Crypto Guides, Knowledge & Insights

Galaxy Digital to acquire crypto firm BitGo in a $1 billion deal.

According to the Wall Street Journal report, Bitcoin-focused firm Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd. has agreed to buy BitGo for $1.2 billion in cash and stock, the first multi-billion dollar deal in the cryptocurrency industry. The deal also coincides with a surge in interest and a nearly yearlong rally in the crypto sector, whose market value has surged to $2 trillion in recent months.　　Galaxy Digital will have more than $40 billion in assets under custody.　　According to the report, the acquisition of BitGo will make Galaxy Digital a crypto-focused financial-services firm with more than $40 billion in assets under custody. The combined crypto-based company will offer an array of products and services, including trading, custody and asset management, investment banking, prime lending, tax services, and even a mining operation, aimed mainly at institutional investors. Galaxy founder and Chief Executive Michael Novogratz said, “In order for crypto to become this revolutionary transformation, youre going to need bigger companies that are going to knock heads against the bigger businesses” of traditional finance.　　The deal will mark the largest acquisition to date in the crypto sector.　　According to Dealogic, excluding companies going public through special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, the deal will mark the largest acquisition to

2021-05-06Deep Dive

Grayscale Becomes First Crypto Sponsor of NFL Team with Giants’ Team-Up

Grayscale has become the first cryptocurrency company to sponsor an NFL team, the New York Giants. The Giants organization is hoping their partnership with Grayscale will help guide them in navigating the cryptocurrency ecosystem.　　The New York Giants have a new team member as of Wednesday morning. The four-time NFL champions announced a partnership with digital currency asset management company Grayscale. The company will serve as the teams asset management partner for cryptocurrency.　　Additionally, Grayscale will become the Presenting Sponsor of the Giants Foundation Golf Outing and sponsor all home games. The move reportedly marks the first time a crypto company has partnered with an NFL team.　　Grayscale looking to score big with New York Giants partnership　　The partnership comes during an explosion in the popularity of crypto assets as well as sports teams and athletes working with digital currencies.　　For the Giants, not only are they partnering up to help their asset management, but they also see value in learning about digital assets in general. The organization is hoping Grayscale can aid in navigating the growing world of cryptocurrency and how the team can best incorporate it into their current plans.　　One example of this is Grayscales plan to host voluntary educational seminars on digital

2021-05-06Deep Dive

Is The Crypto Industry In Danger Of Giving Away Satoshi’s Gift?

When Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin whitepaper back in 2008, a significant part of his definition of Bitcoin and its function included the elimination of a middleman in the process of transacting. The whitepaper reads in part, that Bitcoin “would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”　　This was part of the fundamental roles that Bitcoin would play in the financial sector in the long term, but over the years, there have been reasons to question how effectively Bitcoin has played this role, or as Journalist James Surowiecki quizzes in an article questioning Bitcoins use, whether Bitcoin is even playing this role at all.　　Today, Bitcoin is worth over a trillion dollars, but are we achieving Satoshi Nakamotos dreams？　　Following the 10th anniversary marking Bitcoin‘s anonymous founder’s departure, Nick Saponaro, the co-founder and CIO of Divi, questioned the progression of the industry with a comment worth pondering over.　　He approaches the topic of Bitcoin‘s acceleration in the same critical manner that Surowiecki does, as he questioned the industry’s dependence on institutional money, and how that could take Bitcoin away from the path that Satoshi Nakamoto designed it to follow.　　“You could argue that institutional

2021-05-06Deep Dive

How Bitcoin And Ethereum Have Crossed The Rubicon Of Legitimazation？

Bitcoin and Ethereum are at an inflection point. Beyond their prices, Senior Commodity Strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence, Mike McGlone, believes digitalization of money and finance is accelerating.　　Still in its early days, the top 2 cryptocurrencies by market cap seem to have already won the adoption battle, one as the main hub for decentralized finances (DeFi) and the other as a digital version of gold. McGlone writes:　　The mantra appears to be: “Adopt and embrace the advancing technology, or become the next Kodak, Sears or Blockbuster.”　　With a similar price as a month ago, BTC has retaken the higher area around $50,000. At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency trades at $57,049 with a 4.9% rally in the daily chart. McGlone records a “rising tide of accumulation below the market” after BTC crashed from its all-time high at $65,000.　　Bitcoins price action is on a consolidation or pause phase at current levels. The strategist claims this could be beneficial in the long term:　　We see this as a pause to refresh the paradigm-shifting process of Bitcoin becoming the worlds benchmark digital-reserve asset.　　On the other hand, Bloombergs Galaxy Crypto Index (BGCI) has been led by Ethereum. With a 740% profit since 2020, the BGCI has entered

2021-05-06Deep Dive

New BTC Indicator Launches to Understand Crypto Media Sentiment

State Street will expand their MediaStats indicator offering with a new Bitcoin (BTC) Thematic Indicator to help investors understand the crypto media sentiment and its true impact on financial markets.　　Financial services provider State Street announced the launch of a new Bitcoin Thematic Indicator series to help investors contextualize the rising popularity of bitcoin. This is an expansion of their MediaStats indicator.　　It will quantify media coverage of bitcoin, to measure the intensity or prevalence of the cryptocurrency relative to news at that time. This will also consider news sentiment over a given period.　　How it works　　This new indicator expands on State Street MediaStats, which was launched in November last year. This indicator analyses thousands of online news sources daily, generating sentiment signals for different assets. This was developed to help institutional investors form a more complete picture of what factors are driving the market as well as their portfolios.　　State street decided to launch the bitcoin indicator after intense media coverage around the cryptocurrency, with head of investor behavior research Rajeev Bhargava saying:　　“Over the last few months, media coverage around bitcoin has grown significantly relative to corporate, financial, and economic media markets and continues to trend higher.”　　They aim to provide a quantitative measure

2021-05-06Deep Dive

‘DeFi may lead to a paradigm shift’ says Federal Reserve Bank paper

A paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has delved into the expansion of decentralized finance and Ethereums role in it.　　The research, penned by Fabian Schär and published on Sunday, has taken a deep dive into the world of DeFi, hinting that if security concerns and risks can be addressed, it may lead to huge changes in the financial industry.　　“DeFi uses smart contracts to create protocols that replicate existing financial services in a more open, interoperable, and transparent way,” Schär wrote, also hailing its efficiency, accessibility and composability.　　“DeFi may lead to a paradigm shift in the financial industry and potentially contribute toward a more robust, open, and transparent financial infrastructure.”　　DeFi growth over the past year has been monumental, with a 700% increase in the total value locked across the ecosystem. At the time of writing, that figure stands at an all-time high of around $134 billion across different blockchain according to DefiLlama.　　Schär explained that the backbone of the entire DeFi ecosystem is smart contracts, the majority of which run on Ethereum. The report lists a number of popular DeFirelated tokens but points out that the vast majority of tokens are issued on the Ethereum network.　　Ether (ETH) is

2021-05-06Deep Dive

Move Over Bitcoin: OKEx Insights Report Reveals Institutions Are Accumulating Ethereum

Altcoin season is upon us, and there‘s no better indicator of this than Ethereum beginning to gain against Bitcoin on the duo’s trading pair against one another. The ratio between the two represents the ongoing battle between the two for cryptocurrency market share.　　Right now, Bitcoin remains king. But growing institutional interest in Ethereum exposure, especially since the introduction of CME ETH futures in February, has caused the second-ranked crypto asset to catch up and go for the throne.　　But like any top contender, there‘s also a handful of other booming blockchain protocols that could also soon rival even Ethereum, making the competition across crypto right now fiercer than ever. Here’s a detailed breakdown based on the latest OKEx Insights research report.　　Ethereum Price Doubles Since Introduction Of CME Futures　　When Bitcoin futures were introduced on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, otherwise known as CME, it was the end of the bull market and the very top of the rally. But when Ethereum futures were introduced just three months ago, it started a chain reaction that took the altcoin into superstardom.　　At the close of 2020, all eyes were on Bitcoin as it ended its most remarkable year on the books. January also sent the first-ever

2021-05-06Deep Dive

Bitso’s Latest Funding Round Makes It Latin America’s First Crypto Unicorn

Latin Americas largest crypto platform Bitso has announced that it raised $250 million in its Series C investment round.　　This puts the companys valuation at $2.2 billion, making it the first crypto unicorn in the region. Hedge fund giant Coatue and investment firm Tiger Global led the round. Other investors include Paradigm, BOND, Valor Capital Group, QED, Pantera Capital and Kaszek. Bitso had raised $62 million during its Series, B in December 2020.　　According to CEO Daniel Vogel, the company will use the funds to expand operations. The Mexico City-based firm will also use the money to continue providing access to cryptocurrencies for local residents. “We want to make sure that folks in the region really benefit from accessing these global financial services that are getting built on top of blockchain,” Vogel said.　　Bitsos customers and services　　Founded in 2014, Bitso offers multiple cryptocurrency products and services to over two million customers across Mexico, Argentia, and Brazil. The company says its market share in Mexico exceeds 95%, in addition to 60% in Argentina. Colombian regulators also reportedly selected Bitso to be among nine companies allowed to test crypto use cases under the government sanctioned pilot program.　　Its products include the Bitso App, which lets users

2021-05-06Deep Dive

NYDIG: Bitcoin is Coming to Hundreds of American Banks This Year

Crypto custody firm New York Digital Investment Group said that soon US banks would have the opportunity to buy, hold and sell BTC through their existing accounts. NYDIG also added that it would launch other services such as benefits paid in the cryptocurrency and a new type of bank account, which gives dividends in BTC.　　Another Step Towards BTC Adoption　　According to a CNBC report, customers of some banks in the USA will soon have the chance to operate with the first-ever cryptocurrency bitcoin via their existing accounts. NYDIG partnered with Fidelity National Information Services (FIS). The two companies reported that the main goal of the partnership would be to enable American banks to offer BTC in the near future.　　Patrick Sells, head of bank solutions at NYDIG, explained that the start-up will be very useful and will bring future comfort for the American residents:　　“What we‘re doing is making it simple for everyday Americans and corporations to be able to buy bitcoin through their existing bank relationships. If I’m using my mobile application to do all of my banking, now I have the ability to buy, sell and hold bitcoin.”　　In his turn Yan Zhao, president of NYDIG, said that the move would be

2021-05-06Deep Dive

Bullish: How the Taproot Upgrade Will Transform the Bitcoin Network

The cryptocurrency community will witness some of the biggest network changes this year. Ethereum‘s EIP upgrade was the first to stir excitement for Ethereum proponents this year, with the implementation of five EIPs which took place during April’s Berlin Fork. Now, the Bitcoin network might be on its way to redefining what we know the network to be, as the Taproot upgrade is increasingly becoming a possibility.　　The future of Bitcoin after the Taproot upgrade is unimaginably bullish　　From the GitHub documentation of Taproot, the upgrade is essentially a “proposed Bitcoin protocol upgrade that can be deployed as a forward-compatible soft fork.” The taproot will play a major role in enhancing the Bitcoin network scalability and transactions will become a lot more private. Excerpts of the GitHub documentation explain further, how this will come about.　　“By combining the Schnorr signature scheme with MAST (Merklized Alternative Script Tree) and a new scripting language called Tapscript, Taproot will expand Bitcoins smart contract flexibility, while offering more privacy by letting users mask complex smart contracts as a regular bitcoin transaction.”　　The upgrade will have a significant effect in decreasing the level of load that the network currently carries. The level at which Bitcoin processes transactions will become

2021-05-06Deep Dive

...

622624

...

737