Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s Head of Crypto, spoke about the payments giant’s efforts to digitally asset in a Monday interview with NDTV.
He began, “At Visa the scale and extent of our work on crypto has increased dramatically,” he said. “The number of cross-functional people at Visa who are working in crypto in some capacity now exceeds the handful of employees. We’ve also more than doubled the number of partnerships we have with crypto platforms over the past 18 months, reaching 60 partnerships today. Sheffield explained:
We have partnered with over 60 top crypto platforms like FTX and Blockfi to create card programs that allow consumers to convert and use digital currency at more than 80 million merchant locations around the world.
“Crypto-linked card make it simple for consumers to convert or spend digital currencies without the need to ask coffee shops, dry cleaners or grocery stores to accept crypto at the check out,” he said. All conversions from crypto currency to fiat are done behind the scenes. It’s as simple as a Visa transaction, in-store or online.
When asked by the executive if Visa plans to launch a cryptocurrency consulting service in India, he replied that he did. The company has announced that its crypto advisory services will be launched in December.
“Visa’s goal is to offer our crypto advisory services worldwide to clients wherever there’s interest and at the moment, we offer services only in markets that permit such transactions,” he said.
The head of crypto at Visa stated:
We want to be a bridge between the crypto ecosystem and our global network of more than 80 million merchant locations, plus over 15,000 financial institutions.
He concluded that “We’ve created a lot of momentum within this space, and will continue to support crypto ecosystem in many ways,”
Bitcoin ( USD) has fallen more than 20% since its record high. It is now set for its fourth consecutive weekly decline. As always, crypto bulls are holding firm to their faith. MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor added bitcoin to the company’s balance sheets last year. He has been a vocal advocate for bitcoin since then. He doesn’t see any – at least not right now. – Long-term barriers to price increases.
He stated in an interview that the only real risk to his company was a black Swan – an unknown unknown. He dismissed potential problems like: “Has it ever been hacked?” It hasn’t been hacked. Is it going be banned? It’s not going away. It can be copied. It was copied ten thousand times. Each copy failed.
Saylor stated that bitcoin can rise forever. This sentiment he reiterated to Yahoo Finance Live. He said that technology adoption and inflation are the two main drivers.
“It’s going be driven by technology. As it gets built into Facebook, Google, and Apple, it’s also built into Square, and PayPal. He said that if you add technical utility, it will drive greater adoption.
He acknowledged recent volatility and future potential volatility. “It’s probably not going to go up uniformly in an exponential curve. But I don’t believe we’ll see technology slow down. I don’t think I’m going to see a world in which currencies don’t keep inflation.
Some crypto analysts have recognized risks. In the short-term, selling in a high-leveraged asset such as bitcoin could cascade if it falls below certain thresholds. Indebted holders will be forced to liquidate. There is some debate about whether bitcoin is an inflation hedge. The recent sell-off seems to have been caused by the possibility of higher interest rates, which is a response to rising inflation.
Still, Saylor’s bitcoin positioning has been largely a good thing. MicroStrategy shares rose 380% in the three years since Saylor first announced that in August 2020, the company would be converting cash from its corporate Treasury to bitcoin. The company has steadily built its position over the years, with purchases made using debt. Saylor announced the latest purchase via tweet earlier in this week.
MicroStrategy purchased 1,434 additional bitcoins at a price of $57.477 per #bitcoin. We #hodl had purchased 122,478 Bitcoins for $3.66 Billion at an average price $29.861 per bitcoin as of 12/9/21. $MSTRhttps://t.co/Xke8QhoYpy
MicroStrategy is still an enterprise software company but it has become what Saylor refers to as a digital property business. Both are complementary, he said.
“As an operating company we can generate cash flow and sweep that cash into bitcoin. He said that cash flows can be funded at a low cost of capital and that is another benefit. “Our employees are happier, customers are happier and our brand has increased one hundredfold since we adopted the Bitcoin strategy.”
El Salvador is the only country that recognizes Bitcoin as a legal currency. President Nayib Buke announced Saturday to a crowd of Bitcoin enthusiasts that he plans to build a city around the largest cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
The $1 billion Bitcoin Bond would finance El Salvador’s Bitcoin City. The city will be situated near a volcano along the Gulf of Fonseca.
Bukele’s government is counting on Bitcoin as a way to boost the country’s economy and attract investment. This assumes that Bitcoin prices remain on an upward trend. We will now explain Bukele’s plans for a Bitcoin-friendly city.
What is Bitcoin City? What will Salvadorans gain from Bitcoin city?
According to Reuters, the Bitcoin city will be laid out as the El Salvador president planned. It will look like a coin and will have a plaza in its center that will host a large Bitcoin symbol.
To take advantage of the country’s geothermal energy, the city will be built near Conchagua volcano. This will allow for cryptocurrency mining to generate electricity to both the city as well as the country. Cryptocurrency mining is an energy-consuming process that solves complex mathematical calculations every day to verify and add crypto coins into the Blockchain network.
It is worth noting, however, that El Salvador has already started a pilot Bitcoin mining operation at another geothermal power station near the Tecapa volcano.
Bukele says that residents of Bitcoin City won’t be required to pay income, property, capital gains, or payroll taxes. With foreign investment in mind, the city will be built.
Bukele stated that there will be residential areas, malls and restaurants in the Bitcoin city. Bukele also noted that the country would have access to “digital education, technology, and sustainable public transport.” “Invest here to make all your money.”
The value-added tax will be the only tax collected. Half of it will go to municipal bonds, and the remainder for maintenance and infrastructure. According to AFP, Bukele stated that there would be no property, income, or municipal taxes, and the city would emit zero carbon dioxide. The El Salvador president did not provide any timeline for the creation of the city.
Bukele revealed a $1 billion US “Bitcoin bond”-half ($500 million) would be used for energy and mining infrastructure. The rest ($500 million) will be used by the nation to purchase more Bitcoins.
Blockstream, a Bitcoin-focused company, will manage the issuance of these bonds. According to Blockstream’s CSO Samson Mow, the tokenized bond will be made available to users around the globe who will have the ability to invest as little as $100. “Since Blockstream’s Liquid Network is Blockstream AMP we are also able easily to accept investments as low as $100 to democratize the access to the bond.
Bondholders will receive dividends easily using the Liquid network’s tools. Blockstream, which is issuing the bonds, stated in a blog post that they believe the bond can accelerate hyperBitcoinization as well as create a new financial system based on Bitcoin.
“The Bitcoin Bond” is the beginning of a reformation in capital markets. It’s built on Bitcoin and layer-2 technology like the Liquid Network. Investment capital can now flow from anywhere in the world without any friction. Investors can receive dividends instantly with integrated cryptography to protect their privacy. Bonds can be traded 24/7 alongside other assets such as stablecoins using protocols that eliminate the need to trust the company issuing them.
What will the bond do for people?
Mow stated that El Salvador would eventually sell some of the Bitcoin used in bond financing to provide investors with an ‘additional Coupon’ after a five-year lock-up. Mow believes that Bitcoin’s value will continue to grow. He stated that this would make El Salvador the global financial center.
“El Salvador would sell crypto holdings after five year and pay an additional dividend to bondholders. Mow stated that this could be a huge win for the country with a yield of 6.5 percent.
According to Reuters, Mow stated that $5 billion in Bitcoin would be removed from the market after 10 bonds of this nature were issued. If 10 countries issue bonds, that’s almost half of Bitcoin’s market capital.
Mow suggested that if Bitcoin’s value at the five year mark reaches $1million, which he strongly believes, El Salvador ‘will buy Bitcoin in two quarters, and recoup the $500 million.
During a plenary session Senator Olga Perepechina pointed out that legal entities issuing digital assets, organizing and trading them, as well as those who provide services for the exchange of cryptocurrency into cash, valuables, or other property, are currently not covered by the financial monitoring system.
Perepechina says this encourages the growth of crime related to money laundering, terrorist financing, and the expansion of shadow economies. The deputy advised that terrorists and malefactors are encouraged to use electronic assets and digital means in their settlements.
Olga Perepechina reminded us that Kazakhstan passed a law to regulate digital technologies in June this year. It permits the circulation and issuing of digital assets within the country as well as at the Astana International Financial Centre ( AIFC). The lawmakers want to make financial monitoring of entities that engage in such activities.
These new provisions will require crypto companies to inform the relevant government agencies when they start or stop operations. The Ministry of Digital Development, Aerospace and Defense Industry will be the primary regulator.
Another suggestion is to give the Financial Monitoring Agency unrestricted access, in order to increase its powers. Perepechina believes that this is necessary in order to ensure transparency of information regarding legal ownership of business entities.
After the vote in Senate, the law “On Amendments and Additionals to Certain Legislative Acts of The Republic of Kazakhstan on Counteracting… Legalization (Laundering), of Criminally Obtained Incomes, and Financing of terrorism” was sent to Kassym Jomart Tokayev, the president of Kazakhstan. He must sign it.
Concerned about the power shortage in Kazakhstan, Tokayev recently called to discuss the ‘urgent regulation’ of bitcoin mining. The country in Central Asia has been a popular spot for coin minting due to its low electricity rates. This is despite the ongoing crackdown by China. The 7 percent increase in electricity consumption this past year has been blamed largely on cryptocurrency miners.
Authorities recently set limits for cryptocurrency investing. Non-professional investors cannot buy on local exchanges that are registered at the financial hub of Nur-Sultan. The restrictions were imposed by regulators to protect individuals from the risks associated with digital assets.
It started as ten traders purchasing large amounts of bitcoin futures at Chicago’s CME Group. Now it is becoming a trend. Forbes’ analysis of Commitments to Traders (COT), and CME Group data, which began about two weeks ago, suggests that there has been a rise in investor capital tied up at the CME Exchange in bitcoin futures open-interest (OI) contracts. This is in addition to the increase in large traders participating in the CME exchange.
In two weeks, the number of large traders who must disclose futures activity to CFTC – those with exposure equal to five bitcoins or more – has increased by 29% to 94. The number of big COT traders includes 20 more hedge funds, four banks and two more traders commercially, compared to two weeks ago. This could be a key support for the rising bitcoin trend, as the April 2021 record at $64,900 is only 4% away.
According to the CFTC’s weekly COT report, which ended on October 12, bitcoin OI increased 55% to 10,918 contract during the same time period. BTC futures OI had increased an additional 7% intraweekly to 11,682 contracts by Friday’s close. This was before it was confirmed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, (SEC).
CME retail investors have been selling modestly in the bitcoin rally. This is a sign that they aren’t following the lead of institutional traders. As it becomes apparent that the current rally is capable of sustaining gains higher than last April’s high, retail investors will likely change their minds.
According to COT data, one of the most significant changes in the past week was the announcement that eight banks had added 500 bitcoin futures contracts to their collective OI holdings for the second week.
After having 138 short contracts over seven months, the 1,000-contract barrier was broken in just two weeks. This suggests that large banks have begun to play a sell-side liquidity function for bitcoin. This role was previously held by hedge funds. The market functions more smoothly when there is more liquidity. Price gaps in security securities become smaller and less frequent.
Analyse
Whatever way you look at the SEC approval for the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy eTF, it’s a significant wink by Gary Gensler to US-regulated futures and cash exchanges. The SEC’s approval of the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF would not surprise anyone. It is possible that CME Group’s stock price will see a significant increase as a result.
CME crypto futures’ dollar value reached an all-time high of $4.16 Billion on Tuesday. This is 679% higher than the previous year. CME’s future transactional earnings are highly correlated to the double-digit OI growth mentioned earlier. However, crypto futures are still a relatively small, but rapidly-growing source for revenue for CME Group.
The sharp increase in futures OI contracts is due to the fact that the US bitcoin futures ETF approval will require that issuing entities (e.g. ProShares initially and later other firms such as Invesco or Valkyrie Digital Assets later) acquire bitcoin futures to secure the ETF shares investors will be purchasing. Tomorrow will see the debut of ProShares bitcoin ETF shares on the NYSE exchange. The ProShares precedent has been approved. Other bitcoin ETF applications that are based on bitcoin futures will be approved soon and should start trading at Nasdaq or Cboe.
What will ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF Investors own? It may be easier to state that they won’t own bitcoin. ETF shares can be a cost-efficient, familiar instrument that individuals and institutions can own. However, clinically speaking, they derive their value form something else. In this case, it is a bitcoin futures which is a derivative. The bitcoin futures are the cash asset. The bitcoin futures are the first derivatives products. The ETF holding bitcoin futures, however, is the second.
The SEC doesn’t want ETFs holding physical bitcoin for now. This is understandable. The SEC could give carte blanche to asset managers to purchase bitcoin from the US, even just a small fraction of the billions. This would cause a huge distortion in the supply-demand curve for bitcoin, which is an asset that has a fixed issuance.
The current SEC experiment could mean that double derivatives will absorb some of the bitcoin demand without causing it to rocket overnight. Another explanation could be that the CFTC approved traditional bitcoin futures in 2017 instead of an ETF. This was widely blamed on the 2017 bitcoin bubble.
However, in order for each bitcoin ETF share that is issued to be issued, it would be necessary to hold a minimum of bitcoin futures in reserve. CME bitcoin futures are convertible so investors can settle in bitcoin to trade them for futures contracts exposure.
In practice, however, more than 99 percent of bitcoin futures settlements are cash-settled at the end of a futures exposure. This means that bitcoin futures investors trade cash for the difference in price between when they entered the contract and when they close the transaction. CME bitcoin futures can exist even if they do not have to comply with any contractual or regulatory obligations. They are allowed to hold five bitcoins.
Bitcoin’s price is at or above $60,000, despite strong headwinds from China (Evergrande and energy woes) as well as supply-chain problems. This shows greater confidence in the most widely used cryptocurrency. A massive U.S. institution door, that of bitcoin ETFs, has just opened. This has greater chances of helping bitcoin to record territory than a fall below $60,000. The impact of the SEC’s double derivative demand shock absorber on the bitcoin cash markets remains to be seen. The U.S. market is currently the only one that prohibits approved ETF vehicles holding actual bitcoins. Nothing suggests that other countries will follow this model.
Bitcoin rallied to above US$50,000 after Bank of America (BOA), strategists, backed cryptocurrency as a new asset.
This rally has brought prices to their highest level since September when El Salvador legalized cryptocurrency. Bitcoin rose by as much as 2.8% in New York’s early trading hours on Wednesday, October 6, to reach US$50.354.
According to the BOA strategists, the universe of digital assets is too large to ignore. “Our view is that there may be more opportunities than most people think.”
According to the BOA report, Wall Street is showing interest in crypto despite many controversy. China recently issued a blanket ban against transactions, and the United States financial watchdogs are currently investigating major crypto exchanges.
According to the BOA, regulation can be a long-term positive for crypto. The strategists stated that once rules are in place, there will be less uncertainty about how to invest crypto.
After a May meltdown that was caused by China’s clampdown crypto mining, Bitcoin is slowly returning to its prior highs.
According to Arcane Research, Bitcoin’s latest rally has seen it break through two resistance levels. It is now trading at higher end of its two month-long consolidation range.
For a time, the coin traded in the US$46,000 to US$48,000 range before finally breaking free. The report stated that the US$46,000-US$48,000 range is a strong support area and the coin could trade there for some time.
“The Bitcoin price has fluctuated quite a bit even recently, so when we see dips we often see it as an opportunity and investors moving into to buy those dips,” Grayscale Investments chief executive Michael Sonnenshein stated in an interview at the Bloomberg Invest Global conference.
“If they haven’t changed their fundamental belief or conviction in investing, and they can purchase an asset at 10%, 15%, or sometimes 20% cheaper than they could a few days ago, then that’s a compelling opportunity.”
You’ve likely heard of the immense amount of energy that cryptocurrency mining consumes and the negative effects it has on the environment .
It should therefore be alarming to learn that Bitcoin miners have been buying whole power plants in an attempt to make a lot of the speculative asset.
Stronghold Digital Mining, a Pennsylvania-based holding company, is currently operating a Bitcoin mining operation. It uses the Scribgrass power plant, which it bought in Venango County in Pennsylvania this summer.
Stronghold will invest $105 million in a power plant to support its Bitcoin mining ventures. The power plant currently uses coal waste to generate enough energy to power 1 800 mining computers.
Stronghold Digital Mining claims that the company currently uses 600,000 tonnes of coal waste at Scrubgrass each year to power its Bitcoin mining operations. Stronghold Digital Mining has filed this information with the SEC. The company intends to make it public.
It gets worse. Stronghold plans to expand its coal-burning power station operations.
The company opened a second power station in Pennsylvania, known as the Panther Creek power facility, in August. It plans to add a third power plant.
Bitcoin mining requires powerful computer processors to solve complex mathematical equations. This is how the blockchain, or cryptocurrency’s digital ledger, is maintained. Bitcoin miners are rewarded with the cryptocurrency when these math problems have been solved.
The more computational power an individual has, the more equations can be solved and more Bitcoin they can earn. Because of the intense nature of the process, individuals can’t earn Bitcoin just by using the computing power they have. To mine Bitcoin, miners spend thousands to thousands of dollars on equipment. But only multi-million-dollar operations can mine enough Bitcoin to make it profitable.
According to The University of Cambridge’s electricity consumption index , Bitcoin miners will consume around 130 Terawatt-hours of power (TWh). TechCrunch has shown that Bitcoin’s carbon dioxide emissions is roughly equal to that of a country such as Jordan with 10 million inhabitants.
The cherry on top is that Stronghold Digital Mining’s Bitcoin power plants profits are funded by taxpayers.
Bloomberg states that Pennsylvania offers tax credits to burn coal waste. Stronghold estimates that each Bitcoin it mines costs the company less than $3,000.
Bitcoin traded at over $42,000 at the time of this article – a good profit for a taxpayer-subsidized cryptocurrency mine operation that is destroying the environment.
A statue of Satoshi Nakamoto , the creator of Bitcoin, was unveiled today in Budapest, Hungary, in front of a passionate crowd. stated that the statue was created to honor Satoshi Nagamoto’s work.
Gergely Reka, Tamas Gilly sculpted the bronze statue in Graphisoft park. The statue was sculpted by Gergely Reka and Tamas Gilly. They wanted to reflect the mantra “we are all Satoshi”, making Satoshi’s expression reflective. When you look at it, you will see that you have just as important a role in Bitcoin as Satoshi. It is difficult to create a description of Satoshi Nakamoto’s face because his gender, height, weight and age are not known.
This faceless statue is a great example of Elizabeth Warren’s comment this July calling Bitcoiners an “shadowy faceless group super coders”. It doesn’t matter who Satoshi was in his individuality. It doesn’t matter who Satoshi was as an individual.
Satoshi invented a protocol that lets anyone transfer value in real-time without any permission. The world was changed by this “faceless supercoder” who gave people financial opportunity and hope where none existed. Warren is still learning that just because someone has their identity protected online, it does not necessarily mean they have bad intentions.
Satoshi is shown in a hoodie and a Bitcoin logo. This statue was not created by Satoshi when he first started. It’s important to remember that there isn’t an official logo for Bitcoin. However, the most popular is what is being used by Bitcoiners all over the globe.
In June this year, a draft was made and released to the public. The statue was finally built and unveiled a few months later.
