Kategorie: Crypto Markets

BofA says Bitcoin is not a good store of value or inflation hedge as long as it trades more like stocks than gold.

Bitcoin’s correlation to stocks has increased significantly since its peak in November 2021 and currently trades more like a risk asset that its reference as digital gold, analysts at Bank of America said on Wednesday.

According to Alkesh Shah, a lead analyst at the US banking giant, Bitcoin’s growing lockstep trading with stocks has removed the benefit the cryptocurrency had for investors as a hedge against inflation.

Volatility, Shah said in a note from the bank, meant it’s no longer trading alongside traditional hedge assets such as gold.

As such, the BofA analyst suggests that the flagship cryptocurrency is unlikely to gain traction, in current circumstances, as a store of value.

Insider quotes the Bank of America strategist as saying that correlation between Bitcoin and gold has shrunk to near-zero levels. Meanwhile, the crypto asset has seen the correlation with stocks surge to all-time highs during last month’s market sell-off.

And with Bitcoin trading in lockstep with the Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 500, it’s expected the digital gold would continue to lose its appeal as a possible ‘safe haven asset.’

BofA thus expects the benchmark crypto to lead the rest of the digital asset market in remaining risk assets as long as volatility remains so high.

While the analysts see volatility in Bitcoin prices as a factor likely to put investors in developed markets off, they say the outlook may be different in developing economies. The bank believes those in countries plagued by runaway inflation are likely to see BTC as a better inflation hedge or store of value.

Bitcoin traded to highs near $45,000 on Wednesday to maintain its slight upside momentum after plunging more than 50% from its peak last year. The cryptocurrency is now 35% off that peak, while gold has stayed around the $1,800 per ounce level.

Elsewhere, stocks have fluctuated massively year-to-date, with Nasdaq sinking into correction in January amid rising inflation and a hawkish tilt from the US Federal Reserve.

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The crypto market as a whole was uneventful with a few exceptions, which we’ll note here. Most of the top 100 coins by market cap moved in the range of +/-1 to 3% of their values yesterday.  

US indices rallied yesterday amid a raft of strong corporate earnings. Biotech firm Amgen leapt 7.71% after announcing a $6 billion share buy-back program and forecasting strong growth.

Harley-Davidson (+15.34%) and education firm Chegg (+15.77%) spiked on positive quarterly updates. Meanwhile, travel stocks had another strong performance.

Peloton Interactive soared 25% after the fitness bike maker announced a major restructure, including 2,800 job losses and its CEO stepping down.

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem is scheduled to speak via satellite at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Macklem’s words may generate CAD volatility.

Top cryptos

Bitcoin was down around 3%, trading below $44,000 at the time of writing. Ethereum was also down around 3%.

Cardano and XRP registered losses of around 5% and 4%, respectively. Shiba Inu lost around 7%.

Top movers

On February 8, federal officials seized Bitcoin worth $3.6 billion linked to the 2016 hack of the crypto exchange Bitfinex, one of the biggest crypto hacks in history. Bitfinex announced it would repay investors in UNUS SED LEO, which is rallying on the news.  

UNUS SED LEO is a utility token that’s used across the iFinex ecosystem, currently ranking at #25 on the top 100 by market cap. It’s poised to break the top 20 at this rate, trading for $7.36 at the time of writing and up more than 50% in the last 24 hours.

Other top 100 gainers include Ethereum Classic, Tezos, and Decentraland, which added 8%, 13%, and 6% respectively.  

Metaverse token GALA’s price has grown by 117% since the beginning of this month alone. This week’s jump is mainly attributed to the launch of Legends Reborn, Spidertanks, and other anticipated games. The token has gained 6% in the last 24 hours.   

IOTA is a trending crypto this week. Today, it’s up 7%. Its weekly gains come to 17% at the time of writing. IoTeX is reversing recent gains. It’s down 7% in the last 24 h.

Trending

There’s another dog-themed meme coin in town: DOGECO, the native token of Dogecolony. DOGECO is a play-to-win token. The game consists of 30 levels, which the team has released as a demo.

When collecting coins in the game, players must reach the end of the level by neutralizing the enemies or escaping from them.

DOGECO imposes an 8% tax on buy. 3% of this is distributed to DogeColony owners as loyalty rewards. The coin surged 680% today.  

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The SLP token has been on the rise today and it was trading at $0.01926 at the time of writing; a 24.17% rise over the last 24 hours.

Its trading volume stood at $1,262,461,511 after a 136% rise in the last 24 hours.

Why is SLP token price rising today?

The main reason why the price of the SLP token is on the rise is the looming reduction of SLP token supply by Axie Infinity.

Some may ask how the two (Smooth Love Potion and Axie Infinity) are connected. But here is how.

Smooth Love Potion (SLP) are earned by winning competitions on Axie Infinity, which is metaverse blockchain that allows gamers to play games and also earn as they play.  

Axie Infinity players collect, breed, raise, battle, and trade non-fungible tokens (NFTs) based creatures called ‘Axies’. Players earn Smooth Love Potion (SLP) tokens as rewards and the SLP tokens can be redeemed later to breed new ‘Axies’ creatures.

SLP tokens are different from AXS, which is the cryptocurrency used for transactions within the Axie Infinity ecosystem.

Axie Infinity developers to reduce the SLP token supply

Axie Infinity developers want to make SLP tokens scarcer by implementing changes that will rebalance the ecosystem.

The team had this to say about the issuance of Smooth Love Potion (SLP) tokens:

“The daily quest, in principle, was great to encourage people to play every day, but it’s now become a mass emission mechanism for SLP. By removing the daily quest, we can reduce issuance by around 45 million SLP per day.”

The developers described this as a “painful medicine,” that will be necessary for the future progress of the game. If implemented, the supply of SLP tokens is expected to drop by up to 56%, as the developers stressed that:

“The Axie economy requires drastic and decisive action now, or we risk total and permanent economic collapse. That would be far more painful.”

The team wants to create a $6 million prize fund and make changes in its reward structure.

In season 19, Axie Infinity gave 3,000 AXS to the best player on the leaderboard. The reward has increased to 117,676 for the top 300,000 players in the next season.

The team concluded by saying:

“Put simply, we’ve prioritized growth and onboard millions. Without this approach, Axie would likely have remained a small, niche game with a few thousand players.” 

During the past several days, the price of Axie infinity token (AXS) has also as the general crypto market recovers. Its current price level is 30% higher than what it was at the end of January.

After the news of SLP reduction, the SLP price surged by more than 40% before retracting to its current price.

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• The WGMI exchange-traded fund will invest in companies with 80% of revenue from BTC mining.

• The fund includes 5 Bitcoin mining companies with 90% renewable energy use.

The Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI) has made its debut on the Nasdaq stock market, presenting investors with yet another opportunity to gain exposure to crypto via investments in the stocks of companies in the Bitcoin (BTC-USD) mining industry.

The actively managed exchange-traded fund (ETF) trades under the ticker symbol WGMI.

While the fund does not involve direct investment in cryptocurrencies, its holdings are in crypto mining companies with at least 50% of profits derived from Bitcoin mining.

The investment is also put in crypto-focused companies whose operations are in the production of mining hardware and software, or those that specialize in offering crypto-related services to Bitcoin miners.

Invest in regulated Bitcoin mining companies

WGMI comes with a total expense ratio of 0.75%, with initial investments in top BTC mining firms and providers.

These include Argo Blockchain,  Bitfarms,  CleanSpark, Marathon Digital Mining, Stronghold Mining, Riot Blockchain and Hive Blockchain. Other firms in the investment are Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia Corp and Samsung Electronics.

Commenting on the companies included in the ETF weighting, Valkyrie CEO Leah Wald noted:

„These companies are fully regulated the same as any other publicly traded company, and offer investors yet another avenue to gain indirect exposure to the digital asset space.„

WGMI portfolio accounts for companies with 77% renewable energy use

Bitcoin mining is a multi-billion industry and its growth has seen several top companies around the world look to tap into the revenue stream, bringing into the ecosystem investors who find opportunities in sectors such as oil and gold.

Over the years, Bitcoin miners have moved to use green energy sources like wind, solar, and hydroelectric, cutting on fossil fuels and increasingly relegating the debate on Bitcoin’s massive energy consumption to the background.

Valkyrie said the WGMI portfolio utilises 77% renewable energy, adding to the positive outlook likely to pull in environmentally-conscious investors. The top five companies in the portfolio have a 90% renewable usage, Valkyrie noted in a factsheet.

Where can you buy the WGMI ETF?

According to Valkyrie, the ETF, as with others offered by the company, are available via several providers. You can access the fund at Charles Schwab, E-Trade, Fidelity, Interactive Brokers, Robinhood and TD Ameritrade among others.

Image source: Valkyrie

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Ripple has shown impressive performance and it is among the top ten gainers over the past week. It has gone ahead to even flip giants like Solana and Cardano as it makes strides toward the top five cryptocurrencies in terms of market cap ranking.

Ripple (XRP) is currently trading at $0.8519 after registering a 9.05% today. It has a trading volume of $5.5 billion in the last 24 hours.

Reasons behind Ripple (XRP) price surge

Before delving into the reasons as to why the Ripple price is surging, it is important to first explain what Ripple is for those who may not be familiar with it.

In a nutshell, Ripple (XRP), commonly just referred to as XRP, is the native token of the RippleNet digital blockchain-based payment platform that was developed by a company called Ripple.

Now let’s can get into why the price of XRP is surging.

One of the reasons for the current uptrend in Ripple price is the overall performance of other cryptocurrencies as the crypto market tries to recover from the recent plunge. The overall crypto market cap has risen by more than $2 trillion over the past week with Ethereum and Bitcoin soaring above $3,100 and $44,000 respectively.

As a result of the rising crypto prices, investors have become more comfortable with cryptos.

Ripple vs. the US SEC court case

The other reason behind the current Ripple price surge is the ongoing Ripple vs. the US SEC court case that was filed in December 2020.

Recently, Judge Analisa Torres ordered the unsealing of the three documents in the case after layer John E Deaton said it would be difficult to correlate ripple’s price with Ripple’s announcement and also that prosecutor has to prove that XRP was sold in the US.

John said:

“It will be near impossible to prove any real correlation between #XRP’s price and public announcements by @Ripple (ie partnerships). The SEC must also prove Garlinghouse and Larsen sold #XRP in the USA.”

Analysts believe that the case might be concluded by April 2022 and any positive outcome in favor of the Ripple is likely to result in a huge XRP price surge given that the market is already seeing some positive movements in readiness for the case outcome.

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