Cardano network’s ADA token has joined the TOP 10 of the crypto market again, taking the place of Bitcoin SV. Despite ADA’s bearish behavior, bulls strongly reject low prices, which might lead to previous annual highs.

Taking advantage of a recovery of more than 46%, the Cardano token has achieved a position in the TOP 10 of the crypto market once again. In just 24 hours, ADA showed slight losses of 0.59%, obtaining a price of USD 0.1087 at the time of writing this article.

The team behind Cardano recently revealed the latest update to its roadmap. It includes the progress of the Daedalus and Adrestia wallet, smart contracts, and the clearing of the path towards decentralization.

Among the new advancements is the update of Daedalus towards a 2.4.0 version. It will improve access to details about the saturation of a delegation group and potential rewards in the tooltip. Besides, it will bring improvement to the wallet ranking, provide a more intuitive design, and a better table view.

Concerning Adrestia, the development has focused on Catalyst to add support to different wallets and assets. They have also sought to add delegation support for the wallet hardware and the Cardano-Rosetta partnership.

About Catalyst

Catalyst, the latest version of Cardano, has also seen good progress. This last era aims to decentralize, contribute to and democratize the chain.

Concerning this update of the roadmap, there is talk about the work in favor of the development of voter registration scripts. Also, the developers worked on Bitte’s deployment tool for the Fund2 vote.

The number of improvements that this roadmap has indicated is large. However, reviewing all these technical aspects of the chain would be too difficult and would take too long.

Technical Analysis on Price of Cardano

The ADA vs USD chart shows a behavior that tends to be bearish, but without too much force. The price fell into a demand zone close to USD 0.07, which led the bulls to quickly appear. Then, they left a bullish candlestick with a strong rejection of low prices.

Even though there were signs of a downtrend in the medium term, the bears are still not showing enough strength. There might be an effective command transition, a scenario that it is already possible to observe in shorter time frames.

The general picture of the crypto ecosystem shows a kind of positivism that floods everything. This could lead to seeking the previous annual high, close to USD 0.1700. The next target is above USD 0.2259.

Cardano Should Stay in the TOP 10

It is possible to observe a clearer bullish behavior, consisting of continuous highs and increasingly high lows, breaking resistance.

Exponential moving averages (EMA) of 8 and simple moving averages (SMA) of 18 crossed upwards. Besides, they work as dynamic supports for the upward trend in the medium term.

The 200-day SMA is also currently bullish, supporting Cardano’s strong gains in recent months and those that led it to struggle for a position in the TOP 10.

This behavior will lead to reaching and exceeding the resistance at USD 0.1244 in the next few days. This will leave the ground free for a first objective at USD 0.1500, to then seek the previous annual high close to USD 0.1700.

Given that the medium-term trend should seek a new high, that annual high may not be a problem for bulls.

By Alexander Salazar

Digital assets offer financial freedom, which has made them an alternative for undocumented migrants to send money to their families. Migrants use cryptocurrency gift cards as a method to send remittances since they do not need identification to acquire them.

Many unbanked people have used digital assets, especially Bitcoin, as an option to have their money available anywhere. An example is the migrants who leave their native countries in search of a better life.

They find a barrier in their search for a better future when they are undocumented. The lack of papers means that they cannot have access to traditional financial systems. This situation does not allow them to perform various financial activities, including sending money to their families.

Migrants Take advantage of Bitcoin’s Benefits

Arcane Research, a company providing analysis and research in the field of cryptocurrencies, says that digital assets are very useful for immigrants. This type of digital money allows them to make international cash transfers, which are tax-free, inexpensive, and fast. Also, it does not have the typical bureaucracy of the remittance market, which has a value of USD 500,000,000.

The study entitled “The state of crypto: the P2P market”, which the firm published on October 22^nd, describes undocumented migrants’ use of peer-to-peer markets. It states that migrants turn to them to acquire Bitcoins and thus be able to send money to help their families.

Gift Cards Are the Main Medium that Migrants Use

Migrants consider that one of the limitations to access a traditional financial service is the lack of documents that prove their identity. For this reason, this group uses gift cards as their preferred payment method on exchange platform.

These cards do not require the user to go through the know-your-customer (KYC) process, which implies that users prove their identity. This allows migrants to evade these banking limitations for not having the necessary identity documentation.

The report states that this payment method is very popular in North America, which is one of the main reasons behind the expansion of Paxful. In this global market, it is possible to trade Bitcoin safely with millions of users, using more than 300 forms of payment.

From Gift Cards to Cash

Matt Ahlborg, the founder of the metrics website Useful Tulip, explained to Arcane Research the process of sending money through gift cards.

The executive said that the person has to buy a gift card from a local store, photograph the card and send the screenshot to relatives in another country. Then, they exchange those gift cards for bitcoins on Paxful and convert them into the local fiat currency. To do that, they sell the cryptocurrencies to a buyer in the local market through a P2P platform.

Even though the procedure seems somewhat embarrassing, it is more efficient and inexpensive than traditional options.

Bitcoin as Alternative for Remittances

Venezuela is a clear example of how people can use cryptocurrencies to send money across borders when the political or economic scenario is difficult.

Ariana Entralgo, a Venezuelan who resides in Argentina, said that she used to send money to Venezuela through services promoted on Instagram. She sent a deposit to a person, confirmed, called Venezuela, and ordered a transfer to a bank account, but then she moved to Bitcoin.

Through LocalBitcoin, Ariana buys bitcoins from traders in Argentina, then changes the location on the platform to Venezuela. There, she sells her digital assets to Venezuelan traders, placing her father’s bank account to receive the deposit.

This process takes from 30 minutes to two hours depending on how fast the traders do the process. Besides, it has the advantage of not having to pay high fees.

According to the Arcane Research report, 43% of Bitcoin trading in Latin America takes place in Venezuela.

Venezuela has almost no major remittance services available, so Bitcoin is a viable option for Venezuelans living abroad for sending money to their families.

By Alexander Salazar

Gaining a small portion of gold investors would triple the price of BTC. PayPal’s endorsement of Bitcoin will make it easier for millennials to use it as an alternative currency.

After criticizing Bitcoin for many years, JPMorgan has gradually changed its attitude towards the first cryptocurrency. Last October 24^th, this investment bank took a very favorable position on Bitcoin. It said that this cryptocurrency has great long-term potential to compete with gold. “The main reason for this competitive strength of Bitcoin is the incorporation of millennials as a key group of investors.”

Last October 23^rd, JPMorgan sent the newsletter Flows & Liquidity, Bitcoin’s Competition with Gold to all its customers. The following day, several Twitter users, including investor Dan Tapiero, disclosed the document.

Tapiero thinks that this is JPMorgan’s most bullish commentary on Bitcoin that he has ever read. He said that “even a modest crowding out of gold as an alternative currency will multiply the growth of Bitcoin.” The report reached all the customers of the bank. The PayPal announcement “covers” for other traditional players to get involved.

The investor accompanied the tight summary in his tweet with a partial transcript of the JPMorgan newsletter. However, Twitter user @16trippingborys posted it in full.

JPMorgan highlights that PayPal’s decision last October 22^nd is key to institutional support for Bitcoin.

According to JPMorgan’s newsletter Flows & Liquidity, Bitcoin’s rise began to receive corporate support through Square and MicroStrategy in recent months. PayPal’s recent endorsement is another big step towards corporate support for Bitcoin. The financial institution considers that it will facilitate and improve the use of Bitcoin as an ‘alternative’ currency in the future.

JPMorgan insists that younger investors have a preference for “alternative” currencies, while older investors prefer gold. The investment bank observes a correlation between the interest in gold and the interest in Bitcoin from the two respective cohorts.

Older investors look for gold-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs), while millennials look for the equivalent of Bitcoin ETFs. These do not formally exist, but users can acquire and trade the shares of Grayscale’s Bitcoin fund, which are conceptually close to ETFs.

Millennials will have a growing weight in the universe of investors and, by preferring Bitcoin as an “alternative” currency, Bitcoin’s competition with gold will strengthen, according to the report. “A modest migration from gold to Bitcoin as an alternative currency in the long term would imply doubling or tripling the price of the cryptocurrency,” says JPMorgan.

Last May, JPMorgan announced that it would offer support to exchanges Coinbase and Gemini for their operations with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The following month, a study by JPMorgan highlighted that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies recovered more quickly from the economic collapse of March 12^th than traditional assets.

The relevance of Bitcoin has become increasingly evident this year. The cryptocurrency has recently caught the interest of important international institutions like PayPal and JPMorgan. The advantages that this crypto asset offers and its well-known ability to overcome crises make it the best option for financial investors.

By Willmen Blanco

Billionaire investor Mike Novogratz says that the use of Bitcoin is limited to being a store of value rather than a medium of exchange.

For now, the use of Bitcoin as a currency is not on the horizon, billionaire investor Mike Novogratz believes. However, he says that many people are effectively using the main digital currency as a store of value with large capacity.

“I believe that people will not use Bitcoin as a transaction currency for the next five years,” said the founder and CEO of Galaxy.

Novogratz’s statements come at a time when Bitcoin is having the best streak of 2020. In recent days, the price of the cryptocurrency is around the USD 13,000 barrier as a result of PayPal’s announcements about digital currencies.

People Will Not Use Bitcoin as a Currency in the Short Term

The scope of Bitcoin leads Mike Novogratz to believe that people will not use Bitcoin as a currency in the short term. Only a small portion of the population of economically advanced countries know and use the cryptocurrency as a means of payment.

According to reports, only 7% of the population in the United States has ever used Bitcoin. In other nations, such as Vietnam or Turkey, the percentage is higher. However, less than 30% of the economically active population use Bitcoin.

In this regard, the currency needs to overcome the obstacle of its adoption to acquire the status of money. The investor considers that it should overcome this barrier in the next five or more years.

Of course, all this would depend on how long it takes for central bank digital currencies (CBDC) to come into effect. These would allow the tokenization of hundreds of millions of people, who would learn everything about digital currencies.

Besides, when people realize that there is a decentralized, secure, and more popular cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, those who join CBDCs will consider it as one of their favorites. This is especially possible due to its scarcity and constant appreciation, which makes it both different and superior to stablecoins. However, Bitcoin has only functioned as a store of value until now, says Novogratz.

A Store of Value

The above factors lead Novogratz to say that the use of Bitcoin as a currency is not on the agenda in the short term. However, he also takes into account the current function of this currency.

The expert notes that Bitcoin currently is, especially in this situation of pandemic and crisis, a store of value. One reason for a growing number of high-caliber investors to adopt it is the weakness of the US dollar. Besides, there are fears of the rebound in infections by the new coronavirus.

“Therefore, Bitcoin is going to keep growing as the digital gold,” says Novogratz. He also highlights that an increasing number of people will want a portion of Bitcoin as part of their portfolios.

In the last few days, the price of Bitcoin has grown by about 13% and has reached the USD 13,000 barrier. It is the best streak that the pioneering cryptocurrency has had this year.

By Willmen Blanco

PayPal users will not have the option to withdraw their bitcoin funds to an external wallet. Bitcoin will remain in the PayPal wallet without sending it to other accounts.

PayPal announced this Wednesday that its users now can buy, sell and pay with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies from its platform. However, some of the details about the service raise doubts about the handling of funds in bitcoin and the freedom that users will have.

The first detail is that PayPal customers will not have private keys to their bitcoins, so all funds will be in full custody of the company, as shown in the frequently asked questions section on the platform’s website.

“You own the cryptocurrency you buy at PayPal, but you will not be provided a private key,” the company notes. As a justification, PayPal claims that relying on the private key is “very risky.”

Therefore, they say that the control of funds by the company is a security mechanism for users. “If you can enter your account, you will have access to the balance you have of cryptocurrencies,” adds the text.

In addition to the impossibility of controlling the keys, it is not possible to transfer funds, both in bitcoin and in the other cryptocurrencies that the service will support: litecoin (LTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), and ether (ETH).

Not only is it not possible to neither withdraw bitcoins to an external wallet nor can you send funds to other PayPal accounts. Nor can you directly deposit balance in cryptocurrencies, so everything will happen within the platform.

 That is, it will only be allowed to go from funds denominated in fiat currency to BTC and vice versa and pay with a balance denominated in cryptocurrency to merchants affiliated to PayPal (a balance that will be converted into fiat for businesses).

PayPal customers in the United States will be the first to have the service, which will happen in the coming weeks. Then, an expansion to other markets is planned and, in early 2021, it will be possible to buy using cryptocurrency balance in PayPal affiliated stores.

Bitcoin community questions the adoption of bitcoin in PayPal: “not your keys, not your bitcoins.”

While some see the PayPal news as a good push for large-scale adoption of Bitcoin, there is a lot of skepticism in the bitcoin community. Mainly, personalities of the ecosystem question the nature of custody and the limitation to withdrawing funds in cryptocurrencies.

Among those is Jameson Lopp, co-founder of the Casa Company. The also creator of the statoshi.info tool initially alerted via Twitter about “not letting PayPal retain your precious bitcoins.”

Then, looking at the characteristics of the service, he concluded that what PayPal offers will not even really be bitcoin or another cryptocurrency: “it doesn’t matter; they are just issuing promissory notes. After all, they would not want people to retreat to a censorship-resistant wallet! ”

Satoshi Labs, the creator of the Trezor hardware wallets, immediately alerted potential users with a phrase deeply rooted in the bitcoin environment: “not your keys, not your bitcoins.”

On this point, there are constant complaints from PayPal users about blocking and freezing of accounts without prior notice, retention of funds, and other inconveniences that limit the use of funds in wallets on the platform. Something that could also happen now with cryptocurrencies.

For his part, Meltem Demirors, from the investment firm CoinShares, considered that this news could be exciting. However, he assured that “it feels like another asset in a banking/payment network”, rather than Bitcoin.

Among the positions in favor, stands out the market analyst Willy Woo, who referred to the matter as something “big.” In particular, he referred to PayPal’s user base of more than 340 million users.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

Since October 20^th, the size of the mempool has maintained a clear correlation with the price. The fees on Bitcoin have been at their highest level in the last two months.

In recent days, congestion on Bitcoin (BTC) reached levels not seen in 20 days. The mempool shows a growing trend of unconfirmed transactions since October 20^th, along with a price that reached USD 12,000 that day.

The following day, the mempool had a considerable increase, going from 14,486 MB to 45,484 MB. That same day, Paypal announced the incorporation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies into its platform and boosted the price up to USD 13,161.

The mempool is the temporary memory that stores transactions pending confirmation. On October 21^st, it reached a weight of 45.8 MB and over 70 thousand unconfirmed transactions.

The increase in the mempool may imply that a greater number of users are conducting transactions. The fear of missing out (FOMO) could be leading many new investors to enter Bitcoin by speculating that recent news could push its price higher.

It is important to note that the correlation between the mempool and the price of Bitcoin is not constant. In the period between February 19^th and March 13^th, when the price of Bitcoin lost 60%, the correlation between the size of the BTC mempool and the price of the cryptocurrency was negative by 41.2%. In 2016, that correlation was -83.1%.

Growth of Fees on Bitcoin

The correlation between the mempool and the fees that users pay for transactions in Bitcoin is what may be a usual constant. The network’s congestion encourages higher transaction fees to get priority and receive the validation of miners.

The average fee on October 22^nd was USD 6.36, but it had been USD 1.46 just five days before. They are the largest values since August 6^th, when the average fee was USD 6.47.

Many wallets, Bitcoin custodians, and exchanges do not support SegWit, which contributes to the increase in fees. The same occurs with those that offer high fees by default.

Checking the current trading volume on the network is one way to avoid paying high fees. Various online tools, including BitcoinFees.earn.com and mempool.space, allow users to do this.  Besides, it is necessary to use wallets with the flexibility to customize fees.

Another strategy is to implement the use of solutions in payment channels such as the Lightning Network, which is ideal for micro-payments.

Some months ago, Daniel Alós, a collaborator at HodlHodl, started an educational campaign on this tool. He explained that “the possibility that there will be another Bitcoin bullish rally and on-chain transaction fees will soar” had driven him to do it.

The congestion of the Bitcoin network due to PayPal’s announcement is just one of the signs of the reputation of the cryptocurrency among users. The cryptocurrency has shown an extraordinary ability to overcome its worst all-time lows.

By Willmen Blanco