Written By Pavel Rabtsevich on

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Tesla’s Bitcoin investment & cryptocurrency rankings

Tesla’s Bitcoin investment & cryptocurrency rankings

Over the past week, the cryptocurrency market has undergone massive fluctuations. Bitcoin has gone up 14% in just one hour, and today it made a new historical high above $48,000. The altcoins also went up after the first cryptocurrency – Ethereum crossed the $1,800 mark for the first time. The news that Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoins in January provoked a sharp market growth. Today we analyze what kind of news of the recent days led to such rapid growth.

Elon Musk’s Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin

Elon Musk’s Tesla invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin. This is stated in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The electric car manufacturer specified that it intends to integrate the first cryptocurrency as a means of payment for products in the future.

According to the document, Tesla updated its investment policy in January 2021 to be more flexible in diversifying and maximizing income from funds that are not required to maintain liquidity. The company may invest some of it in “certain alternative reserve assets,” including cryptocurrencies.

Germany’s largest bank predicts the growth of bitcoins as a payment method

A Deutsche Bank study found that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have become more popular as a payment method thanks mainly to the coronavirus epidemic. The study predicts that the use of cash will decline within four to five years.

In a document published on Feb. 3, 2020, the German bank assures that “the world has moved on from questions about whether cryptocurrencies will be successful to how and when their use will end.” In this sense, the inquiry showed that more than a third of so-called millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) would like to replace cash or debit cards with bitcoins. A survey of 3,700 people in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain found that “many imagine a fully decentralized digital currency.”

The opposite is of people surveyed between the ages of 35 and 55, who claimed to be afraid of bitcoins. They believe that crypto-assets “form unsustainable financial bubbles and view them as financial instruments with low liquidity.”

Forbes named 11 cryptocurrency billionaires

Forbes has compiled a list of the wealthiest cryptocurrency businesses in 2020. Given the surge in the cryptocurrency market, Forbes decided to calculate the fortunes of the richest cryptocurrency investors and entrepreneurs, counting not only the value of their digital money but also their shares in related businesses and traditional assets. The result: 11 billionaires. It was headed by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong with $6.5 billion, followed by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried with $4.5 billion and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen with $2.9 billion.
Also in the ranking were:

  • MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor – $2 billion
  • Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao – $1.9 billion
  • Gemini founders the Winklevoss brothers – $1.6 billion each
  • Digital Currency Group founder Barry Silbert – $1.5 billion
  • Ripple co-founder and former CTO Jed McCaleb – $1.4 billion
  • Venture capitalist Tim Draper, $1.1 billion
  • Bloq co-founder Matthew Roszak, $1 billion

The DeFi marketplace was the most profitable of the week, with several tokens in a bullish rally

Decentralized funding platforms (DeFi) were the most prominent in the cryptocurrency market this week. Projects such as UMA, Compound, Nexo, 1INCH, and even SushiSwap experienced a rebound period that raised their token values by more than 90%.

According to CoinMarketCap data, which shows that the top 10 tokens with the best performance for the week belong to the DeFi sector, while the most popular cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, XRP, Monero, or ETH are far behind. UMA, also known as the “Universal Access Marketplace,” is the project that has received the most recognition in the last 7 days.

0-Day for Ethereum: CME Futures listing

However, as strong as Bitcoin seems to be, Monday’s agenda is about altcoins, specifically Ethereum. After surpassing its highs last week, the major altcoin got its own allocated Ethereum futures from CME Group. However, the focus is on the dynamics of the currency, whether the uptrend will continue or whether the launch of CME futures will be an obstacle that triggers corrective behavior.

In 2017, the launch of the first bitcoin futures coincided with a rise in prices, followed by a fall that caused a bear market during the year. Simultaneously, the adoption of futures was much slower than previously anticipated and did not reach its rhythm until 2019.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey launches a full-fledged bitcoin hub

Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey have launched his own bitcoin node ( BTC ). On Feb. 5, the tech billionaire posted a screenshot of the Bitcoin software running on his computer, meaning that Dorsey now supports Bitcoin transaction verification.

Dorsey posted the image along with the words “Running #bitcoin.” The photo shows Dorsey’s computer in sync with the Bitcoin blockchain, which requires the user to download the entire network history. At the time of writing, the Bitcoin blockchain was about 325 GB.

Running a Bitcoin node is different from bitcoin mining because nodes do not compete for a piece of the reward per block. Instead, each node hosts another unchanged copy of the blockchain, which helps improve the network’s overall security. According to the latest data, the number of full Bitcoin nodes in operation has fluctuated recently, reaching somewhere between 7,000 and 11,000.