We’re well and truly in the throes of “altseason” now, with Bitcoin’s dominance showing no signs of diminishing.

Ether delivered a stunning surge that took its price above $3,000 for the very first time, breaking new records throughout the week. On Saturday, ETH remained in uncharted territory after racing to highs of $3,800.

Among those celebrating ETH’s spike will be Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who has officially become a crypto billionaire. Excitement is continuing to build ahead of a long-awaited upgrade that will overhaul the network’s gas fee structure in July.

ETH is in good company, too. EOS rallied by more than 100% this week following a recent protocol that increases the project’s inflation rate. Litecoin has hit a one-year high against Bitcoin , with many analysts predicting extended upside momentum. And Bitcoin Cash jumped 68% amid rumors that a looming hard fork could boost the network’s user base.

Even Ethereum Classic, the hard fork sparked by disagreements after a devastating 2016 hack, has pumped 130% in the past week.

Of course, there’s one altcoin in particular that continues to steal the show…

DOGE has seemed unstoppable in recent weeks. It hit unprecedented highs of $0.7376 early on Saturday. To put into context how bonkers the joke cryptocurrency’s surge really is, $1 invested on Jan. 1 would now be worth $139 at current prices.

Mania over the financial homage to Shiba Inus everywhere may be about to reach a climax when DOGE enthusiast and mega-billionaire Elon Musk hosts Saturday Night Live . It’s inevitable that his appearance will feature endless sketches about Dogecoin, and that could pump prices even further.

But not everyone is finding DOGE’s surge to be a cause for celebration. Lowstrife, a popular account on Twitter, believes the end is nigh, with the crypto trader spotting eerie similarities between DOGE’s current charts and XRP in the heady days of 2018.

Back then, XRP had hit all-time highs of $3.20 that remain true to this day, but then slowly faded to lows of $0.14 — a loss of 95.6%.

Warning of an impending apocalypse for DOGE, Lowstrife wrote: “Each of DOGE’s major rallies this year has been smaller and less aggressive. What took 18 hours at first has been ongoing for 2 days now. I suspect this is the final push before it’s all over for good. May 8th is the day to watch.”

Even Musk himself has been cooling the hype, reminding followers that crypto investments remain speculative.

A flurry of earnings results this week powerfully illustrated the impact that Bitcoin’s sensational first quarter has had.

Square blew analysts’ expectations by delivering earnings of $0.41 per share between January and March — far beyond the $0.16 forecast. Revenue came in at $5.06 billion , dwarfing predictions of $3.36 billion.

Bitcoin alone drove $3.5 billion in revenue, an astonishing increase of 1,000% in just 12 months. Overall, the crypto-friendly company’s gross profit also surged 79% year on year to hit $964 million.

Square’s also sitting on paper profits of $250 million after making two high-profile Bitcoin purchases — one in February and one in October.

PayPal has also been heralding the “great results” it has been receiving from its crypto service. The platform’s earnings and revenue also exceeded predictions in Q1.

The celebratory atmosphere isn’t universal. Coinbase shares tumbled to fresh lows on Thursday as Wall Street investors continued to cycle out of high-flying tech stocks. 

COIN bottomed at $255.15 , where it was in danger of breaching the $250 reference price set on the eve of its public listing in April. All of this comes despite the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies surging beyond $2.4 trillion.

FBB Capital Partners’ director of research, Mike Bailey, told Bloomberg: “We saw a mini-bubble in SPACs, IPOs, crypto, clean-tech and hyper-growth in late 2020 and early 2021 and many of these asset classes are nursing bad hangovers.”

(That said, his assertion that crypto is nursing a “bad hangover” is misplaced.)

Coinbase’s woes may be linked to increasing competition among crypto exchanges, which has left retail investors spoiled for choice. There’s a danger that this could eat into the revenues it derives from transaction fees, which make up most of its income.

Elon Musk’s stint on the box this weekend serves as a powerful counterweight to comedian Bill Maher, who didn’t leave crypto enthusiasts in stitches during a recent segment.

On Maher’s program, he compared the industry to a virtual game — and talked about mining in a derisive tone. Maher also implied that investing in tokens was a childish endeavor, and illustrated his point with quotes from Warren Buffett.

He said: “There is something inherently not credible about creating hundreds of billions in virtual wealth with nothing ever actually being accomplished and no actual product made or service rendered. […] Unfortunately, what is real is the unfathomable amount of electricity those massive supercomputers suck up for their mining.”

Maher even quipped that Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by Bitcoin’s inventor, is the Japanese term for “Monopoly money.”

Anthony Pompliano shared the clip along with this caption: “Never ask a comedian for investment advice.”

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao replied, writing: “Very sad to watch. Feel really hopeless for him. Joke’s going to be on him. Time will show.”

At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $58,366.32 , Ether at $3,811.20 and XRP at $1.56. The total market cap is at $2,433,633,423,933.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Shiba Inu , Bitcoin Diamond and Telcoin. The top three altcoin losers of the week are Harmony , Huobi Token and Filecoin.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis . 

“Looks like Uniswap v3 is more gas expensive than v2, roughly as expected.”

Haseeb Qureshi, Dragonfly Capital managing partner

“With cryptocurrencies already creating incredible worldwide wealth, it’s real estate that will sustain that wealth and provide buyers with a legacy.”

Alex Sapir, Sapir Corp chairman

“We saw a mini-bubble in SPACs, IPOs, crypto, clean-tech and hyper-growth in late 2020 and early 2021 and many of these asset classes are nursing bad hangovers.”

Mike Bailey, FBB Capital Partners director of research

“It definitely can go much higher, I think we can see the price go to $10,000, where a lot of ETH bull price targets begin to kick in and people take profits.”

Nikhil Shamapant, retail investor

“We’ve committed to having no HQ, and it’s important to show our decentralized workforce that no one location is [more] important than the other.”

Coinbase

“Each of DOGE’s major rallies this year has been smaller and less aggressive. What took 18 hours at first has been ongoing for 2 days now. I suspect this is the final push before it’s all over for good. May 8th is the day to watch.”

Lowstrife

“DeFi may lead to a paradigm shift in the financial industry and potentially contribute toward a more robust, open, and transparent financial infrastructure.”

Federal Reserve of St. Louis

“Volatility is everywhere […] It is not unique to crypto.”

Changpeng Zhao, Binance CEO

“Of course I hate the Bitcoin success, and I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth.”

Charlie Munger, billionaire investor

“There is something inherently not credible about creating hundreds of billions in virtual wealth with nothing ever actually being accomplished and no actual product made or service rendered.”

Bill Maher, comedian

Ether’s booming price has prompted feverish talk about a long-fabled “flippening” where ETH overtakes BTC as the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

Although that’s fanciful right now, there are a number of bullish predictions when it comes to where Ether’s price is headed next.

One of them comes from Nikhil Shamapant, a retail investor who recently published a research report where he argued ETH could be worth $150,000 by 2023.

He told Cointelegraph: “It definitely can go much higher. I think we can see the price go to $10,000, where a lot of ETH bull price targets begin to kick in and people take profits. I think we’ll head up to that $10,000-to-$25,000 range, hit a lot of supply and could see some big drawdowns and consolidation at that point.”

Data suggests that Uniswap v3 had a successful first 24 hours — processing more than twice the volume that v2 did in its first month.

But not everyone’s been enamored with the latest iteration of the world’s most popular decentralized exchange, with some users complaining about the costs associated with using it.

One person wrote on Twitter: “Even more expensive to make mistakes now. Tried to migrate my UNI/ETH liquidity to V3, failed and paid 108.09 usd worth of gas.”

Dragonfly Capital’s managing partner, Haseeb Qureshi, also wasn’t impressed. On Twitter, he wrote: “Looks like Uniswap v3 is more gas expensive than v2, roughly as expected. […] Specifically, it’s about 28% more expensive for single-hop transactions it looks like. For larger transactions that cross multiple ticks/buckets, the gas costs should be slightly larger.”

A Democrat senator in New York, Kevin S. Parker, is proposing a three-year ban on crypto mining.

Data centers would only be allowed to operate if they pass an environmental impact review, amid concerns that BTC mining could cause the state to miss ambitious targets designed to tackle climate change.

New York Senate Bill 6486 said: “A single cryptocurrency transaction uses the same amount of energy that an average American household uses in one month, with an estimated level of global energy usage equivalent to that of the country of Sweden.”

The bill is yet to receive widespread backing from other senators. However, the Democrats do control the lower house and senate.

A United States-based business development specialist has claimed that a company that paid them for contract work using cryptocurrency now wants them to return the tokens following a significant rally in the asset’s price.

The unnamed employee, known only as “Crypto Confused,” wrote to MarketWatch and said: “I am not really sure what to do. I have worked with this person for many years, and he has a tendency to try to change the terms of payment after agreeing on a certain way of operating.”

Columnist Quentin Fottrell replied: “If the value of the cryptocurrency had fallen by 100% since August 2020, would he want to pay you in dollars? If it suddenly dipped by that amount today, would he follow up with his employees?”

As experts pinpoint various groups as Dogecoin’s vanguard, the coin’s potential base seems to be a wide coalition.

After bashing Bitcoin back in 2017, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon seems to have softened his stance on crypto, and so has the firm itself.

Declaring BTC a store of value — gold 2.0 — but not a medium of exchange, defies logic. It must first have a use case.

Dogecoin has had a strange year. A once-obscure cryptocurrency named after a dog-based meme has gained over 14,000% in 2021 and has created many millionaires. It has been backed by many major celebrities and seems to be set for a pretty big future. 

Of course, nothing is ever guaranteed and Dogecoin could just as easily plummet, with the bottom falling out and those millionaires turning to paupers overnight, but whether it rises or falls, it looks like Dogecoin is set to become a popular payment method.

The question is, can Dogecoin rival Bitcoin in the online casino industry? It’s an industry that has helped Bitcoin to become the massively popular currency that it is, and one that facilitates the transfer of millions of dollars worth of coins every day, so will it do the same for Dogecoin?

You can already use Dogecoin at many online casinos, but it’s often relegated to a fringe payment method, with the likes of Ethereum, Litecoin, and XRP available ahead of it. The first step for these casinos is to accept Bitcoin. That’s how the biggest and the best bitcoin casino sites operate. Once the systems are in place for these sites to accept Bitcoin , they move onto Ethereum, Litecoin, and other major currencies.

Only when these have been covered do they considered Dogecoin.

However, now that Dogecoin is flying high, and assuming it remains stable for at least a few more months, that will likely change.

Casinos want to see the stability before they embrace a payment method, otherwise, the price will change too much and too quickly for it to be a viable option. In the past 12 hours, for instance, Dogecoin has gone from a gain of 4% to a loss of 10%. In fact, in the time it has taken to write this sentence, it has dropped 0.5%.

That is just not suitable for an online casino payment method and casinos will be keeping a close eye on proceedings, waiting for it to stabilize, and then jumping on board when it does.

Once they do, payment methods like CoinsPaid, which is already used on dozens of sites, will likely become major players in this industry, helping companies to facilitate crypto payments.

In the meantime, some sites are looking to currency exchanges to process the payments. With these payment methods, your cryptocurrency exchange account essentially assumes the role of a web wallet like PayPal or Skrill.

It means that you can use payment methods like Dogecoin, as well as hundreds of others that are accepted on the exchange. As long as you have the funds in the exchange and can transfer them to an online casino, it doesn’t really matter how they got there, at least not as far as the online casino is concerned.

Many have argued that Dogecoin is set for an epic failure, noting that the coin was created not as a serious investment opportunity but as a joke. They’re not wrong, and it’s fair to say that Dogecoin doesn’t have the same benefits that other coins have.

But it’s not always the best commodities that thrive, and the same is true for anything else. If it was always about being the best, Betamax would have beaten VHS and Blu-ray would have beaten HD. In fact, if the cryptocurrency industry prioritized the most advanced technologies, we’d be seeing new market leaders every couple of years.

It’s all about market demand. If people want that currency and back it, it’s going to soar, and if they keep backing it, it’ll be the currency of the future. Sure, it’s a little hard to believe that the future of Dogecoin could be so bright, and it’s more likely that the bubble will burst and it will be overtaken by better altcoins, but we’re still treading new ground here and nothing is ever certain in the cryptocurrency sector.

In 2013, if you had said to someone that there would be a Bitcoin rival created as a joke and based on a dog with bad grammar that would generate a worth of over $100 billion , no one would have believed you. Even now, it’s hard to imagine, and yet that’s exactly what happened. That’s the future that we live in now.

For all we know, the future of currencies could be based on memes and jokes. Maybe people get so tired of Dollars and Pounds that they start investing in altcoins based around amusing memes.

In a world of Dogecoins and NFTs, a world where people will happily invest millions of dollars to purchase something that doesn’t exist and something that is still, technically, owned by the seller, anything is possible.

Logic dictates that Dogecoin will crash pretty soon and that it doesn’t have much of a future, but logic isn’t in control here. 

Bitcoin is at it again.

On Thursday, the cryptocurrency rallied to a fresh high, surpassing the $48,000 level, according to data from CoinDesk.

Even though the asset has been highly volatile, those who have held it long term have reaped incredible gains.

For example, if you invested in bitcoin when it was first launched in 2009, your returns could be in the millions or billions, because the initial value of the asset was $0.

"It's the best-performing asset of the last decade for sure," said Daniel Polotsky, CEO of CoinFlip, one of the largest bitcoin ATM companies in the U.S.

If you bought bitcoin a little bit later and held the asset through the ups and downs, you'd still see remarkable returns from your initial investment.

Say you got into the game when a bitcoin was 10 cents, around October 2010. If you invested $100, you'd have been able to buy about 1,000 bitcoins.

At its all-time high Thursday, those 1,000 bitcoins would've been worth more than $48 million, not accounting for compounding and assuming you bought and held the asset the entire time.

To be sure, that's a long time to hold a highly volatile asset, meaning that the group of people who both invested in bitcoin that early and have largely held onto their investments is small, said Polotsky.

And, though there are many stories of extreme gains from those invested in cryptocurrency, there are also many who have lost just as much money by buying and selling the choppy asset at the wrong time.

In addition, investors who have held onto bitcoin for that long have had trouble actually cashing out their incredible gains due to technical issues – some have forgotten the passwords to their digital wallets, meaning they have only a few tries to access the funds before being locked out forever.

Still, bitcoin has been on an incredible trajectory that's outpaced other investments. So far in 2021 alone, the cryptocurrency has surged more than 63%, after quadrupling in value in 2020.

Most recently, the price of bitcoin has been driven by high-profile support. On Thursday, Bank of New York Mellon said it would provide custody services for digital assets, citing growing client demand.

Earlier in the week, Mastercard also said it would begin to offer support for cryptocurrencies on its network this year. And, on Monday, Tesla announced that it had bought $1.5 billion of bitcoin and that it would soon start to accept the currency as payment.

And, even though the cryptocurrency has also shown its trademark volatility in recent weeks, longtime bitcoin bulls see even more returns in the asset's future.

Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital and a known cryptocurrency bull, in November said he sees bitcoin rising to $55,000 or $60,000 at the end of 2021 as it continues to replace gold. Tyler Winklevoss, another bitcoin bull and co-founder of crypto-exchange Gemini, said he could see the asset reaching $500,000 per coin one day.

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Bitcoin has come a long way. The digital currency was started a few years ago and has grown to become a trillion-dollar asset. Its success has also incentivized many entrepreneurs who have created almost 5,000 cryptocurrencies valued at more than $2.26 trillion.

Crypto trading has also become an exciting part-time activity used by many people to make money online. As a result, many traders and software developers have ventured into the industry with several products like trading platforms and robots.

A robot, also known as expert advisor, is a piece of software that allows people to automate their trades. These tools are widely used by hedge funds and advanced day traders. They are built using technical indicators and other price action tools to either send signals or initiate trades. There are many trading robots, some of which are offered for free. In this Bitcoin Trader review, we will look at what it is and how to use it in trading.

Bitcoin Trader is a robot that automates cryptocurrency trading by analyzing vast amounts of data to identify trade opportunities. The robot also combines technical indicators like the Relative Strength Index (RSI) and moving averages (MAs) to find these opportunities. After signing up, users can link their trading accounts and the robot will do the trading.

Most people who pay for Bitcoin Trader are inexperienced traders who want to make money in the cryptocurrency industry. As such, their expectations are that the robot will help them make money even when they don’t have the experience.

While Bitcoin Trader was developed with BTC in mind, it can be used to trade other popular cryptocurrencies like Ether, XRP, and Binance Coin.

While Bitcoin Trader is a genuine product, its performance cannot be guaranteed. This is a common feature among all expert advisors available today. First, there is no robot that is usually 100% perfect. This is similar to the fact that no trader is usually perfect all the time. Indeed, in the past, we have seen many experienced traders lose money trading assets like stocks and cryptocurrencies.

Second, while some robots do work well, the volatility of the cryptocurrency industry makes it difficult for a robot to make money all the time. Indeed, many day traders have lost a substantial amount of money using robots.

Further, there is a major risk because very few details of this robot are known. Its website has not provided any details on the developers, how it works, and even how to contact them. This is risky because you need to work with a company that you know well.

An ideal alternative to using Bitcoin Trader robot is to day trade yourself. This is how many professionals do it. If you are new to day trading, we recommend that you first take a cryptocurrency course that will guide you on the basics.

Some of the concepts you will learn are on fundamental, technical, and price action analysis techniques. You will also learn concepts on risk management, correlations, and the various types of cryptocurrencies.

While this approach is a relatively long and complex one, it offers better opportunities than relying on a robot. Most importantly, it will help you interpret the information that is found on the robot and how you can minimize your risk in day trading.

Online Bitcoin Trader reviews have found that the robot is a genuine one. However, many reviewers found that the robot developers have left some important gaps like who they really are, how it works, and how to contact them.

Despite its mid-April price drop, Bitcoin, at press time, was well on track to reach this year’s summer target and other price models’ targets as well. Thanks to the market’s general bullishness, recent corrections notwithstanding, many in the community have also taken to making predictions about where BTC might head.

CEO of Pantera Capital Dan Morehead is one of them, with the exec in a recent interview claiming that,

“My prediction is Bitcoin will be 213 percent high, a year from now… that puts it at $200,000 a year from now. I know it sounds crazy, but I think it’s likely to happen. All the fundamentals seem fantastic.”

Morehead’s prediction is well backed by the projected upward shift in the demand curve. He asserted that the entry of firms like Morgan Stanley and PayPal into the space could potentially push its price higher. In light of the gradual adoption of Bitcoin, Michael Saylor, co-founder of MicroStrategy, also recently highlighted that over the next five years, in his opinion, companies like Google and Apple would also buy Bitcoin.

Pointing out the ‘constant’ rise in the price of the coin, Morehead added,

“For every million new users, the price of bitcoin rises $200. It happened every time except for February 2016, when the price was slow to hit.”  

Saylor, however, had pointed out that crypto was an “immature asset class” back then, with the exec arguing that looking backwards at that statistical model and extrapolating its future isn’t rational.  He said, 

“There is 250 trillion dollars of money that needs a home. How much of the 250 trillion dollars is going to move into Bitcoin and at what rate is going to be a function of inflation, adoption, and integrated technology.”  

Robert Breedlove also pointed out that this was an interesting time for Bitcoin’s price trajectory. According to him, the currency’s price would be subject to a long, slow, upward grind by 2031, a time when people would realize that it’s merely a “game of accumulation.”

He went on to say,

“I think Bitcoin by this time [2031] will have reached about 20 percent of the global purchasing power. So this would imply, Bitcoin’s market cap in 2031 would be about $250 trillion… It will be north of 12 and a half million dollars per Bitcoin.”

Pantera Capital has set a summer price target of $115,000 for Bitcoin, and according to the crypto-asset’s fundamentals, it seems to be pretty much on track to achieve that number.

Binance Coin, IOTA, Verge Price Analysis: 30 April

Making leverage trading easy with WOWSwap

With a keen eye on the Indian economic ecosystem, Lavina Daryanani's writing predominantly revolves around crypto-happenings in the Asian markets. She has a strong background in journalism and a personal inclination towards business and financial reporting

First, a review of last week’s events:

EUR/USD. The last week of April was marked by three events: the Fed meeting, as well as the publication of data on the US and Eurozone GDP.

As for the US Fed, the results of its meeting were predictable. The interest rate was left unchanged at 0.25%. The volume of the quantitative easing program (QE) remained the same, $120 billion monthly. And the head of the regulator Jerome Powell uttered almost word for word what we wrote in the previous forecast: although the pace of the US economic recovery is impressive, this is completely insufficient to talk about curtailing fiscal stimulus programs. So far, everything is rather fragile, the acceleration of inflation, according to Powell, is a temporary factor, and the number of people employed remains 8.5 million lower than in February 2020.

On the other hand, US GDP growth in the first quarter was higher than forecast and amounted to 6.4% (against 4.3% a quarter earlier), showing the best dynamics since 1984. The country’s economy needs to add just 1% to reach the pre-crisis high. And, most likely, it will fully recover even before the beginning of July by to this indicator.

Such strong statistics led to an increase in the yield of US Treasuries. But this did not help the dollar much until the end of the week, since European bonds were also growing. Germany’s 10-year debt rates have hit their highest since March 2020.

The gap between the US and the EU in terms of the speed of return to pre-crisis indicators may also soon be narrowed. ECB President Christine Lagarde said on April 28 that “a light is already visible at the end of the tunnel as the pace of vaccination in the EU accelerates” and that economic recovery is expected to accelerate in the second half of the year.

As a result of the above, the fight between the bulls and the bears on EUR/USD has been going on with varying success all week. Strong inflationary expectations continue to weigh on the dollar. President Joe Biden continues to flood the economy with colossal amounts of money. Following the $1.9 trillion stimulus already approved by Congress, $2.25 trillion in infrastructure development and $1.8 trillion in social support are awaiting their turn. As a result of such steps by the US administration, the dollar went down and the EUR/USD pair renewed its two-month high on Thursday, April 29, reaching 1.2150.

However, thanks to not the most impressive macro statistics from the EU, the European currency nevertheless lost ground on Friday. An additional impetus to the dollar was given by the auction for the placement of treasury bonds on Friday evening, April 30. The US Treasury Department sold $130.6 billion worth of debt securities there. This withdrawal of liquidity from the financial system provided additional support to the American currency. As a result, the pair completed the five-day period significantly below the start of the week, at the level of 1.2020;

GBP/USD. When providing last week’s forecast for the pair, 45% of experts voted for its move north, 35% to the south and the remaining 20% to the east.

As expected by most of them (45%), the pound was strengthening its positions the first four days, and investors started to hope that the GBP/USD pair would break through the 1.4000 level again and return to steady growth, as it had been since the end of March 2020 until the end of February 2021 However, having reached 1.3975, its movement stalled, the bearish pressure intensified, and it collapsed downward at the very end of the week, as 35% of analysts had expected. Pushed by the results of the auction held by the US Treasury, the pair reached the local bottom at the 1.3800 horizon. This was followed by a couple of small bounces and a finish at 1.3810, which can be considered the Pivot Point of the last 9 weeks. So, those 20% of experts who voted for the sideways trend of the pair were also satisfied;

USD/JPY. It has already been said that the yield on US government bonds has been the key indicator for this pair. It was growing over the past week. The dollar grew along with it against the yen. As a result, the USD/JPY pair rose above the level of 109.00 and, having added 145 points, completed the trading session at 109.30;

cryptocurrencies. When making a forecast seven days ago, we wrote that the main task of the bulls last week would be to keep the BTC/USD pair in the $ 50,000 area. And, they succeeded, though with difficulty. Despite the fact that the quotes fell to $47,000 on April 25, they managed to rise again to the $50,000-55,000 zone. Investors and speculators began to actively acquire coins at the bottom, counting on further profits. And if the total capitalization of the crypto market was at the level of $1.750 trillion on April 26, it had already reached $2.110 trillion on the last day of the month.

Although not much, the news background helped the bulls. So, the news portal Coin Desk reported that the American financial giant JPMorgan had finally decided to launch a fund focused on BTC. Reporters found out that this bitcoin fund will start operating this summer.

The launch of Bitcoin-ETF could serve as another support factor. However, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) postponed its decision on the VanEck application until June. At the moment, a total of 10 applications for launching ETFs have been submitted, and the regulator decided that it needs more time to study them.

So, the main cryptocurrency stayed in the area around $50,000. But it was never able to rise above the 50-day moving average, which has served as sustained support for the BTC/USD pair since October 2020. As the quotes approach this line, which has now become resistance, the activity of buyers begins to fall sharply. And this is a rather alarming sign for investors: the market is in thought, which is confirmed by the Crypto Fear & Greed Index located in the heart of the neutral zone: at the level of 51 points.

We have repeatedly said that in such a situation of uncertainty with the reference cryptocurrency, many investors are turning their attention to altcoins. Bitcoin continues to lose ground. If its share in the total capitalization was 72.65% on January 2, and 50.70% on April 23, then it fell even lower by the end of the month, reaching the level lowest since July 2018: 47.87%.

On the other hand, the attractiveness of Ethereum is constantly growing. CoinMetrics calculates that the hashrate in the Ethereum network has grown by 89% over the past 100 days. And the ETH/USD pair, unlike Bitcoin, continues to update historical highs over and over again, rising to a height of $2,790 on April 29.

As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

EUR/USD. The weakening of the dollar, which has become almost the main safe haven asset during the pandemic, is facilitated by the growth of inflation expectations, which exceeded 2.4% and reached a high since 2013. The huge financial injections should lead to a record growth in US GDP, which, accordingly, entails an increase in risk sentiment and investors’ attraction to the stock market. According to Dow Jones Market Data, the S&P500 rose 11% during Joe Biden’s first 100 days as President of the United States. This was the best result since President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, and on average, since 1929, stock indices grew by 3.2% annually.

On the other hand, being the most powerful in the world, the US economy will pull up with it the economies of other countries, leveling the gap in the speed of their recovery. The dollar should also be helped by an increase in yields on US Treasury bonds.

So far, giving a forecast for the coming week, 60% of experts expect that the EUR/USD pair will try to go up again. The nearest resistance is 1.2055 and 1.2100, the target is to reach the April 29 high of 1.2150. 70% of oscillators and 75% of trend indicators on D1 agree with this forecast. The remaining 30% of the oscillators are colored neutral grey.

When moving from a weekly to a monthly forecast, the opinion of experts changes radically. Here, 75% of them are waiting for the dollar to strengthen and the pair to drop to the 1.1900 zone, and then another 100 points lower. The target of the bears is to update the March 31 low of 1.1704.

Graphical analysis on D1 indicates the movement of the pair in the trading range of 1.1945-1.2150. At the same time, according to its readings on H4, the pair first faces a decline to the lower border of this channel, and then a rebound upward.

As for the events of the coming week, one should note the publication of ISM business activity data in manufacturing (May 3) and private (May 5) sectors of the United States. We are also waiting for US employment data: the ADP report will be released on Wednesday May 5, and the number of new jobs created outside the agricultural sector (NFP) will be known on Friday May 7.

The European consumer market is likely to delight investors on May 3 and 6. The fall in retail sales in Germany is forecast to narrow from -9.0% to -3.15%. Retail sales in the Eurozone as a whole may, according to forecasts, grow from -2.9% to + 9.4%;

GBP/USD. The main event for the British currency will be the meeting of the Bank of England on Thursday, May 6, which will be devoted to monetary policy. The interest rate is most likely to remain unchanged at 0.1%. As for QE, the volume of purchases of government bonds may be reduced from £895 to 875 billion. If this happens, the market will receive a signal about the intention of the British regulator to start tightening its policy.

The bank may also revise its forecasts regarding the speed of economic recovery in the country. There are many reasons for this. Thus, unemployment in Great Britain decreased by 0.1% in the first quarter, from 5.0% to 4.9%. Almost 30 million people have already been vaccinated in the country, of whom more than 2.5 million received two doses of vaccines against COVID-19. Some of the quarantine restrictions have been removed. And all these are positive factors for the pound, which may push the GBP/USD pair up again. This is confirmed by the forecasts of graphical analysis on H4 and D1.

As for the readings of technical indicators, they look rather indistinct on D1 due to the sideways movement of recent weeks. On H4, naturally, most are painted red, although 25% of oscillators signal the pair is oversold.

As for the experts, 60% expect the pair to grow at least to the level of 1.4000. In case it manages to break through it, the next target is 1.4240. The nearest resistance levels are 1.3860, 1.3925 and 1.3975.

The remaining 40% of analysts side with the bears. The main support is in the zone 1.3670-1.3700, then – 1.3600;

USD/JPY. The experts’ opinion coincides completely with what was expressed a week earlier. 70% of them believe that the pair will go south again, below the horizon at 109.00. The next supports are 108.40 and 107.45. The remaining 30% of analysts expect the pair to continue to rise. Resistance is at 110.00, the target is to rise another 100 pips to 111.00.

As for the indicators, 75% of oscillators and 100% of trend indicators on H4, and, respectively, 70% and 95% on D1 are coloured green. The remaining oscillators signal that the pair is overbought. Graphical analysis on both time frames indicates a fall of the pair to the level of 107.45;

cryptocurrencies. So, as it was said in the first part of the review, the BTC/USD pair did not manage to break above the 50-day moving average on the last day of April. And this looks like a wake-up call for investors. Especially because the fall below this line happened for the first time since the beginning of October last year, when the pair just broke the $10,000 level.

The Bitcoin Dominance Index also fell below 50%, which, attracting institutions, dragged the entire crypto market up with it like a locomotive.

Taken together, both of these factors, according to a number of analysts, strongly resemble the situation in January 2018, which marked the beginning of a protracted crypto winter.

But, along with pessimists, the voices of optimists are usually heard. Thus, the creator of the stock-to-flow model, a popular cryptocurrency analyst known as PlanB, believes that the current decline in bitcoin is quite normal and expected, and only confirms the bullish trend. The analyst stressed that one should not expect constant growth, sometimes pullbacks should also occur: “Nothing grows without pullbacks. Bitcoin has already been growing for 6 months in a row. This is similar to the mid-cycle correction we saw in 2013 and 2017.”

PlanB noted that he even “calmed down to some extent”: the market was too overheated, and now a small “cooling” phase awaits it. In addition, the rate of the first cryptocurrency turned out to be lower currently than the expectations of the S2F model, which means it may well continue to grow.

Dan Morehead, CEO of venture capital firm Pantera Capital, is also positive. According to the businessman, BTC is doomed to further growth, as more and more investors begin to understand that storing capital in cryptocurrency is much more efficient than in traditional instruments.

According to the calculations by the head of Pantera Capital, the value of BTC adds $200 every time 1 million new users register on its network. If such dynamics persist, the price of cryptocurrency in 2022 will approach or even exceed the $200,000 mark.

According to Dan Morehead, the spread of bitcoin is a result of, among other things, the growth in the number of smartphone users. There are now about 3.5 billion people in the world who own such devices, making bitcoin available anywhere and at any time.

Episode 27 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Ritholtz Wealth Management CEO Josh Brown.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to [email protected]

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About Exodus

Wall Street is embracing crypto one headline-driving development at a time.

From Goldman Sachs to Morgan Stanley, major banks are moving from exploring the digital asset world to fully operating in it.

Goldman, for instance, announced Friday it would restart its market for non-deliverable forwards tied to bitcoin. Both Morgan Stanley and Goldman have said they will offer their wealthiest clients exposure to bitcoin. But one channel that has yet to fully embrace crypto is the independent wealth management market. 

Josh Brown — the brains behind the well-followed Reformed Broker blog — is among the legion of wealth managers who have yet to start advising their clients to buy crypto.

The CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management joined The Scoop to talk about how financial advisors are examining the fast-growing $2 trillion market, why he is skeptical of non-fungible tokens and decentralized finance, and how Covid-19 turned the idea of risk on its head. 

Here's a blurb from the show:

© 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 and the entire crypto market turned inexperienced on the shut of April. The run-up to this month’s $4.2 billion choices expiry was uneventful, with no indicators of dissent.

After a quick fall under the $53,000 assist stage on April 29, Bitcoin rallied 10% by noon to reclaim its earlier excessive of $57,400.

MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor’s announcement that the corporate noticed a 52% enhance in gross sales relative to the identical quarter final yr would probably bolster the case that companies ought to preserve Bitcoin on their stability sheet to battle inflation and entice new buyers.

Central financial institution digital currencies (CBDC) are additionally gaining momentum, with the Financial institution of England saying plans to introduce a digital pound, and the French central financial institution making information on April 29 after settling a $100 million Euro bond utilizing a CBDC hosted on the Ethereum community.

Whereas a lot of the mainstream information and evaluation has been targeted on Bitcoin and Ethereum, a handful of altcoins drew merchants’ consideration on Friday as their costs rose by double digits.

Bitcoin’s dominance within the crypto-market is a widely known reality. The final value correction the altcoins collectively confronted was when BTC dropped under the $50k value stage. Since then, whereas many altcoins have been in a position to pull off an inspiring restoration and even go on to attain new highs, BTC’s value has continued to languish nicely under the $55k-resistance stage – a transfer diametrically against what many believed could be BTC’s value motion in April.

Based on information offered by Santiment, BTC’s supremacy over altcoins equivalent to ETH is dwindling. Over the previous few months, Ethereum has closed the hole on Bitcoin’s supremacy, in response to the outcomes. With its new ATH occurring at a time when BTC has been struggling, it may point out a small change in how the crypto-market will probably work sooner or later.

These metrics add as much as articulate an especially bullish situation for ETH within the coming month. This additionally substantiates the potential of the altcoin hitting the coveted $3,000 value vary within the coming weeks if unhindered by a BTC-induced market shakeup.

IoTeX jumped 75% to a brand new all-time excessive of $0.085, was the most effective performers of the day. The blockchain mission goals to deal with the problems of scalability, anonymity, and excessive working prices which can be stopping the Web of Issues (IoT) ecosystem from gaining widespread acceptance.

Equally, BNB’s market rally isn’t over but after flipping XRP. With commerce quantity up almost 80% within the final 24 hours, BNB is rallying to the $600-level as soon as extra. BNB’s volatility has additionally not returned to pre-price rally ranges. The newest ATH of $637 was lower than a tenth of a % increased than the worth at press time.

Throughout the board, altcoins rallied, bringing the general market capitalization to $2.177 trillion, whereas Bitcoin’s supremacy charge fell to 48.8%.

Bitcoin and the entire crypto market turned inexperienced on the shut of April. The run-up to this month’s $4.2 billion choices expiry was uneventful, with no indicators of dissent.

After a quick fall under the $53,000 assist stage on April 29, Bitcoin rallied 10% by noon to reclaim its earlier excessive of $57,400.

BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Supply: TradingView

MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor’s announcement that the corporate noticed a 52% improve in gross sales relative to the identical quarter final yr would probably bolster the case that companies ought to maintain Bitcoin on their stability sheet to battle inflation and entice new traders.

Central financial institution digital currencies (CBDC) are additionally gaining momentum, with the Financial institution of England asserting plans to introduce a digital pound, and the French central financial institution making information on April 29 after settling a $100 million Euro bond utilizing a CBDC hosted on the Ethereum community.

Whereas a lot of the mainstream information and evaluation has been centered on Bitcoin and Ethereum, a handful of altcoins drew merchants’ consideration on Friday as their costs rose by double digits.

Bitcoin’s dominance within the crypto-market is a well known reality. The final value correction the altcoins collectively confronted was when BTC dropped under the $50k value stage. Since then, whereas many altcoins had been in a position to pull off an inspiring restoration and even go on to attain new highs, BTC’s value has continued to languish effectively under the $55k-resistance stage – a transfer diametrically against what many believed could be BTC’s value motion in April.

In keeping with knowledge offered by Santiment, BTC’s supremacy over altcoins similar to ETH is dwindling. Over the previous few months, Ethereum has closed the hole on Bitcoin’s supremacy, based on the outcomes. With its new ATH occurring at a time when BTC has been struggling, it may point out a small change in how the crypto-market will probably work sooner or later.

Santiment knowledge on ethereum handle exercise

These metrics add as much as articulate an especially bullish situation for ETH within the coming month. This additionally substantiates the potential for the altcoin hitting the coveted $3,000 value vary within the coming weeks if unhindered by a BTC-induced market shakeup.

IoTeX jumped 75% to a brand new all-time excessive of $0.085, was probably the greatest performers of the day. The blockchain undertaking goals to handle the problems of scalability, anonymity, and excessive working prices which are stopping the Web of Issues (IoT) ecosystem from gaining widespread acceptance.

Every day cryptocurrency market efficiency. Supply: Coin360

Equally, BNB’s market rally isn’t over but after flipping XRP. With commerce quantity up almost 80% within the final 24 hours, BNB is rallying to the $600-level as soon as extra. BNB’s volatility has additionally not returned to pre-price rally ranges. The latest ATH of $637 was lower than a tenth of a p.c greater than the value at press time.

Throughout the board, altcoins rallied, bringing the general market capitalization to $2.177 trillion, whereas Bitcoin’s supremacy fee fell to 48.8%.

Featured picture from Pixabay, Charts from Tradingview.com, Coin360, Santiment.

Authored by Matt Hussey via Decrypt.co,

Bitcoin’s price volatility has been one of the project’s defining features. In its early days, the price of BTC could fluctuate by as much as 15%, when measuring the standard deviation of daily returns across 30-60 days. 

That sort of fluctuation put Bitcoin on par with national currencies such as Sierra Leone’s leone, Uzbekistan’s so’m and Nigeria’s naira in terms of purchasing power. 

While Bitcoin’s volatility has dropped in recent years - between 2-4% typically in the last 12 months - predicting Bitcoin’s price has continued to be an established and well-trodden corner of the cryptocurrency space. 

Dozens of analysts study charts to unearth subtle shifts in Bitcoin’s price to help discern where the cryptocurrency might move to next. 

More broadly, commentators have suggested that Bitcoin’s price will ultimately go to zero, while others have said there is no theoretical limit to how high the cryptocurrency could go. 

Among all these models and predictions is an idea that has captured the imagination of plaudits and critics alike: the stock-to-flow model.

Plan B's Stock-to-Flow model. IMAGE: Look Into Bitcoin

The idea behind it is simple: as Bitcoin’s scarcity continues to increase, so will the price. Thus far, as the above chart appears to signify, the model has largely tracked the price of Bitcoin. 

This has led to intense debate about the merits of the model: some believe the model is the reason why institutional investors have become so involved in the space - it suggests Bitcoin will 10x in value over the next few years. 

Others however believe the oversimplification of supply and demand is an unreliable reason to invest and highlights several flaws in the model.  

The stock-to-flow pricing model was created by anonymous Twitter user PlanB, who claims to be a Dutch institutional investor with a legal and quantitative finance background that manages around $100 billion in assets. 

The model is a calculation of a ratio based on the existing supply of an asset against how much is entering circulation. The higher the number, the longer it will take for production to meet existing demands and the more scarce an asset is. 

Take gold for example. It has a stock-to-flow ratio of around 66, meaning it would take 66 years of gold production to produce the current amount of gold stock currently in circulation. Silver, by comparison, has a stock-to-flow ratio of 74, according to In Gold We Trust. 

Gold stock-to-flow ratio. IMAGE: In Gold We Trust

Bitcoin’s is 50, after the network went through its third halving last year, reducing its reward to miners from 12.5 to 6.25 Bitcoin. The rewards to miners are an important feature of the stock-to-flow model. 

Commodities like gold and silver struggle to significantly increase their supply i.e. the process of searching for gold and then mining it is expensive and takes time. 

Bitcoin is similar because it is also scarce by design. When the anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, it was supposed to have a limited supply that was going to become harder to extract from the network as time went on. At the time of writing, nearly 90% of Bitcoin’s supply has already been issued. 

Silver stock-to-flow model. IMAGE: In Gold We Trust

This increasing scarcity, says the stock-to-flow model is why Bitcoin’s price is expected to hit $1 million sometime in 2025 as it creates upwards pressure on the price. PlanB has subsequently released an updated version of his stock-to-flow model which revises Bitcoin’s growth to around $288,000 by 2021. Despite the change, there are many who still believe in PlanB’s model.  

Earlier this year, PlanB polled his hundreds of thousands of users to ask how many agreed with his assessment that Bitcoin’s price would continue to grow in line with his projections. A third agreed with PlanB’s model, with almost all believing a variant on the model was likely to come true. 

"What the model does is give us some evidence to show [stock-to-flow] is an important variable in understanding bitcoin value," bitcoin analyst Nick Emblow said via Twitter. 

Fundstrat's Tom Lee and Tim Draper, one of the earliest bitcoin investors, have both been active proponents of PlanB’s model.

"One should think about [PlanB's stock-to-flow] model like Moore's Law," said Adam Back, the founder, and chief executive of Canada-based bitcoin and blockchain technology company Blockstream, referencing Moore's projection that the number of transistors in microprocessors would double every two years.

In August 2020, Fidelity Digital Assets analyzed the S2F valuation model, suggesting that the stock-to-flow model did have some merit. 

BNY Mellon, the largest custodian bank in the world, with over $25 trillion in assets, also examined the model in its recent report on predicting Bitcoin’s price. While it did criticize the model for some of its core features, its inclusion in the report has helped add credibility to PlanB’s model.

But there are also a number of critics who believe the model completely ignores some of the fundamentals of how cryptocurrency works. 

One of the most vocal critics has been Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. In a tweet he argued: “the ‘halvings cause BTC price rises’ theory is unfalsifiable: Was the peak before the halving? Then it ‘rose in anticipation of the halving’ During? ‘Because of the halving’ After? ‘Because of…’ The last $20k peak was near the halfway point between the 2016 and 2020 halvings.”

Put simply, Buterin thinks that the theory is impossible to disprove, analysts can attribute any price as evidence that the stock-to-flow model is correct. Thus, it’s not particularly helpful. Others have been more withering in their critique. 

Nico Cordeiro is the chief investment officer and fund manager at Strix Leviathan, believes the model’s accuracy will likely be about as successful at forecasting bitcoin’s future price as the astrological models of the past were at predicting financial outcomes.

Cordeiro highlights that the model is “based on the assertion that the USD market capitalization of a monetary good (e.g. gold and silver) is derived directly from their rate of new supply.” The fund manager argues that no evidence or research has been provided to support this idea, other than the singular data points selected to chart gold and silver’s market capitalization against bitcoin’s trajectory.

Cordeiro also highlights issues with PlanB’s assertion that gold’s price continues to rise as its scarcity increases. However, gold’s market capitalization has oscillated between $60 billion to $9 trillion, and indeed its stock-to-flow value has oscillated with that price - see the chart above. 

But despite a growing chorus of critics, the stock-to-flow model continues to resonate around crypto, whether investors agree with it, or not.  

Bitcoin and the whole crypto market turned green at the close of April. The run-up to this month’s $4.2 billion options expiry was uneventful, with no signs of dissent.

After a brief fall below the $53,000 support level on April 29, Bitcoin rallied 10% by midday to reclaim its previous high of $57,400.

MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor’s announcement that the company saw a 52% increase in sales relative to the same quarter last year would likely bolster the case that businesses should keep Bitcoin on their balance sheet to fight inflation and attract new investors.

Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) are also gaining momentum, with the Bank of England announcing plans to introduce a digital pound, and the French central bank making news on April 29 after settling a $100 million Euro bond using a CBDC hosted on the Ethereum network.

While much of the mainstream news and analysis has been focused on Bitcoin and Ethereum, a handful of altcoins drew traders’ attention on Friday as their prices rose by double digits.

Bitcoin’s dominance in the crypto-market is a well-known fact. The last price correction the altcoins collectively faced was when BTC dropped below the $50k price level. Since then, while many altcoins were able to pull off an inspiring recovery and even go on to achieve new highs, BTC’s price has continued to languish well below the $55k-resistance level – a move diametrically opposed to what many believed would be BTC’s price action in April.

According to data provided by Santiment, BTC’s supremacy over altcoins such as ETH is dwindling. Over the last few months, Ethereum has closed the gap on Bitcoin’s supremacy, according to the results. With its new ATH occurring at a time when BTC has been struggling, it could indicate a small change in how the crypto-market will likely work in the future.

These metrics add up to articulate an extremely bullish scenario for ETH in the coming month. This also substantiates the possibility of the altcoin hitting the coveted $3,000 price range in the coming weeks if unhindered by a BTC-induced market shakeup.

IoTeX jumped 75% to a new all-time high of $0.085, was one of the best performers of the day. The blockchain project aims to address the issues of scalability, anonymity, and high operating costs that are preventing the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem from gaining widespread acceptance.

Similarly, BNB’s market rally isn’t over yet after flipping XRP. With trade volume up nearly 80% in the last 24 hours, BNB is rallying to the $600-level once more. BNB’s volatility has also not returned to pre-price rally levels. The most recent ATH of $637 was less than a tenth of a percent higher than the price at press time.

Across the board, altcoins rallied, bringing the overall market capitalization to $2.177 trillion, while Bitcoin’s supremacy rate fell to 48.8%.

Amidst an ongoing crypto surge , Ether soared to new market heights Monday, becoming one of the priciest cryptocurrencies in circulation. The Ethereum blockchain-based token is now worth around $3,200, making its total market capitalization higher than Bank of America, Paypal, and Nestle.

The new valuation has also made Ether’s creator , the 27-year-old Russian-Canadian computer programmer Vitalik Buterin, the world’s youngest crypto billionaire. At the age of 19, Buterin helped create the Ethereum blockchain and has served as a manager of the blockchain since 2013.

Ether, which is the second-largest cryptocurrency next to Bitcoin, has seen a meteoric rise in value over the past year. Some twelve months ago, the coin was trading at $210. As of last week, it sat at $2,500. As of today, it has quadrupled in value for the year so far and at least one analyst is now suggesting the coin could go as high as $5,000 by the end of the week.

The coin’s run is due in part to Ethereum’s role in launching the NFT craze currently sweeping the Internet. Investors, some skilled but many unskilled, have flocked to the Ethereum platform over the last several months to take part in the buying and selling of digital art tokens, the likes of which have generated billions of dollars.

At the same time, the U.S. is also currently undergoing a surge in crypto investment, even as authorities worldwide attempt to crack down on its proliferation. The combined value of the crypto industry now ranks at $2.3 trillion, more than “$100 billion more than the market cap of Apple,” the Independent reports. Bitcoin still represents the largest share of the market by a significant margin, though some financial analysts interpret Ether’s recent gains as an example of how decentralized finance may become more ubiquitous in the near future.

Judgement day could be coming for early crypto investors who thought that the government had no chance in tracing Bitcoin and other blockchain transactions.

According to a Senior Washington Correspondent for CNBC, the “taxman” is coming “for crypto” and the IRS has been authorized to serve a request to review a swath of records across a variety of top crypto exchanges. Here’s everything you need to know about the developing and potentially dangerous situation.

When Bitcoin began a little more than ten years ago, it was trading at just pennies to the dollar and very few at that time would envision it to be worth $50,000 per coin.

The earliest users traded 10,000 BTC for two pizzas, just to provide an example of the mindset at the time. Even the US government and other nations paid very little attention to the top cryptocurrency, until recently.

At more than a trillion market cap, Bitcoin is now a force to be reckoned with, and the total crypto market at more than $2 trillion and climbing represents a massive amount of capital growth in under ten years.

Fortunes have been made and lost, then made again, and for all that, the “taxman” wants their cut.

They say there are only two things in life that are guaranteed: death and taxes. Unless you are lucky enough to reside in a tax haven, taxes are something that cannot be avoided. Try it, and you could face fines, penalties, or imprisonment.

Crypto investors or those that rode the Bitcoin rocket ship into wealth, but haven’t put aside anything for capital gains, or worse yet – haven’t reported anything at all – could be in some serious trouble soon. That’s because according to Senior Washington Correspondent for CNBC Eamon Javers, the “taxman” is coming “for crypto.”

The speculation is the result of a new revelation from the US Department of Justice, that claims that the IRS will serve a John Doe summons to crypto exchange Kraken, “seeking information about U.S. taxpayers who conducted at least $20,000 of transactions in cryptocurrency from 2016 to 2020.”

“There is no excuse for taxpayers continuing to fail to report the income earned and taxes due from virtual currency transactions,” said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig. “This John Doe summons is part of our effort to uncover those who are trying to skirt reporting and avoid paying their fair share.”

The document also clears Kraken itself of any wrongdoing. Considering the platform’s location, the company’s hands are tied and will be forced to turn over the requested records.

A similar summons was issued recently to Poloniex, requesting records related to the same subset of users, but from Massachusetts where parent company at the time, Circle, is located. The request related to Kraken is specifically targeting California residents due to its location.

Regardless of location, given how much money has been made in crypto and how little taxes have been paid on it all, the US government could come aggressively looking for their portion. Be prepared.

Cryptocurrency ether broke past $3,000 on Monday to set a new record high in a dazzling rally that has outshone the bigger bitcoin, with investors betting that ether will be of ever greater use in a decentralised future financial system.

Ether , the token transacted on the ethereum blockchain, rose 3% on the Bitstamp exchange to $3,144.81 in morning deals in London. It is up 325% for the year so far, easily outpacing a 95% rise in the more popular bitcoin.

In part, the big rally is a catch-up to late 2020 gains in bitcoin, said James Quinn, managing director at Q9 Capital, a Hong Kong cryptocurrency private wealth manager.

It also reflects improvements to the ethereum blockchain, he said, and a growing shift towards “DeFi”, or decentralised finance, which refers to transactions outside traditional banking for which the ethereum blockchain is a crucial platform.

“At first, the rally was really led by bitcoin because as a lot of the institutional investors came into the space, that would be their natural first port of call,” Quinn said.

“But as the rally has matured over the last six months, you have DeFi and a lot of DeFi is built on ethereum.”

The launch of ether exchange-traded funds in Canada and surging demand for ether wallets to transact non-fungible tokens such as digital art have also pushed up the price.

The ether/bitcoin cross rate has soared more than 100% this year and hit a 2.5-year high on Sunday, pointing to a degree of rotation into the second-biggest cryptocurrency as investors diversify their exposure.

“Surging DeFi volumes continue to push ethereum prices higher as investors gain confidence in crypto and see ethereum as a safe second-place asset,” said Jehan Chu, managing partner at Hong Kong blockchain venture capital firm Kenetic Capital.

Illustrating the momentum for such new transactions, Bloomberg reported last week that the European Investment Bank plans on issuing a digital bond over the Ethereum blockchain, while JP Morgan plans a managed bitcoin fund.

Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz is looking to raise a new fund of as much as $1 billion to invest in cryptocurrencies and crypto start-ups, the Financial Times reported on Friday, underlining interest in the sector.

Bitcoin , the world’s biggest crypto asset with more than $1 trillion in market capitalisation, regained the $50,000 mark last week and hovered around $58,700 on Monday, up about 4% but well below its record high at $64,895.22.

The U.S. dollar was broadly steady.

The cryptocurrency SafeMoon is currently on more CoinMarketCap watchlists than Bitcoin.

CoinMarketCap, a major cryptocurrency price tracking site, shows SafeMoon is on just over 1.3 million watchlists, while Bitcoin—the most widely known cryptocurrency—is on around 1.2 million.

SafeMoon is a relatively new cryptocurrency token launched two months ago in early March. It works by charging a 10 percent fee on each transaction, some of which is redistributed to others who hold the token.

Since its launch, it has gained traction as fans of the token repeatedly post about it on social media.

A tweet by the SafeMoon team on Thursday about how it overtook Bitcoin in terms of CoinMarketCap watchlists gained more than 22,500 likes at time of writing.

The team has urged the price tracking site to increase SafeMoon's ranking as the token is currently placed 2,489th in the world. Bitcoin is placed first.

But CoinMarketCap states that cryptocurrency ranking systems usually list tokens based on their market capitalization—the total value of all circulating tokens of a given type.

SafeMoon is currently worth around $0.000008, at time of writing. Its market cap—the total value of all tokens in circulation—is not listed on major price tracking sites CoinMarketCap or Coinbase. SafeMoon currently claims its market cap is around $3.8 billion, though this changes all the time.

Bitcoin, meanwhile, is worth around $56,000 per coin with a market cap of just over $1 trillion. It is down 1.6 percent over the past 24 hours, while SafeMoon is up around 17 percent. These figures change frequently.

Last week, the cryptocurrency security organization CertiK Foundation announced it had completed an assessment of SafeMoon and granted it a security score of 84 out of 100—placing it 67th on its leaderboard ranking out of 309.

John Wu, president of the Ava Labs blockchain network firm, told Newsweek: "Audits from credible firms are vital to the growth of DeFi [decentralized finance], but audits can't catch all bugs.

"The nature of vulnerabilities is that they can be ever-changing with even small additions to the code opening a new potential threat.

"Users should continue to do their own research, and be active members of projects' communities so they can hear any early alarm bells from fellow members.

"As far as why [SafeMoon] still has such great virality, this is primarily due to a short-term marketing blitz and the built-in mechanisms for value."

Experts have previously warned Newsweek about the risks associated with investing in cryptocurrency.