THE BIGGEST WAVES HITTING THE CRYPTO SHORE

MARCH 2021

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BIGGEST TRADING NEWS & MORE

A for Adoption. B for Banks. C for Clients. D for Digital Assets. First launched in 2018 and soon after shut down, with Bitcoin trading above $55K with increasing client demand, Goldman Sachs is bringing back its Bitcoin trading desk! The desk will operate 24/7, offering derivatives, CME futures, non-deliverable forwards, and cash settlements to begin with. Moreover, the banking giant is set to offer a “full spectrum of cryptocurrency investment products to its private wealth clients” in the 2nd quarter of 2021. This news come shortly after Morgan Stanley’s announcement to offer Bitcoin exposure to its accredited wealth management clients through bitcoin funds. Another Morgan, going by the name of J.P. Morgan, according to a SEC filing, is launching a debt instrument tied to 11 U.S. listed companies, ‘Bitcoin Proxy Stocks’, which are directly or indirectly exposed to cryptocurrencies.

"For speculative investment opportunities to rise to the level of an investable asset class that can play a role in diversified investment portfolios requires transformational progress on both the supply and demand sides. With cryptocurrency, we think that threshold is being reached. A firming regulatory framework, deepening liquidity, availability of products and growing investor interest—especially among institutional investors—have coalesced."

Visa Creates History. On March 29, Visa made history by accepting a cryptocurrency payment for the first time! Aiming to improve crypto business operations and Visa’s infrastructure, Visa is piloting settlements in USDC (USD Coin – stable coin)! This move means that crypto businesses, or businesses holding crypto in their treasury, will not have to keep fiat balances in in their treasury and settlement workflows and will be able to better evaluate new business models without having to predict what their fiat payment volumes will be!

$100 Billion Crypto Nasdaq Listing. Nasdaq’s Private Market auction has set Coinbase’s value to $100 billion dollars! The crypto exchange is set to go public on Nasdaq April 14th.

'Checkout with Crypto' - PayPal. PayPal’s word is PayPal’s bond! U.S. based customers will be able to spend their “cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside their PayPal wallet,” at nearly 30 million online merchants! Applicable to Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC) holdings, all transactions will be settled in USD and converted to the applicable currency for the business at the standard PayPal conversion rates.

It is important to recognize that, within the span of 6 months, PayPal has not just set foot into the crypto space but it has set a BIG FOOT! In October 2020, PayPal inaugurated its crypto services with ‘Buy, Sell, Hold Crypto’. In March 2021, PayPal bridged the gap between e-commerce and digital assets by enabling ‘Checkout with Crypto’. In March 2021, PayPal has also made its first crypto acquisition, bringing on the Israeli startup's, Curv, team to its ‘recently created business unit focused on blockchain, crypto and digital currencies’!

Bitcoin in Q12021. Soon after crossing the monumental $1 trillion market capitalization mark in February, Bitcoin surpassed the $60 K threshold on March 13, taking the asset's ATH to $61,683.86! Bitcoin is currently trading at an average price of $58,000. Crossing the $50K mark had everyone’s attention but crossing the $60K mark created a new dialogue amongst the biggest financial players, recognizing cryptocurrencies as an investable asset class.

Big Gains for Publicly Traded Crypto Asset Manager. Europe’s largest crypto asset manager, CoinShares (CS), went public on Sweden’s Nasdaq First North Growth Market on March 11th and the share price appreciated by 33% on its first trading day! Initially offered at 44.90 Swedish Krone (SEK), the stock closed at 109.12 SEK, more than doubling the initial holders’ money! As per a filing, the asset manager doubled its earnings in 2020 due to a 336% increase in AUM. As of March 2021, CoinShares manages over $4.5 billion.

100% Returns. A leading Israeli investment house with over $50 billion in management (as of January 2021), Altshuler Shaham, invested $100 million in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) at the end of 2020, where Bitcoin was priced at around $20,000. Bitcoin’s astronomical growth from time of investment earned the asset manager over 100% in returns within two months!

'Checkout with Bitcoin' - Tesla Edition. Following Tesla’s purchase of $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin in February, U.S. customers can now buy Tesla with Bitcoin! Unlike PayPal, “Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency” resources at Tesla mentioned. This payment option will become available to non-U.S. customers later in 2021.

Is a Bitcoin ETF In-store for 2021? $10 trillion asset manager, Fidelity, has filed for its Bitcoin ETF. Buy why should it be any different this time, compared to the long list of rejected crypto  ETFs? Well maybe it’s the fact that this time it’s Fidelity or maybe the fact that the new SEC chairman, Gary Gensler, teaches on blockchain technology and digital currencies at MIT. With Chairman Gensler leading the way and CryptoMom, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, voicing her concerns of a delayed Bitcoin ETF, the pairing could become a force to be reckoned with.

Madness that is NFTs. While De-Fi was all the rage in 2020, growing by 2,000%, 2021 has a new rhythm. And that rhythm is NFTs – non fungible tokens. Except this is nor a rhythm nor is it a rage… it is a monstrosity in all its glory – and a commercially exploitable hype! Boiled down, NFT is the tokenization of collectibles and digital works of art into verifiable assets that can be traded on the blockchain. Breaking records, auction house Christies led the auction for digital artist Beeple’s ‘Everydays: The First 5000 Days’ digital artwork. The NFT sold for a staggering $69.3 million!

Twitter founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey, sold his first tweet as an NFT for nearly $3 million. Rock band, Kings of Leon, released and sold their new album as an NFT, generating over $2 million in NFT sales! A New York Times column NFT titled ‘Buy This Column on the Blockchain’ sold for a whopping $560,000.

Curious about NFTs?  

VC behemoth, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), has curated a list of readings and resources on all things NFTs.

Cryptoart.io displays the most expensive artworks sold and data on the NFT market.

Citi Bank: Bitcoin - At the Tipping Point. “Bitcoin is at a “tipping point” between widespread adoption or a “speculative implosion," going as far as to say that it could become the "currency of choice for international trade."

Down n’ Out? Not too long ago, MicroStrategy (MSTR) was riding the waves of its stock’s skyrocketing value! Peaking at $1,315 on February 9th, 2021, MSTR is now trading at nearly 50% discount, closing at $678.80 on March 31st. But MicroStrategy is no lone soldier. Once trading at a 40% premium (December 21, 2020), The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) product is trading at a 10% discount — its highest fall in history!

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