EllioTrades discusses what he thinks is the future for Bitcoin, how long the current bull cycle will last and talks about the NFT hype.

The entire market is looking poised for more upside as Bitcoin recovers from the recent pull backs. Bitcoin’s price action is following the historical stock-to-flow model and it shows there is significant months of bullish trend to continue. The model predicts a Bitcoin top between $300-500k, which would mean exponential growth from the current price and once that settles down, altcoins are expected to go parabolic (0:42).

The NFT mania has seen insane growth since the hype started. With a tonne of the world’s most influential artists, creators, brands and celebrities looking to get into NFTs as a medium to reach out to their fans and monetize. Ellio says he invested early in Ethernity Chain (ERN) and made it public because of their approach in the types of personnel they are bringing on the blockchain. He thinks Ethernity Chain is going to make an interesting splash which differentiates them from other NFT platforms. Ethernity Chain has done a 24x going on a parabolic run from 3$ to 73$ (5:21).

ECOMI (OMI) is a Singapore-based technology company in the digitible collectibles marketplace, for users to buy and share their collectibles across the social network service. Ellio says the now second biggest NFT project with a market cap of $1.8B has partnerships with brands like Pokemon, Batman, Street Fighter etc. These partnerships are important and makes Ecomi one of the crucial players in the NFT space (7:24)

Other discussed NFT projects include WHALE, the first social token backed by the best NFT collection around (9:14). Gaming dominating NFTs with gaming blockchains like Enjin, Decentraland, Sand box, RedFox all making NFTs top 10 ranking (10:25). He believes gaming is going to be the biggest opportunity in the NFT ecosystem.

This episode premiered on March 28th, 2021.

Episode 5 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Dan Morehead, CEO of Pantera Capital. 

This episode of The Scoop is brought to you by Blockset. With Blockset, companies gain access to tools such as:

1. A highly scalable API that supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and other top chains 2. AML/KYC data expediting time to market by complying with legal requirements 3. Leading custody solutions using modern multi-party compute (MPC) technology 

Learn more and start building  today . 

Pantera Capital's CEO Dan Morehead says initial coin offerings (ICO) aren't dead, but the investment world is shifting toward a narrative dominated by Bitcoina nd Ethereum.

"Crypto as a market is so volatile that the narrative changes," said Morehead on this week's episode of The Scoop. 

That narrative lately has been all about bitcoin's growing adoption. From Microstrategy to Stone Ridge Holdings — and maybe soon the city of Miami — big players are allocating to the top cryptocurrency.

But as the money flows towards bitcoin adoption, ICO's aren't over, according to Morehead. Pantera is still pitched one every two to four months, and the firm's initial coin offering (ICO) fund ended 2020 up more than 500%. 

Still, that's a sharp decline from the 50 pitches a week Pantera sifted through in 2017, and its bitcoin fund closed 2020 up nearly 300%. The crypto narrative for investors is trending towards Bitcoin amid institutional adoption, Morehead told The Scoop.

"We’re really seeing an inflection point with more coming into the market over the last couple of months.... I think the reality is they’re looking for managers that manage multiasset funds sometimes both tokens and venture and they ultimately want that all to be within a handful of managers," he said.

Lately, Morehead is fielding calls from endowments, putting the industry at an intriguing inflection point. Driving the interest in bitcoin is the current macro backdrop as well as bitcoin's block reward halving last year—which the firm said could play a role in bringing its price to $115,000. 

Morehead broke down what that means for the coming year on this week's episode, along with:

Disclosure: Pantera was an investor in a past funding round for The Block.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Bitcoin has become extremely popular in 2020, on the back of the store of value, safe haven asset, and digital gold narratives. The digital gold story has taken center stage recently, as the precious metal’s bullish momentum fizzled out and the cryptocurrency market took off.

But one self-proclaimed contrarian investor with a focus on bullion, says that digital gold makes little sense, and compared it – ridiculously – to “digital steak.” Here’s why Simon Mikhailovich’s comparison itself doesn’t make sense.

Bitcoin was designed by Satoshi Nakamoto to share several key attributes with gold and other precious metals, chiefly, their scarce supply. The cryptocurrency creator borrowed other commodity-related concepts, such as mining.

Unique from gold, however, certain attributes of a currency were also added, such as decimal places for unit of account, and the ability to send the asset digitally.

The “digital gold” narrative that has emerged since Paul Tudor Jones said that Bitcoin could outpace the then trending shiny yellow metal, has taken the forefront and even managed to capture the imagination of high wealth investors. Many are reallocating gold into Bitcoin, for the sake of putting capital where it is expected to perform the best.

However, one self-proclaimed contrarian investor, claims that the narrative makes as much sense as a “digital steak.” Is his comment a well-done retort, or is he wrong about the rare, digital-only asset?

According to The Bullion Reserve founder Simon Mikhailovich, the Bitcoin as digital gold narrative doesn’t make sense. Or it “makes about as much sense as ‘digital steak.'”

TBR is a private bullion asset manager, so clearly Mikhailovich could be biased about the cryptocurrency that is heavily eating into his business model and revenue.

The comparison is definitely a strange one. As Bitcoin supporters swarmed the investor on Twitter, he began to add more insight to his thought process.

Approached with sarcasm, some users questioned if he was this skeptical over “digital mail” –  a nod to the fact there was once a time when pundits thought email was unnecessary. He said in that case, emails transfer information and not actual paper, referencing fiat money and ignoring the fact that paper money gets digitally transferred endlessly all day long via debit cards, PayPal, Venmo, and more.

He also explained, that “throughout history, private challenges to sovereign currencies have been deemed an existential threat to sovereign power and treated as such. “Everyone can draw their own conclusions,” he added.

There is always a chance that governments could view it as a threat, but the asset was made to be decentralized and operate outside of the reach of state actors. And the argument is weak from someone who knows gold well enough to be aware that US citizens were once banned from holding the precious metal under Executive Order 6102, and could just as easily be at risk.

The only reason why Bitcoin would be targeted by the government when gold hasn’t in decades would be due to the cryptocurrency being viewed as much more dangerous of a threat to fiat currencies that are used to control the world.

But any government banning BTC would be at risk of a catch 22 like situation. Being the odd man out could let other countries garner a larger share of the limited supply, leaving whatever nations late to catch on at a disadvantage if it becomes the global reserve currency.

The analogy about digital steak is incredibly poor, but email is the ideal example. The best technologies are the ones you don’t need until they become commonplace, but once they are, they become everyday staples.

So perhaps the digital gold narrative is wrong, but solely due to the fact that nicknaming it after the precious metal, despite decades of the gold standard, would be selling the cryptocurrency a few coins short.

The bad, tragic news is ….. there’s a flood coming: This flood of fiat is spewing forth from every central bank in the world. It’s going to be a massive all engulfing flood. In fact, the flood is already here, but it’s going to get a lot, lot worse. But the good news is, we have an Ark that anyone with foresight can climb aboard to avoid the flood. That Ark …. is Bitcoin. While others are drowning in the flood of currency, I have faith that the Bitcoin Ark, made from math and science, will float and save me from the flood. And, because you’re reading this post, you probably \also have faith in the Ark. But 99.9999% of the world either doesn’t know there’s a flood, or doesn’t care about the flood, or doesn’t think there’s anything they can do about the flood. And interestingly, the more people who get on the Ark, the stronger and more resilient the Ark becomes. As more people get on the Ark, w’ll not only survive, but we’ll thrive. So it’s in our collective best interest to help as many people as possible appreciate that the Ark exists, and that it will ensure they survive the flood. Before this post, I referred to “appreciating the Ark” as “seeing the crypto light”. on June 29th, 2017. I became of the belief that crypto was the biggest thing to happen in the history of humanity, even though I didn’t deeply understand it. So, in a manic state, I started feverishly writing about crypto because: On October 8, 2017, I wrote “” to create a framework for myself, and to help others understand crypto. It was the most read piece on crypto on Medium for three days, but it was totally ineffective in helping people see the crypto light. On May 8, 2018, I wrote “.” It highlighted the problems, but didn’t propose any solutions. On March 6, 2019, I wrote “.” That helped me appreciate that we don’t see the world as it is, but as we are. “” was my latest attempt at creating a Bitcoin narrative (published on 4/9/20, 4 days ago). I focused on “faith” as a narrative. We believe in a lot of things we can’t see or understand, because we have faith. And I have faith in Bitcoin. It was a small leap to go from “faith” to the Ark narrative, which really speaks to me. Will it speak to others? I’ll keep you posted. But also that there is no “best” Bitcoin narrative any more than there’s a best flavor at Baskin Robbins or a best religion ( ). There’s only what we believe in, what we like, what speaks to us, works best for each of us. So I’m going to start collecting Bitcoin narratives. Because I believe if we have more narratives, we’ll have more ways to help people understand Bitcoin, and more more people will get on the Ark. So please clap for this post (up to 50 times!) so more people see it, and please post a narrative below if there’s one that speaks to you. I’ll see you on the Ark! Written by

If the running joke of the late 2017 bitcoin price surge was the image of families discussing crypto around the Thanksgiving dinner table (“Grandma, you should buy litecoin!”), the theme of the late 2020 run has been Wall Street hedge fund runners and billionaire investors going on television to say some form of, “I was wrong.”

Since its inception, the bitcoin market has always been fueled by narratives.

After events like the FBI shutting down Silk Road in 2013 (an online black market site that used bitcoin as its payment) and the theft of 850,000 bitcoins from Mt. Gox in 2014 (an early bitcoin exchange that filed bankruptcy shortly thereafter), bitcoin was for years dogged by a stigma that it is unsafe, subject to theft, and favored by hackers and scammers.

Wall Street investment firms pumped a total $5.75 billion into crypto funds in 2020, up 660% from 2019, according to a crypto inflows report from CoinShares. That flood has boosted Grayscale Investments, the largest crypto asset fund, to $20 billion in assets.

But with maturity comes regulation.

Wall Street firms may welcome regulation as a sign of seriousness, but regulation is at odds with the original appeal of bitcoin to its earliest adopters (many of whom were libertarian): that it’s outside government reach and control, unregulated, no middleman. This push and pull is yet another narrative that will continue and intensify in 2021 and beyond, as the bitcoin investment market matures.

Daniel Roberts is an editor-at-large at Yahoo Finance and has covered bitcoin since 2011. Follow him on Twitter at trong>Read more:

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As of 19 March, the total value locked in DeFi exceeded $44 billion , having doubled since the beginning of the year. But this does not mean that the sector could overshadow Bitcoin, which is a perspective that Kraken’s Growth lead, Dan Held recently shared. In addition to the belief that Bitcoin dominates all other crypto narratives, Held said that the “DeFi narrative” does not seem to be “working.”

Bitcoin is dominant because it finds “product-market fit,” Held argued. 

This is a terminology used by product folks to talk about how my product is solving a problem. Bitcoin solves a very real, very interface problem that all these institutions and retail traders across the world are seeing.

When it comes to altcoins and the DeFi sector, in particular, Held stated that most crypto projects are “solutions looking for a problem.”

That’s not how you build things. You build things because you build a solution that immediately solves the problem. And that’s what Bitcoin always did.

While he is optimistic about DeFi products, Held is certain that Bitcoin’s store of value potential was “magnitudes higher” due to present economic threats. For instance, the likes of Tesla and MicroStrategy have added Bitcoin to their treasury for its potential to hedge inflation. Moreover, DeFi may be limited in scope due to its “complicated” narrative which is hard for retailers to understand. 

When compared to other assets, Held said Bitcoin was “the fairest launch.” 

Bitcoin, unlike private, unlike equity and tech companies, wasn’t only exclusively available to accredited investors. You also didn’t have to be a certain citizen of a certain country to have access to the financial markets of Bitcoin. You could, anyone anywhere could trade Bitcoin for local fiat cash.

However, critics of the asset often claim that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. Even those who don’t support fiat argue that crypto, which represents financial freedom, has an uncertain future as long as centralized entities like financial institutions and governments exist.

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Alisha is a full-time journalist at AMBCrypto. Her interests lie in blockchain technology, crypto-crimes, and market developments in Africa and the United States

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Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has said the United States should mine more bitcoin due to national security reasons since 90% of the activity is done outside the country.

Speaking to cryptocurrency journalist Laura Shin, the mayor said that the environmental degradation narrative had taken center stage with more external mining activities. He notes that countries accounting for most mining use dirty energy, and the U.S. holds the key to flipping the narrative.

According to the mayor, the U.S. led by Miami can be a mining hub due to the availability of enough resources.

He added that more mining in the U.S. would primarily benefit the cryptocurrency community because of clean energy like unlimited nuclear power. 

However, Suarez remains optimistic that environmental concerns brought about by cryptocurrency mining will be a thing of the past as new technology emerges to ease mining power needs. 

Suarez, a big proponent of bitcoin, has made inroads to market Miami as global cryptocurrency capital. 

In February, the mayor played a key role in bitcoin hitting a new all-time high after announcing the city will pay municipal workers and accept tax payments in bitcoin. He also revealed plans to invest city funds in cryptocurrency. 

Suarez has been making attempts to attract technology firms to Miami. In this line, the city is enacting policy changes to attract more crypto players.

Miami is working on having a regulatory environment welcoming crypto exchanges to operate in the city. The city is following Wyoming and New York’s footsteps that have made advances in defining their crypto ecosystem. 

Now is the age of cryptocurrency, and no comparison shows that better than the two charts you are about to see side-by-side.

Bitcoin was designed by Satoshi Nakamoto as the first form of peer-to-peer digital “cash,” but also sought to give the cryptocurrency several traits of of a commodity such as rarity. This was achieved through the asset’s 21 million BTC hard cap.

The cryptocurrency creator’s early comments showed a distinct fascination with gold, and appears to have been attempting to create a digital representation of the hard money standard.

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The term gold standard is used to describe a time when all fiat currencies were pegged to the shiny precious metal, and it was a time that was much more prosperous and wealth gaps weren’t nearly as wide.

The evolution of the dollar and all fiat money into what it is today, did away with the gold standard decades ago. As a result, the price per ounce of gold skyrocketed form around $30 to $2,000 this past year.

At the gold bull market peak, however, a passing of the torch took place. The moment gold topped in August, coincides with the moment hedge funds and public companies began buying BTC.

From that moment forward, Bitcoin has been in its most powerful uptrend yet and spiked from $10,000 to $50,000 with not even a trillion in capital to show for it. Gold outflows began to rise the same time Bitcoin trading volume and futures open interest started to climb to previous highs.

Related Reading | Altcoins Bleed After Tesla Bitcoin Buy, BTC Dominance Hints At Deception

The chart above shows exactly when the deviation took place, and gold’s downtrend began. Prior to that, both assets initially performed well as a safe haven post-pandemic, however, the digital currency has completely taken over since.

The digital gold narrative has been effective, and now Bitcoin is ready to set it sights on replacing the dying dollar instead.

Bitcoin was once following a gold fractal closely for years, which has thus far benefited the young cryptocurrency well. But now that the torch has been passed, will Bitcoin soon be the asset to catch up to?

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Apr 16, 2020 07:00&nbspUTC; | Updated: Apr 16, 2020 at 07:00&nbspUTC; Crypto Narrative Confront Reality By Rajat Gaur eToro, an investment platform released a State of Digital Assets report for the first quarter of 2020. The document consists of 50-pages that tours an in-depth market insights, macro trends, and community sentiment. As this document is far lengthy and can take much of your precious time, we have come up with the key findings and every information of the report in detail. Key Findings: With the start of the report, the report covers that over 35 percent of eToro users have Bitcoin, whereas over 97 percent of users are on the assets. In the report, there is Twitter data combined by eToro partner TheTie. Furthermore, it states that this is a positive investor sentiment as Bitcoin-related tweet volume has reached 47 percent in the very first quarter of 2020 with over 60 percent of positive cases. This recent market turmoil results in the widespread coronavirus pandemic across the globe. With this sudden fall of the economy, Bitcoin’s foundational narrative as digital gold is has also resulted in negative within its first major test. So the report covers that, Bitcoin started this current year as the worst global financial crisis since the fall of central bank monetary policy. Considering social media reports, the analysis among Bitcoin acolytes is narrative enough with the sound. Moreover, from the sources of TheTie’s data, sentiment correlations between Bitcoin and gold have escalated majorly from the last month of the previous year. Whereas sentiment correlations between Bitcoin and the S&P 500 index have been minimum. If we come in the real market world, market data narrates that Bitcoin’s correlation with the S&P 500 has reached a new all-time high. Moreover, gold’s correlation and Bitcoin seems positive but it has a lesser degree than its correlation with the S&P 500. Most of the assets are in trend and moving in the same direction due to the stability in dollars. The report covers that with the beginning of economic downturns, most of the major investors are expected to flock to cash and hold across the board. Daniel Larimer Hints At His New B2B Project Without Tokens READ MORE 7 hours ago Four Million Quidd User Login Credentials on Sale on Dark Web READ MORE 12 hours ago Kansas City Fed on Correlation of Bitcoin READ MORE 14 hours ago BitMEX Donates $2.5 Million Towards COVID-19 Crisis READ MORE 14 hours ago Bitcoin’s Mining Difficulty Implies Return of the Miners READ MORE 15 hours ago Facebook’s Stock Drops 4.5% READ MORE 16 hours ago AVA Launches First University worth $50K READ MORE 16 hours ago

Bitcoin continues to be uncertain of its place in the global markets. The coin has been called a global markets hedge and been aligned to more of a ‘digital gold’, but at the same time, it has failed to impress as an anti-correlated asset, following the stock markets down on many occasions.

However, there are still arguments both way for the coin. There have been instances where a weakening US Dollar has seen the price of Bitcoin grow as it shows its potential as a hedge, and more recently, the potential end of the Covid-19 pandemic in sight has tanked the price of the coin.

This occurrence shows that Bitcoin is less suited to a world back on track and growing economies. The end of Covid-19 would mean a return to stronger markets and less need for a hedge, and this is shown in the Bitcoin price.

Whether this is enough to call Bitcoin a full hedge again remains to be seen, but its place, and price in a post-Covid-19 world will certainly have an effect on its direction.

On Monday, pharmaceutical company Pfizer, in collaboration with biotech company BioNTech, announced a breakthrough in its COVID-19 vaccine. Bitcoin fell approximately $1,000, over 6%, between on the vaccine news, from $15,800 down to a daily low near $14,815.

The vaccine, however, still awaits final approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration:

“Submission for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) planned for soon after the required safety milestone is achieved, which is currently expected to occur in the third week of November.”

The notion that Bitcoin is behaving more like an anti-correlated asset was further bolstered when, at this vaccine news, the rest of the global markets mostly rose. The S&P 500 spoiled up almost 4% in price at market open this morning.

At the same time, gold, another store-of-value asset, has fallen more than 5% and looks to be falling even more.

The news of a vaccine and the greater implications it could have on the globe and getting back to normal is even being felt across individual stocks.. Video conferencing platform Zoom watched its stock decline by approximately 19%, while Netflix fell almost 10%. Even e-commerce giant Amazon dropped more than 5%. This seems to add to the narrative that Bitcoin is good in a global crisis, unlike stocks and general markets.

At the current price level, Ethereum is trading at the $1800 level and it is being absorbed by HODLers who don’t sell within 2-4 years or in the short term. The asset’s total value in the ETH 2.0 deposit contract just reached an all-time high of 3,551,682 ETH. The increase in reserves signals the increasing liquidity and volatility in Ethereum’s price.

If Bitcoin traded sideways, it would offer Ethereum and large market cap altcoins to trend and rally. Ethereum has traditionally led the altcoin rally, so the increased volatility is a positive sign. As shown in the chart above, Ethereum reserves on exchanges increased from week 1 in march, and have dropped now. The ETH 2.0 deposit contract is gaining traction and there is an increase in the number of active traders on the ETH network.

Something similar happened to Bitcoin in November 2020. Around this time, Bitcoin’s price went from 10k to 60k, that is 6x, if Ethereum’s price responded in a similar manner traders can expect at least over 3x price hike. At the current price level, Ethereum may continue to remain undervalued. The altcoin is headed towards a massive supply shock and it may hit within the next 12 months, meaning that the impact on price will be long-term. Few important data points that directly influence the supply are 10-20% Ethereum’s supply is locked in staking, of the circulating supply $10-$20 Billion is burned in EIP 1559 every year.

Additionally, the drop in issuance of ETH would lead to a drop of 4.5% in the supply. This coupled with other drops, may shock Ethereum’s supply creating an increased demand for the asset on spot exchanges. This shortage of supply narrative is in-line with Bitcoin’s bullish narrative this market cycle.

Besides, the two assets are correlated strongly, 86% precisely. This is the highest correlation that Ethereum has with any other asset and this is playing an instrumental role in shaping up the drop in supply and driving the price rally higher. Undervalued or not, currently ETH is in the buy zone, even at the $1800 level when it is valued in light of the upcoming supply shock and expected to increase in value in the following weeks.

In the short term, there may be further corrections in the price before hitting a new ATH. Price discovery beyond ATH is likely, however, ETH reserves and ETH value in deposits are not expected to have an immediate impact on the price.

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Ekta is a full-time journalist at AMBCrypto and her specialization lies in spot markets. Currently pursuing her MBA, she is passionate about trading, fintech, and everything decentralized.

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Meltem Demirors is the newest Stacks Foundation board member, and she is out to change the narrative around bitcoin. 

“We’re still in the early innings of the entire crypto space,” said Demirors, who is also chief strategy officer at CoinShares. “In the bitcoin community and outside of the bitcoin community, there’s sometimes these persistent narratives, and there are some I can’t stand.” 

As a Stacks board member, Demirors will devise and implement strategies for building smart contracts, decentralized apps (dApps) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are commonly built on ethereum, within bitcoin’s ecosystem through connections with the Stacks blockchain. 

“I love that Stacks is building on top of bitcoin, and I’d love to see more projects built around bitcoin,” said Demirors. “I really want to emphasize how important it is for people to build bridges back to bitcoin, particularly as people really start to understand how important proof of work is.” 

Demirors started her career as a physical ethanol and methanol trader in Texas. It was the midst of the financial crisis and the world was just starting to move to decarbonization. 

“I started looking at the carbon market, because there were all these new carbon schemes being introduced, like the last time we did this whole environmental social governance and sustainability investing scam,” said Demirors. “I started trading carbon and learned a lot about how markets work.” 

She then moved into consulting before working in the corporate treasury department at ExxonMobile. It was while getting her MBA at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that she first became interested in bitcoin. 

Demirors met Barry Silbert when he was in the early stages of starting the Digital Currency Group, the parent company of Grayscale Investments. 

“I said ‘I think I can help you, I think we could do some cool stuff together,’ and that’s really how it started,” said Demirors. “For me, it was just realizing that all the things that I’d worked on in the past, were dead. Those were dying industries.”

Demirors got involved with digital assets early. For the rest of the world, bitcoin’s latest run is serving as the gateway into the technology. 

While those skeptical about digital assets may be growing more open to learning about blockchain technology, a plethora of misconceptions remain, Demirors said. One of the most notable is the idea that bitcoin is used to commit crimes. 

“Let’s move on from that, please,” said Demirors. “The most widely used financial tool for crime is the dollar, and then the second most widely used tool for financial crime is the US banking system, as evidenced by the $6 billion of fines that were paid by banks last year, an all time record high, in order to settle money laundering charges.” 

Another common anti-bitcoin argument is that mining is bad for the environment. Demirors argued the opposite. She cited a CoinShares study from 2019 that reported 77% of coin mining used renewable energy. 

“I’ve been spending a lot of time lately on highlighting why I think bitcoin will be a massive boon for low energy,” said Demirors. “Bitcoin is effectively a money battery that can help balance energy grids, and make our energy infrastructure more secure and more resilient, while also making it economically feasible to invest in large scale renewable energy production.”

Most people view bitcoin as an investable asset more than a disruptive technology, Demirors said, but she is hoping to change that.

“Part of what I’ve always enjoyed doing in this industry is trying to help people see what I see, where we are going, and what’s really been interesting over the last 12 months is that all of a sudden, people are much more open to having that conversation,” said Demirors.

“I’m really excited that we’re seeing a lot more talent flowing into space, a lot more capital flowing into the space, but also, some really intelligent people are now looking at bitcoin and cryptocurrency more broadly.” 

Bitcoin (BTC) hit $60,000 for the first time on March 13 as the long-awaited continuation of the BTC price bull run got underway.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets and Tradingview tracked BTC/USD as the pair finally crossed the historic level after several weeks of mild corrections and periods of consolidation.

Bulls had spent a considerable time in limbo as Bitcoin tested prior all-time highs at $58,350 repeatedly, with a significant resistance zone beneath slowing progress.

In the end, however, optimism won out, and the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization clinched its latest milestone. At press time, price action focused on an area just below $60,000 amid characteristic volatility.

As Bitcoin price inched its way closer to the previous all-time high, analysts at Whalemap observed some interesting on-chain activity taking place. 

According to the research team:

Anticipation of $60,000 and even higher had steadily built up over recent days. As Cointelegraph reported, professional analysts as well as traders were poised to announce the end of Bitcoin's prior sideways price action as indicators pointed in bulls' favor.

The now-standard narrative of healthy on-chain metrics combined with positive support from institutions served to bolster confidence. Now that Bitcoin price has reached the $60,000 level, many analysts have set their targets on the $72,000 zone, followed by $100,000. 

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.118 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 61.9%.

There is no demand shortage for Bitcoin, even at $50,000, as big buyers dwarf smallholders in the latest stage of the bull run. 

The data suggests that Bitcoin (BTC) whales and institutions have made the most of the recent BTC price dip by buying big.  

On March 9, on-chain analytics service Material indicators noted that if they buy orders of $100,000 and higher on Finance, they get exchanged by worldwide volume. 

Big Bitcoin Buyers do not Delay 

On contrary to orders less than $100,00, larger buys are more frequent than ever before in Bitcoin’s history. 

There have been smaller allocations that have plunged, matching an existing narrative that institutions are picking up liquidity exchanges that surfaced the bull run. 

Material Indicators commented on Twitter that the $100k – $1M class is about to make a new ATH. 

Previously, they also raised concerns regarding the week’s price rise, arguing that whales can sell into the surge. 

While this has come not so far, the analysts also noted that macroeconomic factors were having a different impact to what was expected. 

Whale orders declined after the news came out that the United States’ $1.9 trillion stimulus package had passed the Senate. Coin Telegraph also reported that technology had a dramatic change in the equity market.

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Every time Bitcoin‘s price rallies, traders get hopeful while regulators tend to get anxious. As the market celebrated bitcoin’s all-time high above $60k, the Indian crypto market was woken up to alarming news. A senior government official reportedly stated that the country will be proposing a stringent law banning the use of crypto even as a holding asset.

As per reports, the bill, if passed, can be one of the world’s strictest actions against crypto and would not only criminalize possession, issuance, mining, trading, and transfer of crypto but also leave a big dent in the crypto market in Asia. The COVID-19  pandemic had pushed people to seek alternative payment routes and India was among the countries witnessing a growing population of peer-to-peer users.

India has been closely following China in terms of P2P transfer volumes and according to data provided by Useful Tulips, India was noting a volume of $5.21 million.

This bill aligns with the earlier narrative of a ban that was reported in January 2021 wherein the government called for banning private virtual currencies like Bitcoin and working on an official digital currency.

However, the unrest caused by the news was addressed by the Finance minister who stated that they would be taking a “calibrated” approach with regards to crypto trading. The Finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman had added that they were carrying “negotiations and discussions” with the central bank of India to regulate crypto. With this recent development, the country has been once again been pushed into a puddle of uncertainty.

As per reports, the bill would offer holders of cryptos six months to liquidate and penalties will be levied following the liquidation. There has been a certain level of confidence among the officials to get the bill enacted into law as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government holds a favorable majority in the parliament.

If the government and the regulatory authorities follow through with the plan of a ban, India will become a major, Asian country, and a prominent economy to take such a drastic step.

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