The billion dollar Bitcoin was moved by an affordable fee of $3.54. Data from Whale Alert reveals that the transaction was a two time transaction where the first amounted to 45,671 Bitcoin (8570 Million) which in total gives the 88,855 BTC(1.155 Billion).

Xapo has been known for movement  of large funds in the past, but compared to the past transaction amounts this one was way higher.

Traditional Banking and Bitcoin

It’s no brainer that if such a transaction was to be conducted with our local traditional banks, we would have a lot to worry about like the fees and the limitations our banks place on the amount of transactions we can operate in a particular period of time. First off, an individual won’t be able to pull that off. Even if they decided to use an Automated Cleaning House(ACH) transfer that would take days to complete plus these transactions would have to be done within the jurisdictions of their daily/monthly limits.

Chase Bank, one of the most popular banks in the U.S has a limit on the users. They can send no more than $25,000 daily and that would take 128years (weekends included) to fully complete a $1.15Billion transaction. The bank however could offer the customer the option of using a wire transfer which would then allow them conduct a transaction no more than $250,000 daily thereby making a $1.15 billion possible in 13 years, all this too with the consideration of fees.

Cryptocurrency as a whole led by Bitcoin has made spending and sending of money way simpler and cheap. The location of the recipient does not matter as the funds will still reach within a few minutes.

Reactions To this transaction

Some believed that the transaction was an indication of a possible dump in the price of Bitcoin, there were some too who said its funds were laundered. Ironically, today Bitcoin has been performing well since that transaction occurred, it has even shown more potential power to the upside.

You can see more reactions here 

The CBDC [central bank digital currency] test system can be seen as the process of actually circulating cash,” a Bank of Korea official told Yonhap. The central bank would reportedly use blockchain technology to manage CBDC test transaction details.

The bank would be in charge of issuing and redemption of the digital currency while the private Financial institutions would be in charge of the  distribution as reported by Yonhap.

“The CBDC will be issued and circulated in the virtual world and we are going to test a number of transaction scenarios under a variety of circumstances,” an official said.

The bank of Korea stated that the test phase is the final part of the three- step pilot program.

Phase one saw the designing and checking of technology which ended in July. Phase two focused on analyzing related processes and seeking outside consulting.

The Central Bank has also stated that the testing of the Pilot program is not a confirmation that it will definitely launch an actual digital currency and that they are merely testing the waters.

The Journey to creating its own pilot program for their Central Bank Digital Currency started in April and Plans to run until December 2021.

“There is devaluation of currency. The whole secret to building wealth is to get out of cash and get into assets that are denominated in dollars that will continue to go up in value over long periods of time- Stocks, real estate, gold, Bitcoin, all this stuff – stated Pomp on his live stream on the 18th of July.

The Pandemic on the Economy

The global pandemic Covid-19 has at one time collapsed a lot of the economy, some are still struggling to get back up. The US government and other  governments have been printing and giving away Fiat money in a bid to stabilize the country’s economy and help  restore order.

The more money they print, the higher the chance of inflation, and it is possible  that they are not going to stop soon because unlike the cryptocurrency, fiat  can be  printed to an infinite amount.

“The central bank is already using CBDC for financial transactions with some big businesses”- Said Vachira Arromdee, BOT assistant governor. 

They plan to start using the cryptocurrency for transactions with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and also expand the use to the general public after careful consideration. 

“The central bank is also thinking about expanding use of the cryptocurrency to the general public, but a comprehensive study must be completed before taking such action.” 

She also noted that the CBDC is not the same as Bitcoin or any other digital currency with a volatile market backed by speculation. The CBDC will function as a stable currency backed by tangible assets such as the country’s international reserve.

The Bitcoin Beach Initiative 

This is an initiative that was set up by an anonymous donor in partnership with Micheal Peterson, a San-Diego native that spends up to 9 months volunteering in El Zonte. 

The vision of this initiative is to set up a sustainable Bitcoin ecosystem and economy for the villages where residents are unbanked and the local businesses do not meet  the requirements to accept Credit cards. 

To cut out on Bitcoin fees and transaction delays, the Bitcoin Beach Initiative utilized the Australian-based wallet known as Wallet of Satoshi, the wallet utilizes the Lightning Network protocol. 

“Originally, it didn’t make sense for 25 cent transactions, but did for 5 dollars. But when the transaction costs ramped up again, we switched over to the Lightning Network,” says Michael Peterson, Founder of Bitcoin Beach.

What can you buy with Bitcoin? 

You can basically buy anything here with your Bitcoin just like you would have used cash anywhere else.

You can buy Hardware supplies and also pay your utility bills with Bitcoin. Youths keep the community clean in exchange for Bitcoin, the Bitcoin Beach Initiative also gives grants to children who wish to further their education. They provide those students with transportation funds to school and money for snacks. 

You can use Bitcoin to buy groceries from stores, three restaurants, cut your hair in the saloon all with Bitcoin. Contractors, builders and suppliers for construction projects are all paid in Bitcoin. 

How is this possible? 

Well, cryptocurrency has overall always been about educating the masses, and also seeing up techs that would aid that mass adoption. With the right kind of cryptocurrency education, even elderly ones are able to adapt. 

“As we injected Bitcoin into the community, we also taught local businesses how to accept it and helped educate them on the advantages and drawbacks of accepting Bitcoin…There was a lot of resistance among the adults, [it was] too technical. So we moved on to youth, they picked it up right away. The key is to get them to start transacting right away, then they want to learn more about it, the security of it, and how it works,” described Michael Peterson. 

The Bitcoin Beach Initiative is also working on a new product Strike App, which will allow the connection of recipients’ Bitcoin wallet with the senders Bank account thereby allowing international transfers to be made. 

Kucoin CEO Johnny Lyu said

“As one of the most globalized cryptocurrency exchanges, KuCoin has been expanding its fiat gateways. Now, our P2P Fiat Market supports Chinese Yuan (CNY), Indonesian Rupiah (IDR), Vietnamese Dong (VND), Canadian Dollar (CAD), and US Dollar (USD), the 5 mainstream fiat currencies. We also support 50 fiat currencies like EUR and AUD through our partnerships with Simplex, Banxa and PayMIR. In the future, we will continue to further our work towards globalization, enabling more users worldwide to enjoy the services we provide here at KuCoin, ultimately helping more users enter the crypto world.”

This is indeed huge news for the cryptocurrency world because USD is the most recognised inter-currency PayPal has an estimated 325M users. Latest data from Coinhills shows that among other fiats, USD is the leading fiat or paper money used to purchase Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency by over 63.21%. The combination of USD and PayPal should provide a nice amount of interest from PayPal users in Bitcoin and through the platform without having to worry about moving funds around to other platforms and encounter more fees.

Kucoin also plans to celebrate the first anniversary of the P2P Fiat Market on its platform, they hope to launch different campaigns that will create awareness of the P2P Fiat Market and the USD.

Users can purchase or withdraw Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Dash, Zcash (ZEC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR), USDT AND XRP from some of the ATM depending on which you use. 

The United States alone has over 6,000 cryptocurrency ATM and is still rapidly growing. The ATM has grown to about 17% in the United States since the month of March as reported by Cointelegraph. 

The United States is not the only country cryptocurrencies ATM’s are located, they are also located in Venezuela, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, and the UK. You can see them all here. 

Growing Demand for Crypto 

It’s only natural to want to increase something that has great demand in the business world or Crypto world. Since the Crypto ATM’s are increasing, it only points to the fact that there are a lot of individuals who are making use of it and would prefer to use the ATM to get Bitcoin or Altcoins. 

This also serves as an effective way to gain mass adoption since a lot of people in the financial system use the ATM to withdraw and probably deposit fiat, so they know how to go around an ATM then an online banking application. The cryptocurrency ATM’s will help serve those purposes. 

SEMA AND BLOCKCHAIN

SEMA describes itself as one of the pioneer Central banks to experiment with blockchain technology for money transfers, they have initiatives that are launched to help enable and develop FinTech in the country. Among this initiatives are : The Fintech Saudi Arabia initiative with the capital Market Authority, the introductory sandbox and an array of digital Banking services and payments.

Cointelegraph reported that in 2018, SEMA partnered with the UAEs Central banks to develop a cryptocurrency that can be used for cross-border payments. 

Blockchain Adoption

Governments and banks are getting more and more interested in using blockchain technology in their financial sector is a large step into Mass-adoption. 

If they can trust blockchain with their finances, they can utilize the technology in other sectors too. 

Rookes Data indicates that Grayscale is now purchasing an average of 1,112.35 BTC per day. This is double the amount they used to purchase.

Rookes data shows that Grayscale Bitcoin Trust purchased more than over 9,500 BTC out of the 6,800 mined last week. Grayscale has bought up to 24,413 BTC since the halving occurred on May 12, though only 19,200 BTC has been mined since then.

Bullish??

One might argue that all this buy does not affect BTC or where is the effect of them on the price of BTC or the crypto space, although the current price of Bitcoin does not reflect this buys, it is worth noting  that Bitcoin has held steady between the 9,000’s. The buy pressure too at the moment is also worth taking note of, a lot of individuals are probably bullish with the news of what Grayscale is doing and are fixing buy orders in order for them not to miss the ride to the Moon.

Another reason one might say we’re bullish or in a bull market already is Bitcoins S2F model. This is a trading tool created by an anonymous Dutch early last year, the S2F ( Stock to Flow ) treats Bitcoin like other commodities like Gold and silver and tracks it using its scarcity of 21 million Coins. It evaluates the existing supply of Bitcoin against the amount of mined.

How it works

The S2F signals a Red dot after the first month of halving to possibly indicate a Bull Run.  In this case, the first Red dot has appeared for 2020 has appeared after the halving since the last Bull market in 2017. The Chart indicates a possible rally up to $100,000 between 2020-2022. Just like every other market analysis too, none is absolute and as such some individuals have indicated that the tool is not efficient even Vitalik Buterin described the tool as overly bullish. But checking out the previous Red dots after the last halving, the S2F model has been right although the tool was created after those time periods.

When Rooke announced the increase in the average purchase of BTC by Grayscale Q1 of 2020, Barry Silbert, Founder of Graysacale replied saying “ just wait until you see Q2 of 2020. This might mean that they do not plan on stopping purchase for now since the demand from their clients is still high. This too puts a Bullish scenario before us.

Are we in a Bull market?? We will find out soon enough.

Disclaimer

Although we do not present ourselves as Financial advisors we do take a lot of time and effort to look up projects before reviewing them. Check out an article on SRK released by JRNY Crypto. SRK is up 300%.

Here is a copy of the draft bill written in Ukrainian, an English copy would be uploaded when found.

Reasons for the Bill

Micheal Chobanian, the President of Bitcoin Association Ukraine, said that exchanges are not allowed to own bank accounts.

The new draft bill will help the Crypto industry get recognised as legal and not harmful, this will by extension help all other Crypto companies in Ukraine and other parts of the world.

The bill states that all involved in the Crypto industry ranging from Crypto firms like exchanges, issuers and users have a legal right to open and operate a bank account even owning accounts in other financial institutions.

CRITERIA 

The draft law explained that local firms that aim at operating a Fiat to crypto exchange or business will have to register first with the ministry.

Andriy Khavryuchenko, tweeted out that the Ukraine Bill on Virtual Asset makes all Crypto wallets in Ukraine illegal, unless they register in the Digital Transformation office. 

So basically if you operate without a registry, conducting transactions with Fiat and crypto without registering with the Digital Transformation Office, the Law sees it as an illegal activity.

Another criteria to lookout for is that any crypto firm that aims at registering and becoming legalized must ensure Anti Money-Laundering or AML, and  they must have KYC service among other things.

Ukraine has been looking at making a law that will regulate crypto assets for over 4 years now. Its first attempt to regulate crypto was back in 2015, this was when Verkhovana Rada of Ukraine announced plans to define the legal status of BTC by 2019. The authorities are working on at least three separate bills with one focused mainly at cryptocurrency taxation in Ukraine.