This week, trading volume on Bitcoin futures hit a new all-time high above $180.000 billion. This and more news in this handy daily digest to keep you up to date with the latest events happening in the crypto world.
Cryptocurrencies and altcoins
📍Despite the drop in value of Bitcoin, the daily volume in the futures of the cryptocurrency reached a new historical record. According to data from GlassNode, the Bitcoin futures market on major exchanges hit a new record high above $180.000 billion traded within these markets. This is the highest daily futures volume in the entire history of Bitcoin, so far.
The analytics and data provider skew shows that the highest daily trading volume in Bitcoin futures totaled $184.000 billion as of Tuesday.
Bitcoin and Blockchain Adoption
📍microstrategy He now owns a total of 90.531 BTC, with its most recent acquisition of 19.452 BTC for which it made an investment of 1.030 billion dollars. The company's CEO, Michael Saylor, shared a statement reaffirming his beliefs in Bitcoin, as “the world’s most widely adopted cryptocurrency, which can serve as a trusted store of value.”
The company has been issuing debt and convertible notes to raise capital and make significant investments in the cryptocurrency. To date, MicroStrategy’s total investment in BTC is estimated at around $2.200 billion, although its 90.531 BTC are valued at over $4.390 billion at the time of writing; a value that practically doubles its initial investment.
📍In Switzerland, another bank joins the new generation of services in cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Now the Bordier & Cie, almost 200 years old, offers services to its user clients for buying and selling, storing and exchanging cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) y Tezos (XTZ).
The bank's executives said that the adoption of the new services is due to the high demand from clients and users, who are looking to diversify their funds across the wide range of options offered by cryptocurrencies as alternative assets on the market.
📍A survey conducted by Crypto.com notes that Bitcoin already had 106 million users by the end of January 2021, a growth of almost 16% compared to the number of active users in December.
Source: Crypto.com
This figure may grow considerably, taking into account the results of a survey recently conducted by Piplsay in the United States. Bit2Me News reported the results of this survey, where 50% of participants consider that investing in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is quite safe and 27% expect to invest in Bitcoin and other crypto assets in the remainder of the year.
📍JPMorgan, one of the largest financial institutions in the United States, is beginning to conduct advanced tests of the technology blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT). In a interview In a statement to Reuters, company executives announced that JPMorgan has been conducting decentralized payment tests, using the potential of blockchain and IoT to make payments between orbiting satellites. The results of these tests show that blockchain networks can power transactions between everyday objects, from the most remote and decentralized places on Earth.
"No place is more decentralized and separated from the earth than space."
CBDC and Central Banks
📍The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) has successfully conducted the first retail transaction using its CBDC digital currency. The entity shared a release to describe the process of the first transaction made with its digital currency called DCashThe transaction was carried out jointly with a technology provider and a supermarket in Granada.
Timothy Antoine, Governor of the bank, said that the new digital currency is being developed within the framework of innovation and technological development of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, made up of Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia.
NFT and DeFi Markets
📍Ethereum is preparing a solution to solve its problem of high Gas fees on the network, although for one user of the DEX Uniswap, it will be a little late. As he pointed out Andrew Redden, co-founder and CTO of Groundhog Network, on his Twitter account, a Uniswap user has just paid an exorbitant sum of money as part of the commission fee to process a transaction.
The user apparently made a serious mistake when manually typing in the fee they wanted to pay to process their transaction. Instead of substituting 500 gwei for 801 gwei, the user typed the fees next to each other, resulting in a fee of 500.801 gwei – about 24,9 ETH which is currently worth $39.400 USD, at the time of writing.
Regulations
📍In India, the country's securities regulator SEBI is examining the accounts of companies and firms that intend to launch an Initial Public Offering, also known as IPO, to ensure that they do not have holdings in cryptocurrencies and digital assets. In case the applicants have holdings in crypto assets, they must sell them completely before initiating IPO applications.
As an reported According to a local Indian media outlet, owning cryptocurrencies can be an obstacle for those seeking to raise funds through an initial public offering. The reason behind these investigative actions seems to be the government’s intentions to ban the use and trade of cryptocurrencies that are not backed by the state, and which may be considered illegal in Indian territory.
Continue reading: Square invests 170 million in Bitcoin and adds another 3.318 BTC to its balance sheets
