June 10th, 2023

Bitcoin is Bigger in Asia with U.S. Supply Dropping 11% This Year

According to on-chain data, Asia has surpassed the United States in terms of active capital in Bitcoin and crypto markets.

Glassnode, an on-chain analytics service, announced on June 5 that the gap between US and Asia Bitcoin supplies held or transacted had grown.

According to Glassnode, the year-over-year change in BTC supply by geographical region shows a notable disparity. The US entities’ extreme dominance in 2020-21 has obviously reversed, with US supply dominance declining by 11% since mid-2022. Also, over the last year, European markets have been rather neutral, whereas Asian trading hours have seen a major increase in supply dominance.

The gap has grown wider as America becomes more hostile to Bitcoin and overall cryptocurrency sector while Asia opens up. “This is a distinct reversal from the 2020-21 bull cycle,” Glassnode observed.

The United States’ supremacy began to decline in 2021 and switched negative in mid-2022. This occurred at the same time as the Terra/Luna ecology collapsed and regulatory pressure increased. Since then, the government and federal officials have been on a mission to put an end to the industry through regulatory action.

Glassnode also noticed significant changes in stablecoin supply. Since the beginning of the year, the aggregate stablecoin supply from the top five issuers has decreased by 7.5%, or $10 billion.

A substantial chunk of this fall can be attributed to Circle’s USDC, which was once favored by US financial institutions. In 2023, the USDC supply has fallen by $15.7 billion, or 35%. Circle was also severely harmed as a result of its exposure to the now-defunct Silicon Valley Bank.

Why Is Southeast Asia a Crypto-Friendly Region?

Although cryptocurrency may have started in the G7 (if presumed that Satoshi Nakamoto is Japanese), underdeveloped countries have often been the most enthusiastic about adopting decentralized virtual currencies. The explanation is simple: the promise of financial democratization offered by cryptocurrency has a tremendous appeal in nations where huge segments of the population lack access to key banking services.

It is no coincidence that Asia’s two greatest developing countries, China and India, have imposed severe sanctions on cryptocurrency while rising Southeast Asia has not. Approximately 80% of individuals in both nations have bank accounts.

In comparison, up to 70% of Vietnamese, 66% of Indonesians, and 44% of Filipinos are unbanked. Regulators in these countries are, predictably, slower to restrict access to cryptocurrencies than their colleagues in China and India.

Also, this month, Hong Kong began enabling exchanges to facilitate trading, while in the West, legal proceedings against key exchanges in the United States represented a watershed moment for the industry.

Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, one of the targets of the SECs legal action, cautioned in an opinion article for MarketWatch that weak regulation would harm the United States.

“In the 1990s and early 2000s, smart—and tailored—regulation enabled the United States to define the Internet Age,” he wrote.

Regarding Hong Kong, Armstrong stated that China’s drive for the crypto story was “no surprise.”

Be it as it may, some people familiar with the situation believe that US regulatory action against two big cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase and Binance, may serve as a model for Hong Kong and Singapore as they seek to combine expansion with investor safety.

The revelation has rattled investor confidence just as Hong Kong is attempting to position itself as a trading hub alongside Singapore, which already has such a framework in place.

US Actions May Be Used as Point of Reference

According to experts, the two cities may use the US action as a reference point, which might mean greater inspection of Bitcoin and crypto trades in Asia.

Anndy Lian, Singapore-based author of the book “NFT: From Zero to Hero” said that there would be a fallout for sure.

“Hong Kong and Singapore are taking measures to regulate the cryptocurrency industry by proposing new licensing regimes for virtual asset trading platforms,” he said .

The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) in Hong Kong has asked for an evaluation of a proposal that would urge crypto trading platform operators to get the same licenses as securities traders.

According to Lian, other firms that were not applying had been asked to prepare for an orderly closure as well.

Securities, unlike other financial assets, are heavily regulated and require extensive disclosures to notify investors of potential dangers.

“These developments indicate that cryptocurrency exchanges seeking approval in Hong Kong and Singapore will have to adhere to new regulatory requirements and may be subject to increased scrutiny from regulators,” Lian concluded.

Julian Hosp, the CEO and co-founder of Cake Group, a fast-growing Southeast Asia’s digital assets innovator, asserted that the war that the US is waging on cryptocurrencies “shows no signs of abating, and it will only intensify as time wears on.”

He went on to say that the regulator’s action is part of a bigger trend that would most likely continue through the 2024 presidential election.

Rajagopal Menon, vice-president of WazirX stressed that the SEC’s lawsuit primarily focuses on actions that have taken place in the United States and their impact on American citizens. However, he warned that for regulators in Hong Kong, such as the Securities and Futures Commission, and Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority, the SEC’s lawsuit could serve as a point of reference or information.

Source: https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-is-bigger-in-asia-than-us/

Anndy Lian

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com

j j j

January 20th, 2023

Lunar New Year Chinese visitors to Singapore, Hong Kong help revive gold post-Covid

‘We have seen an increase in visitors … certain Chinese customers, who have not been buying from us for a long time, have resumed’, one trader said
Gifts of gold at Lunar New Year are thought to bring luck to both giver and receiver. China is the biggest consumer and producer of the precious metal

China’s reopening ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday has brought back the lustre of gold in two of Asia’s most important financial hubs – Hong Kong and Singapore.

A steady stream of Chinese visitors since borders reopened on January 8 has stoked up premiums on gold – a mark-up paid to secure speedy deliveries and cover overhead costs – by around 300 per cent to US$3 an ounce from a year ago, dealers say.

Spot gold prices – what the customer on the street actually pays – are hovering around an eight-month peak of US$1,900 an ounce in global markets.

“It’s early days yet, but we have definitely seen an increase in visitors over the past week. Certain Chinese customers, who have not been buying from us for a long time, have resumed,” said Padraig J Seif, Founding Partner of the Hong Kong based-Precious Metals Asia.

Traditionally, gold buying peaks in the run up to Lunar New Year, which this year falls on January 22. Visitors from the mainland like to shop in Hong Kong and Singapore because of the high quality of precious metal products such as jewellery and coins.

“Gold holds a special place for Chinese people, it symbolises wealth and prosperity, making it a popular choice for Lunar New Year gifting,” said Hong Kong-based Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group in a statement, adding that it had seen an increase in gold purchases recently and was expecting a “surge in demand for bridal jewellery as 2023 is considered to be an auspicious year for couples looking at tying the knot”.

Buying momentum likely to increase

Around 64,000 mainland Chinese visitors have streamed into Hong Kong since borders reopened. That flow is expected to increase as a quota of 50,000 travellers per day across four land border checkpoints will be raised to 65,000 a day for four days from Wednesday.

City authorities have also announced that they would increase the number of daily rail tickets from Wednesday.

The momentum in gold sales is expected to last even after the holiday season because of around two years of pent up demand, as many Chinese people are still reluctant to travel because of Covid-19 but are expected to gradually start taking trips.

The holiday season also arrived earlier this year, as it often falls in February. Beijing’s abrupt U-turn on zero-Covid in late December surprised many people and did not give them enough time to firm up travel plans before Lunar New Year.

Gold has long been considered a way to store and lock in value, and demand for it spiked in Asian markets in the initial months of the pandemic in 2020 because of a climate of uncertainty. But the bullion trade in Asian hubs crashed soon after China imposed travel restrictions.

“Lot of people stopped buying because they were experiencing financial difficulties,” said Seif, whose sales revenue in the first two weeks of January has already surpassed that of the entire month a year ago.

It’s not just retail buyers of jewellery, either – long term investors are also turning back to gold. The US Federal Reserve is expected to this year soften its aggressive rate increases, which could make returns on the precious metal higher than on interest-bearing bonds.

Investors have also gravitated towards the precious metal because of its safe haven appeal due to geopolitical tensions such as the Russia-Ukraine war and the looming prospect of a global recession.

Investment bank Goldman Sachs expects gold to trend even higher than it is now later this year, at around US$1,950 an ounce.

Demand in China, the world’s largest gold consumer and also the biggest producer of the precious metal, is expected to have an important bearing on prices.

Like Hong Kong, Singapore’s gold trade is also benefiting from China scrapping travel restrictions with the city state bracing for overall visitor arrivals to rise to 12-14 million, around double the year before.

“Chinese gold demand is expected to drive the global market this year,” said Spencer Campbell, the Singapore-based director of SE Asia Consulting Pte Ltd.

“With the easing of restrictions in China, retail demand for gold is expected to increase in Singapore and Hong Kong as more people shop for gifts and jewellery to celebrate the Lunar New Year.”

Demand has picked up across Asia since late last year, he added.

Indian consumers – in second place after their Chinese counterparts – bought a record amount of the metal in the fourth quarter of last year.

Some Asian investors have switched to precious metals from cryptocurrencies after one of the largest global exchanges, FTX, went bankrupt in November following a surge in customer withdrawals.

Bitcoin, one of the most actively-traded currencies that soared to an all-time high of US$69,000 in November 2021, is now trading at around US$21,000.

However, one Singapore-based fund manager appeared unimpressed by gold’s charms and said savvy investors can take advantage of cryptocurrency volatility, with traders buying at low prices and selling when they rise.

“Gold may be a safe haven” but there were many other opportunities elsewhere for investors “to profit from price fluctuations”, said Anndy Lian, a partner at the Singapore-based Passion Venture Capital and author of the book NFT: From Zero to Hero.

Bullion dealers have said the increased purchasing of gold following China’s reopening is likely to last until the end of the first quarter. Chinese appetite for gold could well continue at the same brisk pace throughout the year if the economy revives and incomes bounce back, they noted.

Source: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/article/3207411/lunar-new-year-chinese-visitors-singapore-hong-kong-help-revive-gold-post-covid

Anndy Lian

www.anndy.com

j j j

October 30th, 2022

SOL /BTC prediction: Can Solana arrest year-long decline, return to growth?

Solana’s SOL has been seeing a surge in investor interest as it continues to expand its network with more exciting projects coming up. Despite dipping by 87.8% since its all-time high in November 2021, experts are saying that a rebound is near while bitcoin (BTC) is down by around 70% since November 2021 gains.

How do the two coins trade against each other and what does the SOL to BTC forecast suggest amid a bear market? Let’s take a look at the SOL/BTC pair and some of the factors that may shape its exchange rate.

What is SOL/BTC?

SOL/BTC is the exchange rate between SOL, the native cryptocurrency of the Solana blockchain platform, and BTC, the native token of the Bitcoin Network.

Bitcoin was first mined in 2009 by its creator or group of creators who prefer to keep their identity a secret using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. It is also the first ever platform to use a blockchain to build, exchange, store and distribute the digital coin.

The cryptocurrency is used as a peer-to-peer payments method, and over the last 10 years it has also become an investment vehicle.

Bitcoin uses a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism. The cryptocurrency is given as a reward to miners who solve mathematical equations to prove the legitimacy of BTC transactions.

The maximum number of newly mined bitcoins is limited at 21 million. After every 210,000 mined BTC blocks (this takes around four years), the blockchain experiences a halving event, which cuts the number of BTC coins in circulation by half.

Solana is a public, open-source blockchain that hosts a number of projects in the likes of decentralised finance (DeFi) applications, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Web3.

It prides itself in its low transaction costs (at less than $0.01), fast speed (at 400 milliseconds per block) and security (it is censorship resistant). The blockchain was nicknamed the ‘Ethereum killer’, as it aims to improve what the Ethereum blockchain is lacking.

It was founded in 2017 by a former Qualcomm (QCOM) employee and Dropbox software engineer Anatoly Yakovenko and his colleague Greg Fitzgerald. In contrast to BTC, Solana uses a Proof of History (PoH) consensus mechanism for verifying transactions on the blockchain, which uses an alternative method for calculating time.

Some of the network’s key functions allow users to mint, sell and trade NFTs, create their own DeFi projects, write smart contracts, build Web3 games and accept payments in crypto form.

SOL coins are ERC-20 standard, meaning that they were developed on the Ethereum (ETH) network and are primarily used for interacting on the blockchain.

SOL to BTC price history

Since SOL’s launch in 2020, the SOL to BTC rate struggled to pick up momentum, moving sideways for around 10 months before starting to gain speed at the end of February 2021.

Between late February 2021 and mid-August 2021 the pairing fluctuated between values as low as 0.0001781BTC and as high as 0.001179BTC. The SOL to USD price chart followed a similar trend, fluctuating between $13 and $49.

Between 15 August 2021 and 9 September 2021, however, the SOL/BTC pair surged, rising by more than 385%, up from 0.0009374BTC to 0.004576BTC as Solana was being discovered by a number of celebrities, such as Mike Tyson and Jason Derulo. This was also the time when the SOL to BTC reached its all-time high, as seen on the price chart above.

Between 9 September 2021 and 20 October 2021 the SOL/BTC price lost nearly 50% of its gains, dropping to 0.002425BTC as the BTC price in US dollars started to see major gains, surging by around 39% within the period from $46,000 to $64,000.

In line with other major cryptocurrencies, the SOL/BTC rate regained a big portion of its losses as it rose to 0.004202BTC by 7 November 2021, at the time when the SOL value in USD reached its all-time high of $258.78.

Up until the start of January 2022, the SOL to BTC exchange rate was fluctuating between 0.004000BTC and 0.003000BTC before falling more than 60% to 0.001149BTC on 13 June 2022, amid overall broad negative investor sentiment.

In terms of technical analysis, the chief digital advisor at the Mongolian Productivity Organisation and author of NFT: From Zero to Hero, Anndy Lian, told Capital.com that the SOL price could be headed towards a trend reversal, as of 28 October.

“The Relative Strength Index (RSI) indicates that the token is in the overbought zone, signalling a reversal could be on the way,” he said.

The pairing’s current exchange rate (28 October) is 0.00151BTC, up by 31.4% since its 13 June 2022 dip.

What is driving SOL/BTC?

On 30 September 2022, the Solana Mainnet Beta cluster experienced an outage, which led to a temporary collapse in the blockchain. This saw the SOL to BTC exchange rate drop by 3.1% within a week, down to 0.001682BTC by 7 October 2022, from 0.001735BTC on the day of the outage.

Dr. Pooja Lekhi, professor of global financial institutions, risk management approach and financial management at University Canada West, told Capital.com:

“Solana has experienced several recent network outages and failures. In the beginning of June, validators in the network stopped processing new blocks for several hours and apps built on Solana’s blockchain were taken offline, which sent its price down more than 12%.”

Projects built on Solana have potential to affect the token’s future price. On 27 October, the Web3 platforms built on Solana Decentralised Engineering Corporation (DEC) and Teleport announced that they have raised funding to bring a Web3 Uber rival (TRIP) to the Solana blockchain, something Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin theorised a while back.

Lian noted that bringing the ridesharing industry to the Solana ecosystem “would surely put SOL into a high utility mode”.

In addition, Solana had partnered with artist Nancy Baker Cahill. She launched her first NFT collection on the blockchain that was shown across 90 billboards on Times Square. Metaplex, an NFT ecosystem built on Solana, also announced it was bringing a new asset class that will allow “creators to enforce royalties at the protocol level by extending the Token Metadata program, which powers 99%+ of all NFTs on Solana.”

Dr. Lekhi noted that until Solana network’s upgrade, “stability will remain a major concern for the SOL, adding:

“It is expected that the Mainnet version will stop the power outage issue. The SOL market had set higher benchmarks for its prices, along with developments in decentralised exchanges, Solana NFT marketplace, Yield aggregators and online games.”

The date for the upgrade launch is yet to be announced.

The enthusiasm surrounding Solana also comes following the news about Saga, its flagship Android phone, which will start shipping in 2023, Lian noted. Solana announced that Saga will have its first mint event on 28 October, which will only be available to those who pre-ordered the phone.

SOL/BTC price prediction

Based on the analysis of past performance, as of 28 October, algorithm-based forecasting service Wallet Investor predicted that SOL/USD could fall to $2.947 in 2023. The platform did not provide a price prediction for 2027.

In terms of its BTC value forecast, the site saw BTC/USD trade at $23,107.27 in 2023 and reach $36,574.97 by 2027.

While Wallet Investor did not provide a direct SOL to BTC forecast, data suggested that the exchange rate could be 0.00012754BTC in 2023.

DigitalCoinPrice predicted that SOL/USD could rise to $36.55 by the end of 2022. The site’s data, as of 28 October, showed that the coin was expected to trade at $49.68 in 2023 and $80.94 in 2025. Its long-term prediction saw the coin reaching $169.10 in 2030.

The site also gave an upbeat BTC/USD forecast, as of 28 October, expecting the coin to grow to $25,646.42 by the end of 2022, reach $33,474.34 in 2023, $53,010.14 in 2025 and surpass $112,000 in 2030.

DigitalCoinPrice’s SOL to BTC forecast for 2022 expected the pair to reach 0.0014252BTC and 0.0014841BTC in 2023. The site’s SOL/BTC forecast for 2025 stood at 0.0015269BTC. Its long-term SOL/BTC forecast for 2030 was 0.0015098BTC.

Dr. Lekhi noted that 2022 was not a good year for SOL, however, the coin may observe a steady growth in the coming months as a rebound in SOL’s price is anticipated.

Lian added that interest in SOL is “extremely high” which could mean that its future movement could be “overall positive”, adding that “with the strong ecosystem backing its value, the rebound can be promising.”

Remember that analysts’ and algorithm-based predictions can be wrong and shouldn’t be used as a substitute for your own research.

Always conduct your own due diligence on a cryptocurrency project before trading, looking at the latest news, a wide range of analyst commentary and technical analysis. Note that past performance does not guarantee future returns. And never trade money you cannot afford to lose.

Source: https://capital.com/sol-btc-prediction-solana-bitcoin-exchange