Good morning. Today, MicroStrategy, the billion-dollar public company that has put Bitcoin in its reserve, has a conference, explaining Bitcoin to other corporations, effectively educating them on how they can do what they did. Apart from its CEO Michael Saylor, other speakers include Coinbase, Binance, and more.
If you don’t have time, this is the TLDR of today’s piece:
Welcome to Thursday Thoughts, part of our new series: BitPinas Daily. We will look at the price of Bitcoin, Ethereum and the major cryptocurrencies. Crypto is global, but sometimes news that matters happens while we sleep. So we bring to you what’s happening in our space here and abroad.
Market Price as of February 4, 2021:
| Bitcoin | $37,592 | +5.70% |
| Ethereum | $1664.65 | +9.80% |
| Tether | $1.01 | +0.10% |
| Polkadot | $20.86 | +20.70% |
| XRP | $0.39 | +6.90% |
| SLP | $0.026 | +0.60% |
Bitcoin closed February 3, 2021, at $37,592 per BTC. We’re up 15% in the last 7 days and up 30% since the year began. This is 10% below the previous all-time high of $41,940, which was hit on Jan. 8, 2021.
Bitcoin’s market capitalization stands today at $699,975,446,669 which is 60% of the entire cryptocurrency market. The entire crypto market, by the way, now has a market cap of $1,157,881,478,763 (+5.80%).
On the table above, there’s the cryptocurrency SLP. If you wonder what that is, check out this article: Playing Axie Infinity vs Minimum Basic Salary in the Philippines.
Table of Contents.
Visa
Visa to work with banks to allow buying and selling of digital assets
Visa is launching a number of APIs that will allow banks to offer Bitcoin services. Called “Visa Crypto API,” it will allow clients to easily connect to the infrastructure of Anchorage, which is a federally chartered digital asset bank, to allow customers to buy and sell crypto.
The service is set to extend to more cryptocurrencies and stablecoins and not just buying and selling but also trading as well.
PayPal
PayPal: Users who buy crypto are more likely to return
“Customers who purchase cryptocurrency have been logging into PayPal at a rate 2x their login frequency prior to purchasing cryptocurrency,” the company said its Q4 2020 earnings call.
Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal said the volume of crypto traded on the platform greatly exceeded all their expectations.
Which means PayPal is moving forward. Schulman said they will significantly invest in their crypto, blockchain and digital currencies business unit.
Institutions
Ruffer sold 40% of its Bitcoin exposure
Last November, Rufer bought $744 million worth of BTC in AUM (Assets under management). The BTC price has more than doubled since then and in selling 40%, the institution profited around $650 million. The sales happened in December and January.
Guggenheim’s shilling is well documented
MicroStrategy
Microstrategy’s Bitcoin Conference
What else is happening
- China’s Central Bank Is Partnering With SWIFT on a New Joint Venture
- Sam Bankman-Fried profiled on NY Mag
- Legendary Macro Investor Launches $200 Million Fund to Invest in Growth Stage Crypto Companies
- Bitcoin futures market exceeds $2 trillion in monthly volume for January
- Mark Cuban is DeFi’s First Billionaire Advocate
This article is published on BitPinas: Thursday Thoughts: Visa and PayPal Double Down on Crypto
Source: https://bitpinas.com/price-analysis/thursday-thoughts-visa-and-paypal-double-down-on-crypto/
