Archive October 2020

A major international customer that the bank will not name started using JPM Coin this week. JPMorgan also renamed its 400 bank cross-border payment settlement network.

JPMorgan Chase's digital currency, JPM Coin, is being used commercially for the first time this week to send cross-border payments 24 hours a day, the bank said on Tuesday. The user is a major international technology company that the bank will not name - other customers are being shipped, the bank said - but the development comes as JPMorgan appears to be pushing its blockchain efforts into its next phase.

The bank this week renamed its interbank information network Liink. The network has more than 400 banks - including four of Canada's six largest - as customers, and has created a 100-employee business unit, onyx, to oversee liink, JPM Coin and other ventures previously under the umbrella of the blockchain Center of Excellence.

"We are launching onyx because we believe we are moving to a period of commercialization of these technologies, moving from research and development to something that can become a real business," said Takis Georgakopoulos, global head of wholesale payments at JPMorgan Chase, to CNBC .

Liink, whose Quorum-based applications focus on troubleshooting problems with cross-border payments, launched two new products Wednesday. Confirm, which allows users to validate account information before sending payments to banks in other countries, aims to reduce the cost of errors and potentially reduce fraud. A second product, Format, ensures that payments adhere to the correct currency and regulatory requirements.

Liink participants with experience with payments in certain regions can build an application at the top of the network and deploy it globally. That peer-to-peer functionality could serve as a differentiator, said Christine Moy, Liink's chief executive.

"We pay a special focus to ensure that our Liink participants have the opportunity to create new revenue streams," she told American Banker.

Moy told Coindesk that Liink's goal is not to replace the Society's Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications network, but to complement it.

Liink is not open source like Quorum or R3's Corda network, but JPMorgan is encouraging collaboration within the network, as well as expanding it to fintechs and other ecosystem companies.

In addition to Liink, Onyx is looking at a project - months from commercial launch, according to the newly appointed CEO of Onyx, Umar Farooq - that would renew the processing of paper checks in a system that now has people to deal with physically with the mail in the vaults to one that allows banks to exchange digital information associated with a check.

"Using a version of the blockchain with participants being the main check issuers and the main lockbox operators, it is possible that we can save 75% of the total cost to the industry today, and make checks available in minutes instead of days", Georgakopoulos told CNBC.

JPMorgan is also considering creating separate payment tracks for central banks that want to launch their own digital currencies. "If we are able to develop a model that works, we think the likelihood of adoption becomes very high," said Georgakopoulos, pointing to Singapore and China as examples of nations looking for use cases.

The movements come at a time of high action and interest in the sphere of digital currency. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston announced in August that it is partnering with researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build and test a hypothetical central bank digital currency. Despite this, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said last week that the Fed did not "make a decision to issue one", adding that more work needs to be done, along with "extensive" public consultation with stakeholders.

Private companies are a little more optimistic about the prospect. PayPal announced last week that it would allow its US account holders to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies in their PayPal digital wallets in the coming weeks, and to use digital currencies to pay for purchases at the company's 26 million merchants in the company's payment network .

JPMorgan, too, took several steps this year to build - or spin off - its blockchain presence. He extended banking services this spring to cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Gemini - three years after the bank's CEO, Jamie Dimon, called bitcoin "a fraud" and said he would fire "in a second" anyone at JPMorgan who were trading in digital currency.

In August, the bank sold Quorum, the blockchain platform it developed, to New York-based technology company ConsenSys. JPMorgan uses Quorum to power the unit now known as Liink, which debuted as a pilot program in 2017. The bank also used Quorum to test JPM Coin.

Venture capital funding for blockchain startups fell by more than 30% last year, CB Insights reported. But Farooq said the excitement about the platform's potential has not abated.

"If you think about blockchain, we are either somewhere in the trough of disillusionment or just beyond that on the [Gartner] hype curve," Farooq told CNBC. "That's why at JPMorgan we have been relatively quiet about it until we were ready to scale it and market it."

source: bankingdive.com

From companies like Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Facebook, Google and Tesla, cryptocurrency traders can now trade stocks against crypto as well.

The FTX cryptocurrency derivatives exchange will now allow its users to trade not only crypto shares, but tokenized by major giants and some of the most popular companies in the world, such as Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Facebook and Tesla.

These tokenized stock offers are backed by the real shares, held by CM-Equity, and can be redeemed for the underlying shares.

For now, trading is available on more than 12 pairs of stocks and cryptocurrencies like BTC and stablecoins.

Since tokens represent a fraction of a share, traders can trade up to half a share if they want to. Erik Voorhees, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift, said:

"American companies cannot offer or compete with that. I am happy that intl companies can still innovate, and that it cryptography across borders over time."

There were some concerns in the crypto community about FTX breaking US regulations, offering trading opportunities for stock CFDs.

But to begin with, merchants in the U.S. and other restricted jurisdictions will not be eligible to negotiate these new offers.

In addition, FTX has partnered with Swiss Digital Assets AG and CM Equity AG, a fully regulated financial company in Germany, to offer fractional shares.

"CFDs are not illegal - and offering them to companies traded in the U.S. on the NYSE and NASDAQ is allowed - you just need to follow the regulations and not try to circumvent the rules just because you are on a blockchain," said Adam Cochran, a partner at Cinneamhain Ventures.

In response to this news, the FTT price jumped to $3.91. But it is to be expected, as FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried said, "Everything on FTX involves FTT".

source: bitcoinexchangeguide.com

Iran has become the first country to establish Bitcoin as a legal medium of exchange within its jurisdiction. The change comes after new waves of US sanctions.

After further sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department earlier this week, Iran now hopes to use Bitcoin for cross-border settlements, local media reported on Thursday.

The Iranian government has changed its crypto regulations so miners can redirect cryptocurrencies to Iran's financial mechanism for international trades as the country's fiat currency continues to suffer from both U.S. sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic.

Iran wants only legally mined BTC

The amended legislation was a joint proposal by the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) and the Iranian Ministry of Energy, wrote the Iran Mail, citing a report by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

The regulation stipulates that only cryptocurrency legally mined in Iran will be used to finance imports from other countries. This means that cryptocurrency miners are required to sell mined BTC directly to Iran's central bank.

"Miners must supply the original cryptocurrency directly and within the authorized limit for channels introduced by CBI," says the report.

The legal limit for each mining company would be based on the level of subsidized electricity they consume in their mining operations and instructions from the Ministry of Energy.

Bitcoin trading was illegal in Iran until August 2019, when the government launched a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies. Since then, the country has kept an open mind about cryptocurrencies. The government even provided exclusive energy for miners to encourage cryptocurrency mining operations, while discouraging illegal mining.

After issuing more than 1,000 licenses for bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining equipment in January, the government announced last month that it is offering three plants to miners in the country.

Escaping US sanctions

With the U.S. dollar acting as a vehicle currency in the global market, Iran believes that the use of bitcoin will help them to boycott all restrictions imposed by the Trump government.

This makes Iran the first country in the world to officially declare bitcoin as an international means of exchange. Meanwhile, other countries are working hard to research or develop a central bank digital currency.

source: cryptopotato.com

Bitcoin is currently trading around $13,500, up 2.18% over the past 24 hours, outpacing all three major U.S. stock indices, as well as gold (which is down today).

According to data from CryptoCompare, at the time of writing (20:25 UTC or 16:25 ET on October 29), Bitcoin is trading around $13,500, an increase of 2.18% against the USD within the past 24 hours.

Now, in case you’re thinking that a 2% gain is nothing to cheer up, it’s worth bearing in mind that the world is still in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic and in recent weeks, we’ve seen an increasing number of new cases in Europe and the USA. Besides that

So, how did Bitcoin fare vs USD in the last period of a month and how did the S&P 500 and gold fare during the same period?

Well, Bitcoin went from a low of $10,678 on September 29 to $13,480 on October 29, meaning it was up 26.42%.

So, what about gold? Well, the spot price of gold went from $1,896 an ounce to $1,866 an ounce, that is, it fell 1.58% vs USD.

As for the S&P 500 today, thanks to the expected growth of US GDP in the third quarter, below the estimated weekly US unemployment claims for the week ending October 24, and expectations of good earnings reports from Alphabet, Amazon , Apple and Facebook - which everyone reported today after the bell closed - managed to close at 3,310.1, an increase of 1.19% on the day and a fall of 0.74% in the last period of a month.

Today was an interesting day because the US dollar index (DXY) is currently at 93.93, up 0.56% today.

This is generally bad news for Bitcoin, since there has been a high degree of negative correlation between the two since March, but not today.

Scott Melker, cryptocurrency analyst / trader at TexasWest Capital, recently commented on this:

Bitcoin and stocks are both rising today with the dollar, which is like spotting a Unicorn riding on the back of purple dragon.

The opinions and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment or other advice.

source: cryptoglobe.com

Not only that we can see $15k for the Bitcoin price, but most likely $16k is in the cards too. How come? For one thing, Bitcoin price action remains bid. The market keeps forming higher highs and higher lows, a typical bullish formation.

Moreover, the cryptocurrency formed an inversed head and shoulders pattern. The dive in March represents the head for the pattern, then the market broke the neckline ($10k), retested it, and now is ready to go for the measured move.

A Surge in Cryptocurrency Deposits

The good news for Bitcoin continues to resurface. It started with MicroStrategy announcing an investment of over $100 million in Bitcoin. It continued with Square announcing $50 million. The PayPal news last week was responsible for a new leg higher in Bitcoin.

This week it is the Silvergate Bank. The California based bank just announced that it accepted deposits in cryptocurrency in excess of half a billion dollars. While not that high as in Q4 2017, it reflects a strong appetite for cryptocurrencies from the general public and something that keeps a bid tone behind the Bitcoin price.

Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis

A close look at the chart below reveals that the measured move (i.e., the blue line) exceeds $15k. In fact, it stretches all the way to $16k and a bit more. Therefore, any bullish trade should consider the $16k as the target.

After a head and shoulders formation, the price typically retests the neckline. While not a mandatory condition, it happens most of the time. Moreover, when it does, it is a sign that reinforces the pattern.

To make the most of this pattern, bulls may want to go long at the market and set a stop-loss order at the $10k level while targeting the $16k. While the risk-reward ratio is not that impressive, it allows traders to participate in the bullish price action.

source: investingcube.com

In the midst of increased interest in cryptocurrencies by policymakers and central banks due to China's intentions to issue a digital yuan, a Bank of Japan official said that the bank's move to launch a cryptocurrency would depend on public support, reported the Bloomberg.

"At the end of the day, there is no way to proceed without getting enough knowledge from the Japanese public," said Kazushige Kamiyama, who heads BOJ's payment systems department.

In the event that the central bank later makes a digital unit, Kamiyama indicated that it would seek to strengthen the transaction ecosystem and would exist alongside cash and other types of digital payments instead of a monetary policy mechanism.

"We have clearly emphasized that banknotes and digital currency will coexist," said Kamiyama, noting that the cryptocurrency will not be "useful for deepening negative rates" since the banknotes will exist.

COVID-19, for its part, continued to accelerate the use of non-cash payments in the country and elsewhere, illustrating the growing desire for different and easier ways to transact.

Although the Bank of Japan does not have an immediate timeline for issuing cryptocurrencies, the central bank's deputy governor indicated in January that he should analyze the potential and be ready.

If the technology gains increased public interest, said Masayoshi Amamiya at the time, there may potentially be a need to issue digital coins from the central bank (CBDC).

There are still a number of details that have to be analyzed before a CBDC can be issued, with issues that remain such as its impact on monetary policy and ensuring the application of specific and strong security rules.

However, he stressed that he considered it "very important" that the BOJ continues to analyze the viability of the circulation of the CBDC.

In other CBDC news, the Federal Reserve is working together with seven other central banks and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to set up a framework that would facilitate the path for issuing digital currency.

source: pymnts.com

The investment bank makes a bullish comment for bitcoin as an "alternative currency" that not only serves as a storehouse of wealth but also as a means of payment.

The tide is changing.

This week PayPal announced support for cryptocurrencies, and now JP Morgan is changing the tune, as it says, Bitcoin is competing with gold as an "alternative" currency.

The physical gold market, favored by older generations, is worth $ 2.6 billion, including assets held within gold ETFs.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, has a market cap of $ 240 billion and is mostly favored by millennial investors. In 2020, to date, Bitcoin has increased by more than 80% compared to almost 25% of gold.

To recover in terms of market value, the leading digital currency would have to rise more than 10x above current levels. JPMorgan said in a note on Friday,

"Even a modest agglomeration of gold as an 'alternative' currency in the long run would mean doubling or tripling the price of bitcoin"

Over time, the investment bank said that crypto could be owned for reasons other than just being a wealth store like gold is.

"Cryptocurrencies derive from value not only because they serve as stores of wealth, but also because of their usefulness as a means of payment. The more economic agents accept cryptocurrencies as a means of payment in the future, the greater their usefulness and value"

PayPal also mentioned that the payment company's endorsement is "another big step towards corporate support for bitcoin". This, they said, would further reinforce the use of BTC millennials as an alternative currency.

Greater interest in institutional investors

Overall, the long-term potential for bitcoin is considerable, as it competes more "intensely" with gold, "given that millennials would over time become a more important component of the investor universe," says JPMorgan.

Millennials and corporate support for digital currency have also sparked greater interest from institutional investors, the report says.

This is evidenced by the peak of activity in both bitcoin futures and options in CME. Prior to Paypal's announcement this week, open interest on CME's BITCOIN futures measured a record of 10.5K contracts per day in the third quarter, an increase of 32% in terms of the second quarter and an increase of 127% compared to 3rd quarter of 2019.

In addition, the institutional flow registered strong growth, with 692 new accounts added, and the number of large holders of OI also registered an average of 79 in the 3rd quarter, an increase of 64% in relation to the 3rd quarter of 2019.

"Holy Cow. Most of the bullish bitcoin comments I read from JP Morgan," noted Dan Tapiero, co-founder of 10T Holdings. "A piece of widespread investigation reaches all customers of the bank. Paypal has announced" coverage "for other traditional players to get involved," he added.

source: bitcoinexchangeguide.com

Totally 86% of traditional companies are implementing or at least considering blockchain-based decentralized finance technology, says Boston Consulting Group.

More than four out of five traditional European financial institutions now see decentralised finance, or DeFi, as a technology worth implementing or at least considering.

That's according to "The Sudden Rise of DeFi," a new study of 411 insurers, banks and trading companies released by Crypto.com and the BOSTON Consulting Group BCG Platinion with an IT focus on October 22.

Specifically, 86% are implementing or evaluating services based on a decentralized structure.

Noting that the blocked value in DeFi grew an impressive 1,500%, to $8 billion, the report concluded that the "ability to borrow, make loans, deposit funds into a savings account or trade complex financial products, all without asking anyone because permission is gaining strength."

Larger companies are shifting more aggressively to DeFi, with 71% of those with a balance sheet above $13.1bn (£10bn) implementing or evaluating the technology, compared with 51% of those below $131m (£100m).

"Research shows that the adoption of DeFi is not just limited to the blockchain industry," crypto said. with co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek. "Traditional financial institutions of all sizes are seeing DeFi not as a competitive threat, but as a valuable tool for delivering more decentralized and efficient financial services."

Of the companies surveyed, 38% - and 61% of the largest companies - are using DeFi to "facilitate faster and safer payment processing services," the study concluded.

Two-thirds of respondents - 67% - believe DeFi will open up new revenue streams, while 70% believe it can make financial transactions faster and cheaper.

"As markets evolve toward decentralization, there will be a growing demand for approaches such as DeFi, which can provide a more efficient and open form of banking, trade and investment," concluded Kaj Burchardi, managing director of BCG Platinion.

"It is encouraging to find that financial institutions are already seriously and strategically collaborating with the cryptographic community to begin building a new generation of governance and technologically resilient solutions that will make financial services more accessible."

Work to be done

That said, the report found serious concerns about the lack of regulation, with 61% saying it made them hesitate - a concern that worsened for companies with higher turnover or more assets under management.

Almost the same number - 60% - said the lack of recovery mechanisms is worrisome.

Fraud security concerns are another challenge, with 70% saying it prevents DeFi adoption across the enterprise.

Still, the risk of vulnerabilities in smart contracts that put assets at risk is the biggest concern of DeFi research participants.

"There's still a lot of progress to be made to bring DeFi into the mainstream, especially in security and compliance," Burchardi said.

This is something that European regulators recognise. The European Commission last month unveiled "ambitious" proposals to regulate cryptocurrency assets and service providers. Unfortunately, it also predicted that it would take four years for these regulations to enter into force.

source: modernconsensus.com

In recent years, investors have had to get used to the cyclical nature of the crypto markets. The last of these cycles, decentralized finance, is still developing. DeFi tokens have achieved unprecedented valuations in record time only to quickly empty, erasing tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in market value.

The main reason why encryption and especially altcoins are so volatile is the lack of new money in the markets. Bitcoin and Ethereum may attract institutional investors, but altcoin traders still usually play a game of musical chairs. The rise of DeFi, for example, correlates with the brightness less performance of the pre-2017 alts - it's the same money chasing the next big bomb. Of course, we need new entries, but from where?

"Adoption" is the obvious answer, but it's worth clarifying what it means - real-world companies paying real money for blockchain projects that redistribute part of it to token holders through creative tokenomics.

The perfect use case for a huge market

One of several sectors where blockchain technology can make a real difference is big data. It is a huge market that is worth $138.9 billion by 2020 and will nearly double to $229.4 billion by 2025, according to market and market statistics.

While blockchain is generally a weak candidate for replacing centralized databases, it is fantastic to ensure the provenance and authenticity of the data. Even governments, usually slow in the adoption of new technologies, have begun to implement pilot projects. The Singapore Public Service is seeking to adopt blockchain to verify supplier history in GeBiz, thereby tracking the career movements of public officials and supporting or even replacing audit processes.

Estonia is already using technology to store public records. The UK Land Registry has partnered with the Methods project to develop a platform that stores land registration information and streamlines the process of buying or selling properties.

In the private sector, manufacturers are investing increasing amounts in research and development of integrated big data solutions. Suppliers are working to reduce equipment costs to gain a competitive advantage, optimize sales cycles, simplify customer service, and better understand customer needs.

GoldsteinResearch says key industry participants such as IBM, HP, Google, SAP, Cloudera and Oracle are progressively investing in R&D to develop unified big data solutions to provide enhanced analytics and integrated data management.

Companies are focusing on mergers and acquisitions to diversify their product portfolio with big data and mainframe technologies. For example, in 2015, Microsoft acquired Revolution Analytics to expand its business to cloud-based platforms. Similarly, IBM acquired Cloudant and Cleversafe to strengthen its cloud platform business.

In short, corporate big data is a huge market and blockchain technology can realistically capture a significant part of it. Projects in developing these blockchain big data solutions will achieve "true adoption" in the sense that they can attract new money to the crypto ecosystem.

Moreover, big data does not only concern the corporate market. The DeFi cycle may be deflating now, but the idea of decentralized finance is compelling and here to stay - and big data is right at the heart of it.

From understanding behaviour, patterns to KYC/AML compliance and reliable pricing feeds, big data is everywhere in DeFi. Oracles are an especially important use case with projects like Chainlink, Band Protocol, Tellor and Kylin Network – all of which have been on the market for a while and are growing.

A quantifiable investment

The size of the addressable market for big data blockchain projects is attractive, but what is even more attractive is that they can evolve into quantifiable businesses.

It is difficult or even impossible to apply traditional financial metrics to most altcoins, as there is no revenue. The price reflects hope, not fundamentals. Projects with real economic activity, on the other hand, can be analyzed - you can calculate profit per token or price per token in the same way you would for publicly listed stocks.

This makes big data blockchain projects a more conservative and reliable investment than tokens in the hype cycle. Some think this is a disadvantage, but they are perfect for building a diverse portfolio of lunar shots and reliable winners. Industry resources such as CoinGecko have already realized this trend and are monitoring big data projects as a niche that can become the "next big thing" that will overshadow even DeFi.

Blockchain data projects to watch

The three fastest development big data blockchain projects are Ocean Protocol, Quadrant, and Streamr. All three have real-world apps and real use cases.

Ocean Protocol

Ocean Protocol helps developers create markets and other applications to publish, exchange, and consume data privately and securely. It also provides access control, data science, and other products that developers can use in their applications.

The Ocean Protocol got off to a troubled start with a controversial IEO and community shenanigans. However, the errors were rectified by the fact that the project rose to the top 100 in CoinMarketCap. The project currently has a market capitalization of more than $130 million.

The project roadmap points to the development of a community market in 2020, extensive improvements in the core of ocean protocol, new applications and improved infrastructure, and incentive to provide data.

Quadrant Protocol

Quadrant Protocol is the blockchain arm of Quadrant Global, a big data enterprise location company that has been around since 2014. After conducting an ICO in October 2018, the Quadrant Protocol was flying under the radar with little communication. Unfortunately, this is clearly reflected in the token price, as the project has a relatively low market value and trading volumes.

On the other hand, the company mentioned during its last AMA that the platform is already profitable. If they can find a better tokenomics model, the project may attract more interest from investors.

Recently, quadrant protocol began to communicate more. Your updated project roadmap includes four new initiatives with real-world applications. The first to be released is Cape Canaveral, a consent management platform that introduces transparency into data supply chains by registering user consent in the chain.

The Baikonur Project also looks interesting because it directly involves the community - they can collect and validate location data using a mobile app and be rewarded in the project's native token.

Streamr

Streamr is an open-source software project distributed with contributors worldwide. It is positioning itself as the missing link in creating a real-time data protocol for the decentralized web. Streamr is listed on Binance with a market capitalization of just over $30 million.

The project roadmap is ambitious and includes the refinement of its internal economy and scalability research, which proves that the network has low and predictable latency. Another milestone for them is the creation of data unions for redistribution of data ownership.

Conclusion

In light of the growing importance of big data in all sectors, blockchain projects targeted at this field may be among the best performing. They have the opportunity to capture shares of a multibillion-dollar market and attract new money to crypto.

Projects such as Ocean and Streamr, both listed in Binance and with solid performance, can attract existing traders in the hope of making a profit from fluctuations. At the same time, the quadrant protocol seems to be undervalued without listings on major exchanges.

As blockchain continues to mature, we expect market cycles to become a little less volatile. There's always a "shiny new object" like ICOs or vegetable chips, but at the end of the day, adoption and money talk.

source: dailyhodl.com

The last three months in Bitcoin have been marked by large corporate entities that have transitioned significant parts of their treasury holdings to bitcoins. In August, software intelligence company MicroStrategy announced that it has bought 0.1 percent of the total supply of BTC (its CEO Michael Saylor has already reached the ceiling and become something of a celebrity in space).

The large payments company Square, which for some time has offered BTC exposure to users of its mobile payments platform, allocated $50 million of its assets to bitcoin in early October. And just yesterday, the British fintech company Mode allocated 10% of its cash reserves to buy BTC as a treasury asset.

To compile this trend into a single, easy-to-digest database, Rodolfo Novak of Coinkite, also known as NVK, has launched bitcointreasuries.org. It lists the companies that have made the transition to keep bitcoin as a treasury asset, along with its market limits, the base price of their investment relative to today's value, the amount of BTC they hold and, critically, the percentage of the total supply of BTC that each bought. The allocations listed a total 3.74% of all bitcoin that will exist.

"I always assumed there was a place where you could see, not a complete list, but a list of large bitcoin holders who are not private entities," Novak told Bitcoin Magazine. "Especially with publicly traded companies because they have all their public books anyway and it's all audited. But I couldn't find anything and I love buying domains, so I started bitcointreasures.org [ ] in the hope of creating more FOMO for other companies"

Why now?

The list consists mainly of blockchain-focused companies that have divested into BTC some time ago as part of their larger business missions. The Grayscale Trust, for example, holds the highest proportion of bitcoins on the list by far 2.17% of the total supply.

But many of the purchases or filings listed on the site occurred this year. Novak explained that while it may seem that many companies are jumping into Plan B at once, it is likely that even the most recent purchases have been planned for a long time, demonstrating HODLer's understanding of the asset.

"Corporate governance, especially for publicly traded companies, moves at a slug pace," he said. "So there must be some mechanisms in place - a kind of model of how to do this. And it took years to get done and, you know, bitcoin goes up, bitcoin goes down. And if you haven't been in this space for a decade, it's hard for you to understand that after bitcoin decreases, it increases again. The number goes up"

But the reasons for switching to a heavy treasure trove of bitcoins should be clear, especially in recent months.

"You have this value reserve, everything meets the pleasure of value booking," Novak said. "And, you know, you hold it because you still want to be above water 30 years from now…. It's like, 'Hey, I got money in the bank, it's going to suck, I need to find a solution.' And, you know, gold pet stones are not a solution"

What does this mean for Bitcoin?

As there is a finite supply of bitcoin (there will only be just a little less than 21 million BTC thrown into circulation), when any entity grabs a significant amount, it affects everyone who wishes to get their hands on some as well. And, as an important value proposition for bitcoin is this scarcity, these corporate purchases have implications for the price of bitcoin relative to fiat as well.

As a Bitcoiner who is ahead of corporate interests, Novak is optimistic about the trend.

"Everything is good for Bitcoin, right?" he asked. "The scarcity of bitcoins comes from the people who buy, right, and you have a stock limit for that. So the more these giants buy, the more the price goes up for everyone"

He also pointed out that the more different types of entities start retaining bitcoin, the more the network as a whole will benefit.

"You want your enemies to have bitcoin, you want your competitors to have bitcoin," he said. "Because the more types of people with different sets of preferences, different sets of incentives have, the more secure the network will be... If Kim Jong-un has bitcoin and the US has bitcoin and China has bitcoin, it's in everyone's interest not to make any changes to Bitcoin, right? Because if one wants a change that is beneficial to them, others will want that change as well. So it's a nice set of incentives"

Some retail investors may see this trend as a warning to stack satellites while they are still available. But Novak points out that while the list of bitcointreasuries.org is growing, there is still a significant opportunity to get ahead of most corporations.

"The little boy still has a chance to win a Berkshire Hathaway. You can even DCA for $10 a week or anything, and you can buy before them. So I don't think it's an opportunity that people should waste. It's a crime not to have exposure to bitcoin right now"

Where is this trend going?

When asked where the trend is going in the corporate allocation of BTC, Novak said he thinks bitcointreasuries.org will no longer exist in 10 years because "every publicly traded company that has treasury management in assets that are not just the dollar, they will have some exposure to bitcoin."

This seemed to be a matter of inevitable "hyperbitcoinization", but in the short term, it may help that some groups already on this list have published their disinvestment methodology in BTC. For example, Square has released a white paper detailing its investment. Novak could see this being used by other groups that are interested in following him toward Plan B.

"They have created a model that other publicly traded companies in the U.S. can simply follow and comply with regulations to do so. Now, just go to a [corporate] board and show that role. You go to your legal, show me that paper. Conformity, show me that paper, that's it. Just make the transfer and buy bitcoin"

A high run in the near future will likely also motivate more companies to follow Square's example. But the ultimate motivator may just be bitcoin's final game. Companies that have already arrived in bitcointreasury.org have adopted an amazing tool to choose to leave the legacy financial system if and when that is necessary. Others will want to join them.

"Now they have an instrument they can just send elsewhere. Let's say America decides to go to shit, right? They could just send this BTC, they don't need permission"

source: nasdaq.com