Securities and Exchange Commission

May 06 2021

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Prediction: BTC/USD Is Stuck between $53,000 and $58,000 as Bears and Bulls Continue Unending Price Tussles

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Prediction – May 7, 2021
Since May 1, BTC/USD upward moves have been restricted below $58,000 high. Bitcoin now fluctuates between $53,000 and $58,000 price levels. Bitcoin bulls have retested the $58,000 resistance level on four occasions but unable to break it. BTC price is now falling after the last rejection.

Resistance Levels: $65,000, $70,000, $75,000
Support Levels: $50,000, $45,000, $40,000

BTC price is falling on the downside after rejection from the $58,000 resistance zone. Yesterday, the king coin dropped to $55,500 support and pulled back to retest the $57,000 high before resuming the downward move. Selling pressure will persist if price breaks below the moving averages. The market will fall and revisit the previous low at $53,000. On the other hand, if price falls and finds support above the moving averages, the uptrend will resume. The downtrend becomes necessary because buyers fail to break the $58,000 resistance. A breakout at the $58,000 resistance will propel price to reclaim the $58,000 support. The bullish momentum will extend to the $60,000 psychological price level. In essence, the resumption of upside momentum begins when the BTC price is above the $58,000 support. Today, the market has declined to $55,896 and there are indications of a further downward move.

Largest Latin American eCommerce Platform, Mercado Libre, Adds $7.8m Bitcoin to Its Treasury
Mercado Libre is the largest e-commerce platform in Latin America. The purchase makes the eCommerce platform the 36th publicly-traded company to add Bitcoin to its balance sheet. The Argentinean Company is the first large Latin American company to acquire Bitcoin for its treasury. The company has joined other firms such as MicroStrategy and Tesla, which have holdings of BTC within their assets. The platform has announced to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it has acquired $7.8 million in BTC in the first quarter of 2021.

BTC price has resumed a downward move after its rejection at $58,000 resistance. The selling pressure may continue on the downside as the coin faces further rejections. Meanwhile, on May 6 downtrend; a retraced candle body tested the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level. This retracement implies that the selling pressure will continue to level 1.618 Fibonacci extension or the low of $53,455.20.

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Prediction: BTC/USD Is Stuck between $53,000 and $58,000 as Bears and Bulls Continue Unending Price Tussles

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Apr 20 2021

Binance Recruits Former OCC Head As CEO Of US Subsidiary

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance has reportedly hired Brian Brooks as its new Chief Executive Officer of its subsidiary in the US, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Brooks To Take The Helm Of Binance.US

Brooks, who was the former Acting Comptroller of the Currency, will be taking the reins of Binance.US come May 1st. He is set to replace present CEO Catherine Coley, who joined from digital payments company Ripple Labs.

Brooks previously led the Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC) between May 2020 and Jan. 2021 in the Trump administration. During that period, he was able to provide crypto-friendly regulations around cryptocurrencies.

He remarkably released guidance directing national banks and credit unions to provide cryptocurrency custodial services to customers and use stablecoins to facilitate payment activities. He was previously in charge of the legal arm of recently listed crypto exchange Coinbase before taking up the position in the OCC after being nominated by former US President Donald Trump.

Brooks is famously called on social media the “CryptoComptroller” and the July 2020 directive on crypto custodial services was hailed by crypto enthusiasts as a win for the industry. Following his departure in early 2021, Brooks served on the board of data-sharing startup Spring Labs.

He was also instrumental in the conditional approval of the first federal bank charter given to Anchorage, a crypto-native company. The federal regulator subsequently issued the institutional digital asset platform a trust charter.

Crypto Still Marginalized

The crypto industry has been through a lot in the past two years, given the infamous volatility narrative surrounding it. Alongside have been issues bordering on criminals using it to circumvent regulatory guidelines. This shortcoming and more have seen financial experts call for strict control on the nascent industry.

One of the most vocal critics being Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. But the one not much talked about is Jay Clayton, who infamously submitted a lawsuit against blockchain firm Ripple Labs on the eve of his departure as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman.

Even though the impact of the lawsuit has seen XRP lose a significant part of its market share to crypto payment rivals, the embattled digital token has rallied significantly in the past weeks, all thanks to little victories in the opening sessions of the case.

XRP hodlers famously began a social media campaign demanding that US crypto exchanges should relist XRP tokens. The hashtag #RelistXRP trended for two straight days and spread across much of Europe and the Americas.

Several industry experts have called into question the SEC’s decision in building a case against the Silicon Valley firm and have noted that the regulatory agency took too long to present its “unregulated security sales” claim.

Joseph Hall, former SEC Commissioner and a legal attorney with white-glove law firm Davis Polk said that the SEC’s case is flawed as XRP is more or less like

Bitcoin and Ethereum. The two largest cryptocurrencies were declared as commodities by the Commodity Futures Trade Commission (CFTC).

He also noted that XRP is undeniably innocent in the charges brought against it.

Binance Recruits Former OCC Head As CEO Of US Subsidiary

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Apr 14 2021

You can already invest in hundreds of ETFs with exposure to Bitcoin

Numerous U.S.-traded exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, are loading up on shares in the world’s top crypto firms.

According to ETF.com, hundreds of funds have invested in publicly-listed companies that are holding BTC on their balance sheets. As of this writing 88 ETFs hold MicroStrategy shares, while 144 ETFs hold Square, and 222 ETFs hold Tesla. Sixteen ETFs have direct exposure to Bitcoin mining stocks.

Almost 200 ETFs hold shares in BlackRock, which recently profited $360,457 after starting to “dabble a bit” in crypto.

Top-performing ETFs with crypto exposure

Nine funds are exposed to both crypto mining stocks and firms with BTC on their balance sheets.

As a share of its overall portfolio, the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK) has the greatest exposure to crypto. Seven of BLOK’s top 10 allocations are in leading crypto firms, including Galaxy Digital, Marathon Digital, Voyager Digital, Hut 8 Mining, Hive Blockchain, Riot Blockchain, and Argo Blockchain. These stocks represent one-third of BLOK’s capital.

The fund describes its investments as targeting “transformational data sharing technologies.”

BLOK is among the top-performing ETFs of 2021 so far, gaining 71.7% since the start of the year. So far in 2021 it’s recorded the eighth-highest returns among all ETFs — and it ranks second if you exclude leveraged and inverse products. Among ETFs, BLOK is the single-largest hodler of both MicroStrategy and Marathon’s stock.

The Nasdaq NexGen Economy ETF (BLCN) is the only other crypto-exposed ETF that ranks among the top 100 ETFs by YTD performance when excluding inverse and leveraged funds, coming in at 82nd with a YTD gain of 23.15%.

BLCN currently holds $5.63 million worth of Marathon stock, $5.4m in Microstrategy, and $5.24 million in Square.

Largest holders by total value of assets

When measured by total value of assets, the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) is the ETF with the heaviest allocations to crypto-exposed firms. The VTI currently represents $2.77 billion worth of Tesla, $478 million of Square, $29.4 million of Microstrategy, and $11.38 million of Riot Blockchain. VTI also owns $516 million worth of Blackwater.

The iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF (ITOT) is the second-largest fund by overall exposure to crypto, holding $450 million worth of Tesla, $4.4 million of Microstrategy, $3.86 million of Marathon, and $3.12 million in Riot.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is yet to issue a verdict on seven applications for Bitcoin ETFs, including Fidelity Investments, Skybridge Capital, WisdomTree, Morgan Stanley and NYDIG, VanEck, and Valkyrie Digital Assets.

The Purpose Bitcoin ETF began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange in mid-February, and has accumulated roughly $1 billion worth of BTC since inception. Canada’s Ninepoint Partners and CI have also announced plans to convert their Bitcoin funds into ETFs.

You can already invest in hundreds of ETFs with exposure to Bitcoin

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Apr 10 2021

Ripple becomes tidal wave, leads weekend pump and notches legal victories

Amid a weekend pump carrying multiple cryptocurrencies higher, Ripple’s XRP looks to be leading the way with a push as high as 30% on the daily — carried on the back of a string of legal victories and rumors of relisting at some exchanges.

Where Bitcoin and Ethereum are up merely 2.7% and 3.4% respectively on the day, XRP climbed to $1.36 before retreating to $1.32, where it sits at the time of publication. The digital currency is now up 111% on a 7 day basis, and a staggering 544% on the year. The recent push has also buoyed XRP back into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by marketcap, behind only BTC, ETH, and BNB at #4.

🙂 pic.twitter.com/qYIf6RPOoY

— sats (@satsdart) April 10, 2021

The rally flies in the face of a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which charges that XRP’s $1.3 billion ICO was an “unregistered securities offering.” The news led multiple exchanges to delist the currency, and XRP lost its place as the 3rd largest currency by marketcap, at time looking as if it would even fall out of the top ten.

The bad news for XRP didn’t stop with the SEC, either. In March Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced that the company would be “winding down” its relationship with Moneygram — a once highly-touted partnership that investors often pointed to as proof of the digital currency being on a path towards becoming “the standard” for payments and settlement.

Despite the deluge of negative headlines, it appears all buyers needed was a small ray of hope to jump back in — and they’ve gotten exactly that. Ripple lawyers have notched two victories in their legal battle against the SEC, including winning access to internal SEC discussion history regarding cryptocurrencies, and a court denied the SEC the ability to disclose the financial records of two Ripple execs, including Garlinghouse.

Ripple executives themselves seem heartened by the news, with CTO David Schwartz saying the US isn’t “prepared” to regulate cryptocurrencies (a possible dig at the ongoing legal proceedings).

All in all, it’s just another week for one of the most controversial cryptocurrencies in the space.

Ripple becomes tidal wave, leads weekend pump and notches legal victories

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Apr 08 2021

Fidelity’s Tom Jessop says crypto has hit a ‘tipping point’

Executives at investment giant Fidelity are confident that cryptocurrency market momentum will continue for the foreseeable future.

Speaking to MarketWatch on April 8, Tom Jessop who heads the investment firm’s crypto division said that he believes crypto has opened a new chapter in traditional finance circles and things have reached a tipping point for the industry.

Jessop stated that the maturation and adoption of crypto assets as an investment class will continue at a rapid pace in the coming years. There are a number of reasons according to the finance manager, one of which is extremely low interest rates in traditional finance.

This, coupled with an environment stimulated by monetary policies, has driven momentum for crypto markets. The Fidelity executive said that this environment is unlikely to change any time soon:

“I think we’ve reached a tipping point. I think you’ve had the accumulated experience of now roughly 12 years of the Bitcoin blockchain being operative since the genesis block in early 2009. And the pandemic, quite frankly, was a catalyst for institutional adoption, and specifically Bitcoin and the narrative, or use-case, around digital gold,”

Jessop added the narrative has been exacerbated by the unprecedented monetary stimulus from central banks and governments in response to the pandemic.

Since the pandemic began, U.S. stimulus packages have topped $6 trillion with much of that money being freshly minted by the Federal Reserve.

Jessop is not the only finance executive to believe that Bitcoin and crypto has reached a tipping point. In early March, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz used the same phrase while commenting on the CI Galaxy Bitcoin ETF on Bloomberg:

“Bitcoin adoption has hit a tipping point and investors don’t want to sit on the sidelines,”

On March 24, Fidelity filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to list a new Bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF). The Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust aims to track the asset’s daily performance using the Fidelity Bitcoin Index PR, an index derived from several price feeds.

Analyst at CFRA Research, VanEck, and Fidelity Investments, Todd Rosenbluth, opined that the SEC is likely to approve an ETF in the coming year or two.

Fidelity created the digital asset unit in 2019 and has been integrating digital assets into traditional investment portfolios ever since.

Fidelity’s Tom Jessop says crypto has hit a ‘tipping point’

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