Of the top 25 largest stocks within the S&P 500, eleven of these companies make use of blockchain or crypto in some form or another, with 22 companies within the S&P 500 using blockchain and crypto in total.A large number of so-called Big Tech firms offer various enterprise blockchain services. Microsoft, which is second place in terms of market cap, leverages its Azure Marketplace in order to offer blockchain-as-a-service. Amazon, which is third on the list, offers a similar service, but doing so through AWS. Alongside this, Amazon is making plans to explore crypto payments, as well.Facebook, being number four,  has its namesake Diem Association (Formerly the Libra association) as well as its namesake stablecoins. Google, standing at number 5, also boasts the Google Cloud division’s public blockchain nodes.Tesla, who stands at number six, had already invested a whopping $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, causing a bull run all on its own through this action within the BTC markets. Furthermore. The company is considering adding crypto payment options for its vehicles.An array of other tech companies have also taken part in crypto. Oracle, AT&T, and Cisco (Numbers 59, 28, and 29, respectively) have all started offering enterprise blockchain services. Alongside this, IBM, number 66, as well as Intel, ranked 20th, have become involved with the Hyperledger blockchain. Salesforce, ranked 26th, opted to develop its own blockchain on Hyperledger Sawtooth.The world’s top payment companies have long since been involved with cryptocurrencies. PayPal, ranked 14th, started crypto trading support back in October, with plans to expand the offering already in place. Visa, standing at 12th place, has a number of partner companies already to support crypto payments cards. Lastly, Mastercard, which is 17th, has recently announced plans to support crypto conversions, as well.Even various financial institutions and banks are going for crypto, after they’ve probably seen that not joining it would be catastrophic. JPMorgan, ranked 10th by market cap, even went as far as to issue its own stablecoin, creatively named the JPMCoin. Wells Fargo, standing at number 53, joined up with the offering of its own stablecoin.BNY Mellon, Blackrock, and Goldman Sachs (Numbers 198, 71, and 69, respectively) have all announced on planning to enter the crypto space. Blackrock is gearing towards a crypto fund, while the other two are planning on dedicated crypto custody services.

With less than a month before the calendar turns to a new year, the cryptocurrency world has benefited from potential new players’ news. In December, one of the world’s largest index providers announced that it would begin to provide cryptocurrency indexing services in 2021. According to S&P’s announcement, the company will provide a service that will enable clients to create custom indices. The S&P services will include benchmarking tools related to cryptocurrencies. S&P Dow Jones Indices will partner with Lukka, a crypto data firm, for pricing data. S&P’s goal is to capitalize on the popularity of cryptocurrencies and bring price transparency to the marketplace.What is Driving Bitcoin PricesThe news that S&P is getting into the cryptocurrency space should not be a surprise. In November, Japanese investment bank Nomura Holdings launched a hybrid custodian tool aimed at institutional investors. Bitcoin hit an all-time high in December. A new high always captures the general publics’ attention. Other players are also getting into the cryptocurrency space. Crypto indexing products in the market include the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index (BGCI) and the ICE Cryptocurrency Data Feed, which will also provide indexed products. Additionally, in November, PayPal announced that customers can now buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin from their PayPal accounts. PayPal and Square, two payment processors, have users that are very active in the cryptocurrency trading space. Approximately $16 million worth of bitcoin is added to the market every day. According to a hedge fund, Pantera Capital, PayPal, and Square users scoop up 100% of these new bitcoins. During the past three months alone, Square users bought and sold $1.6 billion in bitcoin. The demand for bitcoin is rising at record rates, which is continuing to lift its price.Lastly, investors are leery of holding the US dollar as the reserve currency. The dollar has long been used as the reserve currency around the globe. The combination of messages from the Trump administration and the recession in the US that was generated by the pandemic has conspired to weigh on the value of the US dollar. The dollar against a basket of currencies has declined to a 31-month low in December and is poised to move lower. US interest rates are at zero, and the Federal Reserve and the US government are poised to add stimulus. This will likely further weigh on US yields pushing the value of the greenback lower. While bitcoin’s exchange rate is measured again in many currencies, the rise against the US dollar is the most widely watched. Technical AnalysisThe technicals are also helping to drive prices higher. The December all-time highs made some mainstream newspapers, which helps to push the price of bitcoin higher. In August, the 20-week moving average crossed above the 50-week moving average, which means a long-term uptrend is now in place.Momentum is also positive. The MACD (moving average convergence divergence) index generated a crossover buy signal in October. This occurs as the MACD line (the 12-week moving average minus the 26-week moving average) crosses above the MACD signal line (the 9-week moving average of the MACD line). The MACD histogram also generated a buy signal. The MACD histogram sliced through the zero-index level and continues to accelerate upward, reflecting accelerating positive momentum. One caveat is that the fast stochastic, a momentum oscillator, is currently printing a reading of 91. The fast stochastic generates readings between 1 and 100. Readings above 80 are considered overbought, while a reading below 20 is deemed to be oversold. The current reading of 91 is well above the overbought trigger level of 80 and could foreshadow a correction.The Bottom LineNew players are making their way into the cryptocurrency space, which will increase transparency. The announcement that S&P will introduce new indices will provide more institutional players access and generate more interest in bitcoin. The price of bitcoin versus the US dollar hit an all-time high in December, which has increased interest in the cryptocurrency market.Additionally, the US dollar continues to face headwinds, helping to buoy the demand for bitcoin. With the greenback at 31-month lows against a basket of currencies, the dollar’s value as the reserve currency is easing. Lastly, the announcement that PayPal will allow vendors worldwide to make payments in bitcoin will likely accelerate the use of cryptocurrencies as a payment mechanism. This announcement that came in November helped lift bitcoin, which eventually hit all-time highs in December. The outlook for cryptocurrency remains positive, and new larger players will generate transparency and greater interest in these products.

Bitcoin has “a lot of similarities” with gold, and consumer fears of the cryptocurrency being stolen are fading, according to a new report from a unit of the bond-rating and investment index firm Standard & Poor’s.“Concerns of bitcoin theft were rampant a few years ago,” Jim Wiederhold, associate director for commodities and real assets for S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in excerpts of the report emailed by a press representative for the New York-based company. “As bitcoin becomes more mainstream, these worries are fading, though lingering technology and exchange counterparts risks remain.” S&P joins a growing list of Wall Street firms to weigh in on bitcoin after prices for the cryptocurrency quadrupled in 2020, generating fresh interest among big institutional investors including BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager. Some highlights from the S&P report:Bitcoin prices have a one-year volatility of 82%, multiples of the 15% seen in gold prices and the 26% volatility shown by the S&P 500 Index of large U.S. stocks, according to the report.The report comes as S&P itself is angling to get into the crypto market. The firm announced last month a partnership with data provider Lukka to launch crypto indexes in 2021.

In a recent article, Reuters reported that S&P Dow Jones Indices plans to launch indexes based on the performance of more than 550 top-of-the-line digital currencies, including Bitcoin.The indexes will be launched with help from cryptocurrency company Lukka headquartered in New York.This will be the most recent financial giant to enter the crypto industry.S&P Dow Jones Indices will enable its customers to make customized indexes, as well as other benchmarking tools based on crypto, according to a statement by Lukka and S&P.The two companies intend to provide more pricing data to investors so that they can seamlessly work with the new type of assets and face fewer risks on these volatile and speculative markets.Global head of innovation and strategy at S&P, Peter Roffman, believes that, now that the crypto industry has matured enough, it is time to offer reliable and user-friendly tools to its market participants.The entrance of S&P Dow Jones Indices could ensure that crypto will take a step closer to becoming mainstream assets.Yuri is a crypto journalist interested in technology and technical innovations. He has been in crypto since 2017. Believes that blockchain and cryptocurrencies have a potential to transform the world in the future in many of its aspects. ‘Hodls’ major cryptocurrencies and has written for multiple crypto media outlets. His articles have been quoted by such crypto influencers as Tyler Winklevoss, John McAfee, CZ Binance, Max Keiser, etc.Currently Yuri is a news writer at U.Today and can be contacted at yuri.molchan@u.today.Yuri is a crypto journalist interested in technology and technical innovations. He has been in crypto since 2017. Believes that blockchain and cryptocurrencies have a potential to transform the world in the future in many of its aspects. ‘Hodls’ major cryptocurrencies and has written for multiple crypto media outlets. His articles have been quoted by such crypto influencers as Tyler Winklevoss, John McAfee, CZ Binance, Max Keiser, etc.Currently Yuri is a news writer at U.Today and can be contacted at yuri.molchan@u.today.

The investor, who goes by Joe-M-4 on Reddit, claimed to have put $1,000 in the top ten largest cryptocurrencies by market cap on January 1, 2020.  On January 1, 2021, that portfolio was worth $2,395, an astonishing increase of 139.47%. By comparison, the S&P 500 grew just 16%. Joe’s $1,000 in crypto finished 2019 up by about 2% while the S&P 500 ended the year up 29%. And in the 2018 iteration of the experiment, that initial $1,000 in the top ten cryptos was worth just $152 at the end of the year—a loss of 85%. The S&P 500, in contrast, dropped by just 6%. XRP started the year in third place and was in third place at the start of December, too, before its creators were hit with an enormous lawsuit from the SEC. It’s now in fourth, but was briefly in fifth earlier this month. Despite the global financial crisis brought on by the pandemic, traditional finance actually did pretty well this year. But crypto did even better. The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.

The S&P Dow Jones Indices in collaboration with the digital currency solutions company Lukka will be launching a digital currency index in 2021.“As the market for cryptocurrency assets has evolved in recent years, investor interest in benchmarking and index-based solutions based on crypto and blockchain assets has grown and reinforced the need for reliable pricing data,” says the official announcement.The S&P DJI will be using data from Lukka to create the index, and the team at the S&P DJI believes that the introduction of the digital currency index will “make it easier for investors to access this emerging technology-driven asset class while potentially mitigating some of the common risks associated with this traditionally speculative market.”Some believe that the creation of the digital currency index will allow asset-management firms to easily build digital currency-related investment vehicles–something that the digital currency industry has been anticipating for many years now. Why now?For several years,  financial management companies have been trying to get a digital currency ETF listed on the US stock markets. But the S&P DJI has decided that now is the time to launch a digital currency index because of all of the buzz around the blockchain and digital currency industry.There is a renewed interest in the digital currency markets at the moment, partially because the digital currency markets are at the beginning of a bubble, but also, because many individuals believe that governments around the world are going to have to print more money to provide relief to the damage done by the coronavirus. The individuals who believe inflation is on the way are investing in digital currencies because they can serve as a hedge against inflation, increasing in value as the value of the dollar goes down.“For more than a century, S&P Dow Jones Indices has been a pioneer in creating innovative and relevant indices and benchmarks that reflect the global market’s ongoing growth and evolution,” said Peter Roffman, Global Head of Innovation and Strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “With digital assets such as cryptocurrencies becoming a rapidly emerging asset class, the time is right for independent, reliable, and user-friendly benchmarks.New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeek’s Bitcoin for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoin—as originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto—and blockchain.

Yesterday S&P Global Ratings listed a job advert for a blockchain engineering lead. This is the third division of S&P Global to adopt blockchain technology. S&P Global Ratings provides credit ratings for issuers of debt, securities and structure financed instruments like collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).The job listing requires enterprise blockchain skills, including Hyperledger Fabric, and mentions the distributed file storage protocol IPFS. It doesn’t outline any specific use cases. One obvious application would be to verify that a rating document is authentic and matches the one published by S&P. Hence, investors that rely on the rating don’t need to worry about whether the document has been manipulated post-publication.In December, S&P Global agreed to acquire IHS Markit for $44 billion, a firm that also has various blockchain interests, including a stake in DLT-based forex solution Cobalt.In other index news, just this week, Coindesk acquired Tradeblock, which runs the XBX pricing index for Bitcoin. Sister company Grayscale Bitcoin Trust uses the same index to price its GBTC.Meanwhile, commodities division S&P Global Platts is working with the Port of Rotterdam’s BlockLab on a decentralized energy grid project powered by blockchain.

The volatility of crypto prices has been a talking point for years. Despite Bitcoin’s recent bullish run, there are still many who argue that the asset isn’t safe due to its wild price swings. Naysayers have always fallen on this argument as their last resort against the leading cryptocurrency. However, investment management firm VanEck recently shared some significant insights on this metric.Over the weekend, the New York-based firm, which manages about $49 billion in assets, published a report comparing Bitcoin’s volatility to the stocks on the S&P 500 index. The index measures the performances of 500 of the country’s largest companies, representing their risks and returns.As the VanEck report showed, Bitcoin is less volatile than 112 of the 500 stocks on the S&P over 90 days from November 13. When adjusted to 365 days, the leading cryptocurrency was less volatile than 145 stocks.Challenging some of the conventional thoughts on Bitcoin’s volatility, the investment management firm explained: VanEck’s report challenges several thoughts from various top figures in the traditional financial space. Earlier this year, hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio refused to name Bitcoin as a potential safe-haven asset for investors looking to prepare themselves for a tough 2020. Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Dalio told CNBC that investors would need to divest themselves of cash holdings and build diversified portfolios. When asked about Bitcoin, he bashed the asset for failing to function as a currency due to its volatility. Just last week, Fox Business took the same route, bashing Bitcoin in an article for its volatility. The piece took quotes from notable crypto skeptics, warning readers that digital assets’ volatilities meant that they had “no real use.”It goes without saying that most of these detractors have been wrong. Bitcoin already blew other investment options out of the water in the last decade, delivering 90,000 percent in returns. There was hope that it would continue on that trajectory, and it has. Even at that, the coronavirus had severely impacted many stocks on the S&P. This means that the index can’t hope to match Bitcoin’s returns.   For investors who purchased Bitcoin at the beginning of the pandemic, the asset has proven to be more than the safe haven they were looking for. Companies like MicroStrategy and Square have reaped significant benefits following massive Bitcoin purchases, while those that opted to focus on the traditional stock market remain hopeful for modest results to close out the year.

In March, Bitcoin collapsed to an annual low; on some trading floors, the coin tested values ​​of $3,700. Since then, the cost of BTC has added about 100%, and now Bitcoin is kept in the region of $6800. Many analysts systematically draw attention to the increasing correlation between the price of Bitcoin and US stock indicators. Recently, the interdependence of the first cryptocurrency and the American index S&P 500 reached a two-year maximum. This indicator of business activity began to grow last week. Over the past seven days, the S&P 500 jumped 25% — this is the largest weekly growth indicator since 1974. Goldman Sachs investment bank strategists published a study earlier this week that predicted that by the end of 2020 the S&P 500 would exceed 3,000 points. The last session in the stock market ended with an increase in the indicator to 2761 points. Analysts concluded that the US stock market felt the bottom in mid-March. So far, economic data remains weak and a take-off of business activity is unlikely. However, as the situation improves and thanks to incentive measures by the US authorities, capital inflows to high-tech sectors of the economy (including the crypto sphere) will increase again. This trend will certainly have a positive impact on the position of Bitcoin as a key tool in the cryptocurrency industry. Author: Featured image credit: Written by

The investor, who goes by Joe-M-4 on Reddit, claimed to have put $1,000 in the top ten largest cryptocurrencies by market cap on January 1, 2020.  On January 1, 2021, that portfolio was worth $2,395, an astonishing increase of 139.47%. By comparison, the S&P 500 grew just 16%. Joe’s $1,000 in crypto finished 2019 up by about 2% while the S&P 500 ended the year up 29%. And in the 2018 iteration of the experiment, that initial $1,000 in the top ten cryptos was worth just $152 at the end of the year—a loss of 85%. The S&P 500, in contrast, dropped by just 6%. XRP started the year in third place and was in third place at the start of December, too, before its creators were hit with an enormous lawsuit from the SEC. It’s now in fourth, but was briefly in fifth earlier this month. Despite the global financial crisis brought on by the pandemic, traditional finance actually did pretty well this year. But crypto did even better. Source: decrypt

The S&P Down Jones Indices, a unit of market data provider S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI), is collaborating with Lukka Inc to introduce a global cryptocurrency index sometime next year.Lukka is a New York-headquartered software company centered around blockchain technology and the digital assets domain.What Happened: S&P DJI will incorporate Lukka’s proprietory digital asset pricing data to create custom solutions for indexing and benchmarking."With digital assets such as cryptocurrencies becoming a rapidly emerging asset class, the time is right for independent, reliable and user-friendly benchmarks,” S&P DJI Global Head of Innovation and Strategy Peter Roffman said, talking about the need for a cryptocurrency index.Why Does It Matter: Bitcoin has been trading near all-time-high levels above $19,000 this week and the mainstream interest related to investments in the digital asset space is piqued again.The latest announcement by S&P DJI follows the recent $44 billion acquisition of IHS Markit Ltd (NYSE: INFO). The all-stock deal, announced last week, will give S&P 67.75% controlling interest in the newly formed entity, whereas IHS Market shareholders with control the remaining stake.In mid-November, IHS Markit signed up with Lukka and agreed to bundle the cryptocurrency software company’s products along with its own offerings.Price Action: SPGI stock closed 2% lower on Thursday at $326.61. Bitcoin traded 0.8% higher at $19,306.11.

The latest reports state that there is a big move to integrate crypto with traditional finance. Interestingly, 550 coins are set to appear in the new indexes from 2021.S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI), which is a joint venture between the CME Group, S&P Global, and News Corp, will introduce crypto indexes in the coming year. In a December 2 press release, S&P Dow Jones Indices referred to bitcoin and altcoins as an ‘emerging asset class’.The company will partner with Lukka, a United States blockchain data provider, to launch these indexes, aiming to cover a reported 550 cryptos. Global Head of Innovation and Strategy at S&P DJI, Peter Roffman, said in a press release:This move marks the latest commitment from Wall Street to embrace cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, showing the growing interest from the institutional investors. The CEO of Lukka, Robert Materazzi, said:This press release did not highlight which particular crypto will get covered or the strategy behind their selection if this is not entirely based on market capitalization. The latest move comes as bitcoin sets new all-time highs on several exchanges and challenges the resistance that has formed at $20K.