Category: Australia

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Australia Bitcoin

Aussie Analysts Discuss Bitcoin: Can It Reach USD145,000?

Mark Rodda, a market analyst from Melbourne who runs IG trading, recently addressed JP morgan’s comments on a possible $145,000 (188,000 AUD) price target for Bitcoin. 

The investment bank recently called Bitcoin the “digital gold for Millenials” as price reached $35k, marking a new all-time high and possibly reaching $145,000 by the end of 2021, according to their market analysts from Wall Street. But Rodda thinks BTC still has a “few years” to meet that price:

“This price target is one that would be met in the longer-term, over the next few years, rather than something that might occur at some stage in 2021.”

Stated Rodda for News.com.au

Bitcoin was recently traded as high as $35,737, a 26% gain after falling to $27,700 on January 4. The recent upward rally called the attention of JP Morgan and other institutional analysts, who now think BTC could replace gold as the best store of value, and that the “Bitcoin versus Gold” race has started.

Although Rodda thinks that Bitcoin increased its market cap with a strong bullish sentiment, it doesn’t have to replace gold necessarily, as both assets can become better stores of values against declining fiat and inflation.

2021, a “Great Year” for Cryptocurrencies

Rodda also shared his thoughts on other digital assets, stating that “2021 should be a great year” for cryptocurrencies, after Ethereum, the second currency with the largest market cap made an outstanding upward rally with a 600 % Return Of Investments (ROI).

Byron Goldberg, director of Australia-based crypto company Luno, made similar statements to Rodda’s, adding that institutions are also seeking better stores of value — the reason behind the massive hoard of Bitcoin by the end of 2020, raising concerns about BTC’s liquidity.

“At present, gold has a market cap of roughly US$10 trillion. If 30 per cent of value transfers from gold to Bitcoin over the next few years, the price of a Bitcoin would be worth around US$140,000 – a similar figure to JPMorgan’s price target, which is 300 per cent away from here”

It appears that 2021 could be the year where cryptocurrencies could take a broader audience, thanks to the massive bullish sentiment they had in 2020. On top of that, the director of Binance Australia stated that cryptocurrencies could play a major role in digital economies:

We can confidently say that the increased positive sentiment over the past 12 months from the retail and institutional crowd will not disappear anytime soon. I believe a post-pandemic world will see digital economies mature across many industries, which could garner support to push digital assets to a new level of adoption.”

stated Jeff Yew, CEO of Binance Australia for News.com.au
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Australia Bitcoin Crypto News Ethereum Institutions

“2021 should be a Good Year” says Australian Analyst as Ethereum Breaks $1,000 and Bitcoin Turns 12

Image by Miloslav Hamřík from Pixabay

Despite the majority of news focusing on market leader Bitcoin, Ethereum had a much better year than the king of crypto, providing a 600% return-on-investment (ROI) during 2020.

After a massive week-long rally that saw Ethereum double in price and break through the significant $1,000 price point, Australian market analyst Kyle Rodda told news.com.au that “2021 should be a good year” for the cryptocurrency.

However, the sudden gains faced severe resistance around the US$1,200 mark, getting knocked back down to US$892 before recovering to current levels. ETH is now back up above $1,100, with Bitcoin up 16% after suffering 13% losses and dumping almost US$4,000 in one hour on Monday. 

The movements could indicate the start of the ever-elusive alt-season that crypto altcoin investors have been patiently waiting for since the current bull market started last year. As popular Crypto Twitter voice GalaxyBTC pointed out: 

“This $BTC correction was all we needed to finally ignite the #altseason.” 

As a result of the huge gains, Ethereum gas fees are skyrocketing again, rendering the network inefficient for the massive decentralized finance (DeFi) market that relies largely on Ethereum’s ERC20 protocol to function.

Happy Birthday Bitcoin!

The cryptocurrency market has been on a tear recently, with leading asset Bitcoin (BTC) smashing records and hitting new highs almost daily. The price movements mimic the 2017 rally that saw Bitcoin rise from a new all-time high (ATH) of around $1,000 to almost $20,000 per coin in less than a year. Should the same scenario play out this time around, Bitcoin could reach $400,000 per coin before the end of 2021.

Yesterday, on January 3, 2021, Bitcoin celebrated its 12th birthday with huge gains that took it to a new ATH above AUD$40,000. The mysterious and pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, mined the very first Bitcoin block (the genesis block) on January 3, 2009, forever encoding in history a news headline from the day: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”

Many believe the meaning of the encoded headline is to reiterate Bitcoin’s intention as an autonomous and incorruptible replacement for badly managed government-issued money. 

Institutional investment continues aggressively

Speaking to Forbes yesterday, US-based blockchain developer James Reilly from decentralized hosting platform Ether-1 said “BTC is becoming more mainstream.” The level of institutional interest today is much larger than during the 2017 rally, when cryptocurrencies were largely considered a risky, unreliable investment. 

With multinational investment firms like Grayscale and tech giants Paypal pouring money and research into the crypto market, this new rally could unfold in a unique fashion. While adoption and investment are typically a positive sign for an asset class, in the case of cryptocurrency, it’s also attracted intense regulatory scrutiny. The two opposing forces of regulation and adoption will need to find a suitable balance if the crypto market hopes to mature in a sustainable way.

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Australia Bitcoin ATM Crypto News Cryptocurrencies

Auscoin Founder’s Bail Conditions Relaxed

In 2019, Auscoin founder Sam Karagiozis was arrested for suspected drug trafficking. In mid-2019, he was granted bail, but on certain conditions – such as a nightly curfew.

Mr. Karagiozis – a native of Bulleen, is currently on bail on a $600,000 surety and must check in with the police twice a week. He is also forbidden to leave Victoria.

Sam Karagiozis, an entrepreneur who even tattooed “Self Made” on his fingers was well on his way to accumulating ever-greater fortunes – before legal troubles forced his crypto platform Auscoin to halt its activity.

Auscoin was a crypto exchange platform with plans to install bitcoin ATMs across the country. However, the amount of Bitcoin ATMs that were actually installed was far less than predicted, due to a lack of funding.

The company also minted crypto tokens, namely AUSC – which are currently valued at around 0,0077 AUD per token.

Conditions Lessened For A Hopefully Once-In-A-Lifetime Experience

On Tuesday, Mr. Karagiozis’s bail conditions were relaxed, citing the need to administer his chain of Greek restaurants – and the wish to attend his brother’s wedding as the best man, as well as the buck’s night taking place 2 weeks prior.

Defence counselor Dermot Dann obtained the loosening of Mr. Karagiozis’s bail restrictions, stating that Mr. Karagiozis had complied with all bail conditions to date and that his client was eager to attend what would  “hopefully be a once-in-a-lifetime event”.

Furthermore, Sam Karagiozis is expecting a child in April and hopes to avoid any possible legal troubles that may arrive from having to drive to a hospital past curfew.

Magistrate Andrew McKenna granted the request despite the opinions of detractors present in court – on the condition that Mr. Karagiozis will not be allowed to talk to co-accused Victorian police officer Emmanuel-O’Neil about the upcoming court hearing.

“They can talk about how wonderfully well the night is going or the weather or the pandemic, but nothing about the proceedings.”

The hearing will take place in March – and will determine whether the pair will face trial or not.

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Australia Crypto News

Australia Records Highest Number of new Crypto Fintechs in 2020

Australia Records Highest Number of new Crypto Fintechs in 2020

It’s worth mentioning that the past year (i.e., 2020, to be precise) is the biggest year for the cryptocurrency industry in adoption, developments, and other aspects. This, in fact, concedes with the growing number of new companies entering the crypto and blockchain space in different countries, especially Australia.

A new report from KPMG, one of the “big four” auditing companies showed that Australia’s crypto and blockchain fintech increased significantly in the just-concluded year. This shows how much the Aussie crypto industry is growing. Already, the country is rated as one of the blockchain-friendly nations.

Aussie Records More Active Fintech 

At first, the auditing company noted in the “KPMG Fintech Landscape 2020” report on Monday that more than 733 fintech from diverse industries is presently active in Australia. Following this record, the number of active fintech in the country is up by 16.5 percent compared to the previous 629 recorded last year. In the Lending industry, the number of companies increased from 77 in 2019 to 103 in 2020, accounting for more than a 30 percent increase on a year-over-year count.

In comparison to the 2019 and 2020 record, other industries in Australia increased or decreased as follows: Neobank (5 to 10 or 100%), Regtech (48 to 47 or -2.10%), Middle & Back Office (65 to 67 or 3.10%), Payments (143 to 151 or 5.60%), Wealthtech (78 tp 79 or 1.28%), Insurtech 35 to 59 or 68.60%), Data and Analytics (37 to 36 or -2.70%), according to the report. 

Crypto-related Fintech in Australia Grew by 153%

As per KPMG, the crypto and blockchain industry in Australia had the largest percentage growth in new fintech from 2019 to 2020. Respectively, the number of new companies in the industry increased from 32 to 81, accounting for about 153 percent growth. This corresponds to the general support and interest in digital currencies over the past year, including the underlying technology, blockchain.

“Despite the impacts of COVID-19 on the economy, increased digitization across financial services and new customer behaviors have created new opportunities for innovation. […] The overall impressive net growth in the number of fintech illustrates both the robust market dynamics and strong support for the fintech sector in Australia,” said the National Fintech Lead at KPMG Australia, Daniel Teper.

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Australia Bitcoin Mining Digital Asset Mining

Crypto Mining Rig Manufacturer Prepares To Launch Trading Platform

Back in October of 2020, China-based cryptocurrency mining machine producer Ebang established a full subsidiary in Australia, hoping to not limit themselves to crypto hardware exclusively. 

Australian Financial License Pending

Immediately after establishing an Australian subsidiary, the company set its sights on an Australian financial license. 

In recent years, China has been cracking down on cryptocurrency exchange platforms, a measure that tends to give investors cold feet. This prompted many China-based crypto exchanges to look for greener pastures, generally within the APAC region. 

Although Hong Kong used to be the main place to relocate for crypto firms, a combination of turmoil in Hong Kong and interest in fintechs by the Australian government has made Australia a prime location for crypto businesses looking for a new base of operations.

Mr. Dong Hu – the Chairman and CEO of Ebang International Holdings – stated that the interest in the Australian market comes in the wake of the special attention given to blockchain technology across Australia, both by the private sector and the government.

“We are pleased to announce that the Company has established its presence in Australia in furtherance of our strategies to launch a comprehensive blockchain-enabled financial business and capture the growth opportunity along the value chain of the blockchain industry. We are currently applying for the Australian financial service license in preparation for our global expansion.”

Yesterday, Ebang followed up on their previous press release, stating that they are looking to launch within the first quarter of the 2021 fiscal year. 

Not many details have been shared about the tentative launch – except that it will not operate within mainland China at all. 
Although it is not clear whether the financial license requested by the company has been granted yet, the press release indicates that all procedures are at least well on track.

Categories
Australia Crypto News Industries Investing

Japan’s SBI Buys B2C2 Aiming To Become A Bigger Force On The Crypto Markets In APAC

London-based crypto asset management firm B2C2 was recently bought by the financial monolith SBI Group.

According to Phillip Gillespie – the CEO of B2C2 – the spike in interest in Bitcoin that sent the most popular cryptocurrency rocketing to a $2400 price tag coincides with the interest in the asset shown by Square, PayPal, and others. However, this has also lead to a drop in the available supply of the asset.

“If an institution wants to buy crypto, there’s a bit of a problem. There are not that many places they can go right now.”

Regional Competition Heats Up

At the beginning of November, Australian Senator Andrew Bragg spoke out at the Future Of Financial Services 2020 conference – stating that Singapore’s decision to build the world’s first global data exchange showed that Australia was not the only economy in the region investing in cryptocurrencies, blockchain-based fintechs and the like – and that the Australian government would need to allocate more resources to ensure Australia stays in the lead in the very lucrative market.

“Hong Kong will still be an important gateway to China, but because of the recent turmoil there and the foreign influence laws, they won’t have the same regional headquarter attraction. We would be mad to sit idly by and allow such a lucrative share of the market to lead to Singapore or to Tokyo.”

Following a purchase of B2C2 shares worth $30 million back in July, SBI Holdings has bought up much more of the company’s stock – in fact, following the recent deal, SBI Holdings now owns 90% of the company. At the time this article was written, the price of the acquisition has not been publicly stated.

According to Ryo Suzuki – the executive director of SBI’s FX and Rates Division – the company already had the infrastructure to become a key regional player but was missing the necessary assets.

“SBI Group is the biggest internet financial group in Japan so we have the customer base. The cryptocurrency market is not mature in Japan yet, but B2C2’s expertise can provide such a service.”

Japan has now entered the APAC crypto market alongside Australia,  Singapore, and Hong Kong – now it’s time to see where the chips will fall, how the Australian government can help the local crypto industry get a leg up on the competition.

Categories
Australia Blockchain Cryptocurrencies Melbourne Trading

Blockchain Australia Solutions To Expand Crypto-trading By Partnering With FinTech Startup Mudrex

Blockchain Australia Solutions, a leading agency in blockchain application in Melbourne, recently announced its partnership with Mudrex — a trading strategy builder in an attempt to expand cryptocurrency trading to a larger audience.

Automated Trading System

According to a press release, Mudrex will implement automated trading programs for people with less knowledge on the topic. The plan is to bring more people to crypto-trading is by allowing experienced traders to build their trading algorithms and adding them into Mudrex Invest. Likewise, traders can test their algorithms based on historical data, then integrate them into crypto exchanges.

This way, people will only need to pay a monthly subscription for a strategy already developed. Traders can exchange directly without having to expend money through an API key-based integration with Bitmex and Binance.

“There are millions of traders who are trading manually just because, for individual traders or small prop shops it is super difficult to build the whole automated trading infrastructure as it requires coding skills in multiple programming languages, a good understanding of databases and building scalable systems as it is computational heavy. This itself can cost an individual trader or prop shops up to $100,000 and 6 months of efforts to build the system from scratch.”

Stated Rohit Goyal, CEO of Mudrex.

Blockchain Australia Solution has developed its blockchain services and covering several aspects in the fintech area, like smart contracts, automated billing systems, and blockchain POC (proof of concept) systems.

Now the Melbourne-based blockchain agency aims to bring a broader audience to the crypto-trading space by simplifying many of the aspects seen as complex for non-programmers.

Using cryptocurrencies has been requiring too much knowledge about the coding that goes behind it, making it unavailable for the common masses who are not programmers. Moreover, building a reliable infrastructure for trading has also been extremely expensive and time-consuming, which cannot be afforded by everybody. 

Stated the company in a press release.

Both companies expect greater growth with this new alliance. Mudrex has several partners in the fintech area — and has more than 5000 investors who have traded over $200 Million.

This is the main motivation for Blockchain Australia Solutions is partnering with this trading platform, Mudrex. With its various partners in other fintech and software firms, the company will bring a unique value to the trading platform, which will only help both of them to grow further.

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Australia Blockchain

Aussie RMIT University Joins VeChain to Address Blockchain Governance Issues

Aussie RMIT University Joins VeChain to Address Blockchain Governance Issues

RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub, the blockchain department of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Australia, has become the latest member of VeChain Foundation. The organization is focused on extending blockchain technology – perhaps the VeChain blockchain – to the real world. VeChain announced the collaboration in a publication on Monday.

By joining the organization, the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub will work to address issues with blockchain governance, while still pushing towards the mainstream adoption of the technology across different sectors.

VeChain, RMIT University to Address Hurdles With Blockchain

The collaboration is aimed at driving more research on blockchain governance models, and also speed up the standardization of blockchain governance consensus. For a start, the group will focus on creating a framework that will enable a streamlined medium for evaluating and comparing the governance systems of public blockchains. 

Afterward, the group will come up with a better incentivize model to encourage participation in the blockchain governance process. 

The Chief Scientist at VeResearch, Dr. Peter Zhou, commented:

“Blockchain governance plays a vital role in growing a healthy and sustainable blockchain ecosystem. This research collaboration is going to answer some of the most important and fundamental questions about blockchain governance and will contribute to the long-term growth of VeChain’s ecosystem and to achieving our goal of mass adoption.”

Blockchain Adoption by Enterprise, Government

In compliance with regulations, the group will continue to research the governance models that are suitable for enterprises as a long-term goal. In this way, they prepare for mainstream adoption of VeChain and blockchain technology in general, among the enterprises, governments, and educational research facilities. 

“With this important research, we are hoping to build towards a general theory of blockchain governance contributing to VeChain’s ecosystem and providing benefit to the broader blockchain community,” said Dr. Chris Berg, from RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub.

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Australia Bitcoin ChainLink Cryptocurrencies Ethereum Investing Litecoin

New Report Reveals The Six Coins Aussie’s Are Holding In Their Crypto Portfolios

A recent report shows what cryptocurrencies Australians are holding in their portfolios. Over 1,000 Australians were interviewed, interesting revealed that the northern territory is the largest holder of digital assets compared to the other states.

What Coins Are Aussies Hodling?

Not surprisingly, the most popular asset held is Bitcoin (BTC). One surprise though was although Ethereum (ETH) is the second most popular crypto by market cap, more Australians are holding Ripple (XRP).

  1. Bitcoin: 74%.
  2. XRP (Ripple): 28%
  3. Ethereum: 27%.
  4. Bitcoin Cash: 17%
  5. Litecoin: 15%
  6. Chainlink: 5.2%
  7. Others 8.5%

While these are currently the most popular in the average Aussie portfolio, other tokens amounted to a total of 8.5%. Interestingly, the crypto held by Australians mostly resembled the actual order by market cap, similar to that of a “crypto index”.

Millennials Are Making The Most Out Of Crypto

The report also suggests, adults between the ages of 25 and 45 consider cryptocurrencies as savings for their future. At least 18 % of Australians own some token, and 2 out of 5 consider it a good investment.

About 42.7% of those interviewed said they increased their capital by making successful investments in the cryptocurrency market. In contrast, only 20% have lost money. Last year, only 35% of those surveyed increased their wealth.

Cryptocurrencies in Australia are more popular among the youth. However, Australians who have increased their wealth the most are adults between 45 to 50 years old.

From: Independent Reserve

Australians Are More Positive About Crypto in 2020

Above all, the survey has reflected a more positive attitude towards digital assets in Australia for 2020. Bitcoin has gained more attention in these last few months, breaking all time highs. This marks a milestone in the history of BTC — which could attract more people looking for more diversity in their financial investment portfolios.

Categories
Australia DeFi Industries

Aussie DeFi Centered Around Institutional Lending Goes Live

Maple Finance – a DeFi startup focusing on institutional lending with top-notch conditions for collateral has recently finished their seed round.

The platform will not change their rates, bringing an interesting approach to the budding DeFi industry.

However, they may make special offers for institutional customers in good standing.

The seed round for the platforms MPL governance token – which brought in revenues of about $1.3 million – was done with Framework Ventures, FTX, Aave founder Stani Kulechov, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, FBG, The LAO and many other investors.

Ready For Kick-Off

Sidney Powell – the co-founder and CEO of Maple Finance – commented on the establishment of his company with over $15 billion worth of assets ready to be used for DeFi loans and more.

“What we’re allowing is top institutions with solid balance sheets, sound reputations and strong cash flows soon being able to access capital-efficient finance, which enables further growth and adoption of crypto globally.”

The company has expressed its interest in serving crypto-native organizations – Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) for instance.      As some of these firms don’t have traditional legal structures, investors and customers may have a harder time connecting with these firms – and that’s where decentralized finance institutions like Maple come in.

The company will split its assets up into pools – with a Pool Delegate in charge of each. These pools will be organized in categories like world regions, risk profiles, and more. Each Pool Delegate will supervise a pool where their expertise on a certain subject will be most helpful.

In order to demonstrate their business model, the first pool will soon go live – and offer limited funds within the $1-2 million range. The total amount of funds in the lending pool will be between $10 and 15 million.

With yet another up and coming decentralized financial institution, Australia continues down the path of becoming a regional – and hopefully global – blockchain superpower.