Blockchain Bites: JPM Coin Goes Live, Bitcoin Rallies, Stocks Waver

JPM Coin will see its first commercial use, bank executives said. Southeast Asia’s largest asset bank, DBS, is considering a digital asset exchange. And the recent rise in bitcoin shows a decoupling from traditional markets, such as the S&P 500.

JPM Coin
JPM Coin, the business-oriented digital asset managed by the owner global bank, will see its first transaction this week, a JPMorgan executive said. Designed for faster bulk payments and transactions, the system is expected to save the banking sector hundreds of millions of dollars annually. First revealed in February 2019, JPM Coin will run on Quorum, a private version of Ethereum developed by the bank but acquired by development firm ConsenSys in August. In addition, the executive told CNBC that the bank created a business unit with about 100 employees called Onyx to host related projects. “We believe we are moving into a period of commercialization of those technologies, moving from research and development to something that can become a real business,” the executive said.

Change of bank
Southeast Asia’s largest bank by assets, DBS, appears to be in the process of building a digital asset trading platform. The Singapore-based bank and financial services firm has released – and quickly removed – a webpage detailing the DBS Digital Exchange that will offer access to “an integrated ecosystem of solutions to harness the vast potential of private markets. And digital currencies “. In addition to bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether and XRP trading services, the exchange will also offer tokenization services, giving companies the opportunity to raise funds by issuing digital forms of securities and assets, per page. The exchange will be regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the de facto central bank of the city-state.

BTC bail funds
An increasing number of donors are giving out cryptocurrencies to save funds, CoinDesk’s Ben Powers reports. According to The Giving Block, bail fund projects have absorbed thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency donations, including major assets like BTC and ETH, as well as smaller market cap coins like BAT. Potential benefits include helping surety funds diversify payment streams, attracting younger international and tech-savvy donors, as well as tax benefits. “We expect more people to adopt cryptocurrencies as their preferred method of making donations, especially as people understand the tax benefits of cryptocurrency giving, which are similar to those of conventional security donation,” Zach Herz-Roiphe, CFO of the project Bail said.

Volume increase
Automated market makers Curve and Uniswap traded combined volumes in excess of $ 4 billion on Monday, possibly in reaction to a recent exploit of the popular DeFi Harvest Finance protocol. Daily trading volume on Uniswap jumped 1,200% to a record $ 2.04 billion, surpassing its previous record high of $ 1 billion, while decentralized exchange Curve Finance recorded volumes in excess of $ 2 billion. . This weekend, an attacker used a flash loan – a technique that allows a trader to take on huge leverage without any downside – draining about $ 24 million from Harvest and triggering a bank run. “The volume on Uniswap has increased, as the Harvest Finance exploiter likely passed money through the automated market maker,” Denis Vinokourov, head of research at London prime brokerage Bequant, told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat.

Powell pontificates
Jesse Powell, Crypto OG and CEO of Kraken, has criticized the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, in light of several recent multi-million dollar exploits, not the least of which hit Harvest Finance yesterday. In a tweet on Tuesday, Powell said he would “not accept” attempts by DeFi projects to “outsource the cost” of “hasty and reckless” implementations. In a swearing-laden tweet he cautioned these giddy programmers for rushing uncertified and uninsured projects. Despite this, notes CoinDesk’s Sebastian Sinclair, the DeFi sector continues to grow, having exceeded $ 12.45 billion in total value locked in smart contracts on Oct.25 (that figure fell by about $ 1.15 billion after Monday’s Harvest exploit, and is now at $ 11.3 billion, according to DeFi Pulse.)

The indicators
Bitcoin is recovering and on-chain and off-chain indicators point to a continuing trend. CoinDesk market reporter Omkar Godbole placed the new annual bitcoin watermark in the context of the decline in daily deposits in cryptocurrency exchanges and a movement of coins from exchanges.

According to Glassnode, the number of daily deposits on exchanges fell to a nine-month low of 26,889 on Monday, as the total number of bitcoins held in exchanges dropped to a two-year low of 2,478,799 BTC.

These statistics, while imperfect, have traditionally indicated a market sentiment in which traders and investors are poised to “hodl” into a rally, Godbole noted.

A similar sentiment can be assessed by looking at the futures markets, where contracts give buyers the ability to make a purchase at a predetermined price by a predetermined date. According to Godbole’s analysis, the one-, three- and six-month skews put calls, which measure the cost of bearing bullish bets, hover close to zero, an indication that some traders expect the price of bitcoin to continue to to go up.

Last week, Bloomberg analysts released a quarterly report on the predictive performance of cryptocurrencies, aiming for a price level of $ 100,000 BTC for 2025 and a high of $ 14,000 as early as this year.

“Still in a hangover mode from the 2017 rally, we don’t know what specific catalyst might launch Bitcoin to new highs, but supply and demand metrics remain positive on price,” analysts write in “Bitcoin Trend, Adding Zeros. “.

Among the macro factors they point to is the decreasing volatility of bitcoin compared to the Nasdaq composite, a growing correlation with gold and a probable growing market capitalization, in part stimulated by corporate investments (such as MicroStrategy and Square) in the cryptocurrency. .

“In an unprecedented macroeconomic environment of rapidly increasing fiscal and monetary stimulus, in our view, limited value stocks like gold and Bitcoin are about to prevail. This should be true when traditional asset classes – stocks and bonds – are overextended, ”the report reads.

A separate report from CoinDesk’s sister company Grayscale found that more than half (55%) of responding US investors are interested in buying bitcoin in 2020. That’s 19% of the survey responses of the year. last.

Short term? “The next resistance to be eliminated is $ 13,800 (June 2019 high),” Patrick Heusser, a senior cryptocurrency trader at Zurich-based Crypto Broker AG, told Godbole.

Decoupling?
Bitcoin is hitting a 16-month high, trading around $ 13,420 at press time. The cryptocurrency is now up 25% for the month and 87% on an annual basis, reports CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole. This came as coronavirus scares and intermittent US stimulus talks scared traditional markets, seen yesterday by the 2% drop in the S&P 500. “Indeed, it appears we are seeing a weakening of the positive correlation between bitcoin and S&P 500 seen since the March crash, “Godbole said. Matthew Dibb, COO of Stack Funds, agrees: “The decline in transfers to exchanges despite the reduction in risk in the equity markets is a bullish sign.”