Despite its ongoing legal complications, Ripple (XRP) has big plans for its immediate future. Facing SEC allegations that it raised over 1 billion dollars through the sale of unregistered ongoing digital asset securities, the price of Ripple has fluctuated wildly as the merit of the case is assessed by the investment community.
According to the SEC, other financial entities such as Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) do not qualify as a security as they are sufficiently decentralised. The SEC only regulates securities and not currencies or commodities, so the definition is all important.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse is confident his company would be “on the leading” side of the impending crypto IPO boom during the Davos conference in January 2020. The market seems to agree with a bullish Ripple assessment, as evidenced by its strong recent growth.
XRP – 3 day chart
Ripple’s legal team continues to insist that it falls outside of the SEC’s charter and that the Federal case is “dead wrong.” With a strong legal defence team that is well resourced and funded, the market is betting that Ripple will prevail. The management team is then determined to press ahead with a public offering that will raise its profile and a significant pool of funds.
The Coinbase IPO demonstrated the depth of investor appetite for exposure to the growing crypto sector, and Ripple seems determined to tap into this bullish sentiment.
The world’s most valuable cryptocurrency is “disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization” says billionaire Charlie Munger, famed as Warren Buffet’s right hand man during Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting.
Charlie Munger, 97, is worth more than $2billion and has spent close to a century being a huge benificiary of the prevailing economic system.
But Munger, vice president of the holding company Berkshire Hathaway, does not appear to be very keen on the emerging global financial system being built around crypto.
Speaking during a Q&A session at an annual shareholder meeting that’s claimed to be the most watched business event of the year, the super-rich nonagenarian was asked if he still considered Bitcoin to be “worthless artificial gold”.
“Of course I hate the Bitcoin success. I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth, nor do I like just shuffling out of your extra billions of billions of dollars to somebody who just invented a new financial product out of thin air.”
“I think I should say modestly that the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.”
Charlie Munger
Charlie Munger speaking at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting
Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, dodged the question.
“I knew there’d be a question on Bitcoin” he said. “I thought to myself: ‘Well, I’ve watched these politicians dodge questions all the time.'”
“I always find it kind of disgusting when they do it. But the truth is, I’m going to dodge that question because we’ve probably got hundreds of thousands of people watching this that own Bitcoin, and we’ve got two people that are short. We’ve got a choice of making 400,000 people mad at us and unhappy and/or making two people happy. That’s just a dumb equation.”
Warren Buffet
Berkshire Hathaway is a corporate giant which owns many famous companies including Duracell and Fruit of The Loom.
Fool’s Gold Or The New Standard?
Munger has previously said that Bitcoin is “too volatile to serve well as a medium of exchange”.
Both Dogecoin (DOGE) and SafeMoon (SAFEMOON) have recently hit their all-time highs as social media and search volumes continue to soar.
These coins are considered “meme coins” because they currently have minimal intrinsic and utility value. Their value is purely speculative with people buying in expecting to sell at a higher price.
DOGE Reaches 1 Million Followers on Twitter
A massive milestone just achieved for Dogecoin reaching 1 Million followers on Twitter. While Safemoon’s following is also booming as it reaches over 450k followers on Twitter – growing on average +13,370 per day.
Hype coin Safemoon is a new project that has entered the space and is similarly using the power of popularity on social media to push their agenda online through word of mouth promotion. The very clever and deliberate choice of name alone shows Safemoon’s well thought out PR strategy, targeting the meme crypto culture perfectly and appealing directly to the specific type of investor they are trying to attract: Integrating the most popular emoji in cryptocurrency; the Rocket, so seamlessly, as if it was made just for them.
Safemoon positions themselves as the people’s crypto, adopting a deflationary model like the King of all Coins; Bitcoin, while also being cheap and accessible like Dogecoin. Safemoon encourages buyers to HODL by rewarding holders 5% of the cash earned from sellers; while discouraging sellers by penalising those who cash out 10%. Safemoon have carefully created their supply with built in marketing. Token burns, decrease the supply and ultimately shoot up the price, increasing the popularity and therefore the value of the coin. Safemoon is currently the #1 most searched cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap, surpassing Dogecoin, which has been bumped to #2.
As news keeps coming and Elon keeps Tweeting, waves of people FOMO in hoping for a moonshot. People flock like sheep to buy more Dogecoin, as once again the coin gains momentum, turning the charts green as it heads back up towards it’s all time high.
On April 28 Elon Tweeted “The Dogefather SNL May 8”, referring to his upcoming hosting spot airing on “Saturday Night Live”. The tweet has already received over 330K Likes! As could be expected this has resulted in Dogecoin pumping as traders bet on a price surge of the meme-based crypto after mass television audience attention.
There are many indications that we’re still in a crypto bull market, so let’s take a look at some popular coins and how they have been performing.
Which Coin Won The Last 100 Days?
The last 100 days have been a turbulent period for crypto enthusiasts. There have been some coins that delivered phenomenal returns, while others have been less impressive. Let’s compare some of the big players.
Source: Coin Metrics Network Data Charts
$100 worth of the relative safety of Bitcoin (BTC) puchased 100 days ago is now worth $135, not too shabby compared to bank interest and government bonds.
$100 worth of Ethereum (ETH) purchased 100 days ago is currently worth a more exciting $186 today driven largely by the explsion in NFTs.
Meanwhile, $100 worth of Uniswap (UNI) has rocketed to $401 in the past 100 days as traffic to the platform continues to grow.
But the real winner of the past 100 days is Dogecoin (DOGE), which would have seen $100 multiplied to a whopping $2,742 during the same timeframe. Such returns are not even considered feasible by those that invest in stocks or other ‘real world’ commodities.
Dogecoin’s Long-term Prospects
For Dogecoin investors there is a significant probability that the coin may retrace its spectacular recent run. Many serious crypto thinkers believe it to be something of a joke that does not deserve its multi-billion dollar market cap. But occasionally markets behave strangely as the past 100 days shows. A single tweet from Elon Musk can send the Dogecoin price vertical. Its value is not based on solid fundamentals or impressive whitepapers, it’s a vehicle for those enjoy memes and don’t take life too seriously.
The price of Bitcoin has been on a roller-coaster of instability in recent days, but what is fuelling the dramatic slumps and surges?
Whenever the price of a trillion dollar asset takes a sizeable tumble, speculation will abound as to the drivers of such instability. Are whales driving down the Bitcoin price so they can increase their vast holdings at discounted rates? Are Chinese electrical blackouts to blame for the falls? Or are possible changes to US capital gain taxation laws spooking crypto investors?
Biden’s Proposed Tax Laws
Under President Biden’s proposed changes, capital gains taxes rates could hit over 43% for high income earners. This is a huge disincentive for investors who have profited from the surge in crypto markets as they may have to hand over a huge slice of any windfalls to Uncle Sam. Trading crypto is a volatile enough exercise without capital gain taxes, especially for newcomers who are not accustomed to the manic swings like unflappable long-term Bitcoin holders.
While there is no single answer, large and sudden falls generally indicate heavily leveraged trading positions being cleaned out. Unlike the stock market, crypto markets trade 24/7, and a fall in price while an investor sleeps has the potential to wipe out his/her positions. Rapidly falling stocks can also be suspended by an exchange so investors can pump liquidity into their trading accounts, but crypto markets are not equipped with the same circuit-breakers. Short positions are therefore ruthlessly liquidated, thus exacerbating the downward momentum.
Bitcoin perpetual graph for leveraged traders via TradingView
Options To Short Bitcoin
What we know for sure is that there are many more options to short Bitcoin than ever before. Bearish investors can now short sell Coinbase, Tesla, MicroStrategy, or the Bitcoin itself to drive prices lower. For large institutional investors, this provides a massive opportunity to profit from the growing crypto space. Investment banks have long used their financial weight and extreme leverage to drive down prices of stocks and commodities such as gold. Bitcoin is now big enough to attract their attention. Much can be gained by short-selling assets that then decline precipitously.
For long-term crypto investors, wild swings are of mild concern. But for leveraged traders on Binance or other platforms, they are make or break occurrences. A correction of 2% or 3% has the potential to wipe them out. As crypto markets continue to expand and gain wider exposure, and large institutional investors enter the game, we can expect more not less of the roller-coaster style swings.
Approximately $2.5 million in Binance Coin (BNB) was drained from trading pools in the Binance Smart Chain DeFi exchanges after the anticipated launch of TurtleDex.
TurtleDex advertised itself as a DeFi storage platform and claimed it could help “keep data and preserve files without needing to keep them on their computer”. With the pre-sale launch on 15 March, the team hit their target in two hours, raising approximately 9000 BNB.
After the fundraising round, the funds were drained from the TurtleDex liquidity pool, moved to PancakeSwap and ApeSwap exchanges. From there, the funds were converted to Ethereum (ETH) and sent to nine separate wallets on the Binance Exchange.
Attention – The Turtledex (#TTDX) team has exit scammed.
We are just as shocked as everyone to see this unfold.
This type of scam is called exit scam, also known as “rug pull”. Shortly after it occurred, the owners deleted TurtleDex’s Telegram, official website, Twitter profile, and other social pages.
TurtleDex Twitter page
Distressed investors looked toward Binance for assistance and have reached out to CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ). They will need to keep their fingers crossed that Binance will step in and freeze the funds that were sent to Binance wallets.
Although with no formal response as of yet, investors will need to hope that CZ makes good on his word to assist with recovering funds lost in rug pulls based on a comment made a few days prior to the incident.
The community is up in arms about the event and is questioning the effectiveness of contract-audits since this is not the first exit scam to hit Binance Smart Chain.
So now the question is; who should the accountability be left with. The anon team is obviously to blame but what about @Jetfuelfinance & @ape_swap who've been in contact with @turtle_dex to setup & offer liquidty staking options for $TTDX. What due diligence was done?#BSC$BNBhttps://t.co/ddeNT4Hd20
It looks like Cardano will be used as the decentralized financial platform as announced by Charles Hoskinson – CEO of IOG at the Blockchain Africa Summit.
The introduction of Cardano to Africa, initially through Ethiopia, Hoskinson has predicted that the “miracle of Africa” will make the emergence of China as a world power look small in comparison, as millions of people are onboarded onto Cardano.
Cardano is an open platform that seeks to provide economic identity to the billions who lack it by providing decentralized applications to manage identity, value and governance
Cardano, The Blockchain That Can Run an Entire Country
IOG (Input Output Global) is building a decentralized finance system on Cardano (ADA) that aims to unite the world’s economies. IOG CEO Charles Hoskinson revealed the formation of a partnership with Ethiopia two years after Cardano protocol was constructed. And after building many local relationships, training staff, and overcoming obstacles, the platform is at a turning point on the continent where millions of users will join the Cardano ecosystem though public and private partnerships.
In the next 5 years, our staff in Africa will grow from dozens to hundreds, if not thousands. Instead of having one headquarters, we will probably have 4 or 5 across the continent.
IOG CEO Charles Hoskinson
Cardano has had a strong presence in Africa for years, and Hoskinson who wants to take the lead in DeFi (Decentralize Finance) wants to apply these use cases in Africa. These countries have a more relaxed regulatory environment and according to him is rife with opportunity. The idea is to make the wealth of Africa liquid, allowing individuals to play a much larger role as well as share in the riches of the economy.
The first countries to make national elections online will likely be African nations. The first to have an end-to-end digital identity and economy, there is a lot of potential for them to be African nations.
IOG CEO Charles Hoskinson
Decentralised Identities
Hoskinson also revealed that the Prism team, working on a Decentralised Identities (DID) solution will be expanded enabling them to bid on and seal flagship contracts allowing Cardano to do business with various private and public entities.
What I can say is that we are at the final stages of a large government contract that would have multimillion users being onboarded onto the platform for real-world blockchain implementation.
IOG CEO Charles Hoskinson
Since this project is so large in scope a few things have gone wrong and unforeseen setbacks have moved due dates of projects up by a month or two. Also, the difficulty of doing business in Africa is one of the more difficult hurdles to overcome since there are some extra barriers in Africa that one wouldn’t normally encounter in first world countries.
Boom In The Ecosystem
But the two projects in Ethiopia and Tanzania are just the beginning. As O’Connor also revealed, IOG has three other “focus countries”: South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. For South Africa, he said, it is an “interesting project” involving insurance. All projects are expected to reach several million people, so IOG will attract 100 million users in the first stage.
That should be just the beginning. After these five focus countries, we got plans for another 15 countries which we will be working on after we delivered on these first five.
John O’Connor, Director of African Operations at IOG
And after a recent statement by Hoskinson that 100 companies are in the process of moving over the Cardano from Ethereum the future of the ecosystem looks bright. But it seems ADA stakeholders are still waiting for the birds to land.
As of January 2021, there are approximately 17,000 bitcoin ATMs worldwide, with this number set to continue increasing as 10,000 more are planned to rollout in the USA this year.
Bitcoin ATMs Are Targeting Gas Stations
According to Coin ATM Radar there are Bitcoin ATMs in every single state except for Alaska and Washington D.C.
Bitcoin ATM Example
Las Vegas-based Coin Cloud has 1,470 machines around the United States and expects to have over 10,000 by year-end, said CEO Chris McAlary.
Another ATM supplier based in Chicago, CoinFlip, apparently increased their ATM count from 420 last year to 1,800 now. CoinFlip CEO Daniel Polotsky also said that during the same time transactions per ATM increased nearly three times.
The demand has been so high that General Bytes, a major Bitcoin ATM manufacturer, temporarily ran out of stock last summer. The company sold 3,000 machines last year, 90% of which went to North America, said founder Karel Kyovsky.
Australia is Lagging Behind In The Bitcoin ATM Game
Australia has around 54 Bitcoin ATMs nationwide, which is considerably less than most other major countries. Most of these are located in Melbourne in shopping centres. Will we see Australia follow the USA’s lead and install Bitcoin ATMs in gas stations such as Coles Express, Caltex, BP and even 7-Eleven?
ATMs Provide Easy Access to Cryptos
One of the major drivers for the increase of these ATMs is the growing sentiment toward Bitcoin (BTC). The average punter may find it easier to use an ATM to buy Bitcoin than buying it online. There is also the added benefit of being able to buy Bitcoin with cash at an ATM.
Aside from the strict Bitcoin only ATMs there are others that allow you to buy various other major cryptocurrencies like Ethereum (ETH) and some even allow you to buy Dogecoin (DOGE).
One of the main disadvantages of using these machines rather than transacting online is that the fees are usually much higher. The majority of these operators ask more than 10% transaction fee, whereas online you wouldn’t often be looking at something over 2-3% depending on your transaction size.
According to research by strategists at leading U.S. financial investment bank, JP Morgan Chase, Bitcoin (BTC) retail investors have out bought institutions this quarter (Q1 2021), picking up the slack and helping drive the price of Bitcoin to $61,000.
The decline in institutional buying may be one of the reasons the price didn’t hold, as well news about India’s policy regarding cryptocurrencies which is said to have hit the token hard.
Increased Interest From Retail Traders
According to Chainalysis, in 2017, the majority of Bitcoin buyers were retail investors purchasing the cryptocurrency using personal funds. However, 2020 saw a change as mainstream companies and financial institutions were buying up most of the Bitcoin due to macroeconomic uncertainty.
As seen in the breakdown below retailers bought more BTC in Q3 2020 and Q1 2021 than Wall Street buyers. According to the data, itBit daily volumes (which the bank uses as a proxy for PayPal) nearly doubled between Q4 2020 and Q1 2021. Meanwhile, bitcoin payments facilitated by Square also doubled.
Table shows a breakdown of bitcoin flows since 3Q 2020. Source: JPMorgan
Bitcoin’s latest rally meant that it is up by 100% since the start of the year and more than 500% over the past six months. The indicator for CME Group only inched up slightly from 1,284 to 1,449.
Growing Interest in Bitcoin
The number of new participants in the #Bitcoin network is unprecedented.
Over the past weeks, we have seen a large growth of new entities. This is a strong indication that new retail investors have been entering the space.
Now, with the Reddit-fueled meme stock craze cooling and novelties such as digital artwork setting records, retail traders — some now armed with $1,400 stimulus checks — are taking control.
Senior market analyst at Oanda Corp, Ed Moya
Brian Vendig, president of MJP Wealth Advisors, stated that retail need has actually been driven by fear of losing out (FOMO) following the current wave of institutional financial investment into Bitcoin.
More Opportunities for People to Learn, Own, and Transact with Crypto
As reported by Reuters Bitcoin ATMs have been increasing in numbers across the U.S. and Bitcoin’s growing popularity has been a major driver for these new installations (more than 10,000 in the last five months).
Source: Piqsels
The influx of retail buyers might be due to increased exposure through social media, celebrities championing crypto related technologies, NFTs, and simpler technologies that facilitate the acquisition of crypto. When individuals are well-informed they are more likely to participate.
A new survey out of Mizuho Securities on Monday estimates that 10%, or nearly $40 billion of the $380 billion in direct stimulus checks, may be used to purchase Bitcoin(BTC) and stocks.
According to CNN as it stands, 90% of American households qualify for the $1400 per person (including dependants) stimulus check, following the U.S. President Joe Biden signing the stimulus package into law.
People Prefer Bitcoin
Yahoo Finance reported Monday that Mizuho managing director Dan Dolev and his team surveyed approximately 235 individuals with less than $150,000 of household income. Of that, about 200 said they expect to receive the third round of direct stimulus payments in the coming days.
Stimulus check BTC and stock allocation
The results show that 35% – 40% of the people that participated in this survey are aiming to invest some of it in crypto (Bitcoin) or stocks, with 61% saying they would choose Bitcoin over equities.
The survey predicts that bitcoin will account for 60% of total incremental investment spend. We calculate it could add as much as 2-3% to bitcoin’s current $1.1t trillion market value
Dan Dolev, Mizuho Securities, MD
Source: Know-your-meme
Considering the sample size of the survey is only 235 it remains to be seen whether these outcomes will come to fruition, yet the outlook is positive that a reasonable part of the stimulus will find its way into the crypto economy.
Others Also Weighed in on How Stimulus Checks Might be Spent
Mizuho isn’t the only one making predictions, David Kostin, Goldman’s chief U.S. equity strategist recently stated :
We expect households will be the largest source of equity demand this year […] A good chunk of the new stimulus money about to be funnelled into American households shortly via the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill may find its way into the stock market
David Kostin, Goldman’s chief U.S. equity strategist
Ray Dalio also commented yesterday on investing and that money shouldn’t be spent on bonds due to “ridiculously low yields” and rather encouraged people to buy higher-returning, non-debt investment assets in a LinkedIn Blog post.
