Elon Musk dumps $1.1B in Tesla stock, NYCCoin launches with mayor’s blessing and Mastercard pushes crypto-linked cards in Asia: Hodler’s Digest, Nov. 7–13

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Com­ing every Sat­ur­day, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every sin­gle impor­tant news sto­ry that hap­pened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adop­tion and reg­u­la­tion high­lights, lead­ing coins, pre­dic­tions and much more — a week on Coin­tele­graph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Crypto markets tag $3T combined market cap for first time

At the start of this week, the com­bined cryp­tocur­ren­cy mar­ket cap broke $3 tril­lion for the first time. The mar­ket has fluc­tu­at­ed heav­i­ly this year, pre­vi­ous­ly top­ping out at $2.62 tril­lion dur­ing the height of the bull run in May, before crash­ing down to as low as $1.24 tril­lion in mid-July. 

CoinGecko’s data tracks 10,418 dig­i­tal assets across 518 cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchanges, and the surg­ing momen­tum in the lat­ter half of 2021 comes on the back of Bit­coin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Polka­dot (DOT) and Solana (SOL) all push­ing past new all-time highs.

Bit­coin still remains the dom­i­nant force in cryp­to, with its $1.21 tril­lion mar­ket cap being more than dou­ble that of sec­ond-ranked Ethereum at $550 bil­lion. Mean­while, the com­bined cap­i­tal­iza­tion of all oth­er cryp­to assets sits at rough­ly 40%, or $1.24 trillion.

 

BREAKING: Mastercard launches crypto-linked cards across Asia-Pacific

On Tues­day, Mas­ter­card announced that it will be launch­ing cryp­to-linked pay­ment cards across the Asia-Pacif­ic region that will enable users to instant­ly con­vert their dig­i­tal assets into fiat currency. 

The cards are being launched in col­lab­o­ra­tion with three cryp­to ser­vice providers: Amber Group and Bitkub in Thai­land, and Coin­Jar in Aus­tralia. Mas­ter­card hasn’t out­lined what cryp­to assets will be sup­port­ed at this stage but did hint that Bit­coin and Ether would be at the top of the list. 

“Rather than direct­ly trans­fer­ring cryp­tocur­ren­cies to a mer­chant, card­hold­ers will now be able to instant­ly con­vert their cryp­tocur­ren­cies into tra­di­tion­al fiat cur­ren­cy which can be spent every­where Mas­ter­card is accept­ed around the world, both online and offline,” Mas­ter­card said.

 

NewYorkCityCoin launching this week with Mayor-elect Eric Adams’ blessing

NewYorkC­i­ty­Coin (NYC­Coin) launched on Thurs­day, with May­or-elect Eric Adams giv­ing the coin’s issuers, City­Coins, a pub­lic endorse­ment ahead of the roll­out. Adams stat­ed last week that he want­ed to have a City­Coin for NYC that mir­rors Miami’s MiamiCoin. 

While Adams wel­comed the project to New York this week, City­Coins has yet to offi­cial­ly part­ner with the local gov­ern­ment. It may want to do so soon, how­ev­er, as the NYC­Coin project will divert 30% of its min­ing rewards to a cus­todied reserve wal­let that the local gov­ern­ment can use to sup­port what­ev­er ini­tia­tives it chooses. 

“We’re glad to wel­come you to the glob­al home of Web3! We’re count­ing on tech and inno­va­tion to help dri­ve our city for­ward,” Adams said.

 

Elon Musk offloads $1.1B in Tesla stock

Accord­ing to fil­ings with the U.S. Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion, errat­ic bil­lion­aire and Tes­la CEO Elon Musk offloaded more than 934,000 Tes­la shares worth around $1.1 bil­lion on Thursday. 

Musk made around a 180% gain on his sold shares with an aver­age sale price of around $1,170, mark­ing his largest fire sale of Tes­la stock to date. The CEO had teased a poten­tial sale over the week­end after polling his 63 mil­lion Twit­ter fol­low­ers about whether he should sell 10% of his Tes­la stock. The poll was in response to pub­lic push­back against bil­lion­aires who may or may not have paid their fair share of tax. 

This sale only account­ed for 1% of Musk’s hold­ings, and the fil­ings show that he planned to sell the stock as part of his tax oblig­a­tions back in Sep­tem­ber. The world now awaits if he will sell anoth­er 9% to appease the 58% of respon­dents who vot­ed “yes” to his poll.

 

Zimbabwe may be the next country to embrace Bitcoin as legal tender

Zimbabwe’s gov­ern­ment was rumored to be look­ing at uti­liz­ing Bit­coin as a legal ten­der to meet grow­ing demand in the coun­try, accord­ing to local news outlets. 

The news, report­ed on Nov. 7, sug­gest­ed that dis­cus­sions with local busi­ness­es are already under­way. Retired Brigadier Colonel Charles Wek­wete, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and head of the e‑government tech­nol­o­gy unit in the office of the pres­i­dent and cab­i­net, was con­firmed as the source of the speculation. 

A cou­ple of days lat­er, how­ev­er, news also sur­faced that Zim­bab­we was not look­ing to adopt Bit­coin what­so­ev­er, and was instead explor­ing cen­tral bank dig­i­tal cur­ren­cies (CBD­Cs). Zimbabwe’s min­is­ter of infor­ma­tion, Mon­i­ca Mutsvang­wa, had the unfor­tu­nate job of quash­ing the rumors and pro­vid­ing a major buz­zkill for Bit­coin maxis.

 

 

 

Winners and Losers

 

 

At the end of the week, Bit­coin (BTC) is at $63,185, Ether (ETH) at $4,577 and XRP at $1.17. The total mar­ket cap is at $2.75 tril­lion, accord­ing to CoinMarketCap. 

Among the biggest 100 cryp­tocur­ren­cies, the top three alt­coin gain­ers of the week are Loopring (LRC) at 100.64%, Kade­na (KDA) at 99.70% and Livepeer (LPT) at 80.35%. 

The top three alt­coin losers of the week are OMG Net­work (OMG) at ‑25.57%, Arweave (AR) at ‑16.86% and Cos­mos (ATOM) at ‑15.68%.

For more info on cryp­to prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s mar­ket analy­sis.

 

 

Most Memorable Quotations

 

“For the sec­ond time in five months, we announced the seizure of dig­i­tal pro­ceeds of ran­somware deployed by a transna­tion­al crim­i­nal group. This will not be the last time — the U.S. gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to aggres­sive­ly pur­sue the entire ran­somware ecosys­tem and increase our nation’s resilience to cyber threats.”

Mer­rick Gar­land, U.S. attor­ney general

 

“If Apple were to add sup­port for #Bit­coin to the iPhone and con­vert their trea­sury to a Bit­coin Stan­dard, it would be worth at least a tril­lion dol­lars to their shareholders.”

Michael Say­lor, CEO of MicroStrategy

 

“The cryp­to com­mu­ni­ty is ambi­tious, dar­ing and full of poten­tial. Inno­va­tion is about syn­er­gy. It’s beyond tech­nol­o­gy and about peo­ple. It’s about us.”

Kristi­na Cornèr, edi­tor-in-chief at Cointelegraph

 

“I believe that in the next three to five years, the DeFi indus­try will grow mas­sive­ly. It’s already grow­ing rapid­ly, but the advan­tages of peer-to-peer tech­nolo­gies can and will be more wide­ly experienced.”

Anton Bukov, co-founder of 1inch Network

 

“If the results of this ‘devel­op­ment’ phase con­clude that the case for CBDC is made, and that it is oper­a­tional­ly and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly robust, then the ear­li­est date for launch of a U.K. CBDC would be in the sec­ond half of the decade.”

The Bank of England

 

“We are tak­ing a high degree of focus on issues sur­round­ing the secu­ri­ty of per­son­al infor­ma­tion and the dig­i­tal yuan and have made rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry and tech­no­log­i­cal adjust­ments to meet this objec­tive. We have adopt­ed a prin­ci­ple of anonymi­ty for small trans­ac­tions regard­ing the dig­i­tal yuan and will only step in to reg­u­late under the law for large trans­ac­tions. When it comes to col­lect­ing per­son­al data, we seek only to col­lect what is nec­es­sary and the min­i­mum of what is legal­ly required, which is far less than elec­tron­ic pay­ment apps of today.”

Yi Gang, People’s Bank of Chi­na governor

 

“It is not rea­son­able to build a finan­cial sys­tem that demands investors also be sophis­ti­cat­ed inter­preters of com­plex code.”

Car­o­line Cren­shaw, U.S. Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion commissioner 

 

“Cryp­to is becom­ing cul­tur­al, it’s becom­ing cool. […] It used to be that if you were invest­ing in cryp­to, you were kind of weird.”

Cuy Sheffield, head of cryp­to at Visa

 

Prediction of the Week 

 

Bitcoin to hit $250K in January 2022 but ‘invalidate’ S2FX BTC price model — New prediction

Dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy ana­lyst Matthew Hyland recent­ly tweet­ed his thoughts about Bitcoin’s poten­tial upcom­ing price action. In short, his mul­ti-tweet write-up essen­tial­ly explained his pre­dic­tion that BTC will sur­pass $100,000 on its way to $250,000, val­i­dat­ing one pop­u­lar price mod­el and inval­i­dat­ing another. 

The Stock-to-Flow (S2F) and Stock-to-Flow Cross-Asset (S2FX) price mod­els, built by PlanB, a pseu­do­ny­mous Twit­ter per­son­al­i­ty known for his Bit­coin analy­sis, each have price tar­gets of upcom­ing rel­e­van­cy. Decem­ber 2021 should tap into a BTC price of at least $100,000 per coin, accord­ing to the S2F mod­el. The S2FX mod­el notes a price expectan­cy of around $288,000 per BTC before the next halv­ing, which should occur in 2024. 

The price mod­els are based around Bitcoin’s block reward halv­ing cycles. Bit­coin halv­ings occur every 210,000 blocks — which takes about four years. The time in between is the halv­ing cycles. 

Essen­tial­ly, Hyland thinks BTC will keep pace with the S2F mod­el in hit­ting $100,000, but the asset will only reach about $250,000 dur­ing the present halv­ing cycle (con­clud­ing in 2024) — the result of big play­ers sell­ing ear­ly before $288,000. Big play­ers will like­ly get retail investors hyped for BTC after $100,000 is reached in line with the S2F mod­el, accord­ing to Hyland, lead­ing those main­stream folks to look next toward the $288,000 price tar­get of the S2FX model. 

This week pro­duced notable excite­ment in the Bit­coin price cat­e­go­ry. The asset turned in a new all-time high just below $69,000 before drop­ping slight­ly below $63,000, all on Wednes­day, accord­ing to Cointelegraph’s BTC price index.

 

 

FUD of the Week 

 

Nigeria’s central bank reportedly freezes crypto traders’ accounts

The Cen­tral Bank of Nige­ria (CBN) was report­ed­ly lay­ing on the FUD this week after it ordered local com­mer­cial banks to freeze accounts tied to at least two cryp­to traders. The CBN banned banks from ser­vic­ing local cryp­to exchanges over con­cerns of volatil­i­ty, mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ism financing. 

Local media out­let Peo­ples Gazette report­ed the news on Nov. 7, stat­ing that CBN’s direc­tor of bank­ing super­vi­sion, J.Y. Mam­manand, laid down the law, direct­ing his bank to shut down the naughty cryp­to traders’ accounts and move their funds to “sus­pense accounts.”

The crack­down is report­ed­ly part of a broad­er move from bank­ing reg­u­la­tors to imme­di­ate­ly close the accounts of Niger­ian res­i­dents or com­pa­nies “trans­act­ing in or oper­at­ing cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchanges” using local banks, as CBN execs think that the major­i­ty of these trans­ac­tions are nefarious.

 

Coinbase shares to open lower after 75% drop in net income in Q3

Coin­base (COIN) shares prompt­ly dipped around 13.1% in after-hours trad­ing fol­low­ing the release of under­whelm­ing third-quar­ter finan­cial results on Thurs­day. The firm post­ed $1.235 bil­lion worth of rev­enue in Q3, falling well below FactSet’s esti­mates of $1.614 billion. 

The firm’s prof­its equat­ed to $406 mil­lion, which marked a 74.7% decrease com­pared to the sec­ond quar­ter but did beat ana­lysts’ expec­ta­tions of $380 mil­lion. Coin­base also report­ed earn­ings of $1.62 per share, which came in 10% short of the con­sen­sus esti­mate. The firm appeared to be unfazed by the results, and the report high­light­ed that Coin­base is focused on the long term. 

“Coin­base is not a quar­ter-to-quar­ter invest­ment, but rather a long-term invest­ment in the growth of the cryp­to econ­o­my and our abil­i­ty to serve users through our prod­ucts and ser­vices. We encour­age our investors to take this point of view,” the report read.

 

Beeple’s Discord compromised, timed to coincide with Christie’s auction

An admin account for Beeple’s offi­cial Dis­cord chan­nel was hacked on Wednes­day, result­ing in a fake NFT drop being pro­mot­ed to the group that saw users duped out of an esti­mat­ed 38 ETH. 

An admin account with the han­dle “Mul­ti” con­firmed to the group on Wednes­day that their account had been com­pro­mised despite hav­ing two-fac­tor authen­ti­ca­tion set­tings switched on. The hack­er went on to imper­son­ate an admin and the Beeple Announce­ments Bot, and pro­mote a fake and “cheap” NFT drop from Beeple on Nifty Gateway. 

The mem­bers of the group were expect­ing a cheap NFT drop to be released on the back of Beeple’s most recent $29 mil­lion auc­tion, as the artist has done such a thing before to cater to all audi­ences. How­ev­er, not only did the mem­bers par­take in a fake drop, they didn’t even receive any NFTs for their trouble.

 

Best Cointelegraph Features

Meme tokens and dogcoins flood the market as price wars heat up

Lat­inx com­mu­ni­ties are dri­ving for­ward adop­tion, as cryp­to is proven to meet their diverse needs in a way that tra­di­tion­al finance cannot.

Blockchain metaverse startups: Unparalleled investment potential

Think of how essen­tial the inter­net is to every­day life now — that’s what the Meta­verse could become in a lot less time than the inter­net did.

Crypto kids fight Facebook for the soul of the Metaverse

“The Meta­verse doesn’t start in vir­tu­al real­i­ty — it starts with own­er­ship of assets, [the] abil­i­ty for any­one to cre­ate and trade value.”

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