Crypto space hot news review dated 10.05.2021

If last week there were passions somewhere, it was not the cryptocurrency market, as it confidently and without unnecessary emotions just grew, which unspeakably delighted crypto-investors.

News digest of the past week

Social media and the mass media influence our lives on a daily basis. Some people even believe that if something is not trending on social networks, then it simply does not happen. This is why social media plays such a big role in the success and value of cryptocurrency.

In the past week, this influence has been very beneficial. Let’s run through the most notable events.

Vitalik Buterin is the Youngest Crypto Billionaire in the World

As the price of Ethereum (ETH) soars above $3,000, its co-founder Vitalik Buterin is becoming an increasingly large billionaire.

In fact, according to what can be seen publicly thanks to the transparency of the blockchain world, Buterin’s portfolio on Etherscan shows more than 330,000 ETH, which at the current price exceeds $1 billion.

Thanks to his own project, developed over the years, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization exceeded $3,000, making Buterin the youngest crypto billionaire in the world.

Moreover, this increase in the price of the crypto asset has made the market capitalization of Ether a whopping $357 billion. A figure that surpasses the Walt Disney Company and Bank of America.

+ 34% for the market capitalization of Ethereum in just one week is grandiose, but still far from the market capitalization of Bitcoin, the king of cryptocurrencies, at $1 trillion.

This all-time high bullish trend for Ethereum is the result of an eventful week. First, the improvement of the Ethereum fundamentals project itself, which attracted market whales and made the ETH gas fee cheaper.

Secondly, the interest in the project from large institutions has greatly increased. For example, the statement of the EIB (European Investment Bank) about the beginning of the sale of digital bonds in the Ethereum blockchain network.

In particular, EIB plans to issue a two-year digital bond worth 100 million euros, with the sale led by Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander and Societe Generale.

The continued interest in DeFi with TVL or a total blocked value of $72.58 billion also affects the price of the Ethereum virtual machine cryptocurrency.

Forecasts for the price of Ethereum remain optimistic, but there is no shortage of competition either. For example, the Changpeng Zhao cryptocurrency, Binance Coin (BNB), and its smart Binance network.

However, given Ethereum’s stunning results, the exchange platform also marks a new ATH for ETH.

CME Launches Micro Bitcoin Futures

These are small Bitcoin futures contracts, only 1/10 BTC in size, that are provided primarily to small investors to ensure their presence in the Bitcoin market.

CME was certainly one of the first to launch Bitcoin futures on the market, but these were always large contracts, each of which was 5 BTC.

Contracts of this size are only suitable for large investors, not to mention that the value of BTC has almost tripled since their launch in late 2017.

This size effectively prevented small investors from using them, so CME Group decided to make the new contracts micro, meaning they are fifty times smaller in size than their predecessors.

Tim McCourt, head of global Equity Index and Alternative investment products at CME Group, said:

“The new smaller contracts will allow more clients to participate in the Bitcoin market, and large institutional clients to more accurately manage their exposure with BTC.»

The new CME Micro Bitcoin futures are also settled in cash, just like the previous ones, based on the CME CF Bitcoin reference rate, which serves as the daily reference rate for the BTC price in US dollars.

The increase in the range of derivative products in traditional financial markets that allow traders and investors to take positions on the MTC, on the one hand, makes it clear that their interest is growing, and on the other hand, financial institutions are increasingly ready to commit to expanding this new market.

• Bitcoin: hundreds of banks are ready to offer it

NYDIG reports that hundreds of American banks are ready to offer their customers a direct purchase of Bitcoin. This will avoid sending money to and from exchanges.

NYDIG is a subsidiary of Stone Ridge, a $10 billion asset manager based in New York, and is working with fintech giant Fidelity National Information Services specifically to enable banks to offer Bitcoin using this method as early as the next few months.

Patrick Sells, head of banking solutions at NYDIG, said that hundreds of banks have already signed up for the program, although these are usually small institutions, such as Suncrest Bank of California, which has only seven branches. But it is also reported that the company is in talks with some of the largest US banks.

The goal of the program is to make it easier for Americans to buy Bitcoin from their existing bank accounts and, in particular, using their bank’s mobile app, just as they already do with PayPal.

Curiously, until now, banks have always kept their distance from this market, which has turned out to be profitable, as PayPal itself has claimed in recent weeks.

It is probably this success that has interested the banks, given that it is a potentially profitable business that is relatively easy to create, and has a strong appeal to customers.

In fact, according to NYDIG president Yan Zhao, traditional banks are constantly receiving deposits in Coinbase, Galaxy, Kraken, etc., and this has made them understand that market demand exists, and there is enough of it.

In addition, banks will now be able to charge their customers a commission on the exchanges, and keep most of the income for themselves. Given that a survey conducted by NYDIG itself showed that many people would buy a BTC if they could do so through their existing bank accounts.

According to Rob Lee, head of digital banking at Fidelity National Information, which will be joined by smaller banks, eventually even monsters like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America may decide to open up to provide these services.

Fidelity National Information is a provider of several banks that have a total of almost 300 million current accounts, so the potential of this project is very significant.

EBay indicates that it is interested in paying in cryptocurrency

In an interview with CNBC’s Jamie Iannone, the CEO of eBay said that the company is considering new payment options, including cryptocurrency.

As the CEO of eBay notes in the video, new trends are constantly emerging in its market, so when there is demand from users, new payment methods are used.

Google Pay and Apple Pay, which have been integrated as payment solutions on eBay, and Jamie Iannone said that payments in cryptocurrency are becoming increasingly popular, and therefore may appear on the site in the future.

In 2019, there were already rumors about the integration of cryptocurrency payments on eBay, but they turned out to be just rumors.

In this interview, the eBay CEO also talks about NFT, a booming sector, and that the company would like to get its share of the pie.

eBay would like to facilitate the sale of NFT on its platform and thus ride the wave of NFT, which is now affecting many sectors of activity, whether it is art with the sale of digital works, music or cinema.

The development of the blockchain and crypto sector is too important for a company like eBay not to be interested in it, and at the risk of losing ground to newcomers.

Giant CitiBank May Soon Launch Crypto Services

Like other major banks, Citigroup, the world’s largest financial services company in New York, has announced that it is exploring the possibility of launching cryptocurrency, custody and financing services, the Financial Times reports.

Itai Tuchman, head of foreign exchange at Citi, told the Financial Times that the bank has noticed a rapidly growing interest in the crypt, from large clients.

However, Citi is in no rush to launch a cryptocurrency service, and Tuchman said the bank will take action when it is confident it can create something that will benefit its customers and be supported by regulators.

“There are different options, from our point of view, and we are thinking about how to better serve our customers.

I have no FOMO (fear of missing out), because I believe that the cryptocurrency is not going anywhere, and we are only at the very beginning of the market.

This is not a race. There is room for more than one player”, added Itay Tuchman.

Earlier, in March, CitiBank published a report indicating that Bitcoin could become the “currency of international trade”.

Like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan or Bank of New York Mellon, Citibank is the latest Wall Street financial institution considering entering the crypto market.

BTC and other major cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, are now legitimate investment assets with core finances that launch cryptocurrency-focused investment products to meet the pressing demand from their customers.

S&P Dow Jones has even just launched indexes dedicated to BTC and Ethereum, and Golman Sachs bank has quietly started offering Bitcoin derivatives to its clients.

Thus, Citigroup joins the club of large banks and financial institutions that have been tempted by Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.