Crypto news updates 29th Dec. 2020
📣 Messari Analyst: Institutions Will Buy ETH in 2021
Watkins wrote about this on the social network Twitter. He explained that as the adoption of Bitcoin and the realization that the first cryptocurrency is indeed a valuable asset, leaders of organizations will become more open to other cryptocurrencies. Those who have already invested in Bitcoin will find it much easier to invest in Ether, which has the second largest market capitalization.
In the second half of this year many large firms have invested in Bitcoin. So in August, MicroStrategy invested $250 million in bitcoin, after which it acquired BTC for another $175 million. Square created by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also did not stand aside.
In October the company announced the purchase of 4,709 BTC for $50 million. Watkins also mentioned the recent announcement by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME Group) to start trading ETH futures in early February. According to the analyst, CME would not launch such products if there was no demand for them. When CME added bitcoin futures institutional investors did not yet have a complete understanding of the cryptocurrency and its value. Many firms now view Bitcoin as a capital preservation tool in times of economic crisis.
Watkins believes that along with this, companies are developing a more loyal attitude towards ETH, given the upcoming update, which developers have been working on for several years. This weekend, bitcoin reached a record high in its entire history $28,420 but has now rolled back to $26,900. The ether rate has also renewed its maximum, breaking through the $ 700 mark. The price of ETH almost coincided with the expectations of traders who predicted that by the end of this year, Ether will cost $ 790.
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📣 Swissquote: "central banks will launch digital currencies in the coming year"
In an interview, Chris Thomas called the acquisition of bitcoin and ether with long-term storage of these cryptocurrencies "a safe investment strategy."
According to Thomas, these assets will exist for many more years. With the increased demand from institutional investors for Bitcoin and the nascent interest of organizations in Ether, the value of these cryptoassets will grow rapidly. The demand of financial companies for cryptocurrency and custody services is due to the difficult economic situation around the world.
However, this is precisely what creates the preconditions for Bitcoin and Ether to consolidate their positions in the market as an asset class. The specialist also shared his thoughts on the prospects for digital currencies from central banks. Given that the Chinese government is actively testing the digital yuan in several cities and is even developing a special hardware wallet to store it, this country could launch its own stablecoin as early as next year.
Talking about European countries, Thomas suggested that Sweden could be the first country in the European Union to issue a digital Swedish krona. Cash in this country is no longer popular among the population, so the level of acceptance of cryptocurrency from the Swedish central bank can be quite high. Earlier, the Swedish government said it plans to complete research related to the release of the state cryptocurrency by the end of 2022.
Many central banks have begun to think about issuing digital currencies due to fears that Facebook's Libra stablecoin could dominate regular money, thereby destabilizing the entire global financial system.
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📣 Hacker issues 40 quintillion COVER tokens and returns $ 3 million in ETH to developers
According to analysts, the hacker managed to issue such a number of tokens due to an error in the smart contract of the staking protocol. This bug allowed for an almost unlimited COVER issue and then selling them on Uniswap and Sushiswap. The developers of the project reported that they could not timely stop the release of tokens due to the difference in time zones. The project management recommended that users withdraw liquidity as soon as possible. A few hours after the exploit was discovered, the COVER price dropped from $ 860 to almost zero.
Binance cryptocurrency exchange immediately took the necessary action to prevent hackers from selling tokens. Binance has suspended COVER deposits and trading. However, the COVER withdrawal on the exchange remained available.
However, the attacker managed to sell $ 5 million worth of COVER tokens on other exchanges. Later it turned out that the hacker sold part of the tokens through the 1inch decentralized exchange aggregator and returned 4,350 ETH (almost $ 3 million) to the project through the Grap Finance platform. In a comment to the transaction, the hacker left an offensive advice to the developers: "Next time, do your own shit." After that, he destroyed a significant part of the mined tokens. Thus, this hacker may not have received any profit for his actions. But many community members believe that there were several hackers, and another attacker sold the stolen tokens on DEX and did not return anything. The exact amount of losses is still unknown. After the tokens were burned, the COVER price partially recovered, and now this crypto asset is traded on different exchanges in a very wide range: from $ 30 to $ 450.