What Are The Recent Blockchain Bites: Here Is XRP’s Rally, The Chainalysis’ $1B Valuation, Also The Bitcoin’s Volatility In Perspective

The Current Scenario Of Bitcoin

To bypass Venezuelan blockades, the US government is using Circle’s USDC. At a $1 billion valuation, Chainalysis is looking to raise $100 million in fresh capital. Flowing into Coinbase are billions of dollars from institutional players. Reigniting the case for a bitcoin ETF, was VanEck finding that bitcoin is less volatile than a quarter of S&P500 stocks. 

Injecting “stability”

 To support Venezuelan politician Juan Guaido’s bid for office, an unnamed US government agency has enlisted dollar-backed stablecoin provider Circle along with P2P payments startup Airtm. Set up by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro who was re-elected in a 2018 election bypassing restrictions was done by converting the US seized funds into Circle’s USDC product and dispersed via Airtm’s mobile phone network, was the plan to distribute relief funds to medical workers and other Venezuelan locals. Adding this is likely the first US foreign policy objective utilising a cryptographic stablecoin is Circle’s Jeremy Allaire saying that it was in a sense a way to bypass those of the state-controlled banking system which will just directly distribute to the people. 

Private eyes

In a fast approaching Series C, Chainalysis expects to raise $100 million venture capital at a $1 billion valuation. The round could propel the blockchain analysis start-up to unicorn status led by VC newcomer Addition with participation expected from Accel, Benchmark, and Rabbit. Seen in the company’s financial status, were several governments, banks, regulators, and crypto firms relying on Chainalysis technology reporting: from Q3 2019 to Q3 2020, the firm increased its customer base 65%. Analytics firm Coinfirm found government agents frequently leaving behind substantial amounts of forked crypto in seized wallets in other blockchain sleuthing news. Related to sniffing out privacy-preserving monero transactions, finally, Cipher Trace has filed for two patents. 

Open banking

Proposing a rule that would forbid banks to blacklist legal, but unsavoury businesses, potentially including crypto firms, was the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a national bank regulator led by former Coinbase counsel Brian Books. As it comes thereby not in response to those political pressures, it is under the proposed rule, that banks could deny financial services to customers only on the basis of quantitative risk-based standards established in advance. With only a handful of friendly providers namely, Silvergate Bank, Signature Bank, and Metropolitan Commercial Bank, crypto firms have long struggled to obtain or keep bank accounts in the US. Through Jan 4 the proposal is open for public comment. 

$20B BTC

An exchange executive claims, Coinbase now custodies $20 billion in institutional assets. When he joined the firm in April and has grown by $14 billion under this watch was Brett Tejpaul saying the institutional assets business was under $ 6 billion. As a boost, notably, Tejpaul pointed to Coinbase’s Tagomi acquisition in May. He said that it radically transformed their ability to cater to institutional clients thereby wanting to use smart order routing and algorithmic execution. Giving Coinbase more compliance credibility was the veteran banker also said that adding JP Morgan Chase as its banking partner and Deloitte as its auditor. As Tejpaul says, the firm is now measuring new capital coming in for bitcoin in the billions. 

Cbdcs Not Crypto?

Suspending the upcoming listing of a $3 billion bond issuance that was intended to be tradable for bitcoin and US dollars was Chia Construction Bank the world’s second-largest bank. Set to be traded via the Fusang digital asset exchange, the bank was sponsoring the issuance of the Longbond debt securities. The program is now being re-evaluated. The city of Suzhou will hold the second lottery of the country’s central bank digital currency next month in other news out of China.  

Market intel

Leveraged buyers

According to one key metric, some BTC traders may have become overleveraged during the recent rally above $18,000. According to the data source, Glassnode, the average level of the funding rate across major exchanges has risen sharply from 0.023% to a five-month high of 0.087% in the past 48 hours. Measured by the premium derivative plays pay over spot prices, the funding rate reflects the cost of holding long positions. Excessively bullish and therefore overbought conditions is a higher number indicating. Leading to a deeper drop and a pick up in price volatility in such situations is a pullback or consolidation that can trigger an unwinding of longs. 

XRP pumps

Riding 16-month highs is XRP, the native asset of the XRP ledger. Finally in this case, on Saturday it was pointed out that Coindesk is the third-largest crypto by market cap and then it climbed to $0.437564, which is the highest price since July 2019. With minor contractions since it has continued to rise. XRP has appreciated over 120% since the start of the year now above the $0.50 level. 

At stake

Volatility, market data, and ETFs

Volatility is frequently and erroneously conflated with risk as CoinDesk Director of Research Noelle Acheson noted in a September newsletter. 

Adding that volatility can be an attractive attribute for a well-weighted portfolio, she writes that volatility comes as a metric, a number, a measurement. Whereas an ambiguous concept is a risk. 

She found bitcoin volatility is often correlated with the asset’s price direction in Acheson’s analysis. Usually does the volatility as when the price comes down. 

As the crypto trades 24/7 freely across the world, what’s more, bitcoin’s volatility is more measurable than traditional markets. More data to analyse is what more data points mean. 

By saying the following, VanEck ends its report: 

It is here when such products are believed thereby showing similar volatility characteristics as they come based on the comparison above as also there are many stocks in the well-known indices and ETFs such as those of S&P 500 and the related products while there are no US bitcoin exchange-traded funds available today.