Author: Ibiam Wayas

Ibiam is an optimistic crypto journalist. He loves to associate with like-minded individuals and collaborate with them on similar projects. He spends much of his time honing his writing and critical thinking skills.

Categories
Stablecoins Tether

Tether (USDt) Market Capitalization has Surpassed US$20 Billion

Tether (USDt) Market Capitalization has Surpassed US$20 Billion

The fourth-largest digital currency, Tether (USDt) reached a milestone record of US$20 billion on Friday. The record further strengthens the digital currency’s position as the largest United States dollar-backed stablecoin to a great extent. With lots of USDt minted on several blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Tron, etc., it’s worth mentioning that gained massive adoption for trades this year. 

Not if the second-largest stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) is closing in with its US$3.2 billion market valuation.

USDts are now a US$20 Billion Asset Combined

In celebration of the historic increase in USDt market capitalization, Tether, the company behind the stablecoin, tweeted the development, saying “this fantastic milestone is another confirmation for Tether maintaining its number one spot as the most liquid, stable and trusted currency.” Noteworthily, a huge number of USDt has been issued this year alone, which signals a strong demand for the stablecoin for settling transactions, and mostly for trading. 

At the time of writing, the maximum supply of the stablecoin is 20,533,323,926 USDt, of which 20,038,839,262 USDt is currently in circulation, according to the information provided by Coinmarketcap. One factor that indicates the strong demand for the stablecoin in trading is the fact that it has a very high 24 hours trading volume. 

Per Coinmarketcap, the US dollar stablecoin sees US$80 billion 24hrs trading volume, which is way bigger than other popularly-traded cryptos, including Bitcoin (US$48 billion), Ether ($19 billion), Ripple ($16 billion), etc.

USDt on Ethereum and Tron Blockchain

Ethereum and Tron are the two biggest blockchain networks, respectively hosting the stablecoins. According to Etherscan, the Ethereum blockchain explorer, there are currently 12.6 billion USDt issued on the blockchain. The rival blockchain network, Tron, holds 6.4 billion of the stablecoin, all of which are currently in circulation, per Tronscan.

Categories
Australia Crypto News

Australian Crypto Lender, Helio has Established a US Branch

Australian Crypto Lender, Helio has Established a US Branch

The Australian leading cryptocurrency-backed lending company, Helio Lending, is expanding its operations in the United States and would be tapping from the flourishing crypto lending business in the country. The company precisely announced in a publication on Thursday that it has established a branch in a US state. Additionally, it hired one of the popular crypto experts and advisors, Min H. Kim, to spearhead the operations in the country. 

Helio Expands Crypto Lending to the US

Launched in 2018, Helio is reportedly the first independent crypto-related company operating in Australia. It’s regulated and operates with the Australian Credit Licence. Having gained prominence by building a unique and propriety platform for Australians to obtain loans with their digital currencies, the company is looking to step up its service, starting with the United States crypto market. As reported, Helio established its US headquarters in San Francisco.

Following the establishment of the US branch, the chairman of John O’Shea, said they look “forward to a mutually rewarding endeavor as we enter 2021 with some solid momentum and a crypto-lending industry that is bursting at the seams.”

According to the report, Ms. Kim will oversee Helio operations in the United States, its digital currency loan portfolio, and business partnerships. She will be responsible for drafting and managing the company’s daily activities. With rich experience in cryptocurrencies and other related services, Ms. Kim said she is a “firm believer that crypto collateralized lending is here to stay as one of the fastest-growing mainstream use cases.”

Helio Prepares for US Growth

Aside from hiring the former Director of Marketing at Huobi U.S., Ms. Kim, the company seemingly has plans to perform better in the country. According to O’Shea, “the Company has engaged counsel to perform exploratory due diligence on a possible change of control transaction through which Helio Lending would potentially merge with a US publicly listed company and become the majority shareholder.”

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News

How a Reporter Spent 10 Bitcoin Worth US1,000 in Sushi Dinner Seven Years ago

How a Reporter Spent 10 Bitcoin Worth US1,000 in Sushi Dinner Seven Years ago

Early Bitcoin (BTC) investors who sold off their coin many years ago are beginning to scratch their heads in regret as the digital currency posts a five-digit value. A typical example is Laszlo Hanyecz, who traded 10,000 Bitcoin for two Papa John’s pizzas on May 22, 2010. These cryptocurrencies are now worth US$234 million following the current price of BTC on Coinmarketcap. 

On December 16, The New York Times reported another case where a tech reporter spent about 10 Bitcoin on a Sushi dinner she hosted for strangers.

10 BTC Spent in a Single Sushi Dinner

Known as Kashmir Hill, the tech reporter for The New York Times bought some Bitcoin back in 2013 as the cryptocurrency was getting popular among technology junkies. Hill noted that she bought the Bitcoin at US$136 each from the now-leading United States cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase. While she tried to explore the value and use case of the cryptocurrency, the options were limited as only a few places could accept the technology then.

As the efforts to spend the cryptocurrency proved fatal – caused her to lose weight as no eateries accepted the crypto – Hill decided to host a memorable Sushi dinner party as she intended to sell off the cryptocurrency. The dinner party was hosted in one of the few places in San Francisco that supported Bitcoin. Many people turned up for dinner, including entrepreneurs working on Bitcoin apps back then. 

This is Why You Should HODL

The party caused about US$957, which was settled with 10 Bitcoin then. In comparison with today’s price, these cryptocurrencies will be worth about $234,960, which indeed is a lot of money that was spent in a single sushi dinner. 

“I felt guilty at the time, making Yung Chen [the restaurant owner] accept $1,000 worth of funny money because it was unclear to me whether Bitcoin should be worth anything at all,” the tech reported said.

Categories
CeFi DeFi

Milestone: Total Assets Locked in Decentralized Has Surpassed $15 billion

Binance Australia Tops BTC Market in Bitcoin and Ether 24-Hour Volume

Interest in the decentralized finance (DeFi) market is still growing gradually, although the industry hypes seem to have calmed down lately. According to the information on DeFi Pulse today, the market valuation of assets locked in DeFi protocols has surpassed another milestone record of US$15 billion. 

DeFi market is considered as the next big thing in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, as it provides high-interest earning opportunities for participating investors.

DeFi TVL Reaches New ATH at US$15B

This year holds the largest and most profitable record for the decentralized finance market, although there were also losses from hack. There are currently US$15.291 billion assets locked in DeFi, making another all-time high in the TVL. More than US$1.8 billion worth of assets were added since the past month. 

Also, the market is up by more than 2000 percent on the year-to-date (YTD) chart, as there was only US$691 million in assets locked around January this year.

The decentralized lending protocol, Maker, is ranked as the largest in terms of total assets locked. DeFi Pulse showed that US$2.69 billion in assets had been locked in Maker protocol, giving it a market dominance of 17.6 percent. The Bitcoin tokenization protocol, Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) holds the second-largest asset valuation at US$2.33 billion. WBTC is followed by Compound, Aave, Uniswap, etc., all of which has an asset valuation of around $1.7 billion. 

CeFi vs DeFi

The growth of the decentralized market was once a concern for many centralized players in the crypto industry, especially exchanges. The recent yield farming craze in DeFi had caused a massive outflow of coins like Ether (ETH) from crypto exchanges to DeFi protocols. Evidently, decentralized exchange Uniswap posted more trading volume than most popular CeFi trading platforms during these times.

However, CeFi exchanges are beginning to show support for DeFi by offering trading support for the native tokens from protocols and other related services.

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto Exchange

Major Crypto Exchanges Goes Down as Bitcoin Exceeds US$20,000

Major Crypto Exchanges Goes Down as Bitcoin Exceeds US$20,000

Two leading digital currency exchanges, Coinbase and Binance, reportedly went down following the latest Bitcoin (BTC) move to US$20,000. These exchanges usually face connectivity issues due to high demand and influx of traffic whenever there is a price rally in the crypto market. The new Bitcoin price holds quite an exciting time for Bitcoin investors as the leading crypto makes price discovery.

Coinbase, Binance Surfers Server Downtime

On Twitter, a crypto user noted that Coinbase was experiencing connectivity issues due to high traffic. A further glance at Downdetector showed a spike in new reports of downtime on the exchange at 3:17 PM UTC. This was after the cryptocurrency crossed the long-awaited US$20K level.

It’s worth noting that Coinbase also experienced a downtime last month during the market rally. At that time, the founder of the exchange, Brian Armstrong, assured that they will “add additional capacity (both in servers and customer support) to deal with increased traffic.” Judging by this, the exchange may have seen bigger traffic to cause another downtime again, same with Binance.

The largest exchange by market capitalization briefly went down amid the spike in Bitcoin. The downtime was also caused by massive traffic on the exchange, as CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao (CZ) confirmed, saying that they are working to add more servers to handle the traffic.

Bitcoin at Over US$20,000

As Bitcoin broke through the US$20K resistance, a majority of addresses holding BTC were reported to be in a state of profit. At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency is trading at the price of US$20,644 on Coinmarketcap. The surge today also pushed the crypto’s market capitalization to another all-time high this year, thereby strengthening its position as the “king crypto.” At the moment, Bitcoin’s market capitalization sits around US$383 billion.

Categories
Bitcoin Institutions

Institutional Demand Pushes Grayscale’s AUM to $13 Billion

Institutional Demand Pushes Grayscale’s AUM to $13 Billion

It’s no doubt that there is currently a strong and growing interest in Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital currencies from institutional investors. This is evident as institutional-grade digital assets investment companies, especially Grayscale Investment, are seeing an exponential kind of demand for crypto products. 

Earlier today, the largest crypto investment company disclosed on Twitter that its assets under management had surpassed another milestone valuation of US$13 billion.

Grayscale AUM Hits ATH

The company offers about ten investment products tied to popular digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Ether (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Litecoin (LTC), and others. Overall, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust product accounts for about 83 percent of the entire AUM, with a total valuation of US$10.8 billion. For a long time, institutional investors had shown more interest in holding the BTC product on Grayscale. But, not only Bitcoin.

The second-largest crypto also gained more than US$1.7 billion from institutions on Grayscale. For the context, the Bitcoin and Ether products account for more than 95 percent of the company’s net asset under management. Litecoin is one other cryptocurrency that made a significant increase. The LTC product surged from US$48.9 million on November 13 to US$74.8 million, per the report today.

The Institutions are Coming

Aside from Grayscale, the increasing flow of funds from institutional investors to Bitcoin can also be seen in BTC derivatives trading platforms like the Chicago Merchantile Exchange (CME) and Bakkt. These platforms recently witnessed high stats in Bitcoin futures open interest and volume. JPMorgan Chase, a leading financial services company in the United States, expect US$600 billion from institutions to flow into Bitcoin in the coming years.

The prediction was stirred after reports informed that a US mutual insurance company, MassMutual, invested about US$100 million in Bitcoin. The banks believe that more insurance companies and pension funds are going to follow suit.

Categories
Ethereum

Lido Prepares to Launch Eth2 Liquid Staking Mainnet After $2M Funding

Lido Prepares to Launch Eth2 Liquid Staking Mainnet After $2M Funding

Before the launching of the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain on December 1, a few Ethereum protocols, including Lido Finance, had revealed plans to work on solving the “illiquidity” issue with Ether (ETH) staked on the network. Today, Lido is pushing towards this development, as a tweet confirmed that Lido raised millions of dollars from prominent companies in preparation for its Eth2 staking mainnet.

Illiquidity Issue With Eth2 Staking 

Notably, the current Ethereum network is moving to a proof-of-stake (PoS) model with Ethereum 2.0. This transition is expected to be completed in four phases, one of which has been launched already. Although users can stake ETH on the network, these coins are considered illiquid due to the fact that it can’t be withdrawn, at least till the next Eth2 development phase launches. 

Judging by this, many industry experts raise concerns that this might slow down the rate of ETH staking on the network. This is because many people would prefer to lock their coins in crypto exchanges for trading or in decentralized finance (DeFi) yield farming protocols to make even more profit than staking. Besides, they can choose to withdraw these coins anytime, anywhere, unlike when they are staked.

For this reason, Lido planned to introduce a liquid staking service for Ethereum 2.0.

Lido Prepares for Mainnet Launch

The Eth2 staking service provider intends to achieve this liquidity by issuing an ERC-20 token, stETH, for any ETH staked on the network. This will serve as the tokenized version of the coins staked, as well as in value. Lido noted that stETH could be traded on exchanges and also used in DeFi protocols for yield farming. In this way, the Ethereum users have nothing to lose, as they will receive an equivalent token for any coin they stake.

With the US$2 million fundraise, Lido is preparing to debut the Eth2 liquid staking mainnet later this month. There are possibilities that this service will go mainstream in the coming year.

Categories
Ethereum

Ethereum Records Highest Single-Day Network Growth Since 2018

Ethereum Settled $1.9 Trillion Transactions in Q1

Ethereum, the second-largest blockchain, has been noting an increase in developments and users since this year. A lot of exciting activities have happened within the ecosystem, including decentralized finance (DeFi), and other recent developments made towards the launch of Ethereum 2.0. 

Today, information from Santiment indicated an increasing rate of adoption for Ethereum, as new addresses created in a single day spiked to the highest point last seen in the past 35 months.

New Ethereum Addresses Spiked to 35-month High

According to Santiment, about 177.5k new Ethereum addresses were created on December 12. Such a massive increase was last recorded on January 19, 2018, making a new 35-month high in a single day. Although there isn’t any clear reason that propelled the spike in new Ethereum addresses, Santiment did mention in the tweet that such development is a positive indicator for the network bulls.

“The amount of new Ethereum addresses hit a single-day, 35-month high Saturday. Our network growth metric picked up ETH reaching 177.5k addresses created. Notably, more addresses interacting on an asset’s network is a very promising indicator for bulls.”

Is the World’s First Ethereum ETF a Factor?

Interestingly, the single-day spike in new ETH address was recorded just a day after the world’s first-ever Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF) went live on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) in Canada. Although there was a two-hour delay in the listing due to bureaucratic issues, the ETF saw a notable demand on the stock exchange, according to reports. 

When the new addresses spiked on December 12, the cryptocurrency also performed better than the previous day. It saw as high as US$573 only to end that day at US$568. Today, however, the second-largest crypto is trading at US$584, with a 24hrs change of 0.07 percent on Coinmarketcap.

The founder of Aussie Nuggets News, Alex Saunders, is hopeful on ETH breakout, as he explained with a chart on Monday that “ETH will pull a BTC soon.”

Categories
Crypto News

Ethereum Founder Discourages Buying Crypto With Loans

Ethereum Founder Discourages Buying Crypto With Loans

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the second-largest blockchain network, doesn’t fancy the idea of purchasing digital currencies, like Bitcoin (BTC) or Ether (ETH), with personal loans. Judging by his statement on Twitter today, Buterin believes that betting on the future price of cryptocurrencies with borrowed funds isn’t worth the risk. Although taking loans to invest in certain assets is so common for many people, it’s quite on a high-risk side in crypto, due to volatility.

Buterin’s take on buying crypto with loans

First of all, Buterin made his thoughts known after seeing a tweet from a Bitcoiner on December 20. In the tweet, the Bitcoin investor jokingly said he took out about US$46,250 loan at 7.9 percent, to purchase about 2.55 Bitcoin. At the due time (2026), the investor predicted that the cryptocurrency would surpass US$22,000 per BTC. Someone else responded to the tweet, asking how to get through with his loan.

Perhaps, this attracted the attention of the Ethereum co-founder, who discouraged the whole idea. More like a warning, Buterin wrote:

“Please don’t do things like this. I would NEVER recommend anyone take out a personal loan to buy ETH or other ethereum assets. […] 7 years ago, before ethereum even began, I had only a few thousand dollars of net worth. I nevertheless sold half my bitcoin to make sure that I would not be broke if BTC went to zero.” 

The Ethereum co-founder, meanwhile, boasts of an estimated net worth of $400 million to $500 million currently, following the success of Ethereum network, especially. 

But MicroStrategy issues debts to buy Bitcoin

MicroStrategy, a publicly-traded business intelligence company, has been bullishly stacking lots of Bitcoin on its reserve in recent months. Some weeks ago, the company issued about US$550 million in debt to purchase more Bitcoin. When asked about his opinion on this, in regards to his statement, Buterin replied:

“Isn’t the microstrategy thing just them trying to turn their company into a de-facto bitcoin ETF for regulatory arbitrage purposes?”

Categories
Crypto News Crypto Wallets

Lumi Becomes Latest Crypto Wallet to Support Apple Pay

Lumi Becomes Latest Crypto Wallet to Support Apple Pay

cLeading digital currency wallet, Lumi, announced on Friday a new software update that will enable customers to purchase cryptocurrencies through Apple Pay, the digital payment platform of Apple Inc. This comes as an addition to the already-existing payment options available for the users, making buying and trading of cryptos easier on the platform. 

Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the parent company of Apple Pay is seemingly not a big fan of cryptocurrencies, judging their past actions on crypto-related services.

Apple Pay Lessens KYC Procedures in Buying Crypto

As reported, the integration of Apple Pay on the crypto wallet reduces the need for the customers to provides know-your-customer (KYC) verifications before transacting cryptos on the platform. Lumi noted that the new payment method would be available in 60 countries, including Australia. However, users can only buy the supported cryptos – Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Tether (USDT), and more – at $1,000 and $7,500 as the daily and weekly limit, respectively.

While commenting on the integration, Lumi said “this step has opened access to an alternative purchase option for hundreds of thousands of users around the world. […] Lumi Wallet’s iOS users will be able to choose a new option to buy crypto using Apple Pay.” 

Apple Pay simplifies the crypto purchasing process as users no longer need to verify their details since they already have an account with Apple Pay wallet.

But, Apple is not a fan

The technology giant, Apple had once introduced a regulation that banned many crypto apps for mining on the Apple store. Recently in September, the founder of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong took to his Twitter handle to accused the company of making innovations in the cryptocurrency space very stiff. Crypto companies are “reluctant to speak out on these topics for fear of retaliation,” he added.

Meanwhile, many industry players, including the CEO of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor, predicted that the tech giant would eventually make a large scale investment in Bitcoin in the future.