Wood considers Bitcoin to be a game-changer and uncovers why the cryptocurrency is soaring and gaining traction as a hedge. In an interview with Yahoo Finance, she disclosed that her asset management firm had foreseen that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies would eventually gain institutional support. What they were not expecting, however, was the portion each firm allocated to BTC. Wood explained why Bitcoin was so attractive to financial institutions. She said:
“We have been expecting institutions to start moving into Bitcoin and other crypto assets, but primarily Bitcoin, the most secure of the blockchains, because if you look at the correlation of Bitcoin’s performance relative to any other asset class, it has the lowest correlation – meaning if you buy some Bitcoin, you will further diversify your portfolio and increase your returns with lower risk.”
She further revealed:
“Institutions look for that low correlation. Bitcoin has it. That’s clear. We have 10 years of history now.”
Why Bitcoin will steal the tech spotlight
The Ark Invest CEO hinted that in the future, Bitcoin’s potential may be even bigger than that of Amazon or Apple. Currently, Bitcoin’s market cap does not even equate to half of Apple or Amazon’s monetary value, but its unique features have been recognized by many. Wood said:
“Bitcoin is roughly a $600 billion dollar market cap, so not even half the size of Apple or Amazon, put it in perspective and yet it has a really big idea. I think a much bigger idea than Apple or Amazon.”
She added that it was really the first of its kind, as Bitcoin was global and truly decentralized as a digital currency. The CEO added that countries have increasingly recognized Bitcoin’s budding potential, and said:
“When China basically shut down the exchanges in China that dealt with crypto, especially Bitcoin, that activity just moved over to Japan, Thailand and Korea – other countries that wanted to move ahead in this innovation space. They did not want to miss this next big thing.”
Bitcoin has increasingly gained traction, especially since the last quarter of 2020, where its bull run gained momentum and propelled the cryptocurrency to new all-time highs.
Crypto innovation on the rise
From the beginning of 2020 to now, when Bitcoin’s value was around $7,200, the cryptocurrency has soared to new heights, increasing five-fold in value to trade around $38,000 as institutional corporations led by MicroStrategy, Square, and MassMutual have come to recognize Bitcoin’s budding potential. Due to the pandemic, the cryptocurrency industry has attracted more attention, as many have come to recognize crypto as a hedge against monetary policies and inflation rates.
Many industry experts have acknowledged that the underlying narrative surrounding Bitcoin has quickly shifted in 2020. While holding Bitcoin was previously considered a risky move to take as a portfolio manager, the narrative quickly shifted to it being a career risk to not own Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency that has been gaining more and more traction. Historically, altcoins also surge higher when Bitcoin undergoes bullish momentum.
Currently, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, has hit a new all-time high above $1,600. Currently, the cryptocurrency is in price discovery mode, up nearly 7% from yesterday’s price.
Despite Ethereum’s high, Grayscale has taken the opportunity to add more Ether coins to its Grayscale Ethereum Trust, and the move can be perceived as a huge vote of confidence for Ethereum
In a Q4 2020 investor update, PayPal revealed that it recorded fourth-quarter and fiscal year financial results that were far beyond its expectations. The company noted that it was its strongest fiscal year, with high payment volume and new accounts further strengthening its scale.
PayPal recorded a massive surge in the number of active accounts on its platform, with a whopping 16 million active accounts in Q4 2020 alone. For fiscal 2020, the company added 72.7 million net new active accounts, bringing its total active accounts to 377 million.
This increase came shortly after the company introduced cryptocurrency trading on its platform. On October 21, 2020, PayPal confirmed its entry into the market after it had received a conditional license from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), which allows US users of its Venmo service to trade cryptocurrencies.
PayPal’s Crypto Users Are Very Active
PayPal admitted that activity on its network went high after it allowed clients to buy, sell, and store cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash using its wallets.
Consequently, clients who engaged in crypto trading started spending more than twice the time they spent before using the service.
PayPal noted that its total payment volume for the final three months of 2020 rose by 39% to $277 billion, exceeding the company’s expectations and the $267 billion predictions of analysts for the fourth quarter of 2020.
Shaping Crypto In Consumer Payments
Speaking of the company’s venture into cryptocurrencies on a call with analysts, PayPal’s CEO, Dan Schulman said that the company has formulated a comprehensive product technique regarding crypto, blockchain technology, and digital currencies in general.
He noted that PayPal is “significantly investing” in their new crypto and blockchain business unit. The company plans to help shape the role of cryptocurrencies in consumer payments across the globe.
Schulman said:
We also saw an exceptional response from our crypto launch, even with high initial expectations the volume of crypto traded on our platform greatly exceeded our projections. We are excited to build upon this early success by allowing customers to use their crypto balance as a funding source whenever they shop at our 29 million merchants. We anticipate the rollout of that capability to begin late this quarter, and we hope to launch our first international market in the next several months. These initial steps are just the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain, and digital currencies.
UNI Hovers Near All-Time High: A History of Price Movements
The UNI rally has turned parabolic and could mean that it’s approaching the top of the current upward move. First Major UNI Cycle The first major cycle for UNI began moments after its launch in September. A massive increase followed immediately afterward, leading to a high of $15 in a matter of hours. However, since … Uniswap (UNI) went live on Sept. 17, 2020, and despite only being around for a short amount of time, it has already completed its first market cycle and has now begun the second one.
The UNI rally has turned parabolic and could mean that it’s approaching the top of the current upward move.
First Major UNI Cycle
The first major cycle for UNI began moments after its launch in September. A massive increase followed immediately afterward, leading to a high of $15 in a matter of hours.
However, since that price was not sustainable, it only left a long upper wick in its wake. The real high might actually be around $8.16, reached roughly 42 hours after listing.
Immediately after this high, UNI began a long corrective period, in which it fell by 77% in 47 days, leading to a low of $1.75 on Nov. 5.
While the rate of increase after listing was huge, the ensuing downward movement had a more gradual slope. There was a decline of roughly 2% a day.
UNI’s Current Movement
The movement since the Nov. 5 low can be divided into two sections. The first was an upward move of 152% which was followed by a fall of 34%. Both these moves took around 18 days to develop.
Since then, UNI has been on an absolute tear, increasing 600% in 50 days in a near parabolic movement. On Feb 4, it reached an all-time high price of $21.60.
This is now the longest cycle in the token’s short price history and is slightly longer than the original correction of 47 days.
Future Movement
Despite bullish technical indicators, UNI seems to be in the fifth and final wave of a bullish impulse which began in November 2020. Wave 5 has already extended significantly, reaching the 1.61 length of waves 1-3 combined.
Therefore, it’s likely that it is close to reaching the top of its current cycle and may soon see a significant correction. If one occurs, UNI could fall all the way to the 0.5 – 0.618 Fib retracement levels between $8.80 and $11
Disclaimer
All the information contained on our website is published in good faith and for general information purposes only. Any action the reader takes upon the information found on our website is strictly at their own risk.
Valdrin is a cryptocurrency enthusiast and financial trader. After obtaining a masters degree in Financial Markets at the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics he began working at the Ministry of Economic Development in his native country of Kosovo.
In 2019, he decided to focus full-time on cryptocurrencies and trading.
Ghost of High Gas Fee Haunts Ethereum Again, Japanese Exchange Halts
The spiking gas fee on the Ethereum network has come back to haunt the cryptocurrency as it soared past $1600 yesterday creating a new ATH. As a result of the growing gas fee, Japanese crypto exchange Liquid Global has halted ETH and ERC-20 token withdrawals temporarily, promising to resume the service once the gas fee returns to normal levels.
We have temporarily halted ERC-20 and ETH withdrawals due to spiking GAS fees.
Service will be resumed once GAS fees return to normal levels.
All other crypto currencies are operating as per normal.
Thank you for understanding
— Liquid Global Official (@Liquid_Global) February 4, 2021
The issue of the Gas fee has troubled the Ethereum network for quite some time now and has only gone worst over the past year as the popularity of Defi spiked. The current gas fee is almost as high as the price of ETH itself as one user posted a screenshot of their transaction.
$ETH has finally done it! Gas fees are higher than the token price. $HTR $ADA $eGLD $DOT IT’s YOUR TIME. pic.twitter.com/lJiswwcENb
— KuSamORAI Jumper (@JumperWave) February 3, 2021
A similar incident was noticed last year when someone had to pay thousands of dollars for one transaction on Ethereum. Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum has even claimed that the high gas fee leading to several blockages on the network was one of the key reasons behind the new ETH 2.0 network.
The rising gas fee has also led to speculations about Ethereum hitting a temporary top in its recent price surge after breaking $1,600. The gas fee surge is often followed by the price hitting a temporary top on several past occasions and many believe the same could happen with the current gas fee rise as well. The average gas fee is currently between $45-$93.
The rising gas fee has made many thriving defi protocols nearly unusable at the moment and if the trend continues it could soon reflect on the market price of the second-largest cryptocurrency.
Just did a test to compare fees. At the moment Gas Fees are extremely high. Checked the rates to Swap $eth to $link On $uni anything from $48 to $96 on #Honeyswap with $Xdai $0.000166. Imagine $uni v3 starts using $Xdai. $Stake token is a game changer. pic.twitter.com/0LRtXdd9q0
— Tyler Gekko (@GekkoTyler) February 4, 2021
Ethereum is currently in price discovery mode and many believed $1,800 is a possibility by the end of the week given its upcoming CME futures market launch and high trust fund premiums. However, the rising gas fee could prove to be a spoiler in the short term.
To keep track of DeFi updates in real time, check out our DeFi news feed Here.