Category: Bitcoin

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Australia Bitcoin Crypto News

Roger Montgomery isn’t Convinced that Bitcoin is a Viable Monetary System

Bitcoin (BTC) made headlines across international media amid the exponential price growth from the US$20,00 price level in January to over US$50,000 today. During which, many prominent companies have been adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets.

However, a leading Australian investor and the chairman of Montgomery Investments, Roger Montgomery, is having none of that. He needs more convincing that the cryptocurrency can make a good means of exchange.

Roger Montgomery on Twitter

Just a mere belief

Montgomery made his thoughts known while speaking in a recent interview with Ausbiz concerning investing in Bitcoin. He sees the cryptocurrency as a “digital collectible” that is similar to other collectibles like gold, art, or wine. According to him, he’s yet to hear an argument that the largest cryptocurrency will become a viable monetary system.

Roger Montgomery in a recent interview with Ausbiz

“I’ve looked at the arguments in support of buying Bitcoin fairly carefully, and my observation is that most of the arguments are a belief in the future use of the currency,” Montgomery said. “So the belief in it being a universal digital currency is not the same as articulating the path that it actually takes to get there. Not only does it have to be universally accepted, but it has to replace fiat money.”

Also, in order for Bitcoin to become a means of exchange, Montgomery argued that the cryptocurrency must be a stable store of value, “which it isn’t.” He also mentioned that Bitcoin isn’t largely regulated, and so he wouldn’t invest in it. “If I was going to speculate. I’d rather speculate on things that are regulated, and I know my money is going to be protected and not hacked,” Montgomery added.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Regulation

Twitter Mistakenly Suspended Accounts Related to Popular Crypto Influencers

Twitter mistakenly suspends accounts related to popular crypto influencers

During the early hours of Wednesday, the popular social media platform Twitter suspended several accounts owned by top influencers in the digital currency space. The development sparked lots of concerns amongst the crypto users on the platform owing to the fact that Twitter is considered a crypto-friendly social platform. Moreover, the chief executive officer, Jack Dorsey, is one of the biggest supporters of cryptocurrency.

Following a response from Twitter, however, it appears the accounts were suspended by mistake?

Major Cryptocurrency Account Suspended

Twitter users noticed that seven accounts, at least, belonging to popular cryptocurrency analysts and traders were suspended on Wednesday. Some of the accounts suspended include @woonomic, @100trillionUSD, @mmcrypto, @wsbchairman, @themooncarl, @TheCryptoDog, and @KoroushAK. At the time, the message on these profiles read that “Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules.” 

After several complaints were raised by crypto users on the platform, some of the suspended accounts were restored, including that of Willy Woo (@woonomic), a prominent Bitcoin and cryptocurrency analyst, and PlanB (@100trillionUSD), who invented the Bitcoin Stock-to-Flow (S2F), model. Other accounts like @KoroushAK and @wsbchairman are yet to be fully restored during the time of writing.

Twitter Mistakenly Flagged Crypto Accounts as Spam

While addressing the situation in a letter to Willy Woo, Twitter noted that the accounts weren’t suspended deliberately. 

“We have systems that find and remove multiple automated spam accounts in bulk, and yours was flagged as spam by mistake. Please note that it may take an hour or so for your follower and following numbers to return to normal,” the message reads. 

Meanwhile, this is not the first time crypto accounts and contents are being suspended or censored by a centralized platform. Over the past months, several crypto channels were suspended on YouTube, and even our account was suspended on Facebook.

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Bitcoin Crypto News

Bitcoin Still Outperformed All Major Global Assets in February Despite the Correction

Bitcoin Outperformed Global Assets in February Despite Facing a 26% Drop

Despite the significant correction in Bitcoin (BTC) in February, after reaching an all-time high in market value above AU$74,000 the cryptocurrency largely outperformed other major alternative coins, including global assets in February return.

For March, Bitcoin bounced back and is already trading above the AU$70,000 mark, and many cryptocurrency analysts are quite positive that BTC is in for another big run after having gained a strong support level of around AU$62,000.

The Correction Happened, But Bitcoin Still Gained 32% in February 2021

Compared to other global assets, Bitcoin was the top-performing asset in the last month. This was despite dropping from the all-time high to about AU$56,000 towards the end of February. Bitcoin posted a 32 percent monthly return in February. While other assets including Crude oil only posted a monthly return of 18 percent, followed by Commodities (6.5 percent) and S&P 500 (2.8 percent). In the same month, the precious metal gold saw a negative 6.1 percent return.

Source: OKEx, Morgan Chase

The data shows that institutions and corporate investors were the main set of investors behind the massive increase in the price of Bitcoin. It began with the announcement that Tesla invested about US$1.5 billion in Bitcoin, MicroStrategy purchased more Bitcoin and the approval of the first Bitcoin ETF in Canada.

How Soon Until AU$100,000 BTC?

Institutions haven’t lost interest in buying Bitcoin as part of their reserve assets. Recently, a Chinese software company Meitu purchased $40M worth of Bitcoin. With the current momentum in the Bitcoin market, the cryptocurrency is likely to surge with another major bullish news of massive BTC buy. Yet, Bitcoin can still plummet from the current price.

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Australia Bitcoin Ripple

Report By CPA Australia Singles Out XRP For CBDC Potential

A recent report commissioned by CPA Australia has singled out Ripple’s XRP as a good token on which to possibly build a CBDC.

The report takes a look at Bitcoin and Ethereum as well, and outlines why they are not as attractive a choice for a potential CBDC.

Volatility Not Welcome

The RBA has been see-sawing for a while on the issue of CBDCs – first researching them, then deciding that there is no reason to work on one before stating that they’re continuing their research anyway. In the meantime, other countries have also been carrying out CBDC-related research independently.

In the new report, CPA states that in their opinion, Bitcoin is far too volatile to ever host a CBDC – which should match the value of current legal tender.

“Despite it not being legal tender, Bitcoin is popular, and it is accepted as a medium of exchange in many places. Bitcoin’s price has been subject to spectacular volatility in recent years and this volatility has resulted in a lack of confidence in Bitcoin as a medium of exchange or as a store of value and raised concerns among central banks as to the viability of cryptocurrencies as CBDCs.”

The report goes on to state that although Ethereum is in a better spot due to its’ capability of hosting smart contracts and the like on its network, Ethereum is too decentralized to be able to be used safely by banks – however, it’s worth nothing that during the RBA’s CBDC experiments, tokens minted on the Ethereum blockchain were used.

CPA’s report appears to take a stance that greatly differs from that of the American SEC regarding Ripple. While the SEC claims that XRP’s more centralized nature could lead to it being more of a security than Ethereum, CPA states that this very centralization makes it a much more viable too for the creation of a CBDC.

CPA are not the only ones to claim that the nature of Ripple could spur on the creation of CBDCs – Banque de France reportedly believes the same thing, as pointed out in the report.

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Bitcoin

Another Bitcoin ETF Launches In Canada, with a Management Fee of Only 0.4%

The third Bitcoin ETF launches in Canada, this time with the worlds lowest management fee for a Bitcoin ETF at only 0.4% p.a.

As announced on Business Wire, the CI Galaxy Bitcoin ETF launched on 9th February 2021 under the tickers BTCX.B (trading in Canadian dollars – unhedged) and BTCX.U (trading in U.S. dollars).

As market validation of cryptocurrencies continues to accelerate, we are offering investors a secure and lower-cost way to participate in the bitcoin market.

Kurt MacAlpine, Chief Executive Officer of CI Financial Corp

Benefits of the CI Galaxy Bitcoin ETF include:

  • Lowest management fee of 0.40%
  • A streamlined means of accessing bitcoin
  • Storage of bitcoin in a segregated cold storage system, protected in accordance with industry-leading protocol
  • Leveraging the experience of GDAM’s veteran portfolio management team to execute the purchase and sale of bitcoin
  • Ability to conveniently trade units correspondent to real-time changes in value
  • Can be held in registered plans like TFSA and RRSP.

What is a Bitcoin ETF?

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a type of investment fund. […] An ETF holds assets such as stocks, bonds, currencies, and/or commodities. […] Most ETFs are index funds, that is, they hold the same securities in the same proportions as a certain stock market index or bond market index.

What is an ETF? Wikapedia

Bitcoin ETFs are exchange-traded funds that track the value of Bitcoin and trade on traditional market exchanges rather than cryptocurrency exchanges. They allow investors to invest in bitcoin without having to go through the hassle of using a cryptocurrency exchange while providing leverage to its price.

Using pooled investment funds, the funds purchase the actual bitcoins and hold them in “cold storage” — an offline destination that can’t easily be hacked or breached. The ETFs then track the performance of bitcoin in US dollars (or such) on a specific index.

Further Benefits of buying Bitcoin through an ETF include:

  • Trading flexibility
  • Portfolio diversification and risk management
  • Lower costs
  • Tax benefits
  • Familiar investment structure

Bitcoin ETF’s are not yet available in Australia, stay tuned.

Categories
Bitcoin India Regulation

It Seems India is Not Banning Bitcoin Now, But Making Plans To Regulate It Instead

India has reversed its previous position of a total crypto ban, saying that they are developing a regulatory framework instead.

The Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a CNBC-TV interview that they “the government’s position on crypto will be calibrated and it wants to make sure there is a window available for all types of experiments in the crypto world.”.

India Are Creating A Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Called “Digital Rupee”

In January, the Indian Parliament tabled the Bill “The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021.” suggested a ban on cryptocurrencies in India. Additionally, the same committee has pitched for the introduction of an official digital currency that will be appropriately regulated by the Reserve Bank of India.

The “Digital Rupee” has been defined as “currency issued digitally by the Reserve Bank and approved by the Central Government to be legal tender”, an official currency of India.

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Bitcoin Crypto News

Bitcoin Futures Perpetual Funding Rate Rises as Price Surges Above US$50,000

Bitcoin Futures Perpetual Funding Rate Rises

Over the past week, Bitcoin (BTC), the largest digital currency by market capitalization, has surged past US$50,000 to currently US$54,000 (AU$71,000). This does not come as a shock due to the massive demand from institutions.

As recently as March 8, Crypto News announced that Chinese software company, Meitu as the latest corporate Bitcoin investor. The company allocated US$17.9 million in Bitcoin. Aside from the growing lists of Bitcoin buys, recent data from Glassnode, a crypto analytics platform, showed that the Bitcoin futures perpetual funding rate is rising again. This signals that traders are betting big on the cryptocurrency via leverage.

BTC Funding Rate is Gradually Rising

Image

As seen in the diagram above, the Bitcoin futures perpetual funding rate across all exchanges is nearing 0.06 percent. This is obviously not the same levels recorded in February; however, a Bitcoin futures perpetual funding rate above 0.01 percent usually indicates that traders are overextending their bullish trades.

The increasing trades in the futures market become more evident as there is currently an uptick in the open interest in Bitcoin futures across all derivative trading platforms. During press time, there was 349.27K BTC worth of open interest (about US$15.9 billion) across all exchanges, which represented a 13.25 percent increase on a 24-hour count, according to the market data from ByBt, a digital currency tracking platform.

Binance holds the lion’s share of the market as it saw about US$3.41 billion open interest in BTC futures during the time of writing. Bybit, OKEx, and CME follow the list with US$3.04 billion, US$2.65 billion, and US$2.26 billion in open interest, respectively. 

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Bitcoin Superannuation

Comparing 5 Bitcoin Super Funds in Australia

Whilst the rise of Bitcoin may be one of the world’s worst kept secrets, its evolution into a genuine asset group has opened up investment opportunities for people from all walks of life.

In 2014, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) acknowledged the rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies not as a currency, but as a capital gain asset, taxable at a rate of only 15%.

This then opened the door for owners of self-managed super funds (SMSF) to invest and transact in cryptocurrency. Now, many companies offer their services to those looking to set up an SMSF by assisting with things like accounting admin, tax returns and audits.

So, if you’re thinking of diversifying your superannuation portfolio by getting on board the crypto bandwagon, but you’re not quite sure which way to turn, this article is for you.

We’re going to take a closer look at five platforms that allow you to hold your cryptocurrency and perform trading with your superannuation funds and give you the lowdown on the pros and cons of each of them.

Important to note: Some of these platforms such as Binance and Swyftx just allow you to have dedicated accounts for your super. But they don’t help you set up the SMSF and they do not do the administration of the fund.

4. NGS Crypto Dedicated Account For Your Super Fund

Nextgen Systems (NGS Crypto) is an international blockchain mining company which delivers the best fusion of encrypted currency investing. Unlike the other crypto platforms, NGS Crypto provides a digital asset mining service which means you don’t have to be a blockchain expert to invest in cryptocurrencies with them.

NGS supports the use of SMSFs to trade in crypto and offers a $0 up-front fee to transfer your superannuation across, potentially saving thousands of dollars. With NGS, all returns are paid daily in Bitcoin and after securing an affiliate partnership with one of Australia’s biggest financial wealth analyst companies, you will also have access to sound financial advice.

Need help? Speak with Cryptocurrency Superannuation Expert at NGS Crypto, call 1300 001 647, or Contact them via email

3. Swyftx Dedicated Account For Your Super Fund

Swyftx prides itself on being Australia’s most progressive cryptocurrency exchange platform. Swyftx burst onto the scene in 2017 and now has over 60,000 users taking advantage of their low fees and non-inflated market prices.

Swyftx now allows SMSF eligible investors to use its exchange platform and trade in up to 200 cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Ethereum as well as stable currency like USD coin.

4. Binance Dedicated Account For Your Super Fund

Binance is the world’s largest crypto exchange and through creating a corporate Binance Australia account, you can trade cryptocurrency as an SMSF. 

Because of the company’s size, setting up an SMSF with Binance gives you huge flexibility, with access to trading in more than 740 cryptocurrencies.

Binance also has a helpful set of basic Super outlines that will help show you how to set up an SMSF in the absence of a third party consultancy firm.

5. BTC Markets Dedicated Account For Your Super Fund

BTC Markets are Australia’s largest and most trusted digital asset exchange and their platform supports SMSF investment. Despite having a smaller selection of cryptocurrencies to trade in, BTC offers great liquidity across markets including Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP. 

Since being founded in 2013, the Australian owned and operated company has been at the centre of the crypto boom, with over $10.5 billion AUD traded on the platform in that time. 

BTC also offers a helpful KPMG tax reporting feature for annual audit preparation and a personalised service for larger trades.

Choosing your Bitcoin Super Fund

In summary, the nature of the ATO’s stance on cryptocurrency means that Australia provides a somewhat lucrative haven for those seeking exposure to Bitcoin and other digital assets.

By setting up a SMSF or moving an existing superannuation fund over to an SMSF perhaps with a third party platform, Australians can take advantage of the current low tax rates for SMSFs. 

Owners of an SMSF can then trade in crypto across platforms like Binance, Swyftx or BTC or use mining experts NGS Crypto and diversify their portfolio ahead of what will hopefully be a fruitful retirement.

Categories
Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Market Analysis Mining

On-Chain Data Suggests Bitcoin Miners Have Finally Stopped Selling Bitcoin

On-chain data suggests that Bitcoin miners have finally stopped selling their accumulated supplies of BTC. The recent dip in Bitcoin price was linked to miners selling their Bitcoin as China closes its mining operations.

The sell off may finally be over, as you can see from the graph below, the red indicates that the miners are now creating daily negative positions in terms of the BTC held in the miners blockchain addresses. And you can clearly see the rate of sales is declining.

Bitcoin Miner Net Position Change by Glassnode

The Miner Position Change metric factors in all balances for all newly minted coins and thus provides us with a big picture view on the full mining landscape.

Despite newly minted coins representing only a fraction of daily trade volume it appears that even miners are returning to neutral or accumulation mode.

The on-chain data suggests a relatively strong bull case for Bitcoin this week.

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Bitcoin Cryptocurrencies Payments

PayPal Seals The Deal With Curv

Sources have previously reported that PayPal was in talks with crypto firm Curv – but the deal had not been confirmed at the time. The previous deal bandied about with BitGo also ultimately fell through.

Now, however, TechCrunch and others have reported that an agreement has been reached.

Great Technical Expertise

According to Jose Fernandez da Ponte – the VP and general manager, of blockchain, crypto and digital currencies at PayPal,  a huge factor that contributed towards the decision to buy the firm was the great level of technical expertise shown by its representatives.

“During our conversations with Curv’s team, we’ve been impressed by their technical talent, entrepreneurial spirit, and the thinking behind the technology they’ve built in the last few years. We’re excited to welcome the Curv team to PayPal.”

Curv’s big selling point is that it is addressed more towards enterprises than to crypto end users – their software is offered mostly to exchanges and financial institutions and focuses on running cryptography server-side.

In turn, Itay Malinger – the CEO of Curv since its’ foundation in 2018 – stated that they see no better place to continue their research and development than with PayPal.

“As a pioneer in security infrastructure for digital assets, Curv is proud to be recognized as an innovator and trusted partner to leading financial institutions around the world. Now, as the adoption of digital assets accelerates, we feel there’s no better home than PayPal to continue our journey of innovation. We’re excited to join PayPal in expanding the role these assets play in the global economy.

The acquisition is due to take place somewhere in the first half of 2021, once all administrative details have been worked out.

In addition, despite anonymous sources giving out figures on the price of the transaction between just under $200 million and $500 million, neither firm has let any details regarding the exact transaction price slip.