JPMorgan Calls for Strict Regulation

The world’s largest cryptocurrency Bitcoin has reached a trillion-dollar market cap and has received massive acceptance among global financial institutions and corporates. However, some global leaders have a word of caution on Bitcoin. 

On Wednesday, April 7, speaking at a virtual event at the Richard Nixon Foundation, PayPal co-founder Peter Theil warned that China could use Bitcoin as a financial weapon thereby undermining the position of the USD as the world’s reserve currency. 

Theil said: “Even though I’m a pro-crypto, pro-Bitcoin maximalist person, I do wonder whether if at this point Bitcoin should also be thought of in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S.” 

PayPal has seen significant growth after adding the Bitcoin and crypto buying/selling facility to its platform. Although PayPal’s crypto trading facility is currently available only in the U.S, it plans to bring this facility for its users and merchants worldwide ahead of this year. 

During his talk at the even, Theil added: “It threatens fiat money, but it especially threatens the U.S. dollar. “[If] China’s long Bitcoin, perhaps from a geopolitical perspective, the U.S. should be asking some tougher questions about exactly how that works.” 

Bitcoin skeptic and JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon has once again called for strict regulatory measures and laws on Bitcoin’s inclusion in the financial system. In his recent letter, Morgan writes: “There are serious emerging issues that need to be dealt with—and rather quickly: the growth of shadow banking, the legal and regulatory status of cryptocurrencies, the proper and improper use of financial data, the tremendous risk that cybersecurity poses to the system, the proper and ethical use of AI, the effective regulation of payment systems”. 

On Wednesday, April 7, Bitcoin corrected nearly 5% dropping below $56,000 after the Kimchi Premium in South Korea dropped after trading high earlier this week. Before this drop, Bitcoin was trading at a premium of $71,000 on South Korean exchanges due to very high investor demand. 

Source:Bitcoin-BTC-Kimchi-Premium (Courtesy:CryptoQuant)

On the other hand, the miner activity in Bitcoin is showing strong improvement in Bitcoin fundamentals. Over the last few days, miners have been accumulating their newly mined BTC instead of selling or profit-booking. 

This week, the Bitcoin average hash rate has touched an all-time high crossing the daily average of 178 exahash / sec for the very first time in history. On the other hand, the mining difficulty has also hit its all-time high and surged 66% since the last Bitcoin halving. 

But the Bitcoin miner revenue has also increased simultaneously. Glassnode CTO and co-founder Rafael Schultz-Kraft writes: “Bitcoin miners have been making more than $50 Million per day for the past month. Put into perspective: A year ago this number was around $12 Million – that’s a 4x increase, despite the block subsidy being cut in half”. 

After a sharp drop earlier this year, the Bitcoin miners’ Unspent Supply has increased as well. 

Source:Bitcoin-BTC-Kimchi-Premium | Courtesy:Glassnode

Altcoin News: Altcoins Rebounce After Momentary Crash

Amid the Kimchi premium crypto correction, the altcoin market cap tanked by $80 billion in a few hours during the momentary crash on Wednesday, April 7. At the same time, Ethereum (ETH) price crashed to under $2000 levels. However, it has bounced back once again today trading 2.% higher at $2029. 

As on-chain data provider Sentiment reports, the social sentiment for Bitcoin and Ethereum dropped to its 2021-low during the correction on Wednesday. However, historical trends suggest buying during such times of FUD. 

Source:BTC-ETH-Social-Sentiment|Courtesy:Santiment

Other altcoins have also registered strong bounce-back with Binance Coin (BNB) jumping 11% today trading at its all-time high of $411. Ripple cryptocurrency XRP is up once again 6% trading at $0.96 with a market cap of $42 billion. 

In a positive legal development for Ripple on the SEC lawsuit, the court has granted the San Francisco-based blockchain startup access to SEC documents on Bitcoin and Ethereum. Last month, Ripple argued that “under a proper application of Howey, the economic substance of a transaction in XRP is no different from one in Bitcoin and Ether – Currencies that Director Hinman publicly stated were not securities.” 

Polkadot (DOT) is also going strong trading 5% up today at above $40. In a fresh development, the biggest stable coin issuer Tether has decided to bring the USDT (Dollar-pegged) stable coin on the Polkadot blockchain. This might significantly boost the DeFi activity on the Ethereum-competitor. 

In another development, Oracle service provider Chainlink (LINK) has made its way to the Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC) replacing Ripple’s XRP. 

Top Crypto Market News

WhatsApp competitor and recently popular Signal messaging app is testing peer-to-peer crypto payments on its platform. Still, in the beta stage, the feature is available only in the U.K. Signal is supporting a privacy-focused network MobileCoin and its native currency MOB. 

After some internal testing of its Digital Yuan, China has moved to cross-border testing of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the phase 2 trials. For this, the Chinese central bank has joined hands with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.