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Good morning. Welcome to Friday Focus, part of our new series: BitPinas Daily. We will look back at all the major news and updates that happened this week. Crypto is global, but sometimes news that matters happens while we sleep. So we bring to you what’s happening in our space here and abroad. We highlight three to four important news of the past week and list down the rest.    

Market Price as of March 5, 2021:

Bitcoin closed March 4, 2021, at $48,727 per BTC. We’re down 0.9% in the last 7 days and up 62% since the year began. This is also 16.9% below the all-time high of $58,640, which was hit on Feb. 21, 2021.

Bitcoin’s market capitalization stands today at $883,520,048,592 which is 59.43% of the entire cryptocurrency market. The entire crypto market, by the way, now has a market cap of $1,487,357,382,010  (-7%).

On the table above, there’s the cryptocurrency SLP. If you wonder what that is, check out this article: Playing Axie Infinity vs Minimum Basic Salary in the Philippines.

Dallas Mavericks to Accept Dogecoin

The Dallas Mavs will soon start accepting Dogecoin as payment for Mavs tickets and merchandise because of “one very important, earth-shattering reason: Because we can!” Mark Cuban, the team owner shouted in a press release. 

For people who want to learn about Dogecoin, this is Mark’s advice: “Talk to your teenagers who are on TikTok and ask them about it. They will be able to explain it all to you,” he said.

Dogecoin currently has a $6.3 billion market capitalization.

Here are the blockchain Billionaires:

The list was made by China’s Hurun Research Institute. The Blockchain Billionaires List are people who have made their fortune mainly from cryptocurrency. 

Hurun Research said Armstrong’s wealth is ahead of his company’s upcoming initial public offering. Sam Bankman-Fried is a new entrant in Hurun’s list, following the growth of FTX in 2020.

Satoshi Nakamoto was not included in the list because his identity is not known, Hurun said. Additionally, Vitalik Buterin was also considered in the list but the Institute said it is unable to estimate the Ethereum creator’s holdings.

Meerkat Finance drained by $31 million

An account of the events from The Block:

Bitfinex Pay Lets Merchants Accept Payments in Crypto

In a press release sent to BitPinas, Bitfinex Pay is a payment technology that will allow online merchants with a means of receiving contactless and borderless digital token payments

The Bitfinex Pay widget can be integrated on to a website facilitating online payments. Users can pay with Ethereum (ETH), bitcoin (BTC), Lightning Network BTC (LN-BTC) and Tether tokens (USDt) via Ethereum or Tron. Payments made via Bitfinex Pay will be directly deposited into a merchant’s exchange wallet on Bitfinex.

“This is the age of digital money and with Bitfinex Pay we’ve created an intuitive and seamless way for online merchants to receive payments in crypto,” said Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Bitfinex. “Bitfinex Pay enables merchants to be easily equipped to support crypto payments as increasing numbers of consumers become more comfortable with paying for goods and services using digital tokens.”

Rising Stars Announced

In another vote of confidence, withdrawal problems notwithstanding, NBA Top Shot is where the NBA unveiled its 2021 Rising Stars Rosters. Actually, the Rising Stars game won’t be played so this is just ceremonial and a formalization of sorts.

For some primer on Non-Fungible tokens, including NBA Top Shot, check out the BitPinas article: Non-Fungible Tokens – NFT 101 – Why People are Spending Millions of Dollars for Crypto Art and Digital Items

Yield Guild Games Raises Funding To Bring Gamers to the Metaverse

This success has attracted the attention of investors. YGG recently announced that it has raised $1.325 million from a seed round led by Delphi Digital. The funds will be used to invest in game assets and virtual lands and YGG, effectively acting as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), will lend these game assets in virtual worlds to its players so they can earn income. 

Check out the BitPinas article: Yield Guild Games Raises Funding To Bring Gamers to the Metaverse

This article is published on BitPinas: The Blockchain Billionaires List (March 5, 2021)

Crypto arbitrage bots are a set of programmable instructions that automatically execute transactions without human intervention. The automated trading bot contains several key components, besides language and structure.

A trader can create a strategy to make money multiple times, they don’t have to spend hours interacting with the platform to do the same thing over and over again. There are other benefits to creating an automated trading strategy. For instance, a crypto arbitrage bot can make thousands of decisions within a short period compared to what the human brain can think of. Also, in algorithmic trading or bot trading, there is no feeling of constantly implementing the same strategy over time or monotony.

Crypto arbitration strategy

Before continuing to look at how cryptocurrencies are different, traders must come up with a good risk and reward trading strategy and money management. Then compare several options to reduce your risk. For couples with high volatility, trading volumes should be reduced to avoid being affected by market uncertainty. To use a moderation strategy, traders must follow a few basic steps to make their automation profitable.

Can arbitration strategy works successfully in the cryptocurrency market?

Cryptocurrency Automated Trading Bot is an automated software that helps you buy and sell cryptocurrencies quickly. The main purpose of this software is to maximize profits and minimize losses and risks. With this app, you can manage all your crypto accounts in one place. Many of these programs allow you to easily trade Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin (BTC), and more.

The origin of arbitration bot

Currency difference is buying and selling currency pairs from different brokers in order to leverage on the difference in spreads. Cash spread is defined as the difference between the speed of an asset and the ask price. “Bid” means a buyer offering to pay for a particular asset and “Bid” means the selling price of the asset offered by the seller. The size of a currency spread is often used to measure the liquidity and efficiency of a market.

The higher the currency spread, the less efficient the market is, and the smaller the currency spread, the more efficient the market. In the fiat currency market, banks often use arbitration to generate revenue by exploiting the price difference between multiple currency pairs. Some arbitrage robots trade on traditional commodity markets such as Bloomberg and NASDAQ, but are only available to investment companies and brokers. These general market robots need access to market data exchange.

This exchange information is generally not available to non-professionals. The transparent nature of the blockchain gives cryptocurrency traders access to the stock exchange ledger and creates a trading bot that works with this information. Blockchain is a decentralized general ledger where all transactions are recorded by network users and miners. As a result, there are already many bots targeting cryptocurrency exchanges.

PHPtrader Trading Bot is an automated cryptocurrency trading platform that tracks over 1000 cryptocurrency pairs on 11 global exchanges including Binance, Bitfinex, Kraken, Huobi Global, and more. PHPtrader’s main goal is to make it easy for customers to trade cryptocurrencies. With PHP arbitrage trading, cryptocurrency trading is easier than ever. This is especially true for beginners who need to learn how to use the technique and learn how to best manage their emotions to benefit from trading. And even after such efforts, not many people remain successful traders.

Dogecoin (DOGE) will continue gaining traction, and it will soon be entering the NBA thanks to seasoned investor and owner of Dallas Mavericks – Mark Cuban.

Dallas Mavericks will be accepting Dogecoin payments for tickets and merchandise purchased online. The NBA team and BitPay - one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency payment services - will partner up to enable Dogecoin payments by fans.

The hype Tesla founder Elon Musk has created for Dogecoin seems to have carried on and snowballed, as the meme-based cryptocurrency has entered mainstream adoption. The Mavs are not the only ones who have embraced Dogecoin as a form of payment. Earlier this week, Coinflip ATM provider announced that the Shiba-Inu token will be made available for purchase across 45 states in the U.S., on 1,800 machines.

Mark Cuban embraces crypto and NFT wave

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban previously disclosed that he himself had bought DOGE initially so that his son could teach him about crypto. He said:

“For those of you who would like to learn more about Dogecoin, we strongly encourage you to talk to your teenagers who are on TikTok and ask them about it. They will be able to explain it all to you.”

Mark Cuban, the owner of NBA Dallas Mavericks and a billionaire investor, has been among the market bulls embracing the cryptocurrency wave. Cuban appears to favour Ethereum over Bitcoin, however, having only warmed up to the “digital gold” asset recently.

“It’s official! Mark Cuban has invested in Mintable & we are now proud to be one of the Mark Cuban Companies!”

Cuban said that in his opinion, NFTs were potentially going to replace physical collectibles at some point. He himself has gotten ahead of the game by launching his very own NFT-based “Mark Cuban mini-series.”

What are NFTs?

NFTs are non-fungible tokens that have been all the rage as of lately. They are tokens that are used in several applications, where you can find digital items such as crypto art, digital collectibles, and online gaming accessories. NFTs are one of their kind and are what StadiumTalk dubs “the Mona Lisa of baseball cards,” as each token is unique and irreplaceable.

Most NFTs run on the Ethereum blockchain, and they represent physical assets that have been tokenized. Currently, the hype around NFTs has led to an explosion of digital art being sold via blockchain technology.

Recently, a Banksy art piece worth $95,000 was bought by a blockchain company. The Banksy painting was digitized by Injective protocol. The process involved burning the painting to then create a digital representation of the art using blockchain technology.  

Bitcoin price failed to stay above $50,000 and $49,000 against the US Dollar. BTC is now below the 100 hourly SMA and it is likely to continue lower towards $45,000

After forming a short-term top near the $52,600 level, bitcoin started a fresh decline. BTC traded below the $51,200 and $50,000 support levels to move back into a negative zone.

There was also a break below a major bullish trend line with support near $49,500 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair. The pair even broke the $48,000 support level. There was a clear break below the 50% Fib retracement level of the upward wave from the $43,050 swing low to $52,650 high.

It is now trading well below $50,000 and the 100 hourly simple moving average. It seems like the bulls are trying to protect the 61.8% Fib retracement level of the upward wave from the $43,050 swing low to $52,650 high.

If they fail and the price trades below $46,500, there are chances of more losses. The next key support is near the $45,000 level, below which the bears might aim a test of the $43,000 support zone.

If bitcoin stays above $46,500, it could correct higher. An initial resistance on the upside is near the $48,000 level. The first major resistance is near the $49,000 level and the 100 hourly simple moving average.

There is also a connecting bearish trend line forming with resistance near $49,000 on the same chart. To move into a positive zone, the price must clear the trend line resistance and then gain pace above the $50,000 barrier.

Technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD is now gaining momentum in the bearish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for BTC/USD is now well below the 50 level.

Major Support Levels – $46,500, followed by $45,000.

Major Resistance Levels – $48,000, $49,000 and $50,000.

The shares of the electric automaker, Tesla Inc are nosediving since the Wall Street giant placed its bet on Bitcoin (BTC) earlier in February 2021.

Buying Bitcoin has proven to benefit publicly listed firms like MicroStrategy Incorporated, whose shares have surged from $138.82 back in September 2020 before the company’s Bitcoin buying spree took a new momentum, to a peak of $1,272.94 in February 2021, a growth of over 800%. Tesla’s case is however different, the firm has lost 28% of its stock value since making the BTC bet, a development that questions whether the move was the right one or not.

What This Could Mean: The Two Sides of The Coin

On the other hand, some core Bitcoin advocates believe the falling Tesla shares is a call on the company to double its Bitcoin investments, as it appears that the $1.5 billion bets, representing just about 0.3% of the company’s market cap are too small to allocate to the digital currency.

Whichever the school of thought is right, a continuous fall in Tesla’s shares will not in any way help the institutional perception of Bitcoin, a situation that the crypto space does not need.

Litecoin price – Litecoin price – Litecoin, VeChain, Ontology price Analysis: 03 March | Fintech Zoom

After a brief phase that saw much of the crypto-market trade sideways, the last 6-12 hours have seen quite a lot of movement on the price charts. Not only did Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, go past the $50,000-mark to trade at $51,610 at press time, but the market’s alts rallied too, with the likes of Litecoin, Ontology, and VeChain doing the same.

Litecoin [LTC]

Popularly dubbed the silver to Bitcoin’s gold, Litecoin’s price movements have often corresponded to the ones registered by the world’s largest cryptocurrency. While Litecoin was once trading at a 3-year high well above $230 on the charts, it soon fell to as low as $160 thanks to BTC’s depreciation. With Bitcoin gaining at press time, so did Litecoin, with the crypto trading right under the $200-mark.

On the back of BTC’s latest foray above $50k, Litecoin recorded gains of over 12% in a 12-hour period.

In fact, the scale of the gains being registered over the last few hours was highlighted by the crypto’s technical indicators. While the Parabolic SAR’s dotted markers were well under the price candles, the Chaikin Money Flow was surging past 0.20 to underline the strength of inflows into LTC’s market.

Litecoin was in the news yesterday after creator Charlie Lee drew a comparison between 2013’s altcoin mania, 2017’s ICO fever, and 2021’s NFT craze.

Ontology [ONT]

Ontology, the cryptocurrency ranked 77th on CoinMarketCap, like Litecoin, was also surging on the back of Bitcoin’s movement. In fact, in the last 12 hours alone, ONT registered a 13.5% hike. While that’s a significant hike, at the time of writing, ONT was continuing to trade at a level that was well off its price highs from the third week of February.

Also, it’s worth noting that due to a lack of organic developments in its ecosystem, at this time, it is difficult to say whether ONT would be able to sustain its bullish movement if Bitcoin corrects itself.

While the Bollinger Bands were widening slightly to indicate an uptick in near-term volatility, the MACD line was holding steady above the Signal line, with the two set to go past the half-line.

VeChain [VET]

Ranked 30th on CoinMarketCap’s charts, VeChain, like the rest of the market, was heading north on the back of the crypto-market’s general bullish movement. In fact, following a 9% hike in the last 12 hours, the cryptocurrency was well on its way to breach its immediate resistance level on the price charts.

It’s worth mentioning, however, that despite the said hike, trading volumes for VET were still consistently average, with the same way below the levels seen in mid-February. It was around that time that popular crypto-exchange KuCoin announced the launch of VeChain Futures.

While the Relative Strength Index was heading towards the overbought zone, the Awesome Oscillator was flashing bullish signals with two green bars on the histogram.

Litecoin price – Litecoin price – Litecoin, VeChain, Ontology price Analysis: 03 March | Fintech Zoom Tags: Litecoin price

In the last couple of years, we have seen the immense power of corporate consolidation and deplatforming, allowing for established cultural mores and the Constitution to be circumvented. Forming natural monopolies, it doesn’t take much for corporations to trigger an ostracization cascade. With so many infrastructural services in the hands of the few – hosting, payments, search algorithms – a single case of deplatforming signals what is allowable.

In turn, this builds an edifice of precedents, a growing tower looming over the populace. It instills an atmosphere of preemptive deplatforming and auto-censoring, rapidly shrinking the space of allowability and economic growth, which is further leveraged by the few. As we have seen with the stunning hypocrisy surrounding GME trading, at the heart of this is economic power.

Money is the lifeblood of civilization, directed and withheld as needed by those with a running start. For the first time in monetary history, Bitcoin presents itself as the lifeblood freely circulating. The most recent example of Egypt shows us that even institutional gateways can’t stymie its flow.

Much like in China, the status of cryptocurrencies in Egypt is in the limbo zone. Not quite banned, but also frowned upon by the authorities. This is further exacerbated by religious edicts that, although not fully official, hold much sway. Egypt’s highest religious authority – Shawki Allam, the Grand Mufti – issued a fatwa on the use of cryptocurrencies in 2018.

Effectively, this means that cryptocurrency trading was rendered forbidden under Islamic Law. In turn, the edict made secular authorities – Egypt Central Bank (ECB) – reluctant to issue a clear regulatory framework for the use of crypto assets. As of September 2020, Egypt’s banking laws discourage issuing and trading in cryptocurrencies without first having a license from the ECB.

With the help of Google Translate, quite a few oddities pop up:

This incident happened less than two weeks ago, which makes Egypt’s increased Bitcoin trading volumes even more revealing.

For those in Europe, CEX.IO is a well-known and popular crypto exchange. Based in the UK, it hosts 134 cryptocurrencies, of which Bitcoin (BTC) holds the bulk of the trading volume at 31.57%, Ethereum (ETH) as the second one at 13.55%. All other cryptocurrencies are under 10% in trading volume.

CEX.IO’s executive director, Konstantin Anissimov, recently revealed that the exchange had experienced a notable surge in user registration from Egypt – up by 250% from December to January 2021. Moreover, Egyptian trading volume in Bitcoin spiked by 400% in the same time period, just as Bitcoin leaped from $19k to over $30k.

With limited cryptocurrency trading options available, P2P platforms have become leaders in crypto on-ramping from the Egyptian pound (EGP) – LocalBitcoins and Paxful being the top choices. One could only image what the crypto trading volume would be without jumping through multiple institutional hurdles. Here are additional factoids about Egypt that paint a clearer picture:

Although these prospects may seem gloomy, Egypt’s population size and age distribution are ripe for investments. Out of 100 million citizens, only about 5% are older than 65. You may recall from The Tokenist’s comparative BTC adoption survey that this age group represented a consistent breaking point for entertaining anything other than traditional banking.

If Egypt can lessen religious restrictions, as it appears to be happening across the Muslim world, the demand for cryptocurrencies will increase drastically.

How much reach do you think governments should have on the activity of Bitcoin and other digital assets? Let us know in the comments section below.

TL;DR Breakdown

Bitcoin price established a solid support near the $43,000 and $44,000 area at the beginning of the week after dropping sharply from its new all-time high of $58,000 last week. The world’s largest cryptocurrency had infiltrated the bottom boundary of a rising price channel during the decline, displaying signs of weakness as February’s bullish momentum came to a halt. 

Earlier this week, after a consolidation phase within a falling wedge pattern, Bitcoin price successfully penetrated the upper boundary, sparking a frantic rally that reached $52,500 as of yesterday. This morning, the world’s leading cryptocurrency lost its grip of the $50,000 price level amid a wider liquidation in both equities and the cryptocurrency market. 

The flagship cryptocurrency has shed over 7 percent of its price over the last 24 hours and at press time, it is trading at a market price of $46,613. Regardless of the dip, data by Glassnodes indicate that long term Bitcoin holders were stockpiling despite the sell-off. So far, the daily price range is in between $46,300.00 — $48,376.20. 

After rallying towards $52,500 yesterday, Bitcoin price retraced back to below $50,000, moving below the bottom boundary of an ascending parallel channel. Besides, the $52,500 price level represents the Golden Fibb retracement level of the decline from $58,000 all-time high price and last week’s low of $43,000. As such, Bitcoin price appears to be trading in a bearish market for the short term. 

Moreover, Bitcoin’s correlation to the S&P 500 reached a 5-month high this month. Bitcoin has been correlated to traditional financial markets over the last several months and this was evident a few weeks ago when Bitcoin price trailed stocks at close range. The last time Bitcoin and stocks followed each other this closely was back in November last year. 

Today, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivered a disheartening speech that resulted in both S&P 500 and NASDAQ to shed about 3 percent of their value. The Fed chief noted that he “would be concerned” by constraining the financial terms as increasing yields on government bonds exert a great deal of pressure on the cost of borrowing. Following in the footsteps of S&P 500 and NASDAQ, Bitcoin price declined sharply and it is still dropping at the time of writing. 

The comments by Powell comes amid a raft of mixed predictions by popular analysts on the future of Bitcoin. Bloomberg’s Mike McGlone used historical data to suggest that Bitcoin price is journeying towards $100,000 on March 4. McGlone points out the rising discount for shares in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust. The discount applies to when the price of Grayscale shares is trading at a lower price than the underlying crypto asset, and it is currently at the level it was during the March 2020 crypto market crash. 

Crypto Twitter analyst, MasterChangz, tweeted to his followers that the Bitcoin price will hit $200K before we get in June 2021. According to him, the next rally will be towards $77,000 in two weeks time. 

By Shashidhar K.J. and Srinath Sridharan

Headlines have been awash with Bitcoin’s 15 percent crash last week as the price of the cryptocurrency fell below US$ 49,000.

Consequently, other cryptocurrencies like Ether token saw its price fall by 20 percent. The fall in price came coincidentally with two key statements.

• The first from Janet Yellen, the current United States treasury secretary, who called Bitcoin an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions and called its price highly speculative.

Predictably, there have been sharp reactions from proponents of cryptocurrencies, as well as from those who oppose it or politely advise caution. Calmer minds need to prevail to understand the situation deeper.

Bitcoin’s history has seen much worse. There have been about 13 major crashes since 2011 and the crash in December 2017 saw the price of Bitcoin to plummet by 83.7 percent. These crashes were faced by individual investors called “Bitcoin-whales,” who hoarded the asset and drove up the value. These whales hyped other retail investors to participate and eventually cashed out at a peak. And one must remember that correlation does not mean causation and that Janet Yellen and Elon Musk’s statements might not have contributed to the fall in price. It is more likely that this was profit-booking by some investors and a price correction.

Bitcoin’s price is falling but believers in the community are still ‘hodl’-ing and waiting for the day when the price ‘reaches the moon.’ Volatility and speculation must be considered while dealing with cryptocurrencies. This is not a game for the faint-hearted.

Broadly, the interest of institutional investors in cryptocurrencies is a good thing and will act as a bulwark against retail whales in the cryptocurrency market and bring more accountability on the trades. But with more institutional investors taking an interest in cryptocurrencies, it becomes crucial that there is prudent-risk-management as asset management companies (AMCs) invest people’s savings and pensions in volatile cryptocurrencies. The government’s hands-off approach/hostile approach to cryptocurrencies cannot work here and they will have to build in protections for investments in cryptocurrencies, in the case of unforeseen externalities.

However, institutional investors coming into the picture also puts additional pressure on cryptocurrencies to find a purpose for themselves.

Janet Yellen is right — cryptocurrencies are not a viable currency due to their volatility. Companies like Stripe and Valve’s Steam games marketplace, which did accept Bitcoin as a form of payment have reversed their position considering the volatility of the Bitcoin while processing a transaction.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin do not work securities as they do not make a promise of a fixed return. The former United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Jay Clayton explains well why Bitcoin cannot be considered a security since it never sought public funds to develop its technology, but what it does is replace the value in fiat-currency and, therefore, it works a “store of value.”

The SEC said the same cannot be said of cryptocurrencies like Ripple’s XRP token where there was an initial buy in by early adopters who were given tokens that were already mined. Further, the token was advertised that it would give guaranteed returns on the buy in. This led to an investigation by the SEC, which filed a case against the company and its promoters for running an unregistered security. Since the XRP tokens were already mined and some were held by the promoters, it presented an information asymmetry allowing them profit as more people bought the token driving up its value. Therefore, cryptocurrencies have largely been operating akin to a commodity like gold, considering the limited number of tokens that can be mined or acquired.

Commodities too are subject to an immense speculation over their usage and its subsequent trading reflect that. During the COVID-19 pandemic, oil futures collapsed since all economic activity ground to a halt and the price of crude oil at one time was zero. However, oil’s usage would return and, therefore, it still held value. Similar speculation can be done with other commodities like steel, coffee, aluminum etc.

Gold is an interesting commodity since its real-world applications are limited. It derives its value due to its rarity and its non-corrosive properties. Therefore, it functions as a store of value and medium of exchange during uncertain times. But more importantly, now that the world has abandoned the gold standard for the convertible fiat-currency system after the Second World War, it now functions as a “hedge against other financial bets” in an investment portfolio for investors. If there is a crash in the equities market leading to a broad fall in the stocks invested, the value of the gold investment offsets the losses in the portfolio.

Cryptocurrencies function in a similar manner as gold right now, where its main use seems to be a hedge against other financial bets and the current inflationary regime. Asset managers who are not averse to decentralised finance advise investors to keep 1-2 percent of their portfolio in cryptocurrencies as a thumb rule.

However, on the flip side, a more bearish view on cryptocurrencies is worth keeping in mind. In the event of catastrophic events like war or climate-related calamities where electricity and Internet connectivity goes down, gold still has value as a medium of exchange. Bitcoin stored in a digital wallet will be useless in this scenario (of no electricity or internet access). This scenario, therefore, works as a sharp critique of the anarcho-capitalist philosophy the cryptocurrencies base themselves on. It becomes very crucial for regulators to understand the underpinnings of this philosophy.

This idea blends elements of the political philosophies of anarchism and capitalism.

Anarchism promotes the notion of stateless societies and no hierarchies in the power structure. While there are no power structures or governments, it doesn’t mean that there is no governance. Anarchism promotes self-governance (however good, bad and ugly) and the notion of non-aggression; it requires all individuals to act as rational actors, where competing self-interests will maintain order.

Anarcho-capitalists support the idea of a stateless-society, but also promote the idea of owning private property and support free-markets. All functions of society will be fulfilled by competing private companies and enforced by voluntary contracts.

Bitcoin’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto developed the first cryptocurrency as a critique on the inefficiency of central banks and monetary authorities, which debased currencies and criticised banks as they held people’s money but lent indiscriminately with very little reserve. Coupled with neo-liberal policies adopted through the the 1980s to the present time — which advocate for economic growth through debt — we saw the rise of income inequality where ordinary people were unable to generate wealth for themselves and move up the socio-economic ladder.

Bitcoin presented itself as a solution where the limited number of tokens that could be created would limit indiscriminate lending. Thus, people or entities who could contribute processing-power for mining Bitcoin would be rewarded with tokens and its value would only be dependent on “supply and demand dynamics.” The blockchain technology decentralised finance by keeping an immutable record of tokens mined by users and their subsequent transactions. In contrast, central banks control the production and issuance of money and centralise finance through monetary policy. It solved trust-issues with transactions in a limited way, as the blockchain was an immutable record of transactions which needed to be authenticated by all nodes in the system.

However, for this system to work, it requires a wholesale-rejection by citizens on the role of central banks and governments. Governments are loathe to give up power, particularly something as powerful as money.

Cryptocurrencies also relies on public goods provided by governments such as cheap electricity for mining and are beholden to corporations that provide Internet connectivity that must abide by rules set by the government. In countries such as India where the Internet is frequently snapped, the operation of cryptocurrencies is frequently disturbed.

Cryptocurrencies are also curtailed by the state in a much simpler manner: Bans through legislation. The Indian government is getting ready to pass a legislation which bans all cryptocurrencies, save for a virtual currency backed by the government. The Reserve Bank of India is reportedly working on building a central bank digital currency (CBDC) using many of the properties of cryptocurrencies including the blockchain technology.

CBDCs are uncharted waters again and there are several questions that need to be answered for acceptance, including state overreach and privacy where it would have a complete view of all transactions, the role of banks in this scenario, and if it really needs a decentralised system of money.

CBDCs conducting centralised finance operations is at odds with the idea of blockchain which seeks to promote decentralised finance. Permissioned-blockchains will limit the number of nodes, but the question remains: Who controls those nodes and what would be their objectives?

Despite varying views on policies, political power reigns supreme and it will be better to accept this reality. The State will want to have its influence in the society, especially in a socialist-democracy like India. It will have to take care of larger sections of the population, especially the vulnerable segments. Hence, the narrative of what’s good for the economy could be the prerogative of the State at its own discretion and decision.

However, the relationship between governments and cryptocurrencies need not be so antagonistic. Decentralised finance offers a great opportunity for better financial outcomes for people and addressing income inequality needs fresh ideas. The Indian government also needs to understand that cryptocurrencies have been regulated in other jurisdictions globally by applying existing frameworks to regulate them in some fashion.

Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, must realise that they gain legitimacy as more governments and markets are accepting of them. Governments, ultimately, must realise that cryptocurrencies were created as a reaction to neoliberal policies and wholly strive to understand how the state can build better outcomes for citizens. And accept new processes, however inconvenient it is politically.

The opportunity is now — to show how much transparency we can build, as we develop our policies of digital-finance, in this century dominated by the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Bitcoin‘s characteristics and its recent price rally have both contributed to companies gravitating towards it, with Tesla, the prominent American electric vehicle and clean energy company, being one of them. In fact, CEO Elon Musk’s support for Bitcoin may have also prompted the company to include Bitcoin in its portfolio. However, with the cryptocurrency market correcting itself over the past few months, Tesla has seen some heavy losses.

When Tesla had announced its investment of $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, the stock price for TSLA was also climbing, with the same hitting $900 in late January. However, since hitting an ATH of over $58,000 on the charts, drawdowns have been the norm in the cryptocurrency market, with BTC trading under $50,000 for most of the past few days. Needless to say, Bitcoin’s retracement has impacted TSLA’s position in the stock market too.

Over the last month or so, the value of TSLA has fallen by 31% from $871.60 to $600. At the time of writing, TSLA was being traded at $621.44. Curiously, such a fall in the value of the stock was visible all across the stock market.

Consider this – Microstrategy was also noting a tough situation in the short-term. The company completed its acquisition of $15 million in BTC on 3 March, despite the fact that its stock’s value has dropped by almost half since its ATH on 9 February.

With major institutions noting a tough time at the moment, former Equities CIO of Goldman Sachs believes that Tesla should sell its Bitcoin and buy back shares of the company. In a recent thread, Gary Black noted,

“Imagine the positive momentum $tsla would create if they announced the sale of their #btc position, and authorized a $tsla stock buyback instead. Highly unlikely, but shareholders would be very supportive.”

Back in February, after Tesla announced its Bitcoin investment, Black had exited his TSLA position citing “risky capital allocation.”

— Gary Black (@garyblack00) February 8, 2021

Here, it’s worth noting that TSLA’s falling value is not just a consequence of a correcting crypto-market. Instead, many global events have contributed to the same. For instance, according to reports, Tesla has been reprimanded by the Chinese government over quality control issues.

Further, it’s perhaps unfair to single out TSLA or MSTR. After all, the falling trend was visible in other markets too. The S&P 500, for instance, has noted a 4.1% drop over the past month.

According to some, the performances of Tesla and MicroStrategy stocks have led to some traders losing confidence in the same and quitting their positions. Billionaire investor Ron Baron’s firm, for instance, has reportedly sold 1.8 million shares of Tesla for clients. It must be noted though that the billionaire still believes that the value of the stock will grow to $2,000 over the next 10 years.

Although time will tell what fate has in store for TSLA and Bitcoin, the market may want to pay closer attention to the strengthening correlation between equities and the crypto-market.

Binance Coin, Neo, Enjin Price Analysis: 05 March

SEC’s actions caused $15 billion in damages to XRP holders: Ripple

Namrata is a full-time journalist at AMBCrypto covering the US and Indian market. A graduate in Mass communication, while majoring in Journalism, she writes mainly about regulations and its impact with a focus on technological advancements in the crypto space.

Let’s find out some interesting crypto news for today.

ENJIN announced the listing of ENJ on Japan’s GMO Exchange. Moreover, GMO provides financial services fostered by GMO Internet, which is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It provides a secure and robust ecosystem for cryptocurrency transactions. Apart from crypto-assets investment, GMO Coin also provides leverage trading options.

Notably, crypto-collectibles and NFTs are exploding nowadays and gaining popularity. Further, Enjin empowers game developers by allowing game items to be tokenized and incorporated into their own games without any knowledge of blockchain. Hence, this news will open new opportunities for the Enjin project to explore more markets. Additionally, this fueled the price of ENJ to over $1. At the time of press, it is trading at $1.12, which is amounted to over a 200% rise in the past 30 days.

PAID Network partnered with DAO Maker to fuel the IDO launch on the Ignition launchpad. Moreover, DAO Maker supports projects to obtain a community and then uses the project’s token in adding value to those communities. As per the tweet, DAO Maker will boost the PAID ecosystem by identifying and incentivizing the best behavioral fits of Ignition participants. Furthermore, Shadows, the first project launched on Ignition, aims to be a decentralized financial hub that facilitates trading, issuing, lending, and borrowing synthetic assets.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the general availability of Ethereum on Amazon Managed Blockchain. As per the official blog, AWS users will get the facility to provision Ethereum nodes in few minutes and connect to the public Ethereum main network, as well as test networks such as Rinkeby and Ropsten. Moreover, Amazon Managed Blockchain provides secure networking via Ethereum’s open-source APIs to the customer. Besides this, Amazon Managed Blockchain provides services such as nodes management, automation of Ethereum software upgrades, and more. Additionally, this will also empower developers to build smart contracts and monitoring tools through its scalable and fully managed Ethereum service.

MANTRA DAO announced its support of Polygon for multi-chain expansion. Moreover, Polygon is an easy-to-use platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development that connects secured chains. This expansion will boost the Polygon version of dApps that will feature payments of MATIC tokens while processing on-chain transactions. In addition, MANTRA DAO will utilize the Polygon SDK to create complex and scalable dApps to enhance their product offerings.

Power Ledger partnered with Tata Power-DDL and India SmartGridF to launch the first live solar energy trading project in Delhi. According to the official blog, Power Ledger will facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) trading of solar power, which is a pilot project currently testing in India’s capital city, Delhi. In addition, TPDDL’s 150 sites and their customers will use this platform to sell excess energy to other commercial and residential sites. This whole transaction process will occur on Power Ledger’s blockchain which takes near-time settlement with complete transparency. Additionally, this P2P trading trial will continue till June 2021, which will go through different trading algorithms.

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Amazon Web Service (AWS) has made a very interesting announcement today. From now on, Ethereum will be made available by way of Amazon Managed Blockchain. Through this, Amazon will provide the world with a new managed and scalable solution.

It’s a safe assumption to make that Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency out there, and certainly is so when looking at the market caps. Recently, Etheruem has gained a significant amount of support and recognition, with Amazon’s newfound support for it only piling on top of that. It seems that Bitcoin has, more or less, been taken in by the institutions, and now they’re looking for the other big fish in the crypto space to invest in.

The announcement from AWS is a very big event for Ethereum in general. It will allow developers within Ethereum to have a better general time in the creation of automatic software upgrades, general application, and scaling solutions to meet demands.

Indeed, Amazon highlighted that customers of AWS will now be capable of providing Ethereum nodes within a matter of minutes and with great ease. From there, the users will easily be capable of connecting with the various public networks of Ethereum, either the test nets, like Ropsten or Rinkeby, or the main net itself.

AWS was quick to praise its own new service, highlighting the many features it promised would be absolutely amazing. It highlighted how Ethereum users will now gain access to secure encryption and networking, be it at rest or at transport. Users will be able to access this network through any standard open-sourced Ethereum API, and AWS boasts reliable, quick syncs with the Ethereum blockchain at large. Furthermore, this new service also boasts elastic storage within the ledger storage.

Another feature of Amazon Managed Blockchain is the monitoring of node health and the automatic replacement of unhealthy nodes. It automates the upgrading process for Ethereum and gives an overall availability increase when it comes to the infrastructure for customers.

Users in the process of developing various solutions for the Ethereum network, be it fraud detection software, smart contract monitoring tools, or just general analytics products, will be able to benefit greatly as well. Amazon Managed Blockchain boasts to be widely available, highly scalable, as well as fully managed.

Time will tell how successful a service this will be, but it’s clear that Amazon wants a piece of the Ethereum pie. Indeed, the mainstream players are all starting to take notice of various other forms of crypto besides Bitcoin, as the world’s greatest cryptocurrency managed to propel the rest into the mainstream’s eyes, as well.