The total crypto market capitalization has topped $300 billion for the first time since early-August of 2019. This shows that the bulls are back in action. Interestingly, it is not only the crypto markets that have been moving up, even the US stock markets have been making new lifetime highs in 2020. Currently, the Dow Jones index is currently close to 29,500 points. However, Fundstrat Global Advisors co-founder, Tom Lee, believes that Bitcoin will pip the Dow Jones for the race to 40,000. Chicago Mercantile Exchange chief economist Bluford Putnam echoed the popular belief that Bitcoin is a non-correlated asset …

Commissioner Hester Peirce of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission is known for her work on the regulator’s approach to crypto, enough to have earned the moniker “CryptoMom.” On Thursday, Feb. 6, she presented a new proposal looking to build a safe harbor for networks in their infancy seeking to avoid classification as securities. On Feb. 10, Cointelegraph got the chance to speak with the commissioner at greater length about her goals and hopes for the proposal. What is a safe harbor and why don’t firms want tokens to be securities? Briefly, Peirce’s proposal seeking to give tokens run …

A report by investment management firm VanEck shows that Bitcoin can greatly improve the “risk and return reward profile of institutional investment portfolios.” The research shows that even a small allocation to Bitcoin in a portfolio mix of 60% equity and 40% bonds enhanced the cumulative return. The best portfolio return was seen with an investment of 3% in Bitcoin, 58.5% in equity and 38.5% in bonds. When Bitcoin was compared with traditional assets such as the U.S. dollar and gold, Bitcoin showed more features that are desirable from an asset class to be used as money. Daily cryptocurrency market …

The institutional investors have maintained their bullish stance on Bitcoin. Though the spot price is yet to hit $10,000, CME Bitcoin futures have already reached the five-figure mark. Additionally, the Bitcoin futures open interest on BitMEX has topped $1.5 billion. This shows that the institutional traders expect the rally to extend further. Morgan Creek Digital Co-Founder Anthony Pompliano meanwhile has said that his idea of Bitcoin acting as a hedge for portfolios due to its non-correlated nature has only solidified over time. He added that Bitcoin moved in the opposite direction to both the S&P 500 index and gold in …

Although Bitcoin has rallied about 33% year-to-date, its dominance has dipped to 64.40%, its lowest level since July 2019. This shows that altcoins have continued to outperform Bitcoin. However, with the Bitcoin halving fast approaching, the digital asset’s volatility is likely to pick up. Tom Lee, co-founder at Fundstrat Global Advisors, has again turned ultra bullish on Bitcoin and expects a rally to about 200% in the next six months. According to him, historically, whenever Bitcoin has broken above its 200-day moving average, it has recorded an average six month gain of 197%. Lee expects halving to act as a …

Block.one announced a smart contract blockchain puzzle, touting a $200,000 prize for whoever figures it out. “In this challenge, participants must create an EOSIO Smart Contract which can store and invoke EVM (Solidity) Smart Contracts in a virtual Ethereum-like environment,” a Feb. 3 announcement on EOSIO’s DevPost detailed. EOSIO platform Built by a company known as Block.one, the EOSIO blockchain hosts the EOS crypto asset. As a delegated proof-of-stake blockchain touting smart contracts, developers can build decentralized applications on EOSIO. The competition will expire in one year if no one solves the puzzle. The competition ends as soon as someone …

The recovery in cryptocurrency prices has ignited interest among institutional investors. In 2019, dedicated crypto funds returned more than 16% according to Eurekahedge while traditional hedge fund strategies returned 10.4% according to Hedge Fund Research, Inc. Several hedge funds and large trading firms use speed to their advantage by benefitting from pricing inefficiencies. Others profit from the spreads between bids and offers. While such entrants will improve the liquidity and provide depth to the markets, the crypto space will benefit more from investors who are in it for the long-term. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 Bitcoin futures open interest …

Morgan Creek Capital CEO Mark Yusko believes that Bitcoin should be a part of every investment portfolio. The performance analysis of the past five years shows that even portfolios that only held 1% of their total investments in Bitcoin managed to outperform their competitors. Bitcoin offers a ten-to-one downside capture, which makes it one of the most asymmetric assets that Yusko has ever seen. The growing popularity of crypto derivatives indicates institutional players are gradually entering the space. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange group Managing Director and Global Head of Equity Index Alternative Investment Products, Tim McCourt, said: “CME Bitcoin futures …

Japanese consulting firm Nomura Research Institute, which is an affiliate of financial services giant Nomura Holdings, has launched a tradable cryptocurrency index in partnership with cryptocurrency investment solution provider Intelligence Unit. The index, which is meant for financial institutions, will track a basket of cryptocurrencies and can be traded in US dollars and yen. Though several financial companies have launched services for institutional investors, the inflow of money into the crypto space has been slow. Bitcoin options trading on Intercontinental Exchange’s digital asset platform Bakkt has been lackluster with nil volume reported for the past few days. Daily cryptocurrency market …

Investors are rushing into various safe haven assets as the coronavirus death toll in China rises and the virus spreads in various Asian countries, the US, parts of Europe and Australia. Usually, the initial reaction to any crisis is to dump all asset classes but gradually, the investors start to differentiate between asset classes as they analyze the effect the crisis can have on them. After the initial sell-off in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies due to the coronavirus scare, the crypto markets have stabilized and are rising once again. The total market capitalization of the crypto universe has risen from …

Decentralized apps (DApp) continue to be a major focus point for developers in the crypto space. However, 2019 ended with DApps still far off from reaching their much-touted potential of being the “future of the internet.” DApp projects in 2019 continued to suffer from their usual issues like poor user retention and the difficulties of navigating user interfaces (UI), among others. While some projects boast market capitalizations north of $100 million, they fail to attract more than a handful of daily users. In the early weeks of 2020, some analytics firms dedicated to monitoring the DApp ecosystem have released reports …

The International Monetary Fund chief economist Gita Gopinath said in a panel discussion at the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos that Facebook’s Libra was a major trigger that made people reconsider the status of the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. Brazil's Economy Minister Paulo Guedes, who was also a part of the panel, said that “the Libra episode is just evoking a future digital currency.” In order to help policymakers understand the central bank digital currency (CBDC) better, the WEF in collaboration with some of the world's major central banks and experts from over 40 …