Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView confirmed solid 6.5% gains for BTC/USD in the past 24 hours to 4pm UTC Monday.
The pair erased its previous losses, these coming as part of a comedown from new all-time highs seen on Oct. 25.
As has become customary this month, Bitcoin began rising into the start of trading on United States stock markets, with $64,000 being the next level to reclaim at the time of writing.
With $60,000 seemingly retained as support, the mood among analysts has stayed more than optimistic.
For Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe, any levels above $57,000 remained acceptable for BTC/USD.
“…I think we’re just going to have a consolidatory period or continue the momentum with some slight sideways action before we’re going to break back up towards $91,000,” he summarized in his latest YouTube update.
Tesla beats Facebook to top 5 US stocks
Bitcoin was not the solitary gainer for the day. Tesla ($TSLA) also saw an impressive performance as the stock hit a new all-time high and now aims for $1,000.
Related: BTC price ‘on the way to $90K’ — 5 things to watch in Bitcoin this week
Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, likewise saw his personal wealth hit an eye-watering $250 billion as he reconfirmed his BTC holdings.
$TSLA 1-day candle chart. Source: TradingView
Tesla meanwhile outmaneuvered Facebook to become the fifth-biggest U.S. stock.
Shiba Inu, one of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency assets by market cap, has seen immense retail demand in the last few months. The meme coin started this year with a market cap of a few million dollars, now the digital asset has a market cap of approximately $10 billion.
SHIB (Coinmarketcap)
Dogecoin’s largest competitor developed a strong following in the last 8 months. While the biggest reason behind SHIB’s recent rally is its retail craze, institutional investors have started considering Shiba Inu as a good portfolio diversifier. Amid the latest price surge, large SHIB transactions have surged substantially, indicating that Shiba Inu whales are planning to hold the world’s 21st largest cryptocurrency for the next few years.
So, is it only FOMO (fear of missing out) or some serious investors have started adding Shiba Inu to their crypto portfolios? Finance Magnates asked crypto experts about their views on the latest SHIB rally and the importance of Shiba Inu as a portfolio diversifier.
Difficult to Ignore Shiba Inu
“6 months ago, if someone had asked me about “social awareness” tokens (meme coins) such as SHIB or DOGE, I would have NEVER considered them an investment. However, 6 months later, it is clear for me to see that you CANNOT ignore the social power of these tokens in terms of Return on Investment. So, there may be something to these tokens,” Johnny McCamley, Founder of CryptoClear, commented.
“The goal of SHIB was and still is to catch up to DOGE and ultimately surpass DOGE. It isn’t too far away at $10 Billion (SHIB), $30.8 Billion (DOGE). Again, this [is] illustrating that community is an extremely powerful catalyst- for tokens with close to zero utility,” he added.
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While Shiba Inu is the biggest competitor of Dogecoin, its dynamics are completely different from other digital assets like XRP, BTC or ETH. McCamley believes that a meme coin portfolio is a risky option but an option at least.
“So, I have decided to create a ‘meme coin’ portfolio alongside my DeFi, Smart Contract portfolios. I have chosen to allocate $5K to this Meme tokens portfolio-spread amongst the top meme coins. To me, this is a complete ‘gamble’ riding on the social power of the community behind the token to drive the price, unlike actual utility for other Crypto Assets in my Portfolio. To me, this meme coin portfolio is the riskiest investment portfolio I have made EVER, but it is clear to see now, for me, that I should allocate a very small amount of capital to these projects, don’t sleep on meme coins,” McCamley said.
FOMO?
Joaquim Matinero Tor, a Blockchain Associate at Roca Junyent, said that he is not sure about the scalability ambitions of the Shiba Inu project, but FOMO is playing a major role in the latest price rally.
“Shiba Inu is still part of the FOMO strategy of most crypto adopters waiting for a new DogeCoin and obtain more than 7400% in less than 5 months. I’m quite sure SHIBA will jump also into an NFT ecosystem, but I’m not sure about its project and scalability ambitions. I could be wrong but nowadays only crypto-fans are interested in this kind of token,” Tor commented.
NFTs are becoming the next big thing in the crypto market as more investors get on board with projects surrounding them. Non-fungible tokens like the “Stoner Cats” NFTs was released with huge success in their communities. Non-fungible tokens which mostly revolved around art when they were first released has now expanded into a wider domain.
Increasing support for NFTs has shone through with e-commerce giant Shopify adding merchant support for non-fungible tokens. And most recently, Coca-Cola partnering up with Tafi to launch its very first collection of non-fungible tokens. The non-fungible tokens include files like images, audio, and video.
Related Reading | Are NFTs Dead? New Game Changing Trends
Now comes one of the most interesting uses of none-fungible tokens so far and that is 26-year-old Polish influencer Marta Rentel announcing she has sold her love online as an NFT. The NFT sold for $250,000 and the lucky buyer gets to go on a date with the influencer.
Selling “Digital Love”
Talking about the sale, Rental explained that she wasn’t selling her physical love. But was rather selling the love of her online persona. “Nothing on the Internet is physical,” Rental said. “It’s part of my online persona.”
The 26-year-old Polish influencer boasts over 600,000 followers on Instagram and goes by the name of Marti Renti online. The influencer explained that she wanted to be the first person in the world to tokenize emotions.
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This remains a novel idea, as one would scratch their head trying to figure out exactly how they would tokenize emotions. But Rentel believes that love can be separated into physical love, platonic love, and most importantly, digital love. With each one being just as real as the other.
Rentel confirmed the sale of the NFT but added that she did not know who had bought it either. The identity of the buyer seems will remain unknown until the date with the influencer.
NFTs As A Store Of Value
NFTs are gaining more support given what they represent. With this, people can show that they undisputedly own a piece of artwork or anything else being sold as a non-fungible token. Information about the work and the owner is written directly to the blockchain where everyone can see who the owner of the piece is.
This has been especially popular amongst artists as this provides them a way to directly sell their art. And also helps to combat people using their work without properly paying or licensing it.
Related Reading | Banksy’s Infamous ‘Spike’ Artwork Becomes an NFT
The information on the blockchain is impossible to edit or remove. So every and all record regarding a sale is put on the blockchain, which basically acts as a digital ledger for the sale.
Marta Rentel does not stop at selling her “love” as an NFT. The influencer plans to continue to sell her Instagram photos and YouTube videos as non-fungible tokens.
An ex-employee of the now-defunct crypto exchange Cryptopia has admitted in court to stealing crypto worth about $170,000. The employee pled guilty to stealing coins and customer data while he worked at Cryptopia when the company was still up and running.
A name suppression by the Christchurch district court of New Zealand keeps the employee anonymous for the time being. The employee pled guilty to two crimes, namely; theft by a person in a special relationship and theft of more than $1,000.
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The crime was brought to light in 2020 due to complaints from a customer that he had deposited coins into a Cryptopia wallet by mistake. Cryptopia has been through a series of problems in the past. Which is what led to its now-defunct state. The company finally collapsed in 2019.
Cryptopia Hacks
Cryptopia suffered two devastating hacks that eventually led to it shutting down in 2019. The company was hacked at the beginning of 2021 in January when a hack led to the theft of over 19,000 Ethereum. The crypto was transferred into an unknown wallet. The value of the crypto at the time of the hack in 2019 was $2.3 million. At this point, Cryptopia was serving a global customer base of 1.8 million customers.
Crypto subsequently went into liquidation that year and began the process of shutting down the exchange and mapping out ways for users to get their crypto back.
Bitcoin price loses momentum as it falls back into $33K range | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
Later that year though, the company fell victim to another hack. This time losing about $15 million worth of crypto to the attackers. The hack happened during the liquidation. Somehow attackers were able to access a wallet that had not fallen victim to the hack and transfer the crypto out of that wallet to an unknown wallet. This hack represented about 15% of the company’s holdings of digital assets.
During the liquidation, employees of the company were terminated. But not before an employee had copied private keys and customer data. These he retained after his employment with the company were terminated.
The data available to this single employee reportedly gave him access to over $100 million worth of digital assets.
The Crime
Having access to the keys, the employee believed that no one would check old transactions during the liquidation. The employee had transferred Bitcoins with the equivalent value of approximately $160,000 out of wallets and over $100,000 worth of other cryptos.
While he was employed at Cryptopia, the employee had made copies of Cryptopia’s private keys and customer data. He stored this on a USB flash drive. Which he then took home and uploaded the data onto his personal computer at home.
Upon finding out that old transactions were in fact going to be reviewed, the employee came forward to admit the theft. According to the employee, he had planned to return the crypto over time. And he had apparently taken the crypto because he was frustrated with the company, Cryptopia.
Related Reading | Bitcoin Whale Warns Of “November 2018 Vibes.” What This Means
The employee also admitted that he had believed he would get away with the theft as he did not think that anyone would go on to check old transactions.
Upon stepping forward, the employee had sought assurance that he would not be persecuted for the offenses. Although he has now been arrested and charged and will remain in jail until his sentencing, which is scheduled for October 20th, 2021.
The crime is unrelated to the Cryptopia hack. The employee has returned some of the cryptos and has promised to pay back the rest over time.
Featured image from PCMag, chart from TradingView.com
Polygon has announced the integration of yield optimization vaults on the Maker Network. The blockchain-enabled protocol, formerly referred to as the Matic Chain, tweeted on Wednesday that it “will be opening a vault on Maker” and investing $50M of MATIC tokens as agreed liquidity from the treasury.
With the recent integration, it means the protocol has now broadened in scope, vision, and transformation to become an Ethereum scaling aggregator.
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Such feet, among others, would see the protocol network providing developers with L2 solutions. This will be in addition to the POS/Plasma chain – mainnet, launched in April 2020.
Key Terms Explained
About The Polygon
Polygon provides the core components and tools to join the new, borderless economy and society. Two key platforms materialize it: The polygon framework and the Polygon protocol.
With these technologies, any project can quickly spin up a dedicated blockchain network that combines the best features of “stand-alone blockchains (sovereignty, scalability, and flexibility) and Ethereum (security, interoperability and developer experience).”
Plus, these blockchains are friendly with all the existing Ethereum tools such as Metamask, MyCrypto, Remix, etc. So again, the exchange of information among themselves and with Ethereum is facilitated.
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Summary: Polygon is a blockchain protocol and a framework for creating and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks.
One is collapsing together scalable solutions on Ethereum and supporting multiple chains in the Ethereum ecosystem.
What Is Matic Token?
MATIC, the native token of Polygon, is an ERC-20 token running on the Ethereum blockchain. The tokens are used for payment services on Polygon and as a settlement currency between users who operate within the Polygon ecosystem.
MATIC set to follow an upward trend in the daily chart. Source: MATICUSD Tradingview
This has turned out to be quite positive for the MATIC community as the token as hovering in the green-zone marking 1% of growth at the time of writing this article.
As an integral part of the announcement, $50M of MATIC tokens have been committed by Polygon on the newly opened vault on Maker.
About MakerDAO
MakerDAO is an organization developing technology for borrowing, savings, and a stable cryptocurrency on the Ethereum blockchain.
It has created a protocol permitting anyone with ETH and a MetaMask wallet to loan themselves money in the form of a stable coin referred to as “DAI.”
Related Reading | Ethereum Upgrades Could Jumpstart $40 Billion Staking Industry, JP Morgan
By integrating loans with a stable currency, MakerDAO typically allows anyone to borrow money and reliably predict how much they had to pay back. This alleviates the fear that used to come in the era of crypto to crypto borrowing.
Polygon Is Elated
Polygon board, opening a vault on Maker and committing $50M of MATIC tokens as seed liquidity from the treasury, sincerely thanks the MakerDAO community and team.
They appreciate the effort to quickly process the entire governance activities/polls and their feedback to onboard MATIC as collateral.
“This is a crucial development in Polygon’s long-term vision and commitment to develop the Ethereum scaling landscape and entice the gifted builders and engaged community members,” the board reveals.
Following this, Polygon will be minting DAI, which will invest in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Vault Projects On Polygon
Similarly, there are few other networks opening vaults on polygon technology. Beefy Finance, for instance, launched its first Beefy yield optimizing vault In Polygon on the 28th of April, 2021.
The finance tech is a Decentralized, Multi-Chain Yield Optimizer platform that allows its users to earn compound interest on their crypto holdings. In addition, it has launched a new Ape Swap vault deployed on Polygon.
Quarries On The Project
Despite the attractiveness, there have been some skeptical postures on the project.
Many keen crypto lovers and observers are quarrying that, If approved, would Polygon utilize this class of vault themselves?
Are there any specifically identified users – individual or entity – who have expressed an intention to use this class of vault if MakerDAO onboarded this collateral? Well, for now the MATIC community seems to be appreciating the latest development.
Featured image from Pixabay, chart from TradingView.com
