Kategorie: Bitcoin News

Cory Klippsten, the CEO of Swan Bitcoin, believes that Bitcoin is not like the rest of crypto.

Cory Klippsten, CEO at Swan Bitcoin and Partner at Bitcoiner Ventures, revealed in a recent interview that he believes Bitcoin is unlike the other cryptocurrencies. When asked about his thoughts on Bitcoin and whether it is a Ponzi scheme, Klippsten said;

“Why is Bitcoin not a Ponzi scheme? The big difference is that there is no entity or group of people that control Bitcoin who are marketing Bitcoin to be able to dump it. If anything, most Bitcoiners that promote Bitcoin are just buying and holding as much as possible — and people who love it the most are the people who never sell.”

The Swan Bitcoin CEO said he is improving his media presence to ensure that more people are not victims of events like the Terra crash and the Celsius liquidation. Klippsten said;

“When I’m out there talking to media, honestly, I think the number one message that I try to get across is that Bitcoin is not part of the crypto industry. There’s Bitcoin, and there’s other things that call themselves crypto.

It’s in the interest of crypto people to try to put Bitcoin under that umbrella. And it’s clearly in the interests of Bitcoiners in Bitcoin companies to separate Bitcoin from crypto. So that’s the message that I try to convey very clearly with every one of these outlets.

The difference between Bitcoin and other crypto assets is something that crypto publications understand, but the mainstream press? They’re blown away — they thought all crypto people are basically crypto bros trying to grift.”

The collapse of Terra’s UST stablecoin shed another bad light on algorithmic stablecoins. Klippsten said it is very hard for a decentralised algorithmic stablecoin to maintain its peg against the US Dollars. He said;

“Well, there are two different stablecoins: collateralised and uncollateralised. You can’t have a decentralised, algorithmic stablecoin maintain a peg. You need to have a centralised team conducting market operations, else you will just not be able to maintain the peg in times of stress.

This is something the Basis team discovered in 2018 ⏤ , and they were way smarter than Do Kwon or anybody else like at Tron or whatever working on stablecoins today. Basis realised that this stablecoin thing couldn’t be anything other than a security. So they decided to refund the investors’ money.”

Bitcoin is trading above $23k after performing well over the past few weeks.

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Key Takeaways

• Interest in cryptocurrency, per Google data, is 16.6% lower this year compared with the 2021 average worldwide
• Bitcoin’s price fall this year is 52.7%, while layoffs and liquidations have struck the industry too
• Largest drop in interest is Netherlands, with a 37% decrease, followed by Ireland and New Zealand
• Central African Republic buck the trend, with interest rocking 592% following their own government announcing Bitcoin would be legal tender in April
• Other African countries – Morocco and Kenya – are next, with impressive jumps of 61% and 55% respectively in interest compared to last year
• Developing nations’ crypto interest has held firmer than developed world, with many countries increasing this year despite downturn

The crypto market has turned sharply downward in 2022. Bitcoin’s price – which is no stranger to volatility – is currently 52% below the $47,700 level that it traded at on New Year’s Day. 

But it’s not just prices that have wavered. We have seen liquidations of major players as contagion has swirled – most notably the collapse of former top 10 coin Luna and the death spiral of its accompanying stablecoin UST in May, but also bankruptcy filings for crypto lenders Celsius and Voyager Digital, to name a few.  

Unfortunately, layoffs have swept the industry too. None more high profile than Coinbase, who laid off 18% of its staff (1,110 employees), only a couple months after spending millions on a SuperBowl ad. 

So we were curious – has interest fallen across the globe this year in response to the bull market hysteria coming to a close? If so, which countries’ interest in crypto has fallen the most? 

Cryptocurrency interest falls significantly in 2022

The fall in interest across the world is 16.6%, quite a stark drop. The worst nation is Netherlands, seeing a staggering 37% decrease, followed by European counterparts Ireland with a 30% dropoff, and New Zealand with a 28% fall. 

Noticeably, the USA are next with a dropoff of over 26% compared to 2021 search volume. With the US still driving such a large part of market volumes, this symbolises quite how different the market is today compared to last year, contextualising the layoffs and price collapse we have seen. 

Interestingly, the most resilient countries in terms of crypto interest are mostly developing nations – Morocco, Kenya, Sri Lanka Nigeria and Colombia all placing among the countries where interest has actually spiked. For Morocco and Kenya, the two African countries have seen jumps of 61% and 55% respectively. 

Interest over the last month has fallen even further

The bear market has really kicked into gear since May, when Terra went under, and accordingly the last few months have been brutal. In looking at falloffs in July alone as opposed to the entire 2022, the falloff is even worse. The world average shows there are 63% less searches for cryptocurrency this month compared to the 2022 average. 

New Zealand, Spain, Venezuela, and – somewhat surprisingly – USA and Canada, are all among the countries to see the greatest fall-off in interest. US searches have fallen 59%, with Canada just behind on 58%. 

El Salvador

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele often tweets his government is “buying the dip” when Bitcoin is plummeting. It appears that the citizens of his country, where Bitcoin has been legal tender since last year, are not of the same opinion. 

Per Google search trends, interest in Bitcoin fell further in July in El Salvador than any other country, compared to 2021 numbers. A drop of some form is to be expected, given the surge in searches inevitable when Bukele announced it as legal tender in 2021, however a drop of 63% is concerning and highlights both the damaging effect of the bear market and the challenges of onboarding the population to Bitcoin in El Salvador.

Taking the entire picture, interest during 2022 as a whole has fallen 17.9% compared to 2021, which is not quite as stark as the July fall of 64% – but still a large fall. 

Central African Republic

There was one nation left off the above graphs for scale purposes. And that’s because the Central African Republic blow those numbers out of the water. Interest in crypto in July-22 is up 715% in July-22 (592% for 2022 as a whole) compared to numbers in 2021. 

This is, of course, because they became the second nation to declare Bitcoin as legal tender in April. Not only that, but they went even further – announcing the tokenising of the country’s rich resources (diamonds, uranium, oil) with a newly launched cryptocurrency “Sango Coin”.

Yet among the poorest countries in the world, and with only 10% having Internet access, whether this is a prudent initiative is a tale for another day. 

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Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao says Bitcoin has strong support near or at the $20,000 price level, and believes the crypto market is generally likely to see further adoption catalysed by the macroeconomic environment.

Speaking in an interview with ‘Squawk on the Street’ on Thursday, the Binance chief noted that while no one can accurately predict the market – whether the next big move can be higher or lower – the $20k level offers a good buffer zone due to its psychological importance and the market cycle around it.

What next for Bitcoin?

Basically, noone can tell – it could go higher, or a retreat after relief bounce – but…

“Nobody really forecasted NFTs [and] DeFi, which probably drove the last bull run,” Zhao told CNBC, adding that even the 2017 bull market rode on the ICO (initial coin offering) boom. And more likely, the 2017 all-time high is proving the new bottom from where bulls could retreat to before springing higher.

Also, even though the crypto market has grown significantly and it’s not easy to tell which sector will drive the next bull run, growth all across the industry shows we are “moving in a positive direction.”

“The regulatory landscape is shaping to be quite well,” he added, with most countries and jurisdictions moving to adopt regulatory frameworks instead of undertaking outright bans on Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies.

These developments are key and can aid further growth in the industry, as well as buoy the next upside in prices, Zhao said.

According to the Binance CEO, a combination of macroeconomic situations, including high inflation and even talk of recession are all potential drivers of the next bull cycle. This week, Bitcoin rose sharply after the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 75 basis points, with BTC breaking above $24k on Thursday amid recession chatter.

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The cryptocurrency space has been in a bear market for the past few months, but some industry experts believe it will emerge stronger.

Valkyrie CEO Leah Wald told Blockworks in an interview that she believes the cryptocurrency market will emerge stronger from the ongoing crypto winter. 

The crypto market has lost more than 60% of its value over the past nine months. The total cryptocurrency market cap dropped from the all-time high of $3 trillion to currently stand around $1 trillion. Wald stated that;

“Having been through a couple cycles now, I think what’s most interesting to me that I also think we’ll see is just all the innovation that comes out of bear markets. There’s always a cleansing that happens of companies that were not well-suited from a foundational level, that were not strong, and that were fads, not trends.

So we’ll see various blockchains come out stronger than ever, and they’ll have more of a differentiated placement in everybody’s minds, rather than what I feel for the past year has been an undifferentiated understanding in the retail market of ‘crypto’ encompassing everything. There will be more of an understanding of who is strong, who needs to be watched and who wants to be a part of which ecosystem and why.”

The United States Securities and     Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected numerous Bitcoin spot ETF proposals, including those submitted by Valkyrie. However, the CEO said she is not giving up on gaining the approval needed to list the spot Bitcoin ETF. she said;

“We absolutely are still working toward our goal of bringing the holy grail — a spot bitcoin ETF — to market, especially when considering how much demand bitcoin futures ETFs have seen.

We still think that until a crypto exchange registers with the SEC, we’re not going to see spot bitcoin ETF approval. So we’re definitely, unfortunately, in a holding pattern there waiting for an exchange. Exchanges can take 12 to 18 months for approval once registering with the SEC. Unfortunately, that’s probably a realistic timeline.”

Bitcoin is trading above the $22k level after recovering from the losses it recorded earlier this week. 

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Bitcoin (BTC) rose sharply on Wednesday to break above $22,000 as risk appetite resurfaced following the US Federal Reserve’s move to raise interest rates by 75 basis points.

BTC was trading around $22,575 at 15:20 pm ET on Wednesday, up nearly 10% in the past 24 hours. 

Of these gains, about 5% came on the back of Fed’s rate hike. Ethereum (ETH) also rose sharply amid the positive market reaction, breaking to highs of $1,580 with over 15% gains in 24 hours.

Stocks also rallied after the rate hike and as Fed Chair Jerome Powell confirmed the central bank’s desire to battle inflation. The S&P 500 was up 2.43%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had added more than 450 points while the Nasdaq was 3.9% higher.

Among crypto stocks, Coinbase (COIN), which tanked more than 21% on Tuesday to hit lows of $52.93, was up more than 11% at the time of writing. The Coinbase stock was trading around $54.84.

Fed hints at further rate hikes

This is the second time the Fed has increased the interest rates by 0.75% and has the rate at levels monetary policy makers and economists see as neutral.

However, Powell noted in a speech after the Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) meeting that inflation remained well above 2%, hinting at further hikes.

“Today, the FOMC raised its policy interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point and anticipates that ongoing increases in the target range for the federal funds rate will be appropriate,” Powell said.

Powell did note that it is possible policymakers would look to slow down on the rates in the near future.

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