in profitable farming. Previously, for many members of the crypto community, DeFi was associated with a bubble, but multi-billion-dollar investments, the sustainability of projects made skeptics doubt their initial conclusions.

Google Finance added a section “crypto”
A new section has been added to the Google Finance financial market data platform – “cryptocurrency”. Previously, only 4 categories were represented here: USA, Asia, Europe, and “currencies”. The fifth section “cryptocurrency” fits perfectly into this series.

Users can now monitor the price of cryptocurrencies and compare data with stock and foreign exchange markets in real-time. So far, the “cryptocurrency” section contains information about only 4 assets: Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). But, as they say, the beginning has already been made.

Crypto enthusiasts were delighted with this news. Given that Google used to be critical of cryptocurrency, this initiative once again confirmed the growing demand for digital assets as a financial instrument. You don’t need to look far for an example: in 2018, Google found itself at the center of a scandal due to blocking ads related to digital assets, crypto wallets, and exchanges.

Many Twitter users saw the initiative as a sign of Google’s interest in buying cryptocurrency. Of course, so far these are only bold assumptions, but, as experience with Tesla, MicroStrategy, Square shows, everything is possible.

[Monero, Dash и Zcash staged a bullish rally]

This week, the bullish trend was happily picked up by anonymous coins, Vitalik Buterin announced the first Ethereum 2.0 hard fork, users got access to sites with the “.crypto” domain through any browser. Elon Musk is “going to mine DOGE with children” while investors are waiting for the regulators’ decisions. Read about it and more in our weekly review.



Monero, Dash и Zcash staged a bullish rally
During this period, the privacy coins Monero (XMR), Dash (DASH), and Zcash (ZEC) have bucked up significantly. Obviously, the current bullish mood in the crypto market drives tokens that have been in the shadows for some time. Of these three coins, Dash showed the largest increase. In 7 days, the token rose by 125% to $318. It is followed by Zcash, which jumped by 70%, and Monero with a growth rate of more than 50%.
Despite a recent delisting by several exchanges, Monero is holding up pretty well. Once again, the coin has demonstrated the ability not only to restore positions but also to increase its quotes. According to technical charts, Monero is in the ascending channel and, according to analysts, the bulls may push the coin to the level of $300 shortly. But in this price region, the coin may face serious resistance from bears, followed by a short-term correction. At the time of writing, Monero was trading at $277.
In general, this is typical of the crypto market, when one coin from a segment begins to appreciate, other coins tighten and also go up. In addition to these anonymous cryptocurrencies, a similar correlation is often observed between Dogecoin (DOGE), Stellar’s Lumen (XLM), and XRP.

Buterin announced the first Ethereum 2.0 hard fork
On February 15, Vitalik Buterin presented the roadmap for the first Ethereum 2.0 hard fork, tentatively codenamed HF1. According to the plan, key updates will relate to the integration of support for light wallets, the modernization of the mechanism for penalizing validators, and the elimination of protocol vulnerabilities.
One of the most important changes is support for light clients – nodes with minimal resource requirements, with the ability to work on mobile devices. Thus, the developers expect to create an ecosystem of light wallets that can verify the blockchain themselves, instead of relying on external service providers.
To implement this decision, special “sync committees” will be created. These are groups of randomly selected validators with the authority to create special signatures that make it easier to determine the correct version of the chain. Every 27 hours, the composition of the validator group is reelected from a randomly selected 1024 validators.
Also, a hard fork implies a change in the mechanism for calculating penalties for validators in case of their inactivity. It is great news, especially for stakers who, due to problems with the Internet connection, received fines on an equal footing with those who deliberately disconnected. Now force majeure events such as unstable internet connection or power outages will be taken into account.
What will it look like in practice? For example, if one validator is disconnected 10 times for 6 minutes, which in total equals 1 hour, it will lose only 0.1% of its balance. If a validator has been inactive for a full hour continuously, it loses 1% of its balance. Thus, adopting a more flexible approach to inaction leakage can make life much easier for many stakers.

Cryptocurrency and American presidents
At a time when Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to set new price records and do not leave news feeds with loud forecasts, on the network new materials appear on the attitude of opinion leaders to cryptocurrency. In particular, our attention was drawn to a study on how the valuation of cryptocurrency has changed in the highest political circles of the US.
Back in 2016, the news that entrepreneur Matthew Roszak gave Bitcoins to former President Bill Clinton caused a great resonance. Many crypto enthusiasts expected that after such a step, Clinton would comment on his attitude towards digital currencies and, possibly, give a “blessing” to the blockchain. But that didn’t happen.
The 44th president of the US, Barack Obama, was also extremely careful in his statements about cryptocurrency, which, of course, cannot be said about Donald Trump. Recently stepped down as president, Trump did not stand on ceremony in his comments on the cryptocurrency. He has repeatedly stated that he is not a fan of Bitcoin, does not consider cryptocurrency to be full-fledged money. It was exactly during  the presidency of Trump when a wave of claims and lawsuits from the Securities Commission rolled on some blockchain projects.
It is too early to conclude the attitude of the Biden administration to the crypt. His political team includes both open opponents of the cryptocurrency and its adherents. In any case, in government circles, the issue of cryptocurrency regulation has been hanging in the air for a long time, and it will no longer be possible to delay its decision.

Ethereum-based domain names go mainstream
Unstoppable Domains, an Ethereum-based project and the main provider of blockchain domains, has delighted crypto enthusiasts with a new collaboration. The company announced the integration with the Cloudflare DNS service. Now users will be able to access sites with the .crypto domain extension through any browser.
Previously, sites with a “.crypto” URL were only accessible through browsers that integrated the extension themselves. In particular, back in March 2020, the Opera web browser joined the support for the “.crypto” domain name. This was the first time that a major web browser targeting the traditional DNS model has moved away from the “centralized path” and gave the green light to decentralized domains.
Unlike traditional ones, blockchain domains are stored by the owner in a dedicated wallet, not by a domain registrar like GoDaddy. Thus, the domain is under the control of the user, he does not need to pay an annual renewal fee. Also, this extension allows you to close the problem of user data leakage. As practice shows, traditional sites are guilty of this issue, since they cannot provide complete protection and confidentiality.
According to the CEO of Unstoppable Domains, “Ethereum-based solutions can completely change the old Internet.” As of today, nearly half a million domain names with “.crypto” have been registered. Well, perhaps the era of Web 3.0 isn’t that far from us.

Investing in Bitcoin does not slow down
More than 5% of CFOs of large companies announced their readiness to invest in Bitcoin by the end of 2021. Another 11% of corporations plan to add cryptocurrency to their balance within the next 3 years. Such data was provided by the analytical company Gartner.
The poll showed that some large companies are still sticking to a wait-and-see strategy. About 70% of respondents indicated that they are closely watching the sentiment in the financial market and those players who have already boarded the crypto train or are about to do so.
When asked why companies are delaying buying cryptocurrency while others are making multimillion-dollar investments, respondents said they expect clear steps from regulators.
According to ARK Invest’s assumption, if “all companies from the S&P 500 set aside 1% of their money” in BTC, the price of the flagship cryptocurrency would rise by about $40,000 and thus get as close as possible to $90,000.

Elon Musk commented on the attitude towards Bitcoin and DOGE
The recent high-profile statements by Elon Musk about Dogecoin do not give rest to major players in the financial market. Especially when you consider the fact that the tweets about DOGE as a popular cryptocurrency coincided with Tesla’s decision to invest $1.5 billion in Bitcoin.
Specifically, Binance CEO Changepeng Zhao, in an interview with Bloomberg, expressed his surprise at Musk’s “obscure and fanatical” claims about Dogecoin. Of course, Musk could not help commenting on this interview with his inherent note of sarcasm.
To reaffirm his “love for DOGE,” Musk intrigued Twitter followers over the weekend. He posted a note saying that he “set up several mining farms to mine DOGE with the kids.” Great toys, aren’t they?)

[No gifts for such a holiday? Noway! What presents have we prepared for February 14?]

Tesla’s investment in Bitcoin at the beginning of the week had a bomb-like effect – Twitter spoke openly about the prospect of buying crypto, Bitcoin soared to almost $50,000, while analysts began to bet on when and in what format Apple will join the crypto space it will be. Let’s look at what the crypto market has lived this week and what events are worth paying attention to.


No gifts for such a holiday? Noway! What presents have we prepared for February 14?
February 14 is Valentine’s Day, and, of course, we have prepared gifts for our beloved users. What exactly? The opportunity to create greeting digital valentines and win a trip for two to one of the Emirates – Dubai.

The holiday is not limited only to this day of the week and it will last a whole month!
So here are a few key points. What kind of valentines are these?
Binaryx launched its own token – SVDT (St. Valentine’s Day Token), which is designed particularly to take advantage of a new unique opportunity – to show your feelings for someone (or something 🙂) in an original way.
Everyone can take part in the activities.
All registered (and existing platform members) have already received 100 SVDT free of charge, which can be converted into congratulations and voting.
The promotion runs from February 14 to March 14. During this period, the opportunity is available to create your own crypto valentine on the site and vote for it to gain the highest number of points.
The more activities, the higher the rating of your congratulations. Moreover, the higher the congratulations are in the rating, the more chances you have to take prizes and win valuable prizes.
Winners of the first three places will receive:
Romantic trip for two to Dubai
Apple Watch 6
AirPods Pro
4-7. Electronic wallets (for cold storage of cryptocurrency)
But the gifts are not over. Additionally, among all the participants, as many as 7 prizes of 1000 SVDT each will be drawn at random!

Will the token rise in price by itself – Yes! Its emission is limited and all tokens that will not be distributed to the participants of the action will be burned.
The algorithms of the token are such that every day it rises in price by 14%. Every day it becomes more and more expensive to buy it, therefore, the best solution would be to purchase it at the very beginning of the promotion! The initial par value of the 1st SVDT will be equal to USD 0.01, and at the end of the promotional period, it will be almost USD 4.
What will happen to the token after the promotional period?
This token will be available for trading in the Binaryx terminal, with its help you can perform various activities in the future, which we will talk about in the following promotions and posts! Also, you can read more about the token in our blog.

We tried to create something new and interesting for you, as well as to introduce you to the world of digital assets, which is more and more integrated into our everyday life. Use these tokens so that they bring a pleasant surprise to you and your beloved ones!

Twitter is considering Bitcoin purchase
The news that Tesla has invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin triggered a chain reaction among the global largest players, which was quite expected. Twitter could jump on the fast-moving crypto train shortly. Ned Segal, the CFO of the company, announced this in an interview with CNBC.

The Twitter leadership is exploring possible use cases for Bitcoin for internal and external corporate policy. Today, there are already talks about paying salaries to the company’s employees in Bitcoins at their request. Also, an item on the agenda is the possibility to use cryptocurrency for partial payment for the services of Twitter partner companies.
Anthony Pompliano, a crypto enthusiast, commented on this interview with the CFO of Twitter. He is confident that after Tesla, the crypto wave will be picked up by Twitter and other multi-billion dollar corporations. According to Pompliano, “from now on, the chief financial officer of every large company will be asked about the presence of Bitcoins on the balance sheet.” It’s unavoidable.

On the Stripchat platform, crypto payments increased by 400%
While traditional businesses were struggling with the pandemic, adult websites gained a new wave of popularity. At the same time, in 2020, the trend towards using cryptocurrency to pay for the services of webcam models, to access premium accounts, and other additional “buns” was clearly outlined.

A prime example is Stripchat, an adult content platform. In 2020, traffic on the site grew by 72%, the monthly audience of the site approached 60 million users. Since the beginning of 2020, the number of transactions with cryptocurrency on the website has grown by 400%. More than 10% of porn models chose to pay for their works by cryptocurrency instead of fiat money.

Today Stripchat accepts 12 cryptocurrencies and, as it turns out, is quickly picking up “crypto trends”. After a recent tweet by Elon Musk about DOGE as a “people’s cryptocurrency”, the token immediately appeared on this list. Also, Pornhub does not hide its love for cryptocurrency, especially after Mastercard and Visa refused to work with this platform. Pornhub accepts over 16 cryptocurrencies as payment, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, Litecoin, XRP, Dogecoin.

DeFi goes mainstream and may lead Web 3.0
This week, a comprehensive study of the DeFi market and its impact on the development of Internet technologies were presented. Thanks to the DeFi boom, concepts such as staking, pharming, and swapping have taken root in 2020 in the lexicon of not only crypto enthusiasts. Institutional investors from Wall Street are increasingly involved in this area. As a result, DeFi’s market capitalization grew by 4300% over the year to reach $ 45 billion.

Today there are over 230 DeFi apps, and this number is literally increasing daily due to the development of new products. As it scaled, DeFi has spurred the transformation of the current Web 2.0 system of Internet technologies to a completely innovative and decentralized Web 3.0 infrastructure. We are witnessing the formation of a fundamentally new economy in which privacy, the user’s right to financial freedom will come first.

Ethereum was the driving force behind the development of Web 3.0. According to Electric Capital, “Ethereum has 4 times more developers than any other crypto ecosystem.” Thanks to continuous scaling, Ethereum can lead the next generation of decentralized applications and become a key link in the Web 3.0 system.

Tesla first, then Apple?
With Tesla Motors investing in Bitcoin, the intrigue is heating up as much as possible – will Apple be the next institutional player to join the crypto space? Of course, analysts see Apple as a potential participant in the big crypto race and are deliberately considering scenarios in which format the company can enter the crypto market.

Experts from the Canadian bank Capital Markets believe that Apple needs to create its own cryptocurrency exchange. Thanks to this solution, the company can make a revolution in the crypto industry and, as a result, get multiple profits. According to preliminary estimates, the launch of the marketplace will allow Apple to generate additional annual revenue of $40 billion and more.

Today, Apple’s market capitalization is more than $2.2 trillion. Hypothetically, if a company allocates $ 200 billion for the purchase of Bitcoin, it will become the owner of about 25% of the Bitcoins that are in circulation.
After Tesla’s announcement, bitcoin staged a victorious march from new all-time highs and came close to $50,000. If Apple follows Tesla’s lead, it will further spur demand for cryptocurrency and, therefore, push Bitcoin upward.

XRP may leave the top 5 cryptocurrencies by market cap
In the ranking of cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, there is an intensified struggle, which in the future can bring new players to the top positions. XRP this week has already found itself literally “in the balance” several times from losing its 5th place. The Ripple token is breathing down the back of Polkadot (DOT), which has been in an upward channel since mid-January.

XRP risks leaving its positions as a result of a new alt season, which analysts say is already on the way. Despite the advances that XRP has shown in recent weeks, the token could not keep up with competitors that are gaining momentum more quickly. In particular, over the past 7 days, Polkadot has increased by more than 40% and reached a market capitalization of $25.3 billion.

Another strong competitor for XRP is Cardano (ADA). On February 8, Cardano surpassed XRP and took 4th place in the ranking. The token has risen in price by 90% in the previous week and reached a market cap of $26.2 billion. Nevertheless, XRP is still ready to compete for the status of one of the top 5 cryptocurrencies and, according to some analysts, will soon “come out of the shadows.” At the time of writing, XRP is trading at $0.54.

ConsenSys unveiled AirSwap upgrades
ConsenSys, an Ethereum software company, was in the spotlight this week. The team unveiled an updated version of AirSwap, a peer-to-peer exchange system that aims to protect traders from market manipulations such as price outperformance or slippage.

This task has been achieved through the use of the exchange request for quotations (RFQ) protocol and atomic swaps for settlements. According to one of the leaders of ConsenSys, RFQ systems can minimize the cost of gas to users, and contribute to the formation of more favorable pricing. In the future, AirSwap RFQ can cover about 40% of the volume of decentralized trading and become the best solution for OTC transactions.

ConsenSys also encourages users and developers to join the development and improvement of the AirSwap ecosystem. Proposals who get approved will be able to receive AirSwap tokens. To date, 15 improvement proposals (AIPs) have been published, some of which have already been implemented.

[DEX trading volume exceeded $55 billion]

The first week of February was eventful. DEX trading volume hit a new high, XRP experienced an epic pump and price drop, while Visa prepares to integrate a crypto service for black Americans. Elon Musk again successfully “played with DOGE on Twitter” and not only – our today’s review about these and other news.



DEX trading volume exceeded $55 billion
Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) continue to gain momentum at an accelerated pace. At the end of January, the DEX trading volume exceeded $55 billion and doubled its historical maximum in less than six months. For comparison, in September 2020, this figure was $26 billion, in September 2019 – $281 million.

The increase in trading volumes is directly related to the surge in activity on trading floors. Uniswap continues to be the leader in the DEX sector, with 45% of the market share. January was extremely productive for Uniswap: trading volume on the exchange reached $29.5 billion, total blocked amount (TVL) increased to $3.18 billion.

The undisputed dominance of Uniswap has slightly shaken last month, because the main competitor, SushiSwap, is breathing in the back. This exchange has grown significantly after its merger with the Yearn ecosystem. As a result, SushiSwap’s DEX market share increased to 22% with a trading volume of $12.2 billion. The total amount blocked on SushiSwap rose to $2.34 billion.

However, the competition between Uniswap and SushiSwap only serves to benefit the DEX market and signals an impressive increase in user confidence.

Visa announced the development of crypto service for Black Americans
Visa has taken another step towards integrating cryptocurrency into the global payment system. The company announced the launch of pilot software for the help of individuals, who are not clients of traditional banks, can buy, store, sell cryptocurrency.

The initiative was part of a collaboration with First Boulevard, a digital bank targeted at black Americans. According to Jack Forrester, chief product officer at Visa, APIs are designed to bridge the wealth gap between different populations. Difficulty getting mortgages, higher interest rates, and racial pay gaps are just a few of what continues to be faced by the black community in America.
The digital assets of Visa clients will be on the balance sheet of the digital asset bank Anchorage, which was the first in the U.S. to receive a license from the regulator to provide crypto services. Users are expected to be able to withdraw cryptocurrency to external wallets. In this matter, Visa has overtaken PayPal, whose clients can make crypto transactions exclusively within the framework of the payment system.

Elon Musk pumped up DOGE again
Elon Musk continues to hooligan and moves his “favorite cryptocurrency” up. As practice shows, Elon only needs to write the word “DOGE” on Twitter, and the price of the token soars up in a matter of minutes.

On February 4, the scenario repeated itself: after Elon Musk’s tweet, the DOGE price increased by 45% within 30 minutes to $0.058. But the CEO of SpaceX didn’t stop there. After a short time, in his account, he published a caricature of an episode from the famous cartoon “The Lion King”, in which, allegedly, “Elon Musk” holds Simba with the muzzle of the “DOGE” meme-dog. As a result, in 24 hours DOGE has risen in price by 64%.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk continued to “play with DOGE” on Twitter. On February 7, he published a poll “The Future Currency of the Earth”, in which only 2 positions were presented – “DOGE” (who would doubt it) and “the rest of the crypto”. In the survey, which was attended by more than 2 million subscribers, DOGE won with a score of 70.7%. Well, quite a predictable outcome.

Despite the humorous nature of the survey, the result was not long in coming: on Sunday, the price of DOGE rose by another 27% and reached $0.082.

SushiSwap took over a part of Uniswap’s market share
SushiSwap, the decentralized exchange, has once again proved that it is ready to compete with Uniswap and intends to change the attitude of the skeptical part of the market towards itself. Between mid-December and February, the exchange was able to increase its market share to 22%, thereby reducing the percentage of Uniswap dominance.

The increase of SushiSwap was driven by its merger with Yearn.finance (YFI) in December 2020, according to analyst Mira Christanto. If earlier accusations of Uniswap cloning flew towards SushiSwap, now the criticism has subsided, since this merger confirmed the legitimacy of the project and provided protection for TVL.
Despite the busy migration of tokens to the platform, SushiSwap still lags behind Uniswap in terms of blocked funds. To catch up with a competitor, SushiSwap needs at least another $1.11 billion.

XRP skyrocketed 147% and crashed sharply
XRP again became the subject of heated discussion this week, but the news feed was far from controversial. XRP jumped 147% between January 30 and February 1, reaching $0.76. For a short time, the token burst into the top three crypto leaders in terms of market capitalization with an indicator of $27 billion. The abnormal price rise turned into a sharp drop: in a matter of hours, XRP fell from $0.75 to $0.39.

Many analysts saw this XRP behavior as a “pump and dump” strategy. Shortly before the XRP rally, a group called Buy & Hold XRP was created in the Telegram messenger, whose members called for the purchase of the token. Enthusiasts managed to inflate XRP quotes, but, like all pumps, the upward movement did not last long and ended where it began.

Experts point out that speculative group investing is becoming a trend and social networks make this process much easier. In the last month alone, we have witnessed high-profile pumps involving Dogecoin, XRP, GameStop, and AMC. According to analysts, such episodes in the biography of assets may partially undermine their reputation.

USDC volumes on exchanges increased by more than 112%
USD Coin continues to grow its market share. The figures presented this week by the analytical company Glassnode eloquently confirm this: in January, the amount of USDC on exchanges increased by more than 112% from 431 million dollars to 915 million dollars.

Since the beginning of 2021, USDC has been minted for about $1 billion. According to Glassnode, the increase in USDC emission may be related to the strategy of traders to play on the possible upcoming drawdown of the cryptocurrency.
According to analysts, one of the catalysts for the growth of USDC was the launch of software from the Circle company, with the help of which users were able to convert USDC to US dollars.
Amid the success of USDC, Tether (USDT) numbers are fading slightly. In January, the dominance of USDT stablecoins fell below 75% for the first time, which is associated with a general increase in the volume of competing stablecoins. A striking example is the stablecoin DAI, whose capitalization in just a month increased by 3800% from $40 million in January to $1.6 billion at the current moment

[Ripple Labs spent about $700,000 lobbying in the US]

This week was relatively calm in the crypto market. The key event was the deepening of cooperation between Reddit and the Ethereum Foundation, which is already predicted to have great prospects. Of course, we could not ignore the regular Dogecoin pump, the Ripple disclosure, and new flows of institutional money into the crypt. Read about and more in our weekly review.


Ripple Labs spent about $700,000 lobbying in the US
Ripple Labs is one of the few companies that has consistently been on everyone’s lips over the past 2 months. This time, the news about lobbying for Ripple’s interests in the US government threw wood on the fire. According to open sources, the company allocated $690,000 in 2020 to promote its program at the White House.

Ripple’s lobbying spending is almost 3 times higher than that of other leading players in the crypto industry. But even with such a trump card in the hands of the company, it was not possible to avoid a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission. So far, Ripple Labs is in limbo, but that hasn’t stopped XRT from skyrocketing 60% in price this week.

It is not gusting one day that Ripple has allocated large sums to promote its program in the US Congress. In particular, in 2019, nearly $450 000 was allocated for this purpose. However, Ripple’s spending still pales in comparison to the tech giants. For example, Facebook spent more than $5 million on lobbying in Q4 2020 alone.

Ripple’s main interest is in promoting the Token Taxonomy Act, which precludes the classification of cryptocurrency as a security. So far, Ripple’s efforts to advance his interests in the United States have not been crowned with great success, but as they say, a lost battle is not a lost war.

Rally Bitcoin and DeFi boom become the main drivers of the crypto market
2020 was a turning point for the crypto market thanks to two internal factors, namely, Bitcoin’s parabolic rally and the hype around DeFi. But is there a relationship between these drivers?

Analysts point out that Bitcoin and DeFi played a great duo last year, and this trend is likely to continue in 2021. As the total trading volume on the DEX has increased significantly over the past year, some experts have linked Bitcoin’s rise to the increased use of DeFi platforms.

According to Robert Leshner, CEO of Compound, “BTC’s vertical rise to $40,000 was driven not only by the influx of institutional money into the market but also by the surge in WBTC activity.” According to analysts, the rise in BTC prices is also an extremely positive signal for the scaling of DeFi.

The world’s largest investment company BlackRock is interested in crypto 
Institutional players who are already on a train called “cryptocurrency” are likely to be joined by the world’s largest investment company BlackRock. The financial giant controls over $8.7 trillion in assets. BlackRock’s interest in cryptocurrency is evidenced by the filing of an application with the SEC to consider trading Bitcoin futures based on its two funds.

The first signals about a warming attitude towards cryptocurrency from BlackRock sounded back at the end of 2020. Extremely revealing is the words of Rick Reeder, the company’s chief IT director, that “Bitcoin has a great chance to squeeze Gold and take its place.” Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, also spoke about the value of Bitcoin as an investment tool in early December. He suggested that “cryptocurrency can transform into a global market.”

The news of BlackRock’s potential accession to the crypto market was received with enthusiasm in the crypto space. Analysts are optimistic about the initiative as another step towards building confidence in Bitcoin as a mature and reliable asset class. If BlackRock enters the Bitcoin futures market, it is a high probability that a chain reaction will follow, and new large asset management companies will soon enter the crypto market.

Public companies own over $3.6 billion of BTC
This week, analyst Kevin Rook published a study that demonstrates the dynamics of the influx of institutions into the crypto market in an extremely revealing way. According to the data presented, in 2019, there were only 20,000 BTC on the balance sheets of public companies. Within 12 months, this figure skyrocketed to 105,837 BTC, the equivalent of over $3.6 billion.

There are 19 publicly traded Bitcoin companies on the market today. MicroStrategy remains the obvious leader, with 70,784 BTC on its balance sheet. This company has invested a record $1.125 billion in Bitcoin and, apparently, is not going to reduce its appetite for buying crypto. The top three also included GalaxyDigital Holdings, which acquired more than 16,400 BTC, and Square (4,700 BTC.)

As for the price of Bitcoin, analysts have been extremely cautious in their predictions this week. On January 27, the price of the flagship crypt briefly dropped below $30,000 but was able to rebound. Bitcoin has been stuck in the $29,000 to $35,000 range so far and is likely to fluctuate in this price region in the near future.

Reddit announced a partnership with Ethereum Foundation
On January 27, the largest social platform Reddit announced its deepening cooperation with the Ethereum Foundation. Some experts have already dubbed this initiative as a landmark event for the crypto industry in general and Ethereum in particular.

The first steps towards this blockchain partnership were taken back in May 2020. Then Reddit initiated the launch of the Community Points application, with the help of which editors could receive ERC-20 tokens for the publication of useful and interesting content. The app is currently in beta testing in the CryptoCurrency and Fortnite communities.
The Reddit announcement also states that “we will do our best to ensure that Ethereum reaches the scale of our platform in the future.” It sounds ambitious enough. Experience shows that Reddit, with a daily audience of more than 50 million users, can influence market processes. Well, let’s see.

Dogecoin soared in price by 900% in 2 days
Once again, Dogecoin (DOGE) was at the epicenter of the excitement. This time, the price of the token was “sent into space” by users of the Reddit platform, who this week also featured a pump from GameStop. According to crypto enthusiasts, it is the inflating of the gaming company’s shares by 400% that has led to an artificial increase in the price of DOGE.

Despite attempts by moderators to suspend the spread of calls to buy “Elon Musk’s favorite crypto”, the snowball could not be stopped. As a result, on January 28-29, the price of DOGE soared by 900% to 0.078% of the dollar. The market capitalization of the token exceeded $3.1 billion, leaving behind Tezos, Monero, and EOS. At the time of writing, DOGE is ranked 14th in terms of market cap and continues to be in the green zone.

At the same time, the hype around the token instantly migrated to Twitter. According to the analytical company “The TIE”, the volume of tweets mentioning DOGE increased by 1787% compared to the average for 30 days. A total of 89,991 tweets were posted about DOGE in 24 hours. DOGE became the first altcoin in history to surpass Bitcoin in the number of mentions on Twitter per day.

[Cardano doubled in value and became a Twitter star]

The protagonist last week was Ethereum, which was able to renew its all-time high of 2018 and found itself in “uncharted price territory”. Biden gave hope that U.S. cryptocurrency regulation would get off the ground, while the Russian crypto exchange LiveCoin shut down with a bang. Read about these and other events in our weekly review.



Cardano doubled in value and became a Twitter star
Since the beginning of January, Cardano (ADA) has been confidently in the green zone and, apparently, is not going to leave the cozy place shortly. Over the past 3 weeks, the price of assert has risen more than 200%, with daily trading volume soaring to $3 billion. As a result, ADA ranked 6th in terms of market capitalization, overtaking Bitcoin Cash.

Achievements of ADA coincided with a record surge in social media activity. This week has passed under the sign of Cardano on Twitter: monitoring of entries on the network has shown an all-time high number of mentions of the token. What were Twitter users discussing? The most common triggers are the words “pool,” “stake,” “stake pools”, and this is no coincidence.

After the launch of Shelley and the transition to the Goguen era, adherents of Cardano enthusiastically await the deployment of smart contracts, which will allow the network to reach a new level of functionality. Even more “X-day” awaits Charles Hoskinson (the Cardano founder), who confidently stated that “Cardano will become one of the leaders in the DeFi space.”

Certainly, the upcoming network update has improved market sentiment around ADA. This week the token has risen in price to $0.358. Considering the decline in the supply of ADS amid lively staking, analysts are regarding a scenario for the token price to rise to $0.40 in the short-term.

Grayscale CEO named the 6 key trends for the crypto market in 2021
Michael Sonnenshine, the new Grayscale Investments CEO, is convinced that 2021 will be marked by large-scale investment in digital currencies. He spoke about this at the CFC online conference in St. Moritz.

According to Sonnenshein, institutional capital will be the same powerful driver to push the crypto market into the next bull cycle. Investors will continue to actively diversify portfolios with Bitcoin and other digital assets, betting on the long-term play. Also, the following trends will be visible in 2021:

Increasing confidence in investing in digital assets
Grow interested from clients of financial advisors
Scaling up the volume of cryptocurrency mining in North America
Broad launch of stablecoins
Digitalization of national currency units
Development of crypto regulations
This week, Grayscale’s appetite for buying Bitcoin has played out very much: on January 19, the company acquired BTC 18 times more than it was mined in a 24-hours. Over the past 7 days, Grayscale has added to its “piggy bank” Bitcoin worth about $ 1 billion. In general, the total value of all cryptocurrency assets of the company is estimated at $ 28.1 billion.

Ripple hopes for the Biden administration loyalty to cryptocurrency
Joe Biden’s rise to power could change the “rules of the game in favor of the cryptocurrency” and give an impetus to the development of the crypto industry in the United States. This forecast was announced by the leadership of Ripple.

Given the protracted proceedings with the SEC, Ripple’s announcement of an urgent change in policy towards cryptocurrency looks natural and predictable. The issue of developing a clear regulatory framework for the cryptocurrency market in the United States has been repeatedly raised but the matter did not go beyond discussions.
American crypto enthusiasts can still breathe out calmly because positive news has already arrived from the White House. On January 22, Joe Biden postponed for 60 days’ consideration of the document on the regulation of cryptocurrency wallets, which was submitted by the Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and provided for the imposition of serious restrictions on transactions.

Ethereum has updated its all-time high
On January 19, the price of Ethereum for the first time since 2018 exceeded the all-time high of $1,424 and found itself in “uncharted territory” just above $1,430. The next day, the asset rolled back 7%, which, according to analysts, was due to overheating in the futures market.

Technical indicators continue to signal Ethereum’s readiness to continue the rally. Ethereum’s next parabolic leap may be driven by increased interest in DeFi. Over the past month, users have contributed about $20 billion to DeFi lending protocols, and this trend is only accelerating.

Ethereum continues to make a big splash, with data showing that Ethereum’s transaction volume last week exceeded Bitcoin’s transaction volume by 28%. Over the past 12 months, the number of daily active Ether addresses has doubled to reach 550,000. If you look at the statistics of current searches on Google, Ethereum is at the top. A similar heightened interest in Ethereum was seen during the 2017 bull market.

Analyst Michael van de Poppe believes that a new all-time high is just the beginning of a long journey of Ethereum. He is looking at a short-term scenario for the price of ETH to rise to $1,800.

Whales own over 81% supply of LINK
According to Glassnode, the centralization of Chainlink (LINK) distribution has reached an all-time high: over 81% of tokens are in the 125 largest wallets (1% of all token holders). Whales are consistently showing high activity towards LINK, continuing to buy tokens even at record high price levels.

LINK’s turnover has increased by over 50 million units in the past few months. A new influx of tokens entered the market as a result of the sale of personal savings from the Chainlink team. This move further widened the gap between whales and small token holders.
LINK prices soared 46% this week. The asset can be congratulated on a new achievement – at the time of writing the review on market capitalization, the token surpassed Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash and took 7th place in the rating with an indicator of $9 billion.

Game over: LiveCoin exchange closed
On January 16, the Russian exchange LiveCoin announced the termination of work due to the alleged attack by hackers and irreparable damage that was caused later. LiveCoin representatives promised their clients to “return the remaining funds”. To receive compensation, you must send an application with your login and date of registration on the exchange by March 17, 2021.

According to users, “something strange on LiveCoin started happening at the end of December.” A few hours before the hack on the exchange, the price of Bitcoin rose to $320,000, Ethereum went up to $24,000, while the withdrawal of funds from the exchange was not available. According to LiveCoin, it was hackers who changed the value of assets to abnormally high values.

In a statement, the exchange also asked customers not to join chat groups called “LiveCoin,” as the exchange has nothing to do with them. “Do not under any pretext send money to fake exchange employees for getting your funds back,” LiveCoin said.

The presence of several serious Livecoin faсk ups in the past adds fuel to the fire, as a result of which clients of the exchange suffered significant losses.

[Bitcoin soars to $23,800 and prepares for “To The Moon”]

Bitcoin soars to $23,800 and prepares for “To The Moon”

December 19, the victorious procession continued: Bitcoin peaked at $24,200 but then rolled back into the range of $23,500 – $23,800.

The update of the all-time high of 2017 excited the crypto community in earnest and became the reason for new predictions. Willie Woo was one of the first to share his expectations. The trader is convinced that Bitcoin will continue to rally and at least reach the $100,000 level by the end of 2021. On this path, the defining point for Bitcoin will be $55,000 because this price will allow the crypto asset to reach 10% of the market capitalization of Gold.
The technical indicators on the weekly chart confirm the optimism that now prevails in the crypto community: the bulls remain on the side of Bitcoin, and ready to continue the vertical rally. Is Bitcoin expecting a repeat of the 2017 scenario? So far, analysts comment on this with caution.

Unlike 2017, now Bitcoin has significant support from institutions, the macroeconomic situation forces it to play by new rules and in general, the crypto market has made a huge step forward in the context of 2020. Against the backdrop of optimistic forecasts, analysts also do not exclude a correction in the price of Bitcoin. When and at what level the Bitcoin correction will take place is still a matter of time.

DeFi community criticized the new Compound Chain protocol
On December 17, Compound Finance, a popular DeFi project, announced the development of its blockchain, with a test version scheduled to launch in 2021. The new Compound Chain protocol is designed to provide access to lending across different blockchains. For example, a user of an application based on the Tezos blockchain will be able to receive a loan in tokens that are stored on the Polkadot network.

According to the developers, the new blockchain will be able to solve the problem of high transaction fees in Ethereum. This cost reduction will be achieved through the use of the Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus mechanism, which provides for the support of the transaction process by the validators. The Compound Chain ecosystem will use its CASH token to pay the commission.

The idea of ​​creating a new blockchain-based on PoA did not receive the desired support from the DeFi community. The analyst Anthony Sassano has been a fierce critic of this system. He believes that there is no need for a new Compound Chain as such since the deployment of Ethereum 2.0. will be able to solve all the stated problems. In his opinion, the use of the PoA mechanism is a direct route to centralization, and the launch of side networks can further confuse.

To date, the total value of assets locked in the Compound Chain exceeds $1.80 billion.

Cardano blockchain will support smart contracts written in Solidity

Cardano is preparing to take another step towards scaling by integrating Solidity, the main programming language for writing smart contracts. Shortly, a system will be implemented thanks to which developers will be able to work seamlessly in the Cardano and Ethereum ecosystem.

This initiative is part of the Cardano team’s commitment to bringing leading developer communities to their ecosystem. According to Tim Harrison, director of marketing at IOHK, Cardano is now building bridges between developers, which will enable long-term partnerships in the future and will be the impetus for continued modernization of smart contracts.

Going forward, Cardano plans to bring developer networks such as Glow and IELE into its ecosystem.

XRPL testing showed “promising results”
David Schwartz, CTO at Ripple, tested an updated version of the XRP Ledger platform software last week. Three key indicators were taken as a basis – memory consumption, data processing, and the time during which the task was completed.

Schwartz announced all stages of testing on his Twitter account. The XRPL performance benchmark results were more than encouraging. The number of nodes processed per second increased from 73,000 to 327,000. Also, the optimized version of XRPL showed an increase in average sync speed with less memory consumption. If the current version of XRPL syncs in 82 seconds when consuming 5.2GB of memory, the updated version syncs in 37 seconds when consuming 2.2GB of memory.

On key performance metrics, XRPL optimization has been improved by over 50%. But for now, the updated version of XRPL is only available in test mode, and according to Schwartz, the community is open to new proposals from developers.

Large investors have acquired 500,000 BTC since September

Institutional investors have shown tremendous interest in Bitcoin and continue to be in the spotlight. Since September, investors with $20 million or more in BTC have acquired a total of 500,000 BTC (worth about $11.5 billion).

Aggressive Bitcoin hoarding by big players is fueling the current crypto asset rally. Economist Philip Gradwell is convinced of this. He noted that “the entry of new investors into the market has become one of the drivers for the growth of the BTC price from $1110K+ in September to $1120K + in December.”

The influx of institutional investments is under the banner of portfolio diversification, inflation protection and, according to analysts, will receive a new impetus in 2021. A good example is MicroStrategy and Grayscale, which continue to actively buy Bitcoin even at current levels and are determined to play for a long time.

Another important event awaits Bitcoin next week: 92,900 BTC options expire on December 25. Analysts do not exclude that this event may provoke an increase in Bitcoin volatility.

[Digest: The Main News On The Cryptocurrency Market (December 7-13)]

Digest: The Main News On The Cryptocurrency Market (December 7-13)

This week has been a bit stressful for Bitcoin and altcoins. Despite the turbulence in the crypto market, Ethereum 2.0. is gaining momentum, Steve Wozniak's token is going “to the Moon”. And so, let's take a closer look at the main events of the week.

Over 1.2 million ETH already locked in E2.0 deposit contract

The launch of the first genesis block of Ethereum 2.0 until the last moment remained an intrigue: only 4 hours before the end of the deadline, the missing 25% of ETH was contributed. The timely launch of the Beacon Chain once again confirmed investor confidence in the network's prospects and gave an impetus for those who wanted to join but doubted.

To date, more than 1.21 million ETH (about $690 million) have been blocked on the deposit contract, which is about 1% of the total emission of Ethereum. If at the time of the launch of the first block, there were 16,384 validators, now the number of active staking participants exceeds 26,900.

Those who were among the first validators were very lucky because they can count on the maximum profitability from staking (up to 15-20% per annum). As the number of stakers increases, the size of the reward will decrease accordingly. The dynamics speak for itself: now, validators add tens of thousands of ETH per day, while in the first week, the total inflow of ETH was measured at several thousand per day.

If you do not have the 32 ETH required to become a validator, there is good news for you: according to preliminary data, large crypto exchanges may launch a delegated staking service in 2021. That will allow Ethereum owners to profit from staking, but through an intermediary in the form of an exchange.


Bitcoin and the first “drug empire” on the darknet

Back in 2013, news broke about the arrest of 26-year-old Ross Ulbricht, a drug dealer who sold illegal substances through the darknet. He created the site “Silk Road”, which was very similar in functionality to Amazon, but differed in the “specificity” of the product being sold.

The site soon became a mecca for drug dealers. More than 350 sellers, thousands of product items, and the lack of control from "Big Brother" made it possible for Ulbricht to hit the big jackpot. What does Bitcoin have to do with it? The fact is that the drug dealer carried out all operations using cryptocurrency. On each order, he received up to 10% commission, which was about $30,000.

If we close our eyes to the specifics of the product, Silk Road became the first platform where Bitcoin payments were regularly accepted. Back in 2011, Ulbricht tried to minimize the risks of Bitcoin volatility for site users. Buyers could pre-fix the price of the product and not worry about fluctuations in the BTC price.

The first "drug empire" on the darknet lasted for about 2 years. In 2013 Ulbrecht was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. The secret services confiscated more than 140,000 BTC from a drug dealer and closed the first “marketplace” for selling drugs. Ulbricht's fate is the basis for the film Silk Road, which will hit the big screen in February 2021.

Bondly platform moves to Cardano blockchain

Last week for Cardano ended with a landmark event: Bondly, a decentralized e-commerce platform, officially announced the transition to the Cardano blockchain. It will be the first project to see the world as part of the Goguen rollout phase. According to the developers, this stage will help to improve the system of smart contracts as much as possible and will be able to bring the network to a new level.

Charles Hoskinson, CEO of IOHK, is betting heavily on Cardano's collaboration with Bondly. He noted:

“The partnership between Bondly and Cardano is a logical continuation of both companies' policy of scaling and popularizing DeFi. We are one step closer to transforming the global financial system. ”

The next stage of cooperation will be the addition of BONDLY cryptocurrency to the Cardano ecosystem. It will happen after the deployment of the Goguen phase, which, according to the roadmap, should end in February 2021.

Apple co-founder's WOZX token grows 26 times in 5 days

For whom this week was definitely a take-off, it was for Steve Wozniak and his WOZX token. The co-founder of Apple presented his blockchain project on December 4 and immediately made a splash in the crypto space.

WOZX started trading on the Bithumb exchange on December 9 with a price of $ 0.1. In just 5 days, the price has skyrocketed 26 times and is trading at $ 3.26 at the time of writing. It only took 13 minutes for the “newborn” token to reach a market cap of $950.

This project is positioned as “the first energy-saving blockchain platform” and is a continuation of the global trend towards reducing social consumption. Apart from Wozniak, the co-founders of the startup are Jacopo Visetti and Jacopo Vanetti. The company is headquartered in Malta.

According to the project, the commission from the sale of the WOZX token will be directed to the development of the so-called “green projects”. Enterprises will receive financial assistance to implement solutions to modernize the energy-saving system.


Some DeFi tokens soar amid Bitcoin falling below $19,000

In the middle of the week, the dynamics of the crypto market was seriously excited: almost all crypto assets were colored red. Bitcoin rolled on a roller coaster, showed a decline of 9.5%, and was able to rebound from the level of $17,600 only with the onset of the weekend.

The leading altcoins also partially sank: some got stuck in the price range, while others entered a correction. But for some DeFi tokens, this week has been a runaway. In particular, WAVES was among the lucky ones. Altcoin has risen from $6.2 on December 1 to $9.3 on December 7. As of today, the altcoin is in an upward channel and, if the bulls maintain their strength, it could test the $10 level. If WAVES overcomes this indicator, the next target will be the resistance level at $13.4.

Another DeFi token, COMP, has seen exponential growth. The token price soared 78% in 7 days from $100.32 to $179.48. Today, the relative strength index (RSI) of the token has entered the overbought zone, which signals the pressure of the bulls. If the token can overcome the critical level of $200, the COMP/USD pair could jump to $260 and meet serious bearish resistance at this level.

German bank launches euro-stablecoin

Bankhaus von der Heydt (BVDH), one of the oldest banks in Europe,  announced the launch of the EURB stablecoin. The value of the coin is pegged to the euro exchange rate in a 1: 1 ratio. This decision was the result of a collaboration between the German bank and the fintech company Bitbond.

EURB is based on the Stellar blockchain, which already has successfully implemented stablecoins. It will be impossible to see EURB on the exchanges, since the withdrawal of the coin to the trading floors is complicated due to the presence of strict requirements from the European Commission. Today, stablecoin is considered as a tool for fast transactions between developers of financial applications.

According to the director of BVDH bank, the clients of the crypto company SatoshiPay will be the first to use the new stablecoins. Also, BVDH does not exclude the possibility of using cryptocurrency to work with other banks.

For several years in a row, the EU has been trying to take under "its wing" cryptocurrency and retain control over digital assets through the introduction of regulatory norms. The launch of the EURB stablecoin is quite an expected event, since in 2020, more than ever before, the issue of digitalization of the traditional financial system has been sharply raised.

[In this topic, we plan to give forecasts and analytics on crypto assets and not only. Comment and ask questions about the predictions you would like to consider.]

In this topic, we plan to give forecasts and analytics on crypto assets and not only. Comment and ask questions about the predictions you would like to consider.
Today we will look at the ETH / USDT pair
Ethereum, globally, is still in a growing channel. Quite large volumes for sale are noticeable, this suggests that some of the holders of this coin have already decided on their choice and sold the asset. Ethereum 2.0 still fuels the expectations of market participants and they hold their positions, hoping for continued growth.
Anyone who doubts the further growth of the asset, you can fix a part of the profit and wait for a more interesting entry point.
If we talk about prices, then we can clearly see the resistance at 600-620 USD, the approximate movement of the asset is shown on the chart.

[Ethereum faces a strong resistance level]

Ethereum saw explosive gains yesterday, with the main altcoin rising about 10% from its daily low of $515 to hit $570 at the time of writing. Ethereum can be congratulated on reaching a new 2020 high. But this may be only the beginning of the rally, and Ethereum will show new growth points more than once before the end of the year.

The optimism about Ethereum price dynamics is reinforced by several positive factors. The first is the market behavior of Bitcoin. After peaking at $18,488 in the last trading week, the flagship crypto price has dropped to $17,500. One of the reasons for the price pullback was the decline in institutional investor activity over the weekend. Bitcoin may be now approaching a correction phase, so market participants are switching from BTC to altcoins.

Secondly, we see a general recovery in the DeFi market, which is accompanied by a new influx of funds. Leading DeFi tokens also cheered up after falling in November and closed last week again.


Ethereum faces a strong resistance level

Ethereum surpassed the $500 level for the first time since June 2018. Despite the optimistic forecasts of traders, Ethereum will struggle for the critical resistance level of $600 in the short term. In the specified price region, the asset will face strong selling pressure, since this point became a "springboard" for bears two years ago.

"According to technical analysis, we can slightly adjust from the current price to the level of 560-570 USD, but Ethereum is gaining momentum and does not plan to stop yet; the limit of 600 USD does not seem so impassable. Most of the market participants are set for growth now, and until we see protocol 2.0, the increase will continue with small corrective movements."

If the bulls push Ethereum above $600, another victory may appear on the account of the crypto asset – a price increase of 350% per year. Overcoming this resistance level can bring Ethereum into a new price range of $ 700 and above.

Ethereum 2.0 “heats” the price of ETH

The launch of the deposit contract was one of the catalysts for the current surge in the price of Ethereum. As we approach the deployment of the new phase of Ethereum 2.0, this trend can only intensify.

Vitalik Buterin, is convinced that at this stage the foundation is being laid for the successful integration of the Ethereum ecosystem into the global economy. He also added:

“Now it is important for us to build a reliable ecosystem so that in 2 years our main task is narrowed and consisted only in supporting the functionality of the network. Our team is following the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap, and upon completion of the upgrade process, we are confident that we will reach the point where our network becomes an integral part of the global economy. "

In general, analysts give positive forecasts regarding the dynamics of the price of Ethereum in the long term, and the launch of Ethereum 2.0 may play a decisive role in this.

While Bitcoin confidently closes new highs, Litecoin also does not graze the hind ones and, under pressure from bulls, has shown an extreme increase since the beginning of November. But will the bulls be strong enough to overcome the huge resistance ahead?

Bulls control the price of Litecoin, but there is one "but"

Litecoin, the sixth-largest cryptocurrency, followed Bitcoin with parabolic growth. In just 2 days, the crypto asset increased by 23% and reached just under $80. Despite strong bullish momentum, Litecoin has pulled back and is trading at $74.4 at the time of writing.

A rollback with an accompanying correction is a completely natural scenario for bulls. It is imperative for Litecoin right now to turn the resistance levels between $68 and $75 into its support line. However, Litecoin continues to stay within the upward channel. According to analysts, buyers who purchased about 2.6 million LTC at a support level between $68 and $70 played a significant role in this.

For today, the key resistance level for Litecoin remains the $75 mark. That is a critical price region, after a breakdown of which Litecoin opens the way to a new high of $80 and above.

LTC/USD 4-hour chart

Despite the bullish momentum, Litecoin may suspend its upward movement in the short term. That is signaled by the 4-hour LTC/USD chart, on which a rising wedge pattern has formed. This model can lose out for Litecoin in the form of the onset of a consolidation phase between $68 and $75 and a decrease in pressure from buyers.
 
If Litecoin does not receive support from the market at $75 or the monthly high of $77, the indicator SMA (Simple Moving Average) could retrace to $65.

On the other hand, the IOMAP IntoTheBlock pattern signals the continuation of Litecoin's bullish dynamics. The cryptocurrency could close the gap to $80 by breaking the key resistance area between $75 and $76.6. Earlier in this price region, about 52,800 addresses bought about 2.1 million LTC.

Thus, before the breakout, Litecoin may enter a consolidation phase and trade in the $68 to $75 range for a while. After the completion of the correction, the cryptocurrency may make a rally and reach new highs.

LTC always "goes" for BTC, before there was such a correlation: if BTC costs 10,000 USD, then LTC is 100 USD. To date, the increase in BTC capitalization is overtaking LTC, but this is not a reason for the holders of this coin to worry; now Litecoin is in a growing channel, and until Bitcoin goes into a correction, LTC will continue to increase its price.

Just imagine, to pay for ads on Facebook, you can choose any cryptocurrency instead of the US dollar, and using Google Play service, you can pay for purchases with Bitcoins. If earlier it could seem like something empyreal, today it is quite an expected decision. Will Google and Facebook change their crypto policies?

Is PayPal first, then Google and Facebook?
The cryptocurrency is rapidly acquiring new supporters, including large companies, funds, institutional and retail investors. It is obvious that the global economy is moving at full speed towards digitalization, and its transformation is only a matter of time. The leading players in the financial market have already jumped in, as evidenced by the multi-billion dollar investments in Bitcoin in the context of 2020.



Top corporations are unlikely to observe this process from the outside and will soon join the support of the cryptocurrency. Jason Janowitz, the founder of BlockWork Groups, is convinced of this. He believes that large companies such as Google and Facebook may significantly change their corporate policies towards crypto shortly.

The question of the need to introduce cryptocurrency into the ecosystem of large companies is hanging in the air. Of course, PayPal gave a powerful impetus to this process: the news of the launch of the support service for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin for US citizens has already been dubbed by analysts as a turning point for the crypto industry as a whole. Given that the payments giant plans to scale this feature to all users, the outlook is more than optimistic.

Cryptocurrency use will become ordinary
Analysts are convinced that PayPal’s support for the cryptocurrency will be a powerful signal for massive crypto adoption by businesses and individuals. That could radically affect the value of cryptocurrency as a means of payment. Especially, the PayPal initiative should be appreciated by millennials who are increasingly interested in digital currencies.

A lot of the large companies have already become convinced that cryptocurrency is behind the future of the payment system. While government agencies are deciding how to settle the issue of regulating the freedom-loving crypto, corporations are developing strategies to integrate cryptocurrency into their ecosystems. An example is the same Facebook, which has been working on the launch of its own cryptocurrency Libra since 2018.

[Smart & easy way to trade cryptocurrency and other financial assets]

Smart & easy way to trade cryptocurrency and other financial assets

Binaryx offers the best-in-class cryptocurrency trading and exchange experience for both newbies and professional users. Our main goal is to build an entire ecosystem for users to trade, learn, and monetize their skills in cryptocurrency.

The first edition of Binaryx has the following features:

Exchange module to set up the basic component
We decided to start with a common but most useful feature which we use ourselves on a daily basis. We currently support the following cryptocurrency for purchasing: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Tether, Ripple with USD, EUR, UAH, RUB. Sure, we are working on the integration of additional digital currencies, such as ChainLink, Cardano, Dash, NEO, etc.

Terminal to trade in a smart way
One of our main goals was to design a lean and flexible to tune-up interface. UI of the Binaryx developed in close cooperation with the traders using the most innovative design approach.

Wallet to store values
You can keep your assets in a wallet on the Binaryx platform. Further, the wallet allows you to deposit or withdraw digital currencies to other wallets. Operations with flexible-fee exchanges are also available.

Blog to keep up to date
We publish a fresh changelog once a week. Moreover, our editorial team is regularly publishing actual news, trading strategies, podcasts, and interviews.

Academy to skill up within trading
Binaryx Academy is a place where you can study cryptocurrency domain and trading strategies in-depth. All courses are free to use and have been created by professional traders.

White label solutions for joint success
If you plan to launch your own cryptocurrency trading business, we are here to help you! Binaryx offers white labeling of the trading module, wallet, and basic exchange, alongside with an access to liquidity, 24/7 troubleshooting and support. Also, our team can assist you with legal questions, licenses, and more.


🔜 Coming soon features:

ETF indexes. Our team is working on the ETF indexes that allow simplifying the management of digital assets, increase interest yield, and minimize risks.

Margin trading & futures. We know margin trading & futures is a crucial feature for any trader, so we plan to add it by the end of 2020.

API. Set up digital API and get access to all the Binaryx features in your business.

Commodities. Binaryx will support the ability to buy and sell commodities with digital currencies. Coming soon in 2021.

Business tokenization. Our team is working and plan to add business tokenization in 2021. As a result, it will open whole new possibilities for both business owners and investors.

Social trading. Introducing the low-risk social trading module where you can find and hire professional traders who can manage your portfolio to maximize the cryptocurrency income. Coming soon next year.


Thank you for reading the information about our company.

Visit our website, create your account and enjoy trading. We really appreciate your feedback. It helps us improve our product. 😉

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