Crypto Guides, Knowledge & Insights

Bitcoin open interest hits $8.8B as 45% of BTC options expire in 2 weeks

Over the past two months the open interest on Bitcoin options has held reasonably steady even as the figure increased by 118% to reach $8.4 billion as (BTC) price rose to a new all-time high. The result of Bitcoins price appreciation and the rising open interest on BTC options has resulted in a historic $3.8 billion expiry set for Jan. 29.　　BTC options aggregate open interest. Source: Bybt.com　　To understand the potential impact of such a large expiry, investors should compare it to the volumes seen at spot exchanges. Although some data aggregators display over $50 billion to $100 billion in daily Bitcoin volume, a 2019 report authored by Bitwise Asset Management found that many exchanges employ a variety of questionable techniques to inflate trading volumes.　　This is why when analyzing exchange volume, its better to source the figure from trusted data aggregators instead of relying on the data provided by the biggest exchanges.　　BTC spot exchanges aggregate volume (USD). Source: Bybt.com　　As the above data indicates, BTCs spot volume at exchanges averaged $12 billion over the past 30 days, a 215% increase from the previous month. This means the upcoming $3.8 billion expiry translates to 35% of spot BTC daily average volume.　　45% of all

2021-01-18Deep Dive

Bitcoin Tumbled $3500 In 24 Hours: Altcoins On The Rise As BTC Dominance Drops To 66%

Bitcoins dominance drops to 66% as the asset dumped beneath $34,500 for the second time in 3 days. Simultaneously, Polkadot recorded another ATH above $19.　　Bitcoin‘s bloody weekend continued with substantial price declines as the primary cryptocurrency dipped beneath $35,000, for the second time in 3 days. In contrast, remarkable gains for Cardano (ADA) and another all-time high for Polkadot have sent BTC’s dominance over the market to about 66%.　　Bitcoin Loses More Than $3K In 24H　　Just a few days after the Monday crash, in which BTC bottomed slightly above $30K, the cryptocurrency managed to recover most losses and even tried its hand at $40,000 once again.　　However, BTC failed to breach above that coveted level and started gradually declining in value. BTC dipped to $34,500 on Friday, but the bulls intercepted the move and drove it to an intraday high of nearly $39,000 a few hours after.　　Nevertheless, the adverse developments returned, and bitcoin plummeted once again – this time lower. As of writing these lines, Bitcoin price is trading below $34,500 – over $3,500 of free fall in less than 24 hours.　　The technical indicators suggest that the next support levels that could assist if BTC slumps even further south are $34,000, $32,500

2021-01-18Deep Dive

Is Ethereum Undervalued, or Polkadot Overvalued?

DOT, the native cryptocurrency of the Polkadot platform, has taken off lately. It‘s vaulted into fourth place by market capitalization, but is this warranted compared to Ethereum’s value？　　BeInCrypto dives into current platform analytics to compare the DOT versus ETH price and their network usage. Estimation of future production capacity drives price. However, we can begin to understand the valuation of the two ecosystems and why one may be way undervalued or overvalued compared to the other.　　Is Polkadot really an Ethereum killer？　　Since the bull run of 2017, smart contract platforms pop up regularly. They promise increased transaction speed and decreased transaction costs. They also envision overthrowing Ethereum as the smart contract king. These goals still tempt startups. Platforms like Polkadot and Cardano continue to grow in value and user following.　　But how does platform usage translate to price？ Do they correlate？ These new platforms may promise higher transaction speeds. Both speed and correlation merit further examination in this case.　　Understanding the metrics　　Ethereum currently ranks second by cryptocurrency market cap. It boasts a total market cap of $137.8 billion compared to Polkadot‘s $15.4 billion. Polkadot continues climbing the ranks, though. Crypto market cap aggregator CoinGecko showed that the platform almost quadrupled its market cap

2021-01-18Deep Dive

Top 30 Cryptocurrencies Gained 300% on Average in 2020: Report

In its annual report on the developments within the cryptocurrency field, the popular monitoring resource CoinGecko asserted that the top 30 coins by market cap added on average 300% in 2020.　　Moreover, the paper noted that the most widely-used stablecoins had neared $30 billion in circulation after a 440% surge.　　2020: Best Price Performers　　CoinGecko‘s report noted that the market caps of the top 30 cryptocurrency assets grew by $552 billion (308%) in 2020. Thus, last year’s results have significantly outperformed the numbers of 2019, where the increase was by $68 billion (62%).　　The percentage decreased slightly when examined just the top-5 cryptocurrencies to 242%. This difference comes primarily because of Ripple (XRP), which slumped in value at the end of 2020 following the SEC charges.　　Its also worth noting that Ethereum was the best performing large-cap cryptocurrency with a yearly surge of 472%. In comparison, BTC gained “just” 303% in 2020.　　Top 5 Cryptocurrency Returns 2020. Source: CoinGecko　　Naturally, this also meant that Ethereum has also outperformed Bitcoin in terms of market dominance. BTC‘s dominance increased by 0.9% to 73.7%, while ETH’s grew by 3.6% to 11.5%.　　Top 30 Cryptocurrencies Dominance. Source: CoinGecko　　The stablecoins in circulation added the most in 2020 as demand skyrocketed. The five most

2021-01-18Deep Dive

Bitcoin Core 0.21.0 Brings Taproot Closer and Adds Tor, Fee, Signet Changes

Bitcoin Core Project announced that Bitcoin Core 0.21.0 has been released, bringing a variety of fixes and upgrades to the Bitcoin (BTC) protocol, including a step towards the much-anticipated Taproot upgrade, fee changes, a new type of testing ground, new type of wallet support, and more.　　The latest Bitcoin Core is now ready for download. Per the release notes, it comes with “new features, various bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as updated translations.” And it really is a long list of changes to peer to peer (P2P) and network, setting, tools, utilities, wallet, and other aspects - which, among other things, are meant to improve privacy, transacting, and the use of the network overall.　　Among the most significant changes are those related to Taproot, Bitcoins largest alteration since 2017 designed to increase its privacy, which will be bundled with Schnorr, a soft fork that improves privacy, scalability, and speed, and encodes multiple keys into one. This particular release implements the proposed Taproot consensus rules (BIP341), said the notes, without activation on mainnet. Meanwhile, experimenting with Taproot can already be done, given that the upgrade rules are already active on Bitcoins signet, which is a sandbox network available for developers to

2021-01-18Deep Dive

Was Bitcoin’s rally overextended? If yes, what next

After an action-packed week, Bitcoin is trading at $35468 after having endured a flash crash. However, the price action left traders asking why the flash crash in Bitcoin took place？ Also, does this mean the rally is over and it was over-extended？ As per the data, there may have been excessive speculation in Bitcoin‘s price, to begin with. Bitcoin’s price dropped nearly 27% after hitting the new ATH and there were several reasons for the same. The most prominent ones include the increasing active supply on exchanges and bullish sentiment on derivatives exchanges despite massive liquidations. A few signs that Bitcoins rally was over-extended were noted as well. A rapid surge in open interest and interest in general on exchanges, in the short-term which was the highest in the past 3 years, since the historic bull run of 2017.　　Alongside that, a surge in addresses with non-zero balance was noted, on Glassnodes metrics. This rapid increase in addresses with balance 0.1 and above and 1000 and above, indicated that both whales and retail traders are buying. In the long-term this buying may increase the accumulated Bitcoin in wallets and lead to a drop in exchange reserves, starting the cycle all over

2021-01-18Deep Dive

65% Say They Would Consider Selling Bitcoin If The Price Reaches $100,000

The cryptocurrency market has enjoyed the past several months with impressive gains, including all-time highs for bitcoin and several more tokens.　　As such, a couple of crypto analysts initiated Twitter polls to ask the community when they plan to sell their positions and realize profits.　　How Much Would You Sell At The Next BTC Top　　The primary cryptocurrency has led the 2020/2021 bull run. Bitcoin had quadrupled its value since early October when it dabbled with the $10,000 mark to an all-time high of $42,000 charted earlier this year.　　Despite retracing with a few thousand dollars, BTC is still about 10% up in 2021 alone. This has raised discussions within the community if or when most plan to dispose of some of their holdings.　　Crypto analyst Josh Rager took it to Twitter to ask: “how much Bitcoin from your holdings do you plan to sell at the next peak high？”　　Interestingly, the answer that received the most votes (34.4%) suggests that investors plan to dump most, if not all, BTC holdings in case of another price peak.　　However, its also worth noting that a very close percentage (31.6%) said that they would sell less than 25% of the BTC positions.　　While some comments indicated that many investors plan

2021-01-18Deep Dive

TrustToken integrates with Secret Network to enable private stablecoins

TrustToken, the team behind the TrueFi uncollateralized lending platform and stablecoin protocol including TrueUSD, a dollar-backed stablecoin with live on-chain audits, today announced a partnership agreement with Secret Network, a public blockchain to provide privacy-preserving smart contracts.　　Through the partnership, TrustToken‘s TUSD becomes Secret Network’s first asset-backed stablecoin partner, paving the way for private stablecoins and fully secret transactions.　　Blockchain transactions may be anonymous, but theyre far from private, with every transaction publicly and permanently visible on-chain. While early blockchain adopters praise this transparency, institutional investors, businesses, and individuals wishing to transact privately have been reluctant to switch their business to most crypto assets; especially not when these assets fluctuate wildly with the market.　　Secret Network a blockchain with privacy-preserving smart contracts, which means applications built on the network can utilize encrypted data without revealing any of it, including the nodes on the network, to anyone. This allows developers to build powerful, permissionless, and privacy-preserving applications—or Secret Apps—which can then through secret nodes be secretly deployed onto the Secret Network.　　“We‘re thrilled to collaborate with TrustToken as a stablecoin partner for Secret Network,” says Can Kisagun, CPO and Co-Founder of Enigma. “Secret’s unique front-running resistance and privacy features enable DeFi to scale from billions

2021-01-15Deep Dive

Gnosis receives $2.3B Ethereum in a day, now 3rd largest ETH holder with 2.2% of supply

Decentralized finance platform Gnosis is now the third-largest holder of the Ether (ETH) coin supply. Gnosis multisignature storage safe received a deposit of 1,500,000 ETH on Thursday — worth over $1.7 billion at the time of the transaction.　　Although its foray into the storage industry began a little over a month ago, a vast majority of the ETH in the Gnosis safe appeared in the past 24 hours. Up until a few days prior, the address contained just 250,001 ETH. But a 600,000 ETH ($677 million) transaction on Wednesda, followed by Thursday‘s, sent Gnosis from 32nd to third among Ethereum’s largest custodians.　　These two deposits increased the number of ETH in Gnosis safe to over 2.5 million, equating to a total dollar value of over $2.9 billion. That moved Gnosis up the Ether rich list, making it the third-largest holder of the ETH coin supply, behind only Binance and Ethereum itself.　　Top 10 Ether rich list. Source: Etherscan.io　　Although 16.7% of the ETH coin supply is held by just 10 addresses, all are either storage addresses used by cryptocurrency exchanges or function as smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.　　The densest accumulation of ETH is currently found in the Wrapped Ether (WETH) contract, which contains

2021-01-15Deep Dive

Winklevoss twins consider taking Gemini crypto exchange public

Bitcoin billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss said theyre considering taking Gemini Trust Co. public amid the resurgence of interest in cryptocurrencies.　　“We are definitely considering it and making sure that we have that option,” Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder and president of the New York-based digital-asset firm, said in an interview. “We are watching the market and we are also having internal discussions on whether it makes sense for us at this point in time. We are certainly open to it.”　　Bitcoin has more than quadrupled in the past year, evoking memories of the 2017 mania that first made cryptocurrencies a household name before prices collapsed the following year. Volatility remains a defining characteristic of the dominant cryptocurrency, with it spiking to almost $42,000 last week before dropping back to around $37,000.　　An initial public offering, direct listing or even a merger with special purpose acquisition company would be the latest attempt by early advocates of Bitcoin such as the Winklevoss brothers to unlock their digital wealth. Coinbase Global Inc., the biggest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, filed in December with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. Bakkt Holdings LLC, the cryptocurrency platform majority-owned by Intercontinental Exchange Inc., plans to go public through a merger

2021-01-15Deep Dive

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