Virtual currency market analysis [February 9]

Virtual Currency Practical Investment Newsletter February 9

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Ranking of domestic and overseas exchanges I choose

is here below↓↓

http://bitcoin-newstart.com/exchange-japan-bitcoin

I will be publishing a series on cryptocurrency in the FX攻略 (FX Magazine).

It would be greatly appreciated if you could read it when you drop by a bookstore.

https://bitcoin-newstart.com/fxkoryaku

【Cryptocurrency Market Analysis】

The price movements of cryptocurrencies since last week

are summarized as follows for the week

Summary:

Display: Current price (change from one week ago)

Bitcoin

4.66 million yen (34-35% leap)

Ethereum

180,000 yen (30%)

Ripple 47 yen (-7.6%)

Polkadot 2,400 yen (46%)

Binance Coin 8,000 yen (76%)

Cardano 73 yen (102%)

NEM 40 yen (15%)

【Outlook for 2021 Crypto Market】

MoneyVoice published an outlook for the 2021 cryptocurrency market.

https://www.mag2.com/p/money/1001574

Bitcoin rose significantly from last week's 3.5 million yen, and on February 9

it recorded 4.6 million yen.

Bitcoin daily chart

On February 9, Elon Musk’s

world-renowned company led by CEO

Tesla announced that it had been buying Bitcoin since January and

scaled up the purchases into February,

which is why this news spread.

Prices then surged sharply,

recording a 15% gain within 24 hours.

A 15% rise already amounts to about

60,000 yen increase for Bitcoin.

As for corporate Bitcoin purchases,

MicroStrategy is famous for purchasing billions of yen worth of Bitcoin.

Elon Musk asked MicroStrategy’s CEO about large-scale buying

via Twitter at the end of last year, and

it’s hard to imagine Tesla would invest over 100 billion yen

this quickly, but many may not have foreseen it.

Tesla’s 15.8 billion yen worth of Bitcoin is said to account for more than 10% of the company’s assets.

Reasons Tesla bought Bitcoin include

・Mid- to long-term investment

・For enabling Bitcoin payments for Tesla’s electric cars

as a reason

mentioned as well.

Also, influenced by the current coronavirus situation driving global economic stagnation,

countries are issuing fiat currencies, and

to hedge future inflation,

there is a belief that some of Tesla’s dollar holdings should be converted into Bitcoin.

There is a sense that this news about Tesla’s Bitcoin purchases has global impact,

and may become a factor for other large companies to buy Bitcoin.

Also in October last year, the major payments company

PayPal announced support for Bitcoin payments,

and Elon Musk was a founder of PayPal.

Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, global e-commerce sites like

Amazon may also begin accepting Bitcoin payments.

...

However, as with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies,

regulatory issues exist, so it may not be a smooth path.

Currently,

in Japan there are high tax rates,

when Bitcoin rises in price, transfers can stall,

and questions remain about whether to require KYC for individual wallets.

Therefore, although Bitcoin itself is not under government control,

the global trade volume is significant and regulation will likely become an issue in the future.

【Altcoins Also Rise】

Other currencies besides Bitcoin are called altcoins,

such as Ethereum, Polkadot, ADA (Cardano),

NEM, Binance Coin, which have risen by over 30% in price.

Regarding Ethereum,

DeFi tokens built on Ethereum,

such as Uniswap, Aave, Chainlink

also surged significantly.

However, when Ethereum and other DeFi tokens rise in price,

Ethereum transaction fees (gas) spike,

making transfers costly—you may need to pay 2,000 to 4,000 yen per transaction.

This time, to realize profits on overseas exchanges,

I convert profits into dollar-linked cryptocurrencies like USDC or USDT,

hold them, and when transferring domestically to Japanese yen, I convert via Ripple once,

and then immediately convert Ripple back to Japanese yen after the funds settle.

With Ethereum, fees are inevitably high and transfers tend to be slow, so

this can be inconvenient at times.

But conversely,

that also means Ethereum’s system is widely used.

【About Cardano (ADA)】

ADA, which rose to the 4th place by market cap

ADA has been listed overseas since 2017,

and many Japanese invested in it from the start.

ADA was released via ICO,

and is said to have grown several hundred times since then,

and those who held it at that time became quite wealthy.

I too participated in the ICO,

but bought only around 100,000 yen worth then,

and it has become a sizable amount now.

So someone might buy 1,000,000 yen worth

and end up holding billions now, but it’s not clear since some will sell at each price increase.

There are rumors that government tax authorities have obtained lists of ADA ICO participants

and are investigating possible tax evasion.

In any case, profits are okay as long as taxes are paid appropriately,

so you should handle that properly.

ADA has doubled in value over this past week.

Factors cited include

・Staking rate of 60%

・Large investment fund Grayscale adopting ADA as an investment trust

Regarding staking, ADA allows you to earn interest by staking it (currently around 10% annually), and the staking rate is very high, though I’m personally viewing recent ADA price increases as driven by large fund inflows.

ADA has surged to double in the past week.

As for ADA, although it can be said to belong to the same category as Ethereum in the smart contract space, it is not as widely used in practical terms.

Ethereum is used for minting cryptocurrencies and in DeFi.

Nevertheless, the fact that ADA’s price is rising so much suggests that

the marketing by ADA’s operating stakeholders’ wealth is effective.