- The trading volume on cryptocurrency exchanges in February exceeded $1 trillion. Such numbers were achieved for the first time in history, according to experts. Even during the first bitcoin rally, the trading volume reached only $650 billion. According to experts of the analytical platform Block Research, large investors prefer to carry out transactions from one account to another through third-party services in order to maintain complete anonymity. Therefore, the real number of transactions can even be twice the official amount.
- Users of the Opera browser will be able to carry out transactions with many popular cryptocurrencies directly in the browser. “We have added fundamentally new algorithms. We are talking about the Simplex payment processor, which is used in many reliable and reputable cryptocurrency wallets. We are ready to provide services on competitive terms. This is especially true of transaction fees, which we will have as low as possible,” Opera says in a press release. Another benefit would be creating a digital wallet without going to third-party sites.
- A proponent of gold, President of Euro Pacific Capital Peter Schiff congratulated those who managed to buy the first cryptocurrency before take-off and made Wall Street succumb to "this mania." It was just recently, that this bitcoin sceptic called bitcoin the largest bubble in history and unflatteringly spoke about the mental abilities of cryptocurrency investors. And now he has admitted his mistake. “When I first heard about bitcoin, I didn't think that smart investors would be stupid enough to buy bitcoin. I was wrong," Schiff wrote.
- The Google Finance platform has added a tab for monitoring digital asset prices. The new section provides real-time information on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash prices. This block has been added to the sections on the markets of the US, Asia, Europe and "Currencies", and makes it possible to compare the performance of cryptocurrencies with other financial instruments.
- The amount of damage from fraud with digital currencies could double in 2021 and reach $4.5 billion. This This assumption was made by specialists of Kaspersky Lab. Other popular fraudulent schemes include the closure of bitcoin exchanges under the pretext of technical problems or hacker attacks, gaining access to user data using fake applications or websites, and sending out fraudulent emails.
- The head of Galaxy Digital, Mike Novogratz, has dramatically changed the forecast for the BTC rate for the end of 2021 upwards. “We are watching one group of investors after another,” he writes. “They were Square, MicroStrategy and Tesla corporations. These were insurance companies Mass Financial and others. These are wealthy people. This is ETF. Suddenly, buying bitcoin is no longer insignificant or risky. On the contrary, it has become risky not to have BTC in the portfolio when central banks continue to print money. Our business at Galaxy is booming. We don't have enough time to hire sales managers to reach all the institutional clients who want to understand and participate in the market." “It feels like,” says Novogratz, “we’ll stay for a bit between $42,000 and $60,000, and then the next big jump to $100,000. I will not be surprised if we reach this mark by the end of this year."
- MicroStrategy bought another 328 BTC for $15 million. It is the first purchase of crypto assets in March, following its February acquisitions worth billions of dollars. And now MicroStrategy has about 90,859 BTC purchased for $2.186 billion at an average price of $24,063 per coin. Earlier, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor said the company will continue to buy digital currency: "We are focusing on two corporate strategies: expanding the enterprise analytics software business and buying and storing bitcoin." Saylor predicts that 7-8 billion people on the planet will have a “bullion of digital gold” in the phone in the long run, which they will use as family savings.
- The Visa payment system is interested in changing the views of bank card holders due to the coronavirus pandemic. For example, a survey it conducted showed that 25% of all credit card holders in South America would like their banks to add the ability of settlements in cryptocurrency. One in four Hispanics expressed a desire to experiment with digital assets and try them out in everyday life.
- Despite the technical limitations for cryptocurrency mining, set in the Sony PlayStation 5 game console, it is quite suitable for this process at the hardware level. This was taken advantage of by a gamer and crypto enthusiast from China named Yifan Gu, who managed to bypass the restrictions and adapted the console for Ethereum mining, gaining a profit of about $50 per week. This is reported by the Gizchina edition. Earlier, Yifan Gu adapted MacBook Air with Apple M1 chip for mining Ethereum. However, at the current rate of this altcoin, you can earn only $0.14 in one day on the MacBook Air.
- One of the experts in the field of competitive intelligence has suggested that creating and maintaining the long-term hype around bitcoin is not accidental. According to him, in case the American financial elite manages to convince its creditors that having bitcoins is better than dollars, it can transfer all external debt of the US to this cryptocurrency over time. "As soon as this happens, the cryptocurrency will only have to collapse, and America's gigantic debt will actually be zeroed," the expert reflects.
- Cryptocurrency mining requires more and more electricity, which poses a threat to humanity's path to “zero emissions.” This is reported by the Guardian, citing alarming research findings by American scientists. Thus, the amount of energy used to extract bitcoins exceeds the annual energy consumption of entire countries. “We're talking about a few terawatts, tens of terawatts of electricity per year that are used for bitcoin alone,” notes University of New Mexico economics professor Benjamin Jones, calling for measures to regulate cryptocurrency mining to reduce the carbon footprint.
- Financial industry veteran and Fidelity Investments director of macro markets Jurrien Timmer believes that bitcoin has reached the point where it can be considered for investment and hedging inflation risks. “I think gold and bitcoin are great for replacing some of the bonds,” Timmer writes in a paper titled Understanding Bitcoin. In his opinion, the limit on the maximum number of bitcoins makes this asset very similar to gold. Moreover, the appearance of new bitcoins on the market is constantly slowing down, but the volume of gold production has remained at the same level for half a century. Timmer's views are in line with those of SkyBridge Capital founders Anthony Scaramucci and Brett Messing. They released an article in January in which they described bitcoin as a mature investment asset, comparable in reliability to gold and bonds.
