Bitcoin (BTC) is smashing past new records every few hours over the last two days. In a fresh rally today, the Bitcoin price clocked a new all-time high of $41,500 flipping giant organizations like Facebook and Tesla. However, with the one price rally, Bitcoin has hit multiple milestones.

As per the information on CoinMarketCap, the 24-hour trading volume for Bitcoin has surged 25% coming very close to $700 Billion. As of writing this story, the BTC 24-hour trading volume stands at $98 billion. As a result, popular crypto exchanges like Bitstamp and Binance have reported record user traffic. As Bitstamp recently update, the daily Bitcoin trading volume on the exchange crossed $2 billion for the very first time.

— Bitstamp (@Bitstamp) January 8, 2021

On the other hand, as per the Glassnode data, the active BTC addresses have recently hit an all-time high.

— Elias Simos (@eliasimos) January 8, 2021

Another market analyst Willy Woo has recently shared interesting data that shows HODLers are squeezing-in more BTC at the moment.

Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you pic.twitter.com/rRcIxTamj2

— Willy Woo (@woonomic) January 8, 2021

In the following tweet, Woo writes: “RED zones mean the net flow of coins are moving to participants that are historically strong HODLers. Via on-chain forensics; clustering wallet addresses into participants, then observing their behaviour. Historically we see GREEN, before rallies start to top out”.

The recent Bitcoin bull run of 2021 has flabbergasted every market analyst in the financial world. analyst Neil Wilson cautions investors at this stage and says that there could be a massive profit-booking and correction in the coming days.

Sharing another interesting fact, Morgan Creek Digital’s founder notes that Bitcoin (BTC) has given over 200%+ compounded annual returns over the last 9 years. Probably Bitcoin is the only asset class to give such historic returns in the last decade. Even if it continues to surge at one-fourth of this rate, BTC can easily touch $1 million by 2030.

Even if that slowed by 50% over the next 9 years, Bitcoin will still reach $1 million before 2030.

Everyone is underestimating this beast.

— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) January 8, 2021

To keep track of DeFi updates in real time, check out our DeFi news feed Here.

Bitcoin has continued with highly volatile moves, including a drop from $27,500 to beneath $26,000. Several altcoins have marked serious gains, such as Binance Coin. BNB charted a fresh ATH of about $40 after a double-digit daily surge.

After charting the latest all-time high of about $28,300 a few days ago, bitcoin started to decline in value. Shortly after the record, BTC headed south and dipped beneath $26,000.

Although the cryptocurrency bounced off that level and traded north of $27,000 for a while, the past 24 hours saw another steep decline.

This time, bitcoin went from its daily high of about $27,500 to the intraday bottom of $25,850 in a matter of hours. Nevertheless, BTC has recovered some of the losses and currently hovers above $26,500.

It’s worth noting that while the “actual” price of BTC has dropped recently, the “realized” price has continued to chart fresh all-time highs, according to data from Glassnode. The term refers to the value of coins that are actively used and excludes tokens that are lost or left dormant in wallets for years.

While some coins such as Ethereum (-2%), Bitcoin Cash (-2%), and Litecoin (-3%) have charted minor losses in the past 24 hours, others, like XRP have kept nosediving by double-digits.

The SEC charges against Ripple have resulted in numerous cryptocurrency exchanges delisting the native digital asset. The latest announcement came from the largest US trading venue – Coinbase.

The consequences for XRP came immediately. The token has plummeted by another 20% in the past 24 hours and currently trades at $0.22. Thus, XRP has lost over 65% of value in less than two weeks.

In contrast, Cardano and Polkadot have added about 14% of value to $0.18 and $6.3. Binance Coin also jumped by about 12% earlier came inches away from $40. Nevertheless, Binance data shows that BNB marked an all-time high against Tether (USDT).

Further gains are evident from VeChain (12%), Cosmos (9%), Celsius (8%), Augur (7%), and Kusama (7%).

Good morning. 

Welcome to Saturday Sats, part of our new series: BitPinas Daily. We will look at the price of Bitcoin, Ethereum and the major cryptocurrencies. Crypto is global, but sometimes news that matters happens while we sleep. So we bring to you what’s happening in our space here and abroad. 

Market Price as of January 9, 2021:

Bitcoin closed January 8, 2021, at $40,816 per BTC. We’re up 37% in the last 7 days and 38% since the year began. This is a new all-time high.

Bitcoin’s market capitalization stands today at $747,487,614,111 which is 69.29% of the entire cryptocurrency market. The entire crypto market, by the way, now has a market cap of $1,081,375,840,101.

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

Why is Bitcoin going up, and will it crash soon? What’s next as price doubles to $40K

Coindesks breaks down the key reasons why the price of Bitcoin is increasing: Demand from institutional buyers, U.S. dollar’s decline in foreign exchange  markets, retail purchases. 

As to how and why a pullback will happen, these are the possible scenarios or reasons: 1) extreme volatility could shake people, 2) there has always been a 25% pullback, 3) Bitcoin could rally two to three times more before falling back, 3) wild swings, 4) regulators and governments coming in, 4) profit taking. (Bradley Keoun, Muyao Shen, Coindesk)

Bitcoin market cap now nearly 7% of gold

Gold’s market cap is $10.6 trillion. Bitcoin is $747 billion. 

(Michael McSweeney, The Block)

Morgan Stanley now has 10% stake in MicroStrategy

Per a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission released on Jan. 8, investment bank Morgan Stanley had acquired 792,627 shares in business intelligence firm MicroStrategy. The investment represents a 10.9% stake in a firm that has made massive investments in Bitcoin over the past several months. (Kollen Post, Cointelegraph)

Altcoins take a hit as Bitcoin corrects from latest all-time high

The price of Ethereum, which yesterday hit highs of $1,282, has fallen by 6% to its current price of $1,198. Litecoin fell 4% to $179, XRP fell 12% to $0.31, Cardano (ADA) fell 8% to $0.29 and Polkadot (DOT) fell 9% to $9.11. More losses: Bitcoin Cash fell 7.12% to $441, Stellar (XLM) fell 12.29% to $0.29 and Chainlink fell 11% to $15. (Robert Stevens, Decrypt)

Spock, not his real name, who manages a crypto hedge fund in real life, has participated in the BitPinas Year in Review. One of the most insightful pieces you can read here in this website, please do check it out:

This article is published on BitPinas: Saturday Sats: Bitcoin, Gold, Corporate

Announced on January 11, CryptoBridge will include information videos, presentations, and materials to foster the expansion of the ecosystem.

— Cpt.Rektbeard 🇦🇹 (@CptRektbeard) January 10, 2021

In simple terms, RenVM, released in May 2020, is a network of virtual computers that powers interoperability for decentralized applications, enabling cross-chain lending, exchanging, and collateralization of digital assets. The machines are called Darknodes, which earn rewards for contributing computing resources and storage space.

The goal of the network is to enable the permissionless exchange of value between blockchains and bringing interoperability to the DeFi space. Tokens can be minted and wrapped using its RenBridge platform.

Its best-known product is renBTC, an ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum network and pegged to Bitcoin. According to btconethereum.com, there are currently 13,300 BTC tokenized via the protocol, worth an estimated $476 million at today’s prices. This represents 9% of the total of all wrapped Bitcoin.

The protocol has just recorded a milestone of $2 billion in volume processed over the past seven months.

— $REN (@Rentards) January 12, 2021

In a 2020 review report, it added that this volume had locked over $375 million in cross-chain assets, bonded over $50 million REN tokens by 1,500 nodes, and paid almost $2 million in fees to these nodes. It added;

“The cross-chain assets moved between chains by RenVM have also seen wide adoption into different DeFi applications, including Curve, KeeperDAO, MyEtherWallet, and the DeFi Bridge.”

In the first quarter of 2021, the Ren development team plans to roll out its RenVM Sub-Zero 0.3.0-alpha version upgrade to its testnet. A group of node operators known within the Ren community as the “Greycore” will ultimately operate the network once it goes live to mainnet.

The next phase in the Ren roadmap is “Zero,” which is the maturity phase for RenVM when it will become fully decentralized.

The REN token is up 7.9% on the day, trading at $0.364 at the time of writing. It peaked in early September 2020 during the DeFi boom when it reached just below $0.60.

Over the past seven days, REN has made 18% and over the past thirty days, around 37%. Since the same time last year, the token has made a whopping 750%, and it could well go higher as the project evolves and DeFi continues to grow.

Join us on Telegram to receive free trading signals.

For more cryptocurrency news, check out the Altcoin Buzz YouTube channel.

Supply: iStock/Nikada

The cryptocurrency marketplace sentiment made any other lengthy step upwards for the 3rd week in a row, and now we see the blended transferring moderate 7-day marketplace sentiment measure, Sentscore, for the highest 10 cash status at 5.83, in comparison to final week’s 5.47/10, consistent with Omenics, a cryptocurrency marketplace sentiment research carrier.

In contrast to final week then again, no longer all cash are inexperienced, as Tether (USDT) is again in purple. However, Bitcoin (BTC), whilst having by way of a long way the best possible Sentscore of seven.2 (up from 6.Eight per week in the past), is not the one coin within the sure zone. It is joined by way of, no longer one, however 3 different tokens, making it 4 cash within the sure zone, which is a unprecedented prevalence. It is way more commonplace to look just one different coin along BTC with a ranking of 6 and up. The 3 cash are: Ethereum (ETH), EOS (EOS), and Cardano (ADA).

Talking of Cardano, it and Stellar (XLM) have driven out Tron (TRX) and Monero (XMR) from the highest 10 checklist, taking their 10th and ninth positions, respectively.

Sentiment alternate a few of the best 10 cash*: Deciphering the Sentscore’s scale: – zero to two.5: very damaging – 2 to a few.9: quite damaging zone – Four to five.9: Impartial zone – 6 to 7.49: quite sure zone – 7.Five to 10: very sure

Supply: Omenics, 13:33 UTC

Taking a look on the cash with the best possible upward push of their rankings, we discover EOS with 14.8%, Stellar with 12.8%, and Ethereum with 12.6%. EOS’s most powerful side this week is information with a prime ranking of 8, adopted by way of technicals at 7.3. It is social has were given 4.6, basics 4.2, and buzz 3.7. In a similar way, Stellar has 7.Nine in information and six.1 in technicals, in addition to 4.Nine in socials, 3.Nine in basics and three.Eight in buzz. Finally, Ethereum were given a ranking of 6.7 in information and technicals each and every, 6.2 in basics, 4.Eight in social and four in buzz.

Tether is once more the loosing coin, for the 3rd week in a row. As a question of reality, whilst it wasn’t on the backside 4 weeks in the past, it had based itself there for 3 weeks in a row sooner than that as neatly. It is best possible ranking is in information with 6.4, whilst it were given Five in buzz, adopted by way of 4.Nine in social, 4.1 in technicals, and three,7 in basics as its lowest ranking.

In the meantime, this time round, BTC’s 24-hour Sentscore isn’t upper than its 7-day one. It is now 6.7, with a transformation of -2.6%. But even so it, 3 cash are once more within the sure zone, however as a substitute of EOS, Cardano made that checklist. Part are in purple and part in inexperienced nowadays, that may be a trademark of a weaker efficiency till subsequent Monday.

Day by day Bitcoin Sentscore alternate up to now month:

Supply: Omenics

Now looking at the 7-day moderate rankings of the 29 different cash tracked by way of Omenics, we see a fascinating building. It isn’t frequently that we will be able to document cash within the sure zone outdoor the highest 10, and now we have now tree of them: Monero (6), Sprint (6.1), and Tron (6.2). Moreover, 19 have rankings Five or above (in comparison to final week’s 4), and there is no such thing as a unmarried coin within the damaging zone.

Watch the most recent experiences by way of Block TV.

* – Technique:

Omenics measures the marketplace sentiment by way of calculating the Sentscore, which aggregates the sentiment from information, social media, technical research, viral developments, and coin basics primarily based upon their proprietary algorithms. As their website online explains, “Omenics aggregates trending information articles and viral social media posts into an all-in-one knowledge platform, the place you’ll be able to additionally analyze content material sentiment,” later including, “Omenics combines the two sentiment signs from information and social media with Three further verticals for technical research, coin basics, and buzz, ensuing within the Sentscore which experiences a basic outlook for each and every coin.” For now, they’re ranking 39 cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin has, from the beginning of this week, made a remarkable recovery from the recent 20% downswing to $27,735. The bellwether cryptocurrency teeters at $33,884 amid the struggle to resume the uptrend owing to the overhead pressure at $34,000.

All ardent Bitcoin and cryptocurrency enthusiasts are aware of the talk regarding institutional investors adopting Bitcoin. Some believe that these high-volume investors' buying pressure is contributing massively to the rally that saw BTC hit a new all-time of $34,810.

ETH/USD marks its first intraday losses in four while declining to $1,080 during early Wednesday. The ethereum buyers seem to have lacked upside momentum following their run-up to the highest since late January 2018 during Monday. Since then, the quote has been marking a lower high formation amid overbought RSI, which in turn favor sellers.

However, 5-day SMA and February 2018 top, respectively near $995 and $983, will follow the $1,000 threshold to challenge the bears’ entry.

After an initial significant 33% rally that started on January 3, Stellar hasn’t paused and has seen another 40% breakout hitting $0.21. After a lot of bullish momentum, the digital asset might be on the verge of a correction, suggests various indicators.

On the 2-hour and 9-hour charts, the TD Sequential indicator has presented a green ‘8’ candle which is usually followed by a sell signal which will be posted within the next hour. Confirmation of both signals would shift the odds in favor of the bears in the short-term. 

A survey published by crypto index fund provider Bitwise Asset Management has found the number of financial advisors allocating capital toward crypto has increased by roughly 50% in one year.

The survey, conducted in partnership with investment website ETF Trends, queried nearly U.S.-based 1,000 financial advisors in December. The findings indicate that 9.4% of client portfolios were exposed to crypto assets — up from 6.3% one year ago.

Of the investment advisors who have not yet allocated to crypto, 15% stated they will “probably” invest in virtual currency during 2021, with 2% stating they will “definitely” invest in the asset class this year.

Financial planners are much more keen to invest their personal wealth in cryptocurrency, with 24% saying they have already done so.

One-quarter of survey participants described “inflation hedging” as crypto’s most-attractive utility, up from 9% the previous year. Demand from clients also appears significant, with 81% of advisers reporting that clients have queried them regarding crypto assets in 2020, up from 76% in 2019.

Despite the growth in financial advisors making allocations to crypto, Bitwise’s CIO remarked that “the survey shows it’s still early days for crypto, with less than 10% of advisors allocating today,” adding:

ETF Trends CEO Tom Lydon stated: "Financial advisors are increasingly looking for exposure to alternative assets, and interest in crypto is rising.”

The number of crypto-naysayers within the investments advisor community is also falling, with the number of respondents predicting BTC will plummet to zero dropping from 14% in 2019 to 8% last year, and then halving to just 4% this year.

Conversely, the number of advisors predicting six-figure Bitcoin prices within five years has increased from 4% to 15% in a single year.

Following another revisit of $40,000, Bitcoin prices have slid back again over the weekend as buying pressure for the king of crypto starts to wane.

Bitcoin was trading at around $35,100 at the time of writing. Since hitting $40k again on January 14, the asset has been down-trending, and it has lost around $5k over the past couple of days.

Saturday saw prices climb as high as $38k, but resistance there proved to be too strong, and the selling resumed, dropping prices to an intraday low of $34k on Sunday, January 17. The chart has shown a lower high, meaning that a larger correction could still be on the cards.

Analyst ‘CryptoHamster’ has been looking at the chart patterns, adding:

According to Bloomberg, JP Morgan strategists said that Bitcoin was in a similar position in late November, except with $20,000 as the test. They added that trend-following traders could propagate the past week’s correction and;

Taking a more bullish approach was Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead, who said that Bitcoin will rise more than 200% in the next eight months to reach $115,000 by August 2021. In a conference call last week, the investor stated;

The total market capitalization for all digital assets remains above a trillion dollars, but only just. Since late last week, around $60 billion has exited the market, according to Coingecko, most of it being Bitcoin-related trades.

Most cryptocurrencies were trading relatively flat on the day during Monday morning’s Asian session. A few were still making minor gains, though, and these include last week’s rocket ship Polkadot which is up 2% on the day to top $17 after reaching an all-time high of $18.25 on Sunday.

Chainlink (LINK) and Binance Coin (BNB) are doing well today, both making 9% to reach $22.30 and $45.84, respectively. Cosmos and Cardano are also gaining as altcoins enjoy the momentum at the start of the week.

BTCS Inc. (OTCQB: BTCS), a publicly traded Company focused on digital assets and Blockchain technologies, recently announced that management invested $1.1 million in the Company.  This is a particularly bullish sign for investors in BTCS, as it provides strong evidence of management’s belief in its business model and growth potential. The round was led by its CEO, Charles Allen, who personally invested $810,000.  

BTCS was one of the first public companies to focus its business model around providing opportunities for investors to indirectly own Bitcoin, Ethereum, other digital assets.  Charles Allen, a highly respected crypto industry pro, has spent the last 7 years building the BTCS platform.  The BTCS crypto portfolio grew 1,327% from December 31, 2019 to December 31, 2020. 

BTCS Stock Continues Its Breakout Move As Bitcoin’s Reaches All Time High of over $41,000

The market value of OTCQB: BTCS has increased 500% in first two weeks of January, its stock price up from $0.20 cents to $1.34 as of January 8, 2021.  Its market cap is now $50M, but relative to its publically traded peers, may still be considered undervalued.  With the bullish trend in crypto currency prices driven by large institutional investors as a hedge against inflation, cyrptocurrencies are reaching all time highs.  While Bitcoin reached an all-time high of over $41,000 on January 9 th , 2021, there are analysts who believe we are still in the very early stages of a very bullish trend for cryptocurrencies.  There are some analysts who believe Bitcoin could reach $400,000, a potential upside of 1,000%.   Cryptocurrency stocks are rising in direct correlation with the movement in crypto prices.

BTCS Growth Strategy, Crypto Portfolio Up 80% in January

The BTCS crypto portfolio increased from approximately $4 million to $7 million in January alone, up 80%, mostly due to management’s well-timed investments in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).  

In fact, with the newly raised capital, the Company recently added to its portfolio of cryptocurrencies with purchases of both Bitcoin and Ethereum. 

Its growth strategy is focused on three areas: (1) Strategic purchases of digital assets to continue to increase the value of its crypto portfolio; (2) making strategic accretive acquisitions of innovative technologies in the crypto space; (3) developing a unique data analytics platform that would allow crypto investors to track crypto holdings for performance metrics and tax purposes.  With this innovative platform, investors would be able to analyse not only their own performance data, but they could also follow and shadow the performance of other crypto investors.  The plan is to make this a subscription based service in which investors can follow and shadow traders with a proven track record of performance. 

Management Aligned With Shareholders

Not only did management invest $1.1 million in the recent financing, the CEO was also granted 2 million restrictive stock units which are only earned upon an uplisting to the NASDAQ or NYSE.  CEO Charles Allen, commented: “My interests are totally aligned with investors. I have made a considerable investment in the Company.”

He also added, “I believe the cryptocurrency space is still in its infancy and there is enormous upside for those who invest in Companies like BTCS. Moreover, at some point we intend to uplist our stock to either the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ stock exchange.  An uplisting to a national stock exchange will give us greater access to capital and further propel our growth opportunities.”

The distribution of this content was paid for by the company.

BTCS Inc. (OTCQB: BTCS), a publicly-traded company focused on digital assets and Blockchain technologies, recently announced that management invested $1.1 million in the Company.  This is a particularly bullish sign for investors in BTCS, as it provides strong evidence of management’s belief in its business model and growth potential. The round was led by its CEO, Charles Allen, who personally invested $810,000.

BTCS was one of the first public companies to focus its business model around providing opportunities for investors to indirectly own Bitcoin, Ethereum, other digital assets.  Charles Allen, a highly respected crypto industry pro, has spent the last 7 years building the BTCS platform.  The BTCS crypto portfolio grew 1,327% from December 31, 2019 to December 31, 2020.

BTCS Stock Continues Its Breakout Move As Bitcoin’s Reaches All Time High of over $41,000

The market value of OTCQB: BTCS has increased 500% in first two weeks of January, its stock price up from $0.20 cents to $1.34 as of January 8, 2021.  Its market cap is now $50M, but relative to its publically traded peers, may still be considered undervalued.  With the bullish trend in cryptocurrency prices driven by large institutional investors as a hedge against inflation, cyrptocurrencies are reaching all time highs.  While Bitcoin reached an all-time high of over $41,000 on January 9th, 2021, there are analysts who believe we are still in the very early stages of a very bullish trend for cryptocurrencies.  There are some analysts who believe Bitcoin could reach $400,000, a potential upside of 1,000%.   Cryptocurrency stocks are rising in direct correlation with the movement in crypto prices.

BTCS Growth Strategy, Crypto Portfolio Up 80% in January

The BTCS crypto portfolio increased from approximately $4 million to $7 million in January alone, up 80%, mostly due to management’s well-timed investments in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

In fact, with the newly raised capital, the Company recently added to its portfolio of cryptocurrencies with purchases of both Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Its growth strategy is focused on three areas: (1) Strategic purchases of digital assets to continue to increase the value of its crypto portfolio; (2) making strategic accretive acquisitions of innovative technologies in the crypto space; (3) developing a unique data analytics platform that would allow crypto investors to track crypto holdings for performance metrics and tax purposes.  With this innovative platform, investors would be able to analyse not only their own performance data, but they could also follow and shadow the performance of other crypto investors.  The plan is to make this a subscription based service in which investors can follow and shadow traders with a proven track record of performance.

Management Aligned With Shareholders

Not only did management invest $1.1 million in the recent financing, the CEO was also granted 2 million restrictive stock units which are only earned upon an uplisting to the NASDAQ or NYSE.  CEO Charles Allen, commented: “My interests are totally aligned with investors. I have made a considerable investment in the Company.”

He also added, “I believe the cryptocurrency space is still in its infancy and there is enormous upside for those who invest in Companies like BTCS. Moreover, at some point we intend to uplist our stock to either the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ stock exchange.  An uplisting to a national stock exchange will give us greater access to capital and further propel our growth opportunities.”

The distribution of this content was paid for by the company.

As Bitcoin cools from its recent all-time high, HSBC has become the latest banking giant to restrict what its customers can invest in by preventing them from transferring any profits from crypto exchanges to their bank accounts.ban

According to a recent report in The Sunday Times, HSBC has blocked transactions to or from crypto exchanges as it takes a heavy-handed approach to Bitcoin and its brethren. A number of U.K. banks have also made moves to prevent their customers from buying crypto assets using their debit or credit cards.

The U.K. is regarded as one of the more anti-crypto nations, alongside the U.S., as its financial institutions and regulators have increasingly strived to stifle the industry.

CNBC host and Onchain Capital founder, Ran Neuner, pointed out that customers will ultimately make the choice to bank elsewhere when faced with draconian restrictions on what they can and can’t do with their own money;

— Ran Neuner (@cryptomanran) January 9, 2021

Jason Yanowitz from Block Works Group added;

“Legacy financial institutions will do everything in their power to stop this movement. They’re literally denying their customers access to the greatest performing asset of the past decade.”

Banks have traditionally been vehemently against decentralized digital currencies as the concept is a direct threat to their profit margins. Banks make money from other people’s money and were the primary catalyst for Satoshi Nakamoto to spawn Bitcoin just over a decade ago.

It is unclear what HSBC is trying to stifle or prevent as their own involvements in global money-laundering rackets have been well documented.

In September 2020, HSBC shared plummeted after leaked documents from the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), involving around $2 trillion in transactions revealed how the bank, among others, has allowed criminals to move dirty money around the world.

The documents revealed that HSBC allowed fraudsters to transfer millions of dollars around the world even after it had learned of the Chinese Ponzi scam, and now it is worried about its customers trading Bitcoin.

According to the BBC, the files showed the investment scam started soon after the bank was fined a record $1.9 billion in the U.S. over money laundering.

Other major banks including JP Morgan Chase, Barclays Bank, Deutsche Bank, and Standard Chartered were also implicated in dodgy dealings according to the leaked documents.

Blocking transactions related to crypto trading is just the latest in banking hypocrisy that customers have to stomach. Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives available.

Article source

“Blockchain and digital assets are new asset classes with the potential to transform commerce on a global scale,” Ric Edelman, council founder and a prominent thought leader in the investment advisory field, said in a statement. The council is an educational organization on digital assets for financial advisors.

The prediction about the growth of value for digital assets is the first of 21 the council issued for the New Year. In addition to growth, the council said digital assets will experience volatility during 2021, which is not unusual for this asset class. Following the first prediction, council also made the following forecasts:

2. Bitcoin’s share of market will rise, as lots of Layer 1 coins will disappear. But Bitcoin will not be the best-performing digital asset.

3. For the financial services industry—financial advisors and their firms as well as asset managers (from mutual funds to hedge funds to pension funds and endowments to corporate balance sheets and family offices)—reputational risk will shift from “Why did you invest in that?” to “Why didn’t you invest in that?” There will be significant window dressing at each quarter-end as investment managers strive to hide their failure to own digital assets

4. Federal acquiescence to (if not outright approval of) digital assets will continue, as evidenced by 2020’s regulatory proposals (stablecoins and prohibition of anonymous wallets, for examples) and regulation by enforcement (SEC’s action against Ripple, for example). The more they regulate, the more legitimate digital assets become, fostering greater adoption. And as the number of investors rises, and the amount of capital invested increases, the harder it will be for the federal government to outlaw it. (Already, more than 20 million people own Bitcoin, including 6% of the U.S. population, with $350 billion invested.) Truly, bitcoin is here to stay.

5. Further progress in the development of CBDCs will continue. By 2025, most countries will have one in use. 6. We will see at least one centralized company launch a decentralized, user-owned/operated crypto-network where the crypto-network has legitimate checks and balances over the company’s actions.

7. Some of the biggest IPOs of the year will involve crypto companies.

8. Top talent from law, engineering and financial services will leave their positions (and often, careers) to take (or create) new ones in the blockchain and digital asset space. It’ll snowball to conspicuous levels.

9. Frauds and scams will increase commensurate with the price of Bitcoin.

10. The SEC will approve a Bitcoin ETF. That will cause the GBTC, ETHE and BITW premiums to evaporate.

Bitwise Asset management stands as a crypto index fund, and has recently published a survey that had discovered something interesting. According to the survey, there was a 50% yearly increase in the number of financial advisors that opt to allocate capital in the crypto space.

The survey itself was done with the partnership of ETF Trends, an investment website. It queried nearly 1,000 financial advisors based within the US, with findings indicate that 9.4% of these client portfolios held exposure within crypto. This stands as a start rise from the previous year’s survey, which showed just 6.3%.

However, the statistics become interesting once you focus in on those still opting out of the crypto space. As it stands now, 15% of these respondents had shown that they would be likely to invest in crypto within this year. Another 2% of these query respondents responded that they would most definitely invest in the asset class in 2021.

Another interesting fact is these financial planners’ personal wealth investments. While they’re not as keen on investing in crypto on their clients’ behalf, 24% of the respondents stated that they already had crypto holdings to speak of.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a monumental impact within the global economy, and this seems to be a key driver as to why financial planners are going into crypto, to begin with. In fact, 54% of these financial planners described the main benefit of crypto exposure as “uncorrelated returns.”

As much as 25% of these survey responded that crypto’s most attractive utility stands as the fact that it can hedge against inflation. This stands as a massive increase compared to the previous year, which saw only 9% of respondents thinking that. Another key factor this survey shows is the client demand. According to the survey, 81% of the advisors have had their clients inquire about cryptocurrencies within the year of 2020. This stands as an increase to 2019’s 76%.

Even with this growth in regard to financial advisors pushing into Bitcoin, the CIO of Bitwise had shown something interesting, as well. They explained that the survey still only shows the crypto space’s early days of mainstream adoption, as less than 10% of advisors are putting money into it. Even so, the interest and adoption are seeing marked growth, with the survey itself hinting at the number doubling within a year or two.

Tom Lyden stands as the CEO of ETF Trends, and gave his own comment, as well. He made a note of the increase in the number of financial advisors that want to gain exposure to alternative assets. As a result of this, crypto is seeing a marked growth in interest.

Nearly 1,000 financial advisors answered a series of questions on cryptoassets and their use in client portfolios. The survey respondents included independent registered investment advisors, broker-dealer representatives, financial planners, and wirehouse representatives from across the U.S.

The information was certain proven to be quite valuable. Among the key findings, it was shown there has been a Nearly 50% increase in the number of advisors allocating to crypto compared With last year. The percentage of advisors allocating to crypto in client portfolios rose from 6.3% to 9.4% in 2020.

Additionally, 17% of advisors are considering making their first allocation to crypto in 2021. Among advisors who are not currently allocating to crypto, 17% are either “definitely” (2%) or “probably” (15%) allocating in 2021. If all do so, it would more than double the number of advisors allocating to crypto, bringing adoption to over 1 in every 5 advisors.

The number one motivation for advisors is crypto’s uncorrelated returns, and inflation hedging is of rising interest. 54% of advisors selected “uncorrelated returns” as a motivation for including crypto in portfolios. This finding was in line with last year’s survey results. “Inflation hedging” saw the largest uptick in interest, with 25% of advisors highlighting it as an attractive feature of crypto, up from just 9% last year.

With that in mind, most advisors are getting questions about crypto from clients. 81% of all financial advisors reported they were receiving questions from clients on crypto in 2020, up from 76% in 2019.

And lastly, advisors are increasingly optimistic about bitcoin’s price. 15% expect the price of bitcoin to exceed $100,000 within five years, up from just 4% in 2019. Meanwhile, the percentage expecting bitcoin’s price to fall to zero decreased sharply, from 8% in last year’s survey to 4% this year.

This continues the trend of the last few years: In Bitwise’s 2019 survey, 14% of surveyed advisors thought the price would fall to zero. It seems nearly two-thirds of advisors changed their minds about that.

“The survey shows it’s still early days for crypto, with less than 10% of advisors allocating today,” said Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer for Bitwise. “At the same time, adoption and interest are growing: The survey suggests the number of advisors allocating could double or more in the year ahead.”

“Financial advisors are increasingly looking for exposure to alternative assets, and interest in crypto is rising,” said Tom Lydon, founder and CEO of ETF Trends. “We’ve also seen a steady progression of interest in crypto from clients of financial advisors in the three years we’ve run this survey together. I see no reason for that to change in the year to come.”

For more information, visit www.bitwiseinvestments.com.

The year 2020 saw the world economy crush under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. But while the global markets suffered, there was also a surge in crypto market activities. The rate of Bitcoin crossed the $20,000 mark in December 2020 and rose to $35,000 within the first few days of January 2021. The price of ethereum also went up, and there was growth in the DeFi (Decentralised Finance) sector in the year 2020. In 2021, as the global economy is limping back to normalcy, what will be the changes in the cryptocurrency market? Will these changes affect Korean startups in blockchain sector? 

The company emphasizes that the predictions are based on research and analysis and do not indicate any digital asset promotion. Koreatechdesk.com presents a quick summary of the 10 predictions by Hashed about various crypto assets and the market. A more detailed outlook about each prediction can be checked on Hashed’s Medium blog. 

Prediction 1 — Bitcoin ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) will be approved for the first time in history

Prediction 2 — The price of Bitcoin will test $100K.

Prediction 3 – Ethereum price will reach new ATH.

Prediction 4 – Stablecoins based on public blockchain will exceed the market capitalization of $100B.

Prediction 5 — DeFi (Decentralised Finance) TVL will surpass $100B.

Prediction 6 — By the end of 2021, DeFi tokens will be 13+ among the market cap top 50 tokens (i.e. 30%+ increase).

Prediction 7 — Total DEX (Decentralized Exchange) transaction volume will grow to $500+ billion in 2021.

Prediction 8 — Some companies will start to issue certain portions of their own stocks as tokens.

Prediction 9 — Starting from 2021, there will be more blockchain company M&As, including DeFi projects.

Prediction 10 — A single NFT (Non-fungible Tokens) will be issued at a price of more than $300k in 2021.