Argentine analyst Maslatón considers that Bitcoin is a liberal advance in a world that is moving to the extreme left. He denies that someone is manipulating Bitcoin’s price and predicts that it will reach more than USD 50,000.

Attorney and market analyst Carlos Maslatón recently talked about the relationship between Bitcoin’s price and that of fiat currencies. “If Bitcoin’s price reached millions of US dollars, there would be a [new] political reality in the following five years. That situation would lead to the fall of fiat currencies [at the global level],” he said.

According to the former Xapo treasurer, “we may be in a process of melting compulsory legal tender fiat currencies.”

“Compulsory legal tender is a political mechanism through which the State prints banknotes to pay taxes, obligations, debts, and contracts,” explained Maslatón.

This Argentine market analyst, who defines himself as a right-wing liberal, considers that Bitcoin is a liberal advance. He says that it is now available in a world that “is moving to the left and the extreme left.” Maslatón explained that Satoshi Nakamoto’s creation has the advantage that adherents to different political expressions support it. “Ultraliberalism, as well as some US- and Nordic-style lefties, supports Bitcoin. The reason for that is that they initially saw that it challenged the might of banks,” he stated.

Growing Institutional Investment

Before talking about institutional investments, which have reached Bitcoin on a large scale, he said that “something quite impressive is now happening.” Institutional investors have the Bitcoin equivalent of more than USD 20 million in their hands.

“Now banks also want to enter, which is excellent for the strength of the product. That would allow denying that [the cryptocurrency] is speculation in the style of the 17^th-century tulips,” Maslatón added.

This market analyst also rejected the premise that someone is manipulating Bitcoin’s price. “This is a clean market, where there is no possibility of manipulating it. Neither sharks nor whales can do it, which is mere sensationalism,” he said.

Bitcoin’s Possible Price in 2021

The lawyer specializes in Elliot’s wave theory, which allowed him to extensively explain his estimates for Bitcoin’s price. In other words, he believes that it can reach USD 50,145 within the next 3 or 4 weeks, or even less.

According to Maslatón’s predictions, the BTC price chart will make a triangle that will last for about 3 months. He considers that “during those months, which he calls “a break”, there must be fright, fear, and confusion.” After this stage, he estimates that BTC could reach a maximum of USD 93,213 in 2021.

“I recently made an estimate taking into account Bitcoin at USD 95,000. I found that this would lead to a market capitalization equivalent to all the banknotes and coins of the United States,” said the market analyst.

Maslatón considers that this situation “will be a complete novelty at the global scale.” He wondered whether some people would say that it is “a tulip” or “speculation.” He also believes that they might attribute it to “whales or sharks”.

By Alexander Salazar

XRP’s capitalization fell from USD 22 billion to USD 13 billion within a month. The price of Polkadot has increased by more than 70% in the last week.

Ripple’s XRP remains bearish in the market and has lost its place as the fourth most traded cryptocurrency. Polkadot (DOT) now occupies that place, having recently exceeded a market capitalization of USD 15 billion.

In recent days, XRP has depreciated by more than 10% while the price of DOT has increased by 77.2%. That situation has earned the latter the new rank among the cryptocurrencies with the highest capitalization, according to data from CoinGecko.

Even though DOT had been flirting with the fourth place, the confirmation of the change occurred in a matter of hours. The market price of the Polkadot cryptocurrency has risen by more than 21% within just one day. For that reason, XRP’s total capitalization of just over USD 13 billion remains behind.

In that way, Ripple’s cryptocurrency maintains a negative trend that has led it to lose almost half of its price in the last month. The lawsuit that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed against the XRP issuing company caused this disaster.

In December, the SEC sued the company and its co-founders for the sale of XRP, since they consider it to be an unregistered security.

When the news appeared, the price of XRP was USD 0.48. At the time of writing this article, each XRP trades at USD 0.28. On the day of the complaint, the price of the crypto asset had already dropped by 30%. XRP’s market capitalization went from above USD 22 billion to just above USD 13 billion in the same period.

Exchanges and Investment Funds Separate from Ripple

The lawsuit that the SEC filed against Ripple last December led to an unleashed wave of rejection of XRP on exchanges. In a matter of a few days, dozens of those platforms announced that they would delist XRP and mutual funds. They would also liquidate positions, so they requested their customers to withdraw their funds in the said currency.

On December 24^th, Bitwise announced that it would liquidate its position in XRP, equivalent to almost 4% of its portfolio. Later, exchanges markets such as OKCoin, Coinbase, Bittrex, Crypto.com, Binance, or eToro also withdrew it.

Crypto investment fund Grayscale made the latest decision in this wave of rejection of XRP. Institutional cryptocurrency investors consider it one of the most important on the global scale. It withdrew its positions in XRP, but its Bitcoin fund grew by USD 3,000 million during the last three months of 2020.

Several days ago, a group of XRP investors filed a petition with a US court for the modification of the SEC’s complaint. They requested the agency not to consider their XRP holdings as securities. They are waiting until the court determines whether the Ripple crypto is a security or a cryptocurrency.

By Alexander Salazar

Late in 2020, Europe’s leading Bitcoin fund CoinShares achieved record flows. The firm is part of the first group of companies for institutional investment in Bitcoin.

In recent weeks, CoinShares announced that it reached a total managed number of assets of USD 34.5 billion. The largest Bitcoin fund in Europe said that it was able to do it due to the growing institutional demand for its Bitcoin funds.

According to CoinShares chief strategy officer Meltem Demirors, they expect that there will be volatility and cyclical movements for Bitcoin. However, she predicted that the trend will continue to rise this year. She argued that this will happen “simply because there is not enough Bitcoin to meet the massive demand,” reported The Economic Times.

Demirors believes that “Bitcoin is a technology and networking infrastructure whose growth resembles that of a social movement.” She says that this kind of group might aim to create and resist change. The main cryptocurrency of the market “introduced a new idea when the world needed it most: the separation of state and money.” She highlighted that it proposed that money could be digital, scarce, immutable, and open-source.

The latest CoinShares weekly report indicates incoming flows of USD 26 million in the first week of the year. This represents a significant drop compared to the record of flows of USD 1,090 million that they had obtained the week before Christmas 2020.

They attributed the decrease in flow rate to many traders and investment advisers’ decision to take that week off.

The European Bitcoin fund shows in a graph that the total flow for December, including the record week, exceeds USD 1.8 billion. There has been a massive flow of investors into Bitcoin in the last year, Demirors noted. This has contributed to the growing demand for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as well as a bullish price momentum, in recent months.

Why Institutional Investments in Bitcoin are Important

Concerning the price corrections in a bullish cycle, Meltem Demirors states that volatility “is part of the story.” The executive highlights that the market prefers long positions due to the rapid rise in prices. However, she explains that market participants will want to achieve some profit at some point.

“Some institutions do not want to allocate between USD 10 million and USD 30 million to Bitcoin. They would rather put between USD 100 million and USD 500 million, or even USD 1 billion, into a single investment. I do think that there will be volatility and cyclicality this year, but the trend will continue to be upward. This is a question of supply and demand. There is simply not enough Bitcoin to meet the huge wave of demand that we face,” said CoinShares chief strategy officer.

Demirors says that it is difficult for portfolio managers to optimize the return on their investments. Interest rates are close to zero, and traditional stocks are not performing as well as they had expected. The managers who allocated a portion of their portfolio to Bitcoin in late 2020 had great returns, says the executive.

Along with other companies, CoinShares contributed to institutional investment in Bitcoin in 2020. Grayscale, MicroStrategy, Square, and Galaxy Digital also invested in Bitcoin.

The leading Bitcoin fund was part of a review of companies conducted in October 2020. At that time, they accumulated more than 600,000 BTC, which currently exceeds one million BTC.

By Alexander Salazar