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).
Bitcoin: 74%.
XRP (Ripple): 28%
Ethereum: 27%.
Bitcoin Cash: 17%
Litecoin: 15%
Chainlink: 5.2%
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.
Although the Bitcoin blockchain itself was not affected, the official website that hosts a copy of Bitcoin Core open-source code for developers and any other interested party was. So far, an attack against a blockchain itself has never been executed.
DDoS Attacks Common In Similar Circumstances
According to Cobra – an anonymous dev who helps keep the website up and running – this sort of attack is not uncommon when Bitcoin is spiking high and markets are bullish. He also warned that this particular attack was probably not over just yet. Although the official Bitcoin site is up and running again, DDoS attacks happen in waves through coordinated botnets quite often.
“Basically, we got hit with a large DDoS, which is quite common around ATHs (all-time highs) and bull markets. It took us down for a while but for now, we’re back up, but we might go down on and off periodically depending on how long the attackers want to continue attacking.”
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attack in which many devices infected by malware are coordinated by a bad actor in order to overwhelm an IP address with web traffic, slowing down traffic for normal users – and often taking the site offline completely for certain periods of time.
For those eager to help host the source code until the DDoS attacks cease, crypto enthusiasts have set up a torrent where the code can be downloaded from and hosted.
https://t.co/klNYO046It is under DDOS attack. People will not be able to get BitcoinCore until the site is back up. But you can help a bit if you download and keep sharing the torrent of Bitcoin Core 20.0.1 for people that need it to start a full node. https://t.co/NX29uvWArj
The attack is being led by mostly Russian IPs – although this does not necessarily mean the attack is coming from there, as bad actors nearly always use VPNs, allowing them to pretend to be from somewhere else.
In addition, infected devices carrying out the attack can belong to anyone, anywhere – and the owner of the device will almost certainly be unaware that their device is being used for nefarious purposes.
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 Timesreported 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.
The Australia-based Independent Reserve Cryptocurrency Index (IRCI), an Exchange and yearly survey panel published a new report today on how Australians are embracing cryptocurrencies and digital assets. According to the survey, one in five Australians owns crypto, with Bitcoin being the favorite cryptocurrency among all.
The data shows that while Bitcoin remains the leader among digital currencies — with a market capitalization 5x greater than its nearest competitor, Ethereum — in Australia, XRP is the second most popular crypto, only surpassed 3x by BTC.
Aussies Viewing Crypto As A Store Of Value
Back in 2016, the IRCI opened an account for Self-Managed Super Funds, with a total of AUD 41,000 invested into Bitcoin — making more than AUD 1M, a return of 90%.
But the super funds Prime Super and Unisuper could barely make it to 9.9% in returns over a five year period.
“I chose to invest in crypto as I believe in the future and direction of this asset class. I’ve enjoyed taking control of my financial future and have watched my portfolio grow (especially of late). I believe that thanks to my investments in crypto I will be able to retire earlier and live a comfortable life in retirement.”
Stated a respondent named Tony, 46, South Australia.
Likewise, respondents under 45 years old confessed they would like their industry super fund to invest in crypto such as Bitcoin. But no retail or industry superannuation promotes cryptocurrency investment currently.
Source: Indepent Reserve
Currently, Australians owning crypto are holding Bitcoin: 74%, XRP (28%), Ethereum (27%), Bitcoin Cash (17%), Litecoin (15%), other tokens: (8.5%).
Awareness And Adoption Of Crypto
This year, the awareness and adoption of crypto-assets have grown considerably. By 2020, 91.4% of Australians have heard of at least one cryptocurrency, an increase of 90.3% compared to 2019’s survey.
Likewise, almost one in five Australians have adopted crypto as a better store of funds than gold or any other asset. The ownership by age is led by 25 – 40 years old. This age group was more likely to trade more than $500 per month.
Victoria is the leader among crypto-ownership on the eastern side with 20 %. New South Wales is behind with 19.50 %, and Queensland at 16%. But the highest ownership percentage in Australia is on the northern territory, with 22% owning some crypto.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is priced at 30,592 AUD (USD 23,255). Payment companies such as Paypal, financial institutions like Grayscale, and famous millionaires like the Winklevoss brothers have propelled the value of Bitcoin, whilst increasing its popularity among the mainstream media.
Bitcoin hits a fresh record high above $30,000 AUD on Thursday, extending a wild rally for the cryptocurrency that has seen it more than triple in value this year.
The world’s most valuable digital currency surged +15% to $30,902 AUD according to crypto market data provider Coin Metrics, taking its year-to-date gains to more than +200%.
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency originally described in a 2008 whitepaper by a person, or group of people, using the alias “Satoshi Nakamoto” It was launched soon after, in January 2009.
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer online currency, meaning that all transactions happen directly between equal, independent network participants, without the need for any intermediary to permit or facilitate them. Bitcoin was created, according to Nakamoto’s own words, to allow “online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”
Bitcoin Quick Stats
SYMBOL:
BTC
Global rank:
1st
Market cap:
$551,313,622,271 AUD
Current price:
$30,124 AUD
All time high price:
$30,902 AUD
1 day:
+15.96%
7 day:
+24.53%
1 year:
+241.59%
Bitcoin Price Analysis
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is ranked 1st cryptocurrency globally and the current price is $30,124 AUD. This is a +24.53% increase since 11th December 2020 (7 days ago) as shown in the chart below.
After looking at the above 8-hour candle chart, we can clearly see that Bitcoin was trading inside the rising wedge pattern on the BTC/USDT pair. The first resistance was on the $26,151 AUD price levels which BTC broke with a strong bullish trend buying volume and made a new all-time high above +$30k AUD. Seeing that the whole crypto market is waking up bullish today, Bitcoin is likely to continue the uptrend to make new all-time high prices.
“A rising wedge is a technical indicator, suggesting a reversal pattern frequently seen in bear markets. This pattern shows up in charts when the price moves upward with pivot highs and lows converging toward a single point known as the apex.”
The cryptocurrency rose by more than +15% on Thursday to reach $30,472 against the AUD, extending a winning streak this year amid growing interest among big investment companies attracted to its potential for quick gains.
The price of bitcoin has surged by more than +400% this year from a low point of around $4,718 AUD in March when the coronavirus pandemic triggered a deep sell-off in financial markets around the world.
Analysts said that unlike in previous surges, a major price driver appeared to be more institutional investors buying into the cryptocurrency.
What do the Technical Indicators say?
The Bitcoin TradingView indicators (on the 1 day) mainly indicate BTC as a buy, except the Oscillators which indicate BTC as a neutral.
So Why did Bitcoin Breakout?
The recent rise in Bitcoin over 100% since the halving in May and then the suggested start of the Altcoin season could have contributed to the recent breakout of Bitcoin. Another reason could be the whales, secretly stacking up Bitcoin to their portfolio for the next bull run rally.
A few other reasons for Bitcoin’s return to the record highs. It’s about $30,124 as of this writing, matching the previous highs from 2017’s original explosion.
Reason One: Paypal and Square’s Cash App, according to reports, are in a race to acquire enough Bitcoin to facilitate the next generation of their money transferring services. They both seek to allow their massive user bases to be able to seamlessly transact with merchants in Bitcoin, moving money back and forth from sovereign currencies into Bitcoin, etc.
Reason Two: Wall Street legends are being won over. Don’t underestimate the pull of FOMO, peer pressure, idol worship, etc, Read this article in Barron’s about how institutions are afraid of missing out.
Reason Three: Gold and Silver aren’t “working.” Go look at a chart of gold or a gold ETF since the summer. It peaked in July in US dollar terms. The weakening (some would say plunging) dollar is one of the biggest macro stories around right now. Gold should be rallying. So far it’s not. Just fell below its 200-day last week.
Bitcoin has the highest liquidity on Binance Exchange so that would help for trading USDT/BTC pair. However, if you’re just looking at buying some quick and hodling Bitcoin then Swyftx Exchange is a popular choice in Australia.
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.
Still some latency issues here and there. Working on it, all hands on deck. 🙏
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.
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.
12/14/20 UPDATE: Net Assets Under Management, Holdings per Share, and Market Price per Share for our Investment Products.
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.
Bitcoin issuance is decreased by 50% every four years. These halvings are also a core part of the Bitcoin protocol, and are predictable well into the future.
New bitcoins are issued every time a new block is mined as a reward for the miner who successfully mined the block. This is the only way that new bitcoins can be created and is a key part of the Bitcoin protocol.
Bitcoin’s current block reward is 6.25, which means 6.25 new bitcoins are issued every time a block is mined. On average, blocks are mined every ten minutes, which typically means about 800-1000 new bitcoins are issued every day. There’s slight variance from day to day due to the unpredictable nature of exactly how often new blocks are mined (Bitcoin’s difficulty adjusts every two weeks to keep the average block time around ten minutes), but over the long term this supply issuance is deterministic and predictable.
Tether’s total supply has passed 20 billion. After initially launching on Omni, the Ethereum based version of Tether (USDT_ETH) and Tron based version of Tether (USDT_TRX) have both grown rapidly over the last year (see our report “The Rise of Stablecoins” for an exploration of why stablecoins have been exploding). Tether is still the undisputed leader of stablecoins, with over 5x the supply of any other stablecoin. But regulatory action is once again heating up with the recent introduction of the STABLE Act. Tether may once again come under fire in 2021.
MetaStreme, an Australian e-wallet and Bitcoin interface platform, recently proposed a new project prototype called “RouterSV” — a tool that will be designed to improve network security by publishing the traffic logs on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Introducing a new project prototype 'RouterSV' launched on MetaStreme.
Hack proof router logs stored on an immutable ledger.
Earn #BSV by contributing to shared intelligence blacklists that help protect your network from known attackers. pic.twitter.com/vnPYQmS8rk
RouterSV uses the Syslog standard to send data logs collected in routers and other network devices to the Bitcoin SV ledger. According to MetaStreme’s director, Paul Chieri, by publishing the log files, the transaction records would become permanently auditable, and allow network administrators to share valuable data records with each other.
RouterSV takes logs collected by a router or other network devices and stores them to a syslog server which then writes that data to the BSV ledger. Syslog is a commonly used protocol by routers, servers, switches, and other network devices. It allows the collection of system and security logs of multiple devices to be collected into a single database.
Stated Paul Chieri to Coingeek
In a recent interview, Chieri stated that the company is already using its own system to publish the traffic logs to the BSV blockchain. The director added that RouterSV is under design, and it’s an open project if people experienced with Syslog records are interested in joining in its development.
MetaStreme is powered by Bitcoin SV (BSV) protocol – which enables other programs to interact with the BSV network through an API (Application Programming Interface) — a software intermediary that allows two applications to interact with each other.
Bitcoin SV (Satoshi Vision) originated from a hard fork from BTC Cash. The result is a cryptocurrency with its own separated blockchain. The BSV network has a number of advantages, such as scalability — with bigger blocks of 128MB, lower fees, and better network development.
Publicly-traded business intelligence company MicroStrategy has purchased an additional US$50 million Bitcoin (BTC), according to the CEO, Michael Saylor. The recent purchase further strengthens the company’s stand as the largest company holding the cryptocurrency as a reserve asset. By investing in Bitcoin, the company sees it as a better inflation-hedge asset against cash, including Gold.
Many other companies like Square have joined the train, adding a massive amount of Bitcoin to their reserve.
MicroStrategy now Holds Over 40,000 Bitcoin
MicroStrategy has purchased approximately 2,574 bitcoins for $50.0 million in cash in accordance with its Treasury Reserve Policy, at an average price of approximately $19,427 per bitcoin. We now hold approximately 40,824 bitcoins.https://t.co/nwZcM9zAXZ
The US$50 million Bitcoin purchase was also confirmed in the company’s recent filing with the United States Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). At such an amount, MicroStrategy could buy 2,574 Bitcoin at the average price of $19,427 yesterday. This is the third time MicroStrategy is acquiring Bitcoin. In August, the business intelligence firm purchased the first whopping amount of 21,454 BTC for US$250 million at the average price of $11,635.
About one month later, MicroStrategy announced an additional 16,796 BTC for $175 million. Overall, the company now has about 40,824 Bitcoin as cryptocurrency reserve. At today’s price of US$18,866 on Coinmarketcap, MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin treasury is worth over US770 million. Such a massive number of Bitcoin indicates the level of confidence the company and its board members have in the leading cryptocurrency. While giving reasons for the crypto treasury, MicroStrategy explained that:
“If you have large dollar values and you’re hoping for any kind of return on them, that’s faded. Gold, silver, and bitcoin are showing strength. […] Hence, if we look at assets, gold, silver, bitcoin, and equities have all been accreting as the dollar has been weakening.”
Corporate Bitcoin Investors
MicroStrategy’s move into Bitcoin had caused many companies to rethink allocating a portion of their reserve in the cryptocurrency. On this train is Square Inc., which purchased about US$50 million worth of Bitcoin. Among others, Galaxy Digital Holdings also has about US$130 million worth of Bitcoin in its reserve.
