Your Cryptocurrency Newsletter for December 17, 2020

If you are interested in cryptocurrencies, this newsletter is for you. [img]  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...](   [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [img]( [FeedBinary Newsletter]( [Bitcoin’s 2020 Explosion is Not the 2017 Bubble Again]( Early adopters who saw the potential in Bitcoin in the last decade have been waiting for this year their entire crypto investing lives. Bitcoin’s (BTC) recent volatile price corrections might conjure up images of the 2017 crash in your mind, or maybe even the crash caused by COVID-19 back in March of this year. But the fact that Bitcoin has reached $20,000 for the first time in history is not a reason to sound the alarm.Despite the fact that the price of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency is up more than 225% this year, the current bull run we’re living through is unlike the Bitcoin mania we saw back in 2017. Far from it. There are four key reasons for this: - Institutional investment in the space is at an all-time high. - There is little to no mainstream media attention catapulting the price this time. - Central banks and governments are starting to see the writing on the wall. - Retail investors in emerging markets are investing in what they hope is a revolution. These four reasons aren’t just relevant now; they will all continue to play a role in the future growth of Bitcoin. Consider this your newsflash. Bitcoin doesn’t live in a bubble anymore, and soon, the traditional financial world is the only thing that’s going to burst. Institutional investment in Bitcoin skyrockets in 2020 Bitcoin isn’t just for young, tech-savvy millennials anymore. Governments, central banks and major corporations can no longer ignore its value. That’s exactly why a few landmark investments by major Bitcoin backers grabbed the headlines in 2020.A publicly traded business consulting firm called MicroStrategy now owns 38,250 Bitcoin, currently worth just under $640 million. The BTC was originally purchased for around $250 million earlier this year. Thanks to the enormous scale of the purchase and its profitability so far, company CEO Michael Saylor has become quite the Bitcoin evangelist. Apart from major investment trusts, no company owns more Bitcoin than MicroStrategy. Saylor and his company are joined by Square CEO Jack Dorsey in their enthusiasm for Bitcoin. Dorsey purchased roughly $50 million worth of the cryptocurrency for his company. What’s more important than that $50-million investment, however, is that estimates suggest both Square and fellow payments competitor PayPal are swallowing up more than 70% of newly mined Bitcoin entering circulation. Square lets customers use cryptocurrency as payment; PayPal lets customers and merchants purchase Bitcoin directly from their PayPal accounts. Both gateways are currently creating quite the windfall for Bitcoin’s market capitalization. Retail investors aren’t just following a mainstream media trend anymore In 2017, it would have been difficult for you not to hear about Bitcoin. Whether a friend or family member talked to you about it at Christmas, or you heard about it in the news or in TV commercials, the fact is nearly every major media outlet was covering the price boom at the time. Fast-forward to the present day, and you can take a look at Google Trends to see that searches for the word Bitcoin have been trending at a high level recently, yet apart from investment-specific television programming, you don’t hear about Bitcoin in the mainstream media nearly as much, with some exceptions of course.This means we’ve reached a new milestone for adoption. More and more people know about cryptocurrencies than ever before, and now they follow the asset class more closely. Central banks and governments have no choice but to join the party Russia, China, Canada, the European Union and many other countries are either already working on their own central bank digital currencies or publishing white papers detailing their intentions to do so. Moving away from paper money and plastic credit cards is the natural next step for the world as payment technologies continue to advance. But as crypto enthusiasts know, a digital currency built on a blockchain owned by a central bank or government isn’t the same as one built on decentralized technology. This is obviously a sign that the powers that be in the old financial world are seeing the writing on the wall. They are doing everything they can to protect a system that favors those in control. But CBDCs and more stringent government regulations will only continue to blur the lines between government-backed digital currencies and Bitcoin. It’s only a matter of time before society chooses the latter over the former. Retail investors in emerging markets are counting on a Bitcoin revolution Not only are Google searches for the word Bitcoin at an all-time high, but the two countries with the highest surge in search volume at the moment are Nigeria and South Africa, both of which are developing nations with unique challenges. It turns out that search volume is not just a sign of new crypto investors doing research; it’s leading to large amounts of capital flowing into the space.Marcus Swanepoel, CEO of Luno — a crypto exchange serving emerging markets — recently tweeted that purchase volumes on the company’s exchange have tripled among retail investors in Nigeria, South Africa, Malaysia and Indonesia. While institutional investment is surely a driving force, pushing the value of Bitcoin higher, people around the world, who can no longer trust the economies they used to depend on, are putting their capital to work and betting on a Bitcoin revolution that’s going to change their future for the better. The future is bright for Bitcoin Don’t be mistaken. There are certainly many challenges still to come for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Just this month, Coinbase announced the suspension of margin trading because of changing government regulations. The news is a reminder that governments will continue to try to regulate everything, and detractors will continue to denounce Bitcoin’s fundamental value. [Read Full News]( The post [Bitcoin’s 2020 Explosion is Not the 2017 Bubble Again]( first appeared on [Feed Binary](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ You Might Like     [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( ------------------ [DeFi Hype and Upcoming Mainnet Upgrade Back Zilliqa’s (ZIL) 69% Rally]( New partnerships, network upgrades, and a surge in DeFi activity sent Zilliqa price on a strong month-long rally.In the past month, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) basked in the limelight as each rallied to new yearly highs. Investors tend to focus their energy on the larger cap altcoins, which leads to smaller cap coins that reside outside of the top-10 being ignored. For example, Zilliqa (ZIL) has rallied 69% in the last 30-days. Despite this impressive performance, the altcoin has significantly underperformed Ether in the past six months. The project was founded in 2017 by National University of Singapore researchers who w looking to bring scalability to smart contracts. Currently, ZIL is ranked 49 on CoinMarketCap, ahead of some well-known names such as Decred (DCR) and Basic Attention Token (BAT).Decentralized finance (DeFi) may have fueled the recent uptrend, but staking and governance voting by itself does not seem enough for a sustainable price hike.The project now desperately needs dApps users adoption and total value locked to display strength against the leader Ethereum. ZIL has underperformed Ether (ETH) price by 42% in the past six months, despite its nominal price gain. Coincidently, Zilliqa’s design is based on sharding, which allows parallel data processing, similar to Eth2 proposal.As the DeFi sector exploded with a new influx of users seeking high-interest returns from yield farming, it became clear that the industry required additional options to handle surges in transactions and fees. Zilliqa uses a modified version of the proof-of-work consensus protocol and a proprietary programming language called Scilla. Thus, comparing its performance with the smart contract industry leader makes sense. Staking and partnerships are behind the recent price hike April marked Zilliqa’s v.6.2 release, which focused on usability, memory, and performance optimization, along with support for staking. This version also changed the number of Zilliqa-owned shard nodes from 520 to 250, a significant increase in community participation. After several months of expectation, the project finally announced its staking in mid-June, including partnerships with KuCoin and Binance. The announcements were followed by a rally, which brought Zilliqa’s highest price in Ether terms since April 2019. Recent developments bode well for Zilliqa price On Oct. 5, Zilswap, the first Zilliqa-based decentralized exchange, was launched. Interestingly, the DEX runs on NEO blockchain. The rollout of Zilliqa’s non-custodial staking took longer than expected, and it eventually launched on Oct. 14. Nevertheless, it was an instant hit with the community and investors who staked more than one billion ZIL staked in the first few hours. By Oct. 15, over 25% of the circulating supply had been staked. The team also revealed governance voting, which is another long-promised feature the community has looked forward to. The positive momentum of announcements and price recovery continued in October with Pillar Protocol’s launch, an algorithmic stablecoin dApp. Zilliqa’s v7.0 mainnet update is scheduled for Dec. 21, and the upgrade will reduce storage use and allow miners’ votes to be attached to PoW submissions. Data from TheTie also shows that price spikes have been accompanied by increases and decreases in ZIL’s daily sentiment score. Historically, these have been moments of ZIL price stagnation. Fortunately, if there is enough substance behind the upcoming v7.0 mainnet launch, the token price could continue its recent uptrend. Nevertheless, Zilliqa investors have been hooked to monthly updates and partnerships. Thus, it is only natural for the price to stagnate in the absence of groundbreaking announcements over the past 30 days.So far, there hasn’t been much traction in Zilliqa’s dApps ecosystem, which could be limiting its price upside. The fact that another network is handling Zilliqa’s DEX could also be a potential concern to investors as it does not transpire confidence from newcomers. [Read Full News]( The post [DeFi Hype and Upcoming Mainnet Upgrade Back Zilliqa’s (ZIL) 69% Rally]( first appeared on [Feed Binary](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ You Might Like     [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( ------------------ [Cryptocurrency Investors in US and Japan Reaches New High]( Approximately 16% of retail investors in Japan and 21% in the US already invested in digital assets.The Tokyo-based financial services company Monex Group released the results of its Global Retail Investor Survey, which shows that the number of investors in Japan with active cryptocurrency investments reached a record high of 16.2%. According to the survey findings, the US reported a record increase in the retail crypto investors as 21% of the respondents said that they already invested in cryptocurrencies. The firm conducted the survey across Japan, China (Hong Kong) and the US from 19 November to 30 November. The firm surveyed investors in Japan through Monex and in the US through TradeStation securities. Additionally, the Group surveyed investors in China (Hong Kong) through MONEX Boom Securities. The number of investors in digital assets decreased slightly in China (Hong Kong) from 14.5% in 2019 to 14.1% in 2020. We asked retail investors about much-discussed cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, with respect to their experience with it and their willingness to invest in it. The percentage of retail investors replying that they had already invested in cryptocurrency was 16.2% in Japan and 21.0% in the U.S., the highest level in each country since this question was introduced in June 2017. The percentage of investors in China (Hong Kong) who had invested in cryptocurrency fell slightly from the previous survey. Retail Investors The Group surveyed other trends in the global retail trading industry. According to the survey, retail investors in China (Hong Kong) were the most optimistic about the performance of global stock markets while investors in the US and Japan remained cautious. The report indicated optimism among investors regarding the US stock market due to a potential rebound in economic activities. The total number of cryptocurrency investors has increased across the world as more people are planning to diversify their investment portfolio with the inclusion of crypto assets. The recent numbers from Japan and the US indicate the mass adoption of digital assets. [Read Full News]( The post [Cryptocurrency Investors in US and Japan Reaches New High]( first appeared on [Feed Binary](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ You Might Like     [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( ------------------ ------------------ Connect with TheFeedBinary on Facebook and Twitter [fb](  [tw]( ------------------ You received this email because you operate or create content for a website/service and based on your website it seemed like this could be important information to you and your users. FeedBinary daily newsletter is managed by [Postbox Consultancy Services Pvt. 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