Ethereum pauses at record high, bitcoin's rally stalls, DOGE Moons

Ether (ETH) prices were lower after surging 10% on Wednesday to a new record, climbing past $1,600 for the first time.

The recent gains appeared driven by signs of growth on the cryptocurrencys underlying Ethereum blockchain network, as well as interest from institutional investors starting to venture beyond bitcoin, the oldest and largest cryptocurrency.

Ethereum is in such high demand because the asset is undergoing changes to make it even more decentralized and even more secure, said Simon Peters, an analyst for the trading platform eToro. This is attracting buyers from both the institutional and retail world.

Bitcoin (BTC) appeared to lose momentum after its steady rise over the past week from $30,000 to about $38,000.

The price level of $38,190 proved tough to pierce, according to Matt Blom, head of sales and trading for the cryptocurrency exchange firm EQUOS.

Once it hit that level, prices seem to struggle and actually just retraced lower, overtaken by massive sell orders on both spot and derivatives exchanges, Blom wrote. Stagnation in the $34K-$38K range probably cant be avoided, and eager bulls might be cooled down by relentless sellers before BTC progresses higher again.

And dogecoin (DOGE)? The digital token launched in 2013 as little more than a joke is up about 50% in just the past two days, for a market value of more than $6 billion. Elon Musk, the electric-vehicle and private-spaceflight entrepreneur whos also reportedly the worlds richest man, tweeted about it early Thursday. There was also heavy chatter about the token on social media forums, and probably a lot of speculation about the chatter.

In traditional markets, the Reddit-fueled whiplash in shares of meme stocks like GameStop (GME) appeared to subside, but the regulatory fallout might just be getting going: U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who heads the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, said Wednesday she wants Reddit user Keith DeepF***ingValue Gill to testify at a Feb. 18 hearing along with executives from the retail trading platform Robinhood and the hedge funds Melvin Capital and Citadel.

Stocks were pointing higher whilegold weakened 1.1% to $1,814 an ounce.

Visa's plans push crypto industry closer to point of no return

With 3.3 billion payment cards in use, Visa (V) is a household name. Its also one of the biggest players in the global financial infrastructure, processing some 188.1 billion transactions a year.

Thats why it was such big news for the cryptocurrency industry on Wednesday when Visa announced it is piloting a new program that will allow banks to offer bitcoin services. Previously, Visa had been focused on helping crypto companies issue bank cards and has partnered with 35 crypto firms to date, but this is the first time the company has offered crypto services to banks.

The market impact? Edward Moya, senior market analyst for the brokerage Oanda, wrote Wednesday the news may have helped to push up bitcoins price. Bitcoins acceptance continues to improve, Moya wrote.

Another takeaway might be that Visas splashy move could make it harder for U.S. lawmakers or regulators to thwart bitcoins growth. Ray Dalio, of the giant hedge fund Bridgewater, and former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein have suggested that authorities might look to crack down on the fast-emerging cryptocurrency if it really starts to take off.

Think of the operational, technological and marketing expenses involved in Visas new project. The chances are low that a big, heavily regulated financial company would push forward without some assurances that theres no turning back from crypto. Or that Visa would make this move before heavy consultations with key corporate customers, including big credit-card lenders such as JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America.

The more investments established companies make in the business, the less likely authorities are to force write-offs.

Ether rally spreads beyond ether. Dogecoin has nothing to do with it.

The average fee for sending a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain has climbed above $20 for the first time, in a sign of just how popular the network is becoming.

Its not just ether rallying to a new all-time high this week: Also rising were major digital tokens from the realm of decentralized finance, or DeFi, where entrepreneurs are building software-automated versions of banks and trading platforms atop decentralized, Internet-based networks, mainly the Ethereum blockchain, CoinDesks Muyao Shen reported Wednesday.

DeFi tokens including price-feed-provider Chainlinks LINK, the decentralized exchange SushiSwaps SUSHI and the DeFi lender Aaves AAVE have logged new historic highs.

Prices for SUSHI, whose launch last year met with immediate controversy, have quadrupled already in 2021 amid bullish speculation over the future of DeFi. Based on data from the analysis firm Messari, thats the second-highest gain among digital assets with a market capitalization of at least $1 billion after dogecoin (DOGE), which offers little more than meme-y yuks to its adoring fans. (Dogecoin has nearly sextupled this year, for those keeping track.)

Also getting a lift were prices for cryptocurrencies associated with blockchains that are competing with Ethereum to become dominant platforms for decentralized computer applications. Sometimes referred to colloquially as Ethereum killers, they include Polkadots DOT token and Solanas SOL.

Ether made a significant push, and that is causing projects linked to the DeFi space to rise, said Hunain Naseer, senior content editor at crypto exchange OKEXs research unit, OKEx Insights.

One downside from the flurry of activity on the Ethereum blockchain might be elevated fees for sending transactions over the network, since the rate paid rises with increasing congestion. As reported by CoinDesks Will Foxley, the average transaction fee early Thursday climbed above $20 for the first time, reflecting growing demand for tokens launched atop the Ethereum blockchain. Those include the dollar-linked digital tokens known as stablecoins as well as DeFi-related tokens.

A catalyst for further price action might come from the Chicago-based CMEs launch of a new futures contract on ether next week. The listing should give more institutional investors a way to bet on the second-largest cryptocurrency after they took positions in bitcoinlast year.

The institutions are buying ether, Ryan Sean Adams, founder of newsletter Bankless,wrote in a tweet.And theyre just getting started.

Bond traders are increasing their expectations for inflation

So-called breakeven inflation rates, or the pace of price increases implied by U.S. government bond markets, have reached an eight-year high and are climbing fast.

The Federal Reserves mantra over the past year as the coronavirus wreaked a devastating toll on the economy is that theres no need to worry about inflation; in fact, as Chair Jerome Powell was quick to point out, recessions often lead to deflation because flagging consumer demand can prompt businesses to cut prices while elevated unemployment mutes upward pressures on wages.

Despite the assurances, big investors and corporations have piled into bitcoin over the past year, betting the cryptocurrency, whose supply is limited under the blockchain networks underlying programming, could serve as a hedge against loose monetary policy, aka near-zero interest rates and trillions of dollars of money printing.

But now there are signs another key market segment might be getting more concerned about inflation: bond traders.

The five-year breakeven inflation rate, which can be derived by examining the yields on various U.S. government bonds, is now signaling a 2.2% average rate over the next five years. Thats the highest in eight years, and its also above the Feds long-term target of 2%. Whats more, the figure appears to be rising fast: As recently as September, the breakeven inflation rate was below 1.5%.

As noted this week by First Mover, economists are already starting to sketch out how fast the economy might heat up as more people get vaccines and consumers start to get their confidence back. Bank of America estimates theres some $1.6 trillion of excess savings on consumer balance sheets, which could quickly translate to pent-up spending demand. And the economy has yet to feel the impact of the stimulus package now being debated in U.S. Congress, likely to total at least $1 trillion.

The national employment situation will become clearer on Friday when the U.S. Labor Departments Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its jobs report for the month of January. On Wednesday, Pantheon, a macroeconomic forecasting firm, revised its projection to an increase of 200,000; previously the firm was expecting a decline of 100,000 in the nonfarm payrolls. The average expectation of Wall Street economists is for an increase of 100,000, according to Bloomberg. (U.S. jobless claims were lower than expected last week, at 779,000, according to a report early Thursday.)

The reflationary trends we are seeing in markets are likely to continue throughout 2021, according to a report Wednesday from the Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

Bitcoin Watch: Increasing signs of demand from institutional investors

Although bitcoin has failed to sustainably push past the psychologically important $40,000 price level, signs continue to mount of growing interest in the cryptocurrency from big institutional buyers.

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Ethereum, DOGE on Own Journeys as Inflation Bets Fuel Bitcoin - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

During the last decade, cryptocurrency users have leveraged a number of coin market capitalization aggregators, in order to check in on a crypto assets price and the projects overall market valuation. However, theres also a number of crypto price aggregators that follow a different method of recording market caps, in contrast to multiplying the supply by the price of each unit. The web portal coinfairvalue.com attempts to measure fair values by using the current usage of each coin and without any implied speculation.

Crypto price aggregators measure the spot price of each crypto asset and then multiply that number times the circulating supply of each digital currency. Then an aggregator like our web portal markets.Bitcoin.com, lists each crypto market cap in order from the largest valuation to the least. There are also market cap aggregators that measure cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) up against the top assets in the world which include stocks like Apple and Amazon. Currently, according to assetdash.com data, BTC is the tenth-largest asset in the world just below Alibaba Group Holding (BABA) shares.

Two years ago in the summer of 2018, news.Bitcoin.com reported on another type of crypto price aggregator that leverages whats called fair value. Fair value is a broad measure and it is not the same as market value. Oftentimes, the metric is used in accounting and it can be used to measure an asset or a companys actual worth. Oftentimes, fair value estimates can be found on a firms quarterly financial statements alongside the market valuation. The aggregator called coinfairvalue.com has used the methodology behind the Currencies Fair Value model published by @pablompa back in 2017.

One of the most interesting parts of Currencies Fair Value model is that it arrives at the rational conclusion that currencies must be trading at their fair value when the number of speculative trades in the particular currency itself is negligible with respect to the total number of overall trades conducted using the same currency as a tool, the web portal details.

The website further adds:

Calculating an exact fair value for a currency with respect to another currency can be laborious if done rigorously. The trickiest part would be integrating the future expected supply to obtain the Total Discounted Supply. Nonetheless, one can take some approximations for a quick calculation.

Looking at the crypto assets fair value (FV) on coinfairvalue.com is a lot different than traditional market-cap aggregators. For instance, it includes the U.S. dollar and the euro as well which are the top two currencies on the list.

Bitcoin is below the USD and EUR, but according to the FV recording on coinfairvalue.com BTCs FV should be $10,960 per unit. This is a stark contrast to BTCs currency price which is hovering well above the $30k handle and close to the $40k zone. Ethereum (ETH) made headlines on Friday for crossing the $1,700 per handle price range. However, coinfairvalue.coms FV recording shows that ETH should be $351.13 per ether.

The controversial digital asset XRP isnt much different on coinfairvalue.com than other crypto cap aggregators. Although, XRP should be $0.3942 per unit instead of todays $0.4592 per coin. Below XRP is bitcoin cash (BCH) which is currently trading for $438.64 per BCH but according to the FV web portal, the BCH FV metric should be around $1,723.86 per coin.

Other digital assets that show they should be worth more than they actually are, include crypto assets like crypto.com coin (CRO) and a few others. A great majority of coinfairvalue.com listings show that most coins are overvalued in terms of FV and the aggregate total of all the coins listed is around $445 billion. Again this is much less than the current market valuation of all 7,500+ crypto-assets in existence valued at more than $1 trillion.

Coinfairvalue.com is not the only attempt to figure out the fair value as cryptocurrency supporters in the past have attempted to do the same. News.Bitcoin.com has studied another rudimentary form of an FV crypto coin aggregator in the spring of 2018 when Andrew Rennhack created his Honest Coinmarketcap document.

Despite the alternatives, it is likely that most people will leverage coin market cap aggregators that multiply the price by the supply. Albeit it is interesting to get a glimpse at so-called fair value metrics to see a different perspective of the crypto assets that are often considered highly speculative.

What do you think about todays FV statistics from the website coinfairvalue.com? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Coinfairvalue.com,

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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An Aggregated List of Cryptocurrency 'Fair Values' in 2021 Gives a Different Perspective Economics Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

Seven compelling factors that are driving Bitcoin higher.

Let the business resources in our guide inspire you and help you achieve your goals in 2021.

February1, 20216 min read

As technical as cryptocurrency and Bitcoin (BTC) markets are there are some fundamentals driving the market. These include cryptocurrencys growing mainstream acceptance, the amount of power put into mining the coin, and its availability to name a few. Now that BTC/USD is trading at new all-time highs the market can expect the bullish trends to continue because there isnt much reason for the market to reverse until a clear top is formed. Based on what were seeing inthe marketBTC/USD could easily hit the $59,000 this year and that estimate might be too low.

Related:How a Series of Elon Musk Tweets Helped Lead Investors to Dogecoin, a Meme-Inspired Cryptocurrency Worth 4 Cents

1. There is a cost to mine Bitcoin

While mining Bitcoin used to be very easy, an influx of miners (along with other factors discussed below) drove up the difficulty rate while driving down the reward. Now it is virtually impossible for a lone operator to mine a single BTC without the help of either 1) a vast quantity of expensive mining resources or 2) the aid of a mining pool. The mining pools tend to operate where electricity is cheap but there is still cost, not to mention the overhead of running a large mining operation. The latest estimates put the cost of 40 TH/s of computing power at $4.32 per day. Thats may seem small but it adds up over the year. The annual cost runs about $1,576 with an expected reward of 0.08875 Bitcoins or about $3,017 with BTC trading at $34,000. Thats a gross margin of 47% and then add in the cost of buying or renting a unit. The takeaway, it costs money to mine Bitcoin and that is where a lot of its intrinsic value lay.

2. There is not an unlimited supply

Bitcoins value is also driven in large part by supply, and the supply is dwindling. There are only ever going to be 21 million real BTCs ever minted. That doesnt count wrapped BTC or other kinds of defi-sourced BTC which ultimately will also affect BTCs price. But, back to the supply, of the 21 million nearly 90% have already been mined leaving just over 2 million for the mining community to split up. And, not only that, but there are the halvings to consider. A halving is when the Bitcoin mining reward is cut in half. The purpose of this is to help control BTC inflation and extend the lifespan of the mineable BTC pool. The halving occurs every four years, there have been three so far, and the most recent was just this past year. The takeaway here, people who want to own a Bitcoin or use a Bitcoin have to buy one of the few that are already out there.

3. There are a growing number of BTC addresses

Technically, the way that the BTC network is set up, there are already an infinite # of addresses. The system is set up that way to help make it more difficult to find a specific address and hack into it. The more important figure, however, is the number of Bitcoin wallets that currently hold BTC >0. That figure posted a YOY increase in 2020 that has the total number of wallets in use at over 1 million. That doesnt sound like a lot but you have to remember that supply is limited and the number of large holders and whales is rising by mid-single-digits. The number of whales, BTC holders with over 1000 BTC in their account rose by 7% while smaller accounts with 5 to 100 BTCs rose by 4%. In total, BTC whales are holding nearly 2.3 million BTCs while smaller investors account for upward of 10 million BTC. Thats not a lot left for the truly small retail investors who are also flooding into this market.

4. The mining community is still growing

If Bitcoin wasnt an attractive and lucrative investment the mining community would not be growing and it is growing. The latest data shows hashing power or the amount of computing power attributed to the BTC network at a new all-time high. The takeaway here is that Bitcoins hashing power has only risen over the long-term and is likely to continue setting new highs long into the future. Thats a lot of competition for a dwindling supply of coins.

5. Bitcoin is the worlds reserve cryptocurrency

Bitcoin has long been the worlds reserve cryptocurrency because its the easiest to use, themost widespread, the first that most new users buy, and its role in defi. The proof of this is in the coins market dominance of its percentage of the total cryptocurrency market cap. Except for a brief period during 2017 and 2018 when the Altcoin craze was going on Bitcoin has always commanded at least 50% of the total market cap. Lately, that has risen to over 60% where it has trended since mid-2019. The takeaway here is that when the world turns to crypto Bitcoin is the first name they seek. And the world is warming up to crypto.

6. Bitcoins get lost, locked, and burned every day

As if the limited and dwindling supply was not enough to support BTCs price movement there is the lost BTCs to consider. The estimates vary but investors should assume that roughly 3.7 million BTCs are already lost or irrecoverable. One analyst estimates that 1,500 BTCs are lost every day. What lost means is that they are in unrecoverable wallets. We know where they are on the blockchain but no one can get to them for 1 of 2 reasons. The first is that they are really lost due to password protection and/or lost devices. Those coins will never come back to the market. The second is burning. Some operations on blockchains require you to lock or burn coins. This essentially loses coins on purpose but in a way that spawns new value. For example, if we wanted to launch our own cryptocurrency we could burn $1 million worth of BTC and produce 1 million $1 MarketBeat Coins.

7. Defi is growing

Defi isdecentralized financewhich, in a nutshell, means locking BTC or another cryptocurrency into a smart-contract. The total value of defi grew at an exponential pace in 2020 and now amounts to over $27 billion in value. Thats not all BTC value but BTC is well-represented. The takeaway here is that defi is growing and will continue to suck up BTC value and drive demand for BTC.

After a strong rally from the 2020 lowws the Bitcoin market is very bullish. BTC is likely to move sharply higher over the next year and basied on the recent move, it could run close to 100%. Assuming the recent consolidation at all-time-high levels will lead to a continuation we project at least $27,000 in upside from the $32,000 level.

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This Is Why Bitcoin Will Hit $59,000 In 2021 - Entrepreneur

It has been a volatile few months for bitcoin.

On Friday alone, the cryptocurrency briefly shot 20% higher after billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk changed his Twitter bio to "#bitcoin."

Though it quickly gave up those gains, there are parallels between bitcoin's swift move higher and the GameStop stock mania, which continues to dominate the global news cycle.

The battle of hedge-fund short sellers versus retail traders who are coordinating on social media to drive the price higher could be a sign of what's to come for the world's biggest cryptocurrency.

Data from crypto news and analysis company The Block shows that hedge funds are short bitcoin by more than $1 billion.

That term "shorting" means that traders and hedge funds are betting that the price of bitcoin will go down. Those short positions ramped up starting in October 2020, just as bitcoin's latest rally began to take hold.

Meanwhile, individual investors are still buying into bitcoin, among other cryptocurrencies, as they bet that the price will go up.

Sound familiar?

Retail brokerages including Robinhood have extended trading restrictions on stocks such as GameStop, and as of Friday, the trading app is also limiting trading in cryptocurrencies.

Unlike GameStop, a brick-and-mortar mall business that was closing stores even before the pandemic led to widespread shutdowns, analysts say the fundamentals underlying bitcoin tell a more promising story.

Analysts at JPMorgan think the price of bitcoin could rally as high as $146,000, and the global head of CitiFXTechnicals says the charts signal that bitcoin could reach $318,000 by December.

Part of what's different about bitcoin's rally in 2020 versus its last run higher, in 2017, is that institutional investors are now adopting bitcoin, lending it newfound legitimacy and helping to erase the reputational risk of investing in the cryptocurrency.

"We've seen the majority of folks like insurance firms, asset managers, hedge funds and corporate balance sheets come into the market in 2020," said Michael Bucella, general partner at crypto firm BlockTower Capital.

The surge in interest from mainstream financial players hasn't just reformed bitcoin's image, it's also fomented a supply shortage.

"There is a large and emerging group of institutions that have an enormous capital base that are reallocating to this space," Bucella said. "And if you think about the supply-demand model of a commodity, the supply curve is declining over time to effectively zero, and the demand is increasing exponentially."

There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins in existence, because, like other cryptocurrencies, it was built around the principle of a finite supply. The total number of mined bitcoin is at roughly 18.6 million, so it's nearing its maximum threshold.

And that interest from institutional investors doesn't appear to be slowing down.

"There's a lot of demand, and there's not enough supply of bitcoin for every financial institution to have their own reserve to serve their clients," said McKenzie Slaughter, a member of the Black Women Blockchain Council.

The GameStop saga has been driven by a large group of Reddit day traders, at least some of whom are motivated by wanting to stick it to Wall Street. They coordinated online to pile into GameStop in order to drive the price of the stock higher, with the specific purpose of causing hedge funds to lose money.

That same underlying anger and frustration over how institutional investors make profits has also played a role in bitcoin's rise. A big part of the cryptocurrency's intrinsic value is derived from the fact that it isn't tethered to any one governmentnor is it pegged to other currencies.

Investing in an independent cryptocurrency such as bitcoin, therefore, means you are putting your money toward a technology and a currency that could one day replace the modern financial system. This is certainly not lost on retail traders looking for the ultimate way to cut institutional investors out of the equation.

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Yes, bitcoin could be the new GameStop - CNBC

Spoileralert: I own both gold and Bitcoin in my portfolio.

As a longtime participant and observer of the shifting currents of monetary policy and financial markets, I believe both can play vital roles as repositories of value, especially in a world plagued by economic and political uncertainty.

But although they share some similarities, there are important differences that persuade me that contrary to growing opinion, bitcoin BTCUSD, +3.55% will not supplant gold GC00, -1.73% as the choice of investors seeking long-term safety.

Admittedly, bitcoin advocates have some momentum on their side, as its price hit a record above $40,500 in early January. After a recent pullback, bitcoin still trades around $30,000. Prominent institutional investors have become bitcoin fans; BlackRock, the worlds largest money manager, called it a durable mechanism that could take the place of gold to a large extent.

Yet, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of golds demise have been greatly exaggerated. Bitcoin is certainly a legitimate asset and has the potential to be a true store of value joining a select group of assets, commodities and currencies that can be saved, retrieved and exchanged without deteriorating in value.

However, gold has at least a 2,500-year head start as a widely-accepted, global medium of exchange and value. Compared to bitcoin, the gold market enjoys great depth and liquidity. The total amount of physical gold held by investors and central banks is an estimated $3.7 trillion. Thats nearly seven times the market capitalization of all bitcoin created. Both gold and bitcoin enjoy highly liquid markets, but golds average daily volume in 2020 was $125.3 billion, or 30 times bitcoins daily spot volume of $4.1 billion.

I own gold for insurance to offset the effects of inflation and as a safe haven to offset any steep losses in other parts of my portfolio. Bitcoins role in my portfolio is that of a speculative asset, rather than to protect wealth. I became interested while I was director of the U.S. Mint and wanted to understand cryptocurrencies, and the best way was to try it. Since leaving government service, I have become an investor in bitcoin.

While both gold and bitcoin can be seen as islands of security in an ocean of financial turbulence, we must understand their similarities and significant differences.

In both cases, their value is supported, in part, by scarcity. Gold is limited by physical supply and the difficulty of extraction, while bitcoin creation is capped at 21 million by its source code. These qualities, as well as the deep, liquid markets I noted earlier, mean that both gold and bitcoin have the potential to retain value, and in fact appreciate, during difficult economic cycles.

And unlike government-made currencies like the U.S. dollar, whose value derived from confidence in the issuing government and laws requiring citizens to accept it, gold and bitcoin have other uses, and the markets generally determine their value.

Gold, however, has an unmatched long-term record as a store of value. Economists have shown that, over the past 50 years, gold more than held its own in times of low inflation and rallied strongly during periods of high inflation. Since bitcoin has only existed since 2009 and its active trading market is even more recent, it is too soon to tell how its value will hold up over time.

The differences between gold and bitcoin are meaningful. For one, bitcoin is volatile, having fallen more than 20% from its Jan. 8 high. Over the same period, gold declined about 3%. This lack of volatility is one reason investors gravitate toward gold.

The run-up in bitcoin over the last year may largely be due to a new class of investors, attracted to a more transparent regulatory environment. Many new bitcoin owners are institutions, including private-equity firms, hedge funds, insurance companies, pension funds and endowments. Once this initial institutional surge of buying normalizes, bitcoins price escalation may not be sustainable.

Another advantage of gold is that one can take physical delivery, while digital currency exists as an electronic ledger entry. Weve heard about the British investor claiming to have accidentally thrown away a hard drive containing a cryptographic key to about $300 million in bitcoin that may now reside in a trash dump in South Wales. Its hard to imagine misplacing that amount of gold coins or bars. By holding physical gold, the investor owns its full value and has no counterparty risk.

Furthermore, despite expectations that Bitcoin would be used for everyday transactions, that degree of wide acceptance has not yet occurred. Bitcoin is more likely to be used as money in countries where there is little confidence in government currency and will take longer to be widely accepted as money in economies where government money is generally trusted, like in the U.S., Japan and across Europe.

While these differences explain why bitcoin wont entirely replace gold, both make sense in a well-managed portfolio. The continuing economic uncertainties wrought by COVID-19, the lower-for-longer interest rate policies of central banks, and the volatility of the highly valued equity market make a strong case for owning assets whose value is not tied to economic vagaries or government policies.

As an investor, why should I have to choose between the two? I think there advantages to owning both.

Edmund C. Moy was the 38th director of the United States Mint and is now chief market strategist at Valaurum, a company that enables investors to buy gold in small, more affordable increments.

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This investor in both gold and bitcoin says only one offers real long-term safety - MarketWatch

To figure out if youre in a bubble, you need to find the source of the hot air. Obvious for GameStop , but for bitcoin, not so much.

In July 2018, we wrote about the cryptocurrency company Tether, which issues tokens called tethers that trade under the symbol USDT and should be valued at $1making the currency a stablecoin. Tethers creators might have manipulated bitcoin, a University of Texas paper suggests, by issuing tokens willy-nilly unbacked by real dollars and then buying bitcoin to jack up its price. (The company claims the research is flawed.)

At the time, Tethers total value was some $2.7 billion, and its website claimed: Every tether is always backed 1-to-1 by traditional currency held in our reserves. So somewhere there should have been $2.7 billion in real moneythats how a stablecoin is supposed to work. In November 2018, New York state Attorney General Letitia James invoked the Martin Act to begin an investigation into iFinex, which owns Tether and the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange, in connection with ongoing activities that may have defrauded New York investors. The company has disputed the attorney generals claims, denied it misled customers, and said it will fight any action. An appellate court last year rejected its challenge to the probe.

Bitcoin peaked at the end of 2017 at $19,000 and over the next year collapsed to $3,200. Welltheyre baaack! On Friday Elon Musk was the latest to pump Bitcoin, which briefly reached almost $38,000. And there are now some $26.4 billion of USDT tokens, $18 billion of which were created since March 2020. Why the increase? No one has a good explanation.

All that glitters is not gold. In 2019 Tether subtly updated its claim to say reserves may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties. Tether has even admitted it only has 74% of the cash or cash equivalents to back its stablecoin. Hmmm. Basically unbacked.

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Behind the Bitcoin Bubble - The Wall Street Journal

Bitcoin is struggling to find momentum even as Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk expressed explicit support for the world's apex cryptocurrency on Monday.

What Happened: Bitcoin traded mostly unchanged over 24 hours at $33,670 at press time late Monday, retreating from the above $38,000 levels it was trading at last week after Musk initially updated his Twitter bio to #Bitcoin.

The cryptocurrencys gains are outshined by a decentralized finance, or DeFi, cryptocurrency.

SushiSwap (SUSHI) traded about 32% higher at $13.43 at press time. The cryptocurrency has surged about 61.4% against the U.S. dollar over the past seven days and 281% over 30 days, as per data from Messari.

It outshines Bitcoin, up 1025.9% against the apex cryptocurrency over a period of 90 days.

Among other Defi coins, Uniswap (UNI) has surged 13.2% to $19.74 over 24 hours.

Aave (AAVE), another DeFi coin that has added 211.7% gains over 30 days, is down 2.5% to $290.49 at press time.

Ethereum (ETH) cryptocurrency, which supports the primary blockchain platform associated with DeFi projects, is up 5% at $1,387.30.

Why It Matters: DeFi cryptocurrencies have been seeing momentum over the past month as total value locked (TLV) in such projects increases. According to DeFi pulse, the TLV for overall DeFi projects has increased to $27.68 billion as of press time.

SushiSwap, the DeFi project supported by the SUSHI cryptocurrency, has a TLV of $2.34 billion.

SushiSwap's share of the decentralized-exchange market is also increasing rapidly, as per Dune Analytics data. The SushiSwap trading volume made up for 23.3% of the DEX market at press time. UniSwap has a DEX trading volume market share of 48.9%.

2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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As Bitcoin Remains Muted, Traders Find Time To Eat Sushi - Benzinga

VICTORIA, Seychelles, Feb. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OKEx (www.okex.com), a world-leading cryptocurrency spot and derivatives exchange, is thrilled to announce the integration of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, a second-layer scaling solution based on the Bitcoin blockchain, in the coming quarter. This major development will dramatically decrease transaction fees and times, improving user experience on the exchange. Lightning integration also highlights OKEx's deep commitment to deep commitment to bringing the most advanced Bitcoin technology to the world and furthering the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Originally proposed by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja in 2015 as a Layer 2 scaling solution, the Lightning Network is a decentralized network that uses smart contracts on Bitcoin's blockchain to facilitate instant payments across the network. An off-chain scalability solution to Bitcoin's network congestion, the Lightning Network acts as a payment protocol on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, routing payments through participating nodes through a peer-to-peer system that greatly reduces transaction fees and times.

As BTC adoption becomes increasingly widespread and more users interact with the Bitcoin blockchain, the cost of transactions rises significantly, while transaction speed is greatly reduced. Currently, the average BTC on-chain fee is more than $10 and takes between 10 to 30 minutes to complete, discouraging many users from interacting with the network. Integrating Lightning with the OKEx platform will allow users to send and receive BTC in near real-time at next-to-no cost.

As OKEx becomes a participant node in the Lightning Network, users will be able to select the Lightning Network option when depositing and withdrawing BTC.

"OKEx is extremely proud to be one of the first major exchanges to integrate the Lightning Network. We are always looking for new ways of decreasing user transaction fees and times. By integrating Layer 2 payment protocols like the Lightning Network, we can offer more competitive products to our users and, at the same time, openly demonstrate our support for the Bitcoin network by increasing the number of participant nodes in the Lightning Network," commented OKEx CEO Jay Hao.

"OKEx's Lightning integration marks a big step for its users and the bitcoin community as a whole, enabling instant, global, low fee transactions. OKEx's leadership in adopting Lightning will help bring bitcoin to the next billion people around the world," said Elizabeth Stark, CEO and Co-Founder at Lightning Labs.

About OKEx

A world-leading cryptocurrency spot and derivatives exchange, OKEx offers the most diverse marketplace where global crypto traders, miners and institutional investors come to manage crypto assets, enhance investment opportunities and hedge risks. We provide spot and derivatives trading including futures, perpetual swap and options of major cryptocurrencies, offering investors flexibility in formulating their strategies to maximize gains and mitigate risks.

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http://www.okex.com

SOURCE OKEx

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OKEx to integrate the Bitcoin Lightning Network, enabling cheaper and faster transactions for users - PR Newswire India

Mining bitcoin is finally profitable again as new data has revealed that miners were able to bring in $1.09bn in revenue last month.

This is significant due to the fact that bitcoin revenue in January reached its highest point since December of 2017 before the cryptocurrency bubble crashed later that month.

At the same time, the revenue for bitcoin miners in January of 2021 also surpassed the level seen during the same time period in 2018 when miners were able to rake in $1.02bn. However, both last month and January 2018 failed to surpass the monthly revenue of $1.25bn for bitcoin miners recorded during December 2017.

Of the over $1bn in revenue made from mining bitcoin last month, $977m came from the network's block subsidies. These block subsidies increased sharply as the cryptocurrency's price jumped above $30k to reach a high of $42k.

Mining bitcoin has also become more expensive recently due to a bidding war for the latest ASIC mining equipment including Bitmain's AntMiner S19 Pro and S19. According to The Block, some customers who preordered the latest ASIC machines due to be delivered last month tried to resell them at premiums of at least 75 percent.

The supply shortage coupled with bitcoin's recent rise lead to miners' daily revenue per each terahash second (TH/s) of computing power increasing to as much as $0.25 which has not been seen since mid-2019.

If you have an unused bitcoin mining rig lying around, now may be the perfect time to fire it up again.

Via The Block

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Bitcoin miners raked in more than $1 billion in revenue last month - Techradar

Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Dash, NEM and Monero are some of the altcoins looking to challenge bitcoin.

In a world going virtual, can currencies be far behind? Obviously not, particularly when cryptocurrency has become a hot button topic in trading and investment circles.

While bitcoins have tended to hog the limelight in this rarefied space, there are multiple other coins or cryptocurrencies that are attracting eyeballs. In that lot, altcoin is fast emerging as a favourite.

An altcoin is a cryptocurrency, or virtual currency. It is an alternative tobitcoin. Altcoins work much like the original Bitcoin. Using a private key, a payment can be sent from a digital wallet A to digital wallet B. In acryptocurrencysuch as these, there is a blockchain or recording ledger, where the transactions are permanently and publicly recorded, so exchanges can't be altered or denied. The blockchain is secured by mathematics proofs, which confirm transactions in block.

Moneycontrol goes deep into the world of altcoins, examining the main issues that surround the coins. Before that though, it is important to familiarise an investor about these coins. It will help set the context.

Right, so think of bitcoins as a digital currency, which cannot be manufactured or printed but only be mined by solving complex mathematical problems.

Bitcoin first grabbed peoples imagination on January 3, 2009, creating a network of sorts when a mysterious pseudonym known as Satoshi Nakamoto mined the starting block of the chain, known as the genesis block.

Today, this seems like a whole different world. So, are altcoins another form of bitcoin?

No. Altcoins stand for alternate coins or alternate to bitcoins and are non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies. Altcoins also don't all follow the same rules as Bitcoin. For example, while Bitcoin will only ever mine, or produce, bitcoins every 10 minutes, an altcoin called Litecoin will produce coins every 2.5 minutes. This makes Litecoin able to process payments faster. Litecoin will also produce 84 million litecoins, whereas Bitcoin will only produce 21 million bitcoins. Litecoin also uses a different set of rules for miningthan bitcoin. Whereas bitcoins require costly hardware to mine, litecoins can be mined with common computer hardware.

Now why do we need altcoins? Isnt bitcoin enough for crypto enthusiasts?

Bitcoin was one of the first cryptocurrencies to be developed, but since then, there have been layers of improvement on its structure. Certain altcoins have made transactions cheaper as well as faster. Some consume lesser energy to be mined while others bring in added layers of secrecy. While few have the same proof of concept, some altcoins operate on different proofs of concept. There is a complex technological analysis that can be put forward, but we can keep that for later explanations. The main point is these new coins have made technology stronger, better, making transactions less expensive. In addition, there was also the need for stabler cryptocurrency. Historically, bitcoin is prone to massive value fluctuations. So, there are some stable coins in the market as well, which are pegged against other fiat currencies like US Dollars. Libra, which was to be launched by Facebook and other tech companies, was supposed to be one such stable coin.

Can you give some examples of altcoins?

Interestingly, Litecoin is just one of the thousands of altcoins on the market. A few examples of altcoins include Ethereum, Ripple, Dash, NEM and Monero. Litecoin was introduced in 2011 after the success of bitcoins. While the proof of concept is nearly the same, it operates in different ways. Yet another example of altcoin could be Namecoin. It was also introduced in 2011, and uses the same proof of concept as bitcoins, but what it brings is greater anonymity and helps avoid any form of censorship. As per industry estimates, there could be as many as 5,000 such cryptocurrencies in the world. Except bitcoin, all the rest are clubbed under altcoins.

So, how are these altcoins used?

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What are altcoins? All that you need to know about the non-bitcoin cryptos - Moneycontrol.com