Amid Bitcoin touching five-month lows near $30,000, JPMorgan Chase analysts suggested that large institutional investors are now dumping Bitcoin (BTC) in favor of gold. In its Tuesday note to clients, JPMorgan suggested that institutional investors are going back to gold, reversing a major bullish cryptocurrency market action that drove Bitcoin's price above $64,000 in mid-April. Citing open interest data in Bitcoin futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the American megabank said that BTC futures now saw the first biggest decline since the bull market that started in late 2020: “The bitcoin flow picture continues to deteriorate and is pointing …

The government of Bahrain, the third-richest Arab country, is working with American investment bank JPMorgan Chase on a digital currency settlement pilot. The Central Bank of Bahrain officially announced Tuesday that the bank is now collaborating with JPMorgan and the Arab Banking Corporation BSC, or Bank ABC, in a pilot scheme to introduce an instant cross-border payment solution based on digital currency technology. Aiming to cut settlement processing time, the new digital currency pilot will involve transferring funds from and to Bahrain in U.S. dollars for payments from buyers and suppliers. The central bank emphasized that it could move forward …

Ether (ETH), the second most-valued cryptocurrency after Bitcoin (BTC), has hit a major milestone amid the ongoing price rally. On Wednesday, Ether’s price set another historic record, surging to as high as $4,346, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Ethers market capitalization briefly surpassed $500 billion, reaching nearly $505 billion on Wednesday. The new milestone marks Ether’s ongoing massive surge after it surpassed the $4,000 price mark for the first time in its history on Monday. At the time of writing, ETH is trading at $4,317, up more than 6.4% over the past 24 hours and seeing massive gains of about …

JPMorgan Chase’s constant love-hate relationship with cryptocurrency has been a fascinating one to observe over the years, especially since the digital asset sector started exploding at the start of 2021. To put things into perspective, between February and April, the total market capitalization of the space doubled from $1 trillion to $2 trillion. As a result of this meteoric ascent, the individual market cap of premier cryptocurrencies such as Ether (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) has gone on to become higher than those of established multinationals, with Bitcoin surpassing Tesla, Tencent, Visa, Berkshire Hathaway, Alibaba, Facebook and Samsung, among others. Back …

Major American investment bank JPMorgan is working with Singapore’s largest bank, DBS, and state investment firm Temasek to launch a new blockchain company focused on global payments and interbank transactions. Dubbed Partior, the new firm will use blockchain technology and digitize commercial bank money to reduce the existing friction in cross-border payments, trade transactions and foreign exchange settlements. Such functionality would enable instant settlement of payments for various types of transactions, helping banks overcome global payment-related challenges in the current financial system, JPMorgan said in a Wednesday announcement. The new platform builds on JPMorgan and Temasek’s past work as part …

Bitcoin (BTC) is seeing a tsunami of new user adoption as a backdrop to prices likely bottoming at around $52,000, say analysts. In a series of tweets on Tuesday, statistician Willy Woo led calls for calm about Bitcoin’s recent price dip and subsequent lingering $9,000 below recent all-time highs. $1-trillion cap has created new “line in the sand” Reiterating previous assertions, Woo argued that buyer support had firmly established Bitcoin as a trillion-dollar asset and that BTC/USD would, therefore, not fall much below the equivalent spot price to maintain it — around $53,000. “This revisit of lower price has created …

If 2021 has taught us anything about digital currencies, it’s that big banks and major payments providers are now feeling more comfortable with Bitcoin (BTC). While the CEO of PayPal and other large corporations are expressing excitement for crypto payments and salaries paid in Bitcoin, executives from Visa, JPMorgan and ING all agree that Bitcoin is still an investment vehicle rather than a currency. This notion was revealed during a panel discussion entitled “Buying with Bitcoin,” which took place during Forbes’ “2021 Blockchain 50 Symposium: Crypto Goes Corporate” online event. Michael del Castillo, associate editor at Forbes, led the discussion …

ConsenSys, a prominent blockchain software company, has raised $65 million in strategic investments from major financial institutions including JPMorgan Chase, Mastercard and UBS, offering yet another sign that traditional finance is entering the crypto space. The investment round will aid ConsenSys in expanding its enterprise blockchain infrastructure solutions to enable more decentralized finance and Web 3.0 applications on Ethereum, the company announced Tuesday. After a year of significant growth, ConsenSys is now focusing on accelerating mainstream adoption of Web 3.0, which is considered to be the next phase of the internet’s evolution. In addition to the major finance players, blockchain-focused …

JPMorgan Chase expects Bitcoin (BTC) to reach $130,000, while Ark Invest anticipates the market valuation of BTC to surpass that of gold. The optimistic macro prediction from both funds revolves around the scarcity of Bitcoin, which has buoyed its popularity as a safe-haven asset. Why are both high-profile funds so optimistic about Bitcoin? As Cointelegraph previously reported, the outlook of the U.S. dollar index is on the decline. The fear of inflation and the increasing liquidity in the financial markets is causing reserve currencies, like the dollar, to depreciate. Ark Invest, as an example, sees Bitcoin nearing $500,000 in the …

Major South Korean internet company Naver has reportedly begun negotiations to acquire a stake in the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Bithumb. Naver has discussed a potential equity stake acquisition with major Bithumb stakeholder Vidente, local publication the Maeil Business Newspaper reported Monday, citing several unnamed sources. Naver is the provider of South Korea’s largest search engine and Line messenger, and is reportedly seeking to expand its platform’s presence in the country’s fintech market. The internet giant is reportedly planning to add Bitcoin (BTC) as a payment option on its payment services Naver Pay as well as Line Pay in Japan …

Cryptocurrency adoption has been penetrating the mainstream at an exponential rate. While most investors are going straight into buying the likes of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), a few skeptical investors want to invest in the cryptocurrency economy without exposure to tokens’ volatility directly. This volatility is evident in the recent all-time high Bitcoin of around $61,700 reached on March 14, before dropping to trading in the $56,000 range and then rising to around $59,000 at the time of publication. Bitcoin’s market capitalization has now surpassed that of Visa and Mastercard combined. For the overly cautious investors, JPMorgan recently announced …

Bitcoin (BTC) did more than hit $60,000 per coin last week — it also became worth more than the world’s three biggest banks combined. According to publicly available data, the largest cryptocurrency surpassed the three highest-valued global banking giants by market capItalization. Bitcoin market cap blasts past financial stalwarts At its all-time highs of $61,700, Bitcoin’s market cap was roughly $1.15 trillion. The combined market cap of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is $1.08 trillion. The achievements do not stop there: Visa and Mastercard, the biggest payment networks, have a combined market …