Hey {EMAIL} , Your Crypto Newsletter for February 11, 2021

If you are interested in cryptocurrencies, this newsletter is for you. [img] [img]( [FeedBinary Newsletter]( Sponsored Content [India Has a Backdoor Entry Into Digital Currency. Will It Take It?]( Credits: www.bloombergquint.com India’s central bank is opening its balance sheet to the public. Retail investors will have online access to the government bond market via investment accounts with the Reserve Bank. As the government’s investment bank, the RBI manages institutional buying and selling in gilt securities. Skepticism is high about “Retail Direct” because previous attempts at bringing public debt to the masses haven’t gone anywhere. But if the initiative takes off, it could be a precursor to an interest-paying digital currency competing with bank deposits. The idea of a central bank digital currency, which will reside on smartphones but as a direct claim on the state (rather than a bank) is gaining ground everywhere. Covid-19 has made people reluctant to handle cash for fear of infection. The pandemic has also underscored the need to extend timely financial support to people who don’t have bank accounts. The rise of cryptocurrencies and Facebook Inc.’s Libra initiative, now known as Diem, have made authorities sit up and take note. If they don’t offer their own official tokens, private coins — or another country’s virtual cash — might fill the vacuum. Any semblance of monetary sovereignty in emerging markets may be compromised. A quarter of the world’s population is likely to get access to a general purpose central bank digital currency in one to three years, according to the latest Bank for International Settlements survey of monetary authorities. Regulators in another 21% of jurisdictions aren’t ruling out the possibility that they, too, might join in. That number is up from 14% in a 2019 BIS poll. Unlike China, which is running pilots, and the European Central Bank, which will soon publish results of its public consultations, India is not a frontrunner in the race to issue virtual cash. While summing up the many changes in the payments landscape over the past decade, the RBI said last month that it’s “exploring the possibility as to whether there is a need for a digital version of fiat currency and in case there is, then how to operationalize it.” That’s why Retail Direct assumes significance, says Krishna Hegde, head of strategy at Setu, a Bangalore-based fintech firm. Rather than taking the weight of individual investors on its core banking system, perhaps the RBI will only allow their banks to act as custodians. Individual investors will come to the government securities marketplace through their banks’ so-called Constituents’ Subsidiary General Ledger accounts with the monetary authority. But if money can move quickly and without friction between these accounts at the central bank, India may get a version of official digital cash. [India Has a Backdoor Entry Into Digital Currency. Will It Take It?] This could have long-run implications for the banking system. State Bank of India, the country’s biggest lender, offers 2.7% interest on demand deposits, and 5.4% on five-year deposits. A seven-day treasury bill yields 3%, and a five-year government bond trades at 5.8%. Banks with large deposit bases may not want to popularize a product that could undermine their hold on low-cost household savings. But newer institutions like payments banks, which take small deposits and aren’t allowed to lend commercially, will run with it. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, a fintech pioneer and chairman of Paytm Payments Bank, says he’ll make Retail Direct a key feature. “By offering gilt securities, we’ll be able to offer high yields and super safe products to consumers,” he told me. Whether meaningful excess yield will actually be available will depend on liquidity, and the cost for market makers to provide it. That’s where blockchain might come in handy. Self-executing contracts programmed into virtual tokens can help fractionalize and democratize finance by automating trade settlement, making it both quicker and less expensive. Once they’re widely used as a store of value, the tokens could also start circulating as a means of exchange. Anyone may be able to pay for a coffee using her account with the central bank, just as she does today by debiting her balance with a commercial bank. An interest-bearing virtual currency may help counter the appeal of other private and official digital cash to India’s millennial savers. The federal and state governments will obtain financing for a part of their chronic budget deficits — which have ballooned after the pandemic — directly from households. They can do so even now by scooping up postal and other small savings. But those borrowings are more expensive than what it costs to raise funds in the bond market. Without guaranteed recourse to cheap and sticky current and savings account balances, banks will have to work harder to earn a return on equity. [Read more]( The post [India Has a Backdoor Entry Into Digital Currency. Will It Take It?]( appeared first on [Feed Binary](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ [Crypto mogul bets on ‘meme investing’ with millions in GameStop]( Credits: www.livemint.com Tron founder Justin Sun says a new type of internet-driven investing would benefit cryptocurrencies as well as shares of companies that are able to understand and latch onto ‘meme culture’ Justin Sun, the 30-year-old crypto entrepreneur who bought $10 million worth of GameStop Corp. at the height of its Reddit-fueled rally, is predicting a paradigm shift in investing as younger people swarm into financial assets. Speaking the same week Elon Musk announced he put $1.5 billion of Tesla Inc.’s cash in Bitcoin, Sun said that a new type of internet-driven investing would benefit cryptocurrencies as well as shares of companies that are able to understand and latch onto “meme culture.” Sun said he’s prepared to hold onto his GameStop shares that he purchased near the highs late last month in an effort to tap into the adrenaline-charged rush that lured retail investors into so-called meme stocks. He also bought $1 million in AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and a further $1 million in silver. The GameStop position is now worth just $2 million, Sun said. “I think I’m going to hold. Even if I lose money on the GME stock, I still believe this is a paradigm shift,” Sun said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “In the past we all followed the advice from the financial analysts, and these days people are going to make their own decisions.” GameStop soared almost eightfold in the last week of January as retail investors spurred on by Reddit forums and Discord chats piled into the stock, causing pain for professional hedge funds who had shorted the video game retailer’s shares. The price of GameStop has since plunged from a peak of $483 to around $50, handing losses to retail investors who bought at the top and also sparking a wider debate about whether this type of community-driven trading can continue. Sun founded blockchain business Tron in 2017 and has since expanded into other decentralization technologies and platforms such as BitTorrent Inc., Steemit and DLive. He made headlines in 2019 by spending a record $4.6 million at Warren Buffett’s annual charity auction to have dinner with the aging investor. Sun said he advised Buffett to buy Bitcoin and Tesla when he dined with him last year. “Elon Musk is not only a company CEO, but he is also the representative of this kind of meme culture and the representative of this kind of new generation movement,” Sun said. “In the future these kind of community-driven trends require company CEOs to be more engaged with the community, with their fan base.” Sun has also been working on a Chinese version of Clubhouse, the social networking app that was recently blocked by China’s censors. Clubhouse is “a very effective way for people to expand their social networking,” Sun said, “But of course, every country has their regulations so we’re definitely going to have this kind of moderation system to help identify and moderate the content.” Sun has fallen afoul of censors before, with his Peiwo app slammed by China’s top state news agency for spreading vulgar and pornographic content. DLive, the live-streaming platform that was bought by BitTorrent late last year, has also come under scrutiny from American lawmakers for its role in broadcasting the U.S. Capitol riots. Sun declined to comment on the controversies. Meanwhile, Tron, the cryptocurrency associated with the Tron Foundation, hasn’t benefited from retail enthusiasm as much as some other digital coins in recent months, [Read more]( The post [Crypto mogul bets on ‘meme investing’ with millions in GameStop]( appeared first on [Feed Binary](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ [Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, hits a record high above $1,700]( Credits: www.cnbc.com - Ether climbed 11% to a price of more than $1,700 on Friday, according to data from CoinDesk. - Investors are awaiting the launch of ether futures contracts from the CME next week. - The Ethereum network is also undergoing a major upgrade called Ethereum 2.0. LONDON — The cryptocurrency ether hit a fresh all-time high on Friday, surging past $1,700 for the first time. Ether, which is the world’s second-largest digital coin by market value, climbed 11.2% to a price of $1,743 at around 10:30 a.m. ET, according to data from CoinDesk. It comes after bitcoin, the most valuable [virtual currency](, hit a record high close to $42,000 last month. Bitcoin more than quadrupled in price over the course of 2020, and is up 29% since the start of 2021. Ether has risen about 129% year to date. Ether has been steadily rising this week as investors await the highly anticipated launch of ether futures contracts from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange next week. Trading in ether futures is set to start Monday. The CME launched bitcoin futures over three years ago, at the peak of that cryptocurrency’s 2017 rally. Some investors believe that futures and other crypto-focused derivatives products will give institutional investors more confidence to invest in the space. “Bringing more financial instruments will bring more participants into the market,” said Sachin Patodia, a partner at Avon Ventures, a venture capital fund affiliated with the parent company of Fidelity. “That probably is positive for the ether price.” But Patodia said a big driver of the price of ether — and other smaller digital currencies — was the momentum for bitcoin in recent months. “We’ve seen this pattern over many crypto cycles that we’ve gone through, where bitcoin leads the way in price movement and then you see what we call the alt-coins get carried along,” he said. Ethereum, ether’s network, was created after bitcoin in 2013. The main difference it has with bitcoin’s blockchain is the ability to support applications. “This move by the CME may spark further buying of ether by new entrants to the market because it provides a way for sophisticated investors to hedge their risk against positions that they may be holding on the underlying asset,” Simon Peters, a cryptoasset analyst at online investment platform eToro, told CNBC. “However, it is worth noting that, like bitcoin, CME ether futures will be cash settled so as not to involve any physical delivery, so we shouldn’t necessarily expect a major impact on spot prices.” Crypto investors said another factor potentially boosting ether was the start of a major upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain, called Ethereum 2.0. Believers in ether hope the upgrade will make Ethereum faster and more secure. The total market value of all cryptocurrencies combined hit $1 trillion last month, as bitcoin’s price surged to records. Bitcoin bulls say it’s gotten a boost from institutional demand, as well as the perception that it is a store of value similar to gold. Bitcoin was up 4.7% in the last 24 hours, trading at a price $38,151. XRP, the third-largest digital token, climbed 10.7% to 44 cents. [Read more]( The post [Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, hits a record high above $1,700]( appeared first on [Feed Binary](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ Sponsored Content [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. Want to change how you receive these emails? [Update your preferences]( or [Unsubscribe](