February 2021 – Holpop News

Swiss financial institution Bordier & Cie, which has been running for more than 170 years, has announced a collaboration with Sygnum digital asset bank to allow its customers to buy crypto assets.

Bordier’s customers will buy Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Tezos (XTZ) via integration with Sygnum’s business-to-business banking.

Bordier managing partner Evrard Bordier said:

“By partnering with Sygnum Bank, we are providing our clients with a one-stop, integrated solution while empowering them to invest in this new, high growth asset class with complete trust.”

The move was motivated by rising demands of customers seeking to diversify their investments with new properties, Bordier noted. “The company highlighted the lack of correlation between the cryptocurrency and conventional financial markets, describing crypto assets as a “powerful tool to enhance diversification and achieve superior risk-adjusted returns.”

India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Unocoin, has adopted the blockchain-based Unstoppable Domains, which simplifies crypto transactions by turning blockchain addresses into human-readable web URLs.

The collaboration between Unocoin and Unstoppable Domains, both backed by Silicon Valley founder Tim Draper, was announced on Wednesday, and is intended to minimize remittance costs and ease the transaction process for the 1.2 million users of the exchange.

Unstoppable Domains turns crypto addresses into decentralized websites on the Ethereum and Zilliqa blockchains. Instead of sending coins to a 42-character blockchain address, Unstoppable Domains allows users to create simple URLs ending in “.crypto” and “.zil” extensions. Domain names need only be purchased once, and then exist forever on the blockchain without requiring any renewal or maintenance fees.

Ethereum fees are at a historic high, but even so, with a gas charge of $36,000 for a single purchase, one Uniswap customer charged way over the current standard.

Crypto twitter was overwhelmed with concerns about the excessive costs for accessing the Ethereum network, but only one DeFi user’s fat fingered error was compounded by the prices.

The ridiculous fee turned out to be a typing mistake because two prices in gwei were manually entered together by the customer. The 500,801 gwei charge was intended to be one (500 gwei) or the other (801 gwei), but not both.

At the time it was made, it came to a whopping 24.94 ETH, or nearly $36,000

Average transaction fees have skyrocketed to an all-time high of around $40 according to Bitinfocharts.com, after surging more than 1,000% since the beginning of the year. Etherscan’s gas tracker is reporting an average of $23.85 for an ERC-20 transfer and $73.79 for a Uniswap swap at the moment.

The unexpected $11,500 drop of Bitcoin (BTC) liquidated more than $1.64 billion worth of BTC futures contracts. This huge amount represents 8.5% of the entire available interest of $19.5 billion, which, by coincidence, has just hit its all-time peak, reports Cointelegraph today.

Although these are significant figures, they are proportionally lower than the $1-billion futures liquidation on Nov. 26, 2020. At that time, the 16% correction that followed Bitcoin price testing a $16,300 low reduced the open interest by 17%.

Open interest, as traders use excessive leverage, will vary more strongly. Normal market volatility can cause cascading liquidations as this happens, there is reducing the outstanding number of open contracts.

Anthony Scaramucci, founder of asset management company Skybridge Capital, has estimated that the price of bitcoin will hit $100,000 by the end of the year purely because of supply and demand. “You do not have a lot of supply and very heavy demand out there,” he said. Currently, his company has over half a billion Bitcoin dollars.

During an interview with CNBC last week, Skybridge Capital founder and managing partner Anthony Scaramucci spoke about his expectations for the price of bitcoin and the investment of his company in the cryptocurrency.

Noting that although its supply is declining, he sees ferocious demand for bitcoin, Scaramucci expects the price of the cryptocurrency to double by the end of the year. The founder of Skybridge Capital noted: “I do think we see $100,000 in this coin before year-end … It’s just a supply and demand situation. You don’t have a lot of supply out there and very heavy demand.”

On Feb. 18 as Bitcoin (BTC) trades near $51,000 and Ether (ETH) is within reach of the $2,000 level for the first time as retail traders remain long while pro traders are less optimistic in the short term. So, bullishness in the cryptocurrency market continues these days.

Bitcoin price has pulled back slightly from recent all-time highs to a current value of $51,924 while ETH price has increased 5.66% to a record high of $1,950, shows data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView.

Chad Steinglass, Head of Trading at CrossTower, has identified the next wall of resistance for Bitcoin around $53,000 while its current support level is around $51,000, creating a “narrow channel” that is unlikely to “hold for very long.”

When it comes to Ether (ETH), Steinglass indicated that the recent selloff in altcoins “dragged ETH down along with them,” but as the selloff subsided on Feb. 18 Ether was able to “break free and drive higher.”

According to local media reports, a government-owned company in Dubai has begun accepting bitcoin, ether and tether as payment for its services.

Kiklabb is a free trade zone that lets businesses set up shops in the United Arab Emirates in Dubai, an affluent region and emirate (UAE). Kiklabb issues trade and other licenses as well as processes visas.

The entity also leases office space to its customers on-board the Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise liner anchored at Port Rashid in Dubai. Payments for these and other services can now be made in bitcoin (BTC), the Gulf News reported on Feb. 16.

Tasawar Ulhaq, chief executive officer of Kiklabb, said the decision was made in response to a “growing interest in cryptocurrency with several customers in blockchain and fintech (financial technology) sectors.”

On Wednesday, data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView saw BTC/USD crossing the $50,000 level of resistance again, heading into uncharted territory this time.

For the first time ever, Tuesday had seen Bitcoin reach $50,000, the amount however failing to last for more than a couple of minutes.

As Cointelegraph reported, various indicators nonetheless suggest that Bitcoin is far from violating any uptrend, being at the start, rather than the end of its bull run.

“$50,000 #Bitcoin is the new normal,” Blockstream CSO Samson Mow declared on Wednesday.

On-chain analytics provider, Glassnode, has published data revealing that Bitcoin miners are accumulating while long-term investors are taking profits.

Glassnode’s report shows that mining outflows have dried up during February so far, despite January seeing strong sales from miners.

The report asserts that during bull markets, miners and longer-term buyers are the two biggest Bitcoin sellers. According to Glassnode, declining mining outflows may be inferred as bullish, with miners have either already paid their operational costs or stockpiling coins in reaction to Tesla’s $1.5 billion Bitcoin investment:

“This suggests that miners have either completed adequate sales to cover costs, or could also mean they see Tesla’s vote of confidence as fair reason to keep a strong grip on their treasuries.”

The conclusive breakout of Bitcoin (BTC) over $50,000 will have to wait longer to materialize as spot purchasing pressure on Coinbase Pro demonstrates signs of weakening, at least in the short term.

The Coinbase Premium Index, which measures the gap between the BTC price on Coinbase Pro and Binance, has flipped negative, according to CryptoQuant. In other words, selling pressure on Coinbase appears to be strengthening compared with other exchanges like Binance.

A precursor to short-term resistance may be a pessimistic reading on the Coinbase Premium Index. When the premium is high, on the other hand, it implies heavy spot purchasing pressure on Coinbase.

Based on the index, in the near term, CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju thinks topping $50,000 “looks pretty tough.”

Holpop News

One of Switzerland’s leading banks now offers crypto trading

Despite the nation’s imminent Bitcoin ban, India’s largest crypto-currency exchange will use Unstoppable Domains to build and host blockchain-based URLs.

As EIP-1559 draws closer, DeFi user pays $36K for one Uniswap transaction.

Any over-leveraged retail investors may have been washed out by today’s $1.6 billion Bitcoin liquidation event, but the overall market is still balanced in favour of bulls.

Due to ‘heavy demand’ and decreasing supply,’ Skybridge Capital Founder predicts $100K Bitcoin price this year.

Breakout of Altcoins to new peaks when the price of Bitcoin checks a key support

Dubai Government Licensing Entity Now Accepts Bitcoin for Payments.

Bitcoin hits a new high of $51.3K

While long-term investors take profits Bitcoin miners are holding.

Bitcoin’s Coinbase premium turned negative.

Archive for February 2021