Another week, another round of Crypto Tidbits. The past seven days have been quite, quite exciting for Bitcoin and its ilk.
Per data from Coin360, BTC has gained 11% in the past week, rallying as high as $9,000 as buyers have stepped in en-masse. While already impressive in and of itself, what has been especially interesting is the performance of altcoins, which have largely outpaced Bitcoin for the first time in a while.
Ethereum gained 22%, surging to multi-month highs on the back of positive news and an influx of buying pressure; Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (BSV) has surged by 75%, rallying higher on developments in a court case between Craig S. Wright and his former business partner; and a majority of other altcoins saw weekly gains between 10% and 20%.
Like the market, the underlying industry saw its fair share of positive developments over the past week, which is as follows.
Related Reading: Crypto Tidbits: Elon Musk Pokes Bitcoin Bear, Japanese Giants Delve Into Cryptocurrency Mining, Baidu’s Blockchain Beta
Bitcoin & Crypto Tidbits
- Grayscale Sees Record Inflows Into Bitcoin & Crypto Products: On January 16th, Grayscale released its “2019 Digital Asset Investment Report.” Per the report, which summed up the performance of the company’s funds and other investment vehicles in 2019, the company raised $607.7 million worth of investment last year. The report, while filled with other tidbits of data, has seemingly two trends to tell. Firstly, investors still largely prefer market leader Bitcoin, with the company’s flagship Grayscale Bitcoin Trust gaining $471.7 million of the aforementioned $607.7 million sum. And secondly, there exist record levels of institutional interest and involvement in the cryptocurrency market, with Grayscale reporting that 71% of the inflows into its Bitcoin and crypto funds garnered were sourced from players like traditional hedge funds, pensions, and endowments.
- Crypto Giant Gemini Launches Insurance Business: Crypto giant Gemini Trust, the company headed by the Winklevoss Twins, has just launched its own insurance company dubbed Nakamoto. The company will be servicing customers of Gemini’s Bitcoin custody branch, which stores crypto-assets for its clients, to the tune of $200 million worth of coverage. The coverage is for the cold/offline wallets the firm operates.
- Ex-Top Financial Regulator In U.S. Wants a Digital Dollar: Christopher Giancarlo, a former head of the CFTC in the U.S. that gained a nickname “Crypto Dad” for his support for Bitcoin, has created a new organization to promote the development of a digital U.S. dollar: the nonprofit Digital Dollar Foundation. This new organization, the report claims, is effectively a think-tank that will focus on developments around turning the dollar into a digital currency or asset based on blockchain or a blockchain-like technology. The Digital Dollar Foundation will also look into the benefits of bringing the dollar digital (and presumably the drawbacks, too). This venture is being supported by another former CFTC official, Daniel Gorfine, a private equity company, and information technology giant Accenture.
- NBA Team Sacramento Kings to Use Ethereum, Again: Per a press release published to the official NBA website on January 15th, the Sacramento Kings will be launching a new auction platform that will allow fans to buy in-game sports gear (game-worn jerseys, balls, etc.). The platform was made in collaboration with ConsenSys, an Ethereum-centric blockchain development studio, for it actively uses a solution called Treum, which uses blockchain for supply chain. In 2014, the NBA team made history when it began to accept Bitcoin as payment in their arena. Late last year, the company announced that it will be offering vinyl collectible figurines powered by Ethereum, with each toy being assigned a non-fungible token that ensures that no two Crypto Kaijus are the same.
- Twitter Tipping Rumor Generates Bitcoin Hype: This week, The Information, a Silicon Valley insider media outlet, released a report revealing that Twitter is currently considering a feature that will allow users to send money and value to other users. Some in the cryptocurrency space saw this as a sign Twitter may allow on-platform Bitcoin transactions. Others echoed this optimism, claiming that solutions like the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which enables BTC transactions that can be well under a dollar and can take place in literal seconds, would be perfect for this tipping feature. Not to mention, in a Twitter post last year, Jack Dorsey, chief executive of both Twitter and fintech company Square, showed his love for a cryptocurrency service that allows Twitter users to tip Bitcoin to others through the Lightning Network.
This is excellent @tippin_me ⚡️ https://t.co/FifrgwBOTp
— jack ??? (@jack) February 20, 2019
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