載舟覆舟！Crypto、PayPal走勢大相逕庭 比特幣是罪魁禍首

載舟覆舟！Crypto、PayPal走勢大相逕庭 比特幣是罪魁禍首

PayPal (PYPL-US) 和 Square (SQ-US) 都靠比特幣吸引顧客使用其 app 並維持其參與度，但兩家股價走勢卻大相逕庭，自從比特幣一個月前開始下跌以來，Square 股價就表現不佳。

如果加密貨幣持續熊市，兩家股價可能都會苦不堪言，但 Square 可能會面臨更多壓力，部分原因是該公司在散戶投資者中與比特幣的聯繫更為緊密。

兩種支付 app 都可輕鬆買賣和儲值加密貨幣，PayPal 在其 app 上提供數種加密貨幣，而 Square 只供應比特幣。這兩家作法像經紀人，賺取的是每筆交易的手續費和利潤。

來自加密貨幣的營收淨額並非其整體業務的大部分。MoffettNathanson 分析師 Lisa Ellis 指出，PayPal 今年營收約只因加密貨幣交易增加 2%，在營收總額 260 億美元中僅占 3 億至 6 億美元。

Square 第一季營收總額 51 億美元，其中比特幣營收 35 億美元。Square 的會計方式是：扣除購買比特幣的成本，在當季 9.64 億美元毛利總額中，只計入這些交易 7500 萬美元的毛利。

雖然加密貨幣的獲利非常微薄，但這兩家支付公司都將加密貨幣交易視為攏絡顧客並提高 app 參與度的一種手段。

Ellis 指出，「他們的加密貨幣用戶一天會多次打開 app 確認價格，這就讓公司有機會出售其他服務。」

Square 與加密貨幣聯繫更緊密，但部分原因是其創辦人兼執行長 Jack Dorsey 是加密貨幣狂粉，近日也曾在推特上表示，「比特幣使一切變得更好。」Square 過去幾季資產負債表上認列投資比特幣 2.2 億美元，現已對該投資進行減值。

加密貨幣低迷顯然對 Square 的影響更大。在過去的一個月中，Square 股價下跌約 17%，而 PayPal 股價僅下跌 4%。

但加密貨幣並非 Square 唯一苦痛來源，投資者逃離高倍數成長股的浪潮也重創 Square，反映投資者在價格上反映預期上升的通膨，這點會降低未來收益的現值。

根據未來 12 個月的估算，Square 現行股價是企業價值倍數 (EV/Ebitda) 的 113 倍，PayPal 則為 43 倍，對比其他同業如 Visa (V-US) 和 Mastercard (MA-US) 僅 27 倍至 30 倍。

Ellis 談到 PayPal 和 Square 時說，「他們是我兩家長期最愛的支付公司，但實際考慮上來說，機構投資者如果擔憂長期通膨，就會對這些高倍數股覺得反感。」

隨著比特幣價格的飆升，投資者也迷戀上這些股票，但水能載舟也會覆舟，如今比特幣和其他加密貨幣恐怕也是令他們憂心忡忡的原因之一。

週一美股普遍上漲，PayPal 週一上漲 2.58%，收 257.17 美元；Square 上漲 5.47%，收 210.95 美元。

Skrill Research Finds Four in Ten Consumers Have Invested in Crypto

Skrill , the digital payments brand which is part of Paysafe , has released the results of a consumer survey, which uncover a number of trends on the rising popularity and adoption of cryptocurrency. 38% of respondents said they’d either invested in or bought a cryptocurrency, and 84% said they’d heard of at least one cryptocurrency, with 64% recognising Bitcoin.

Of consumers polled for the survey, carried out between March and April 2021 by Sapio Research in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, Austria and Bulgaria, 20% said they owned Bitcoin now or had done in the past. Ownership climbs higher in the US (24%) and Bulgaria (36%). Beyond Bitcoin, the report showed that the most known currencies were Bitcoin Cash (31% of consumers), Ethereum (22%) and Litecoin (19%). Ownership rates followed a similar trend, with Bitcoin Cash (9%) slightly leading Ethereum (8%) and Litecoin (7%).

Of the remaining currencies, Ethereum Classic, Dash, and Stellar were recognised by more than 10% of respondents, though ownership rates were as low as 5% or less. With even less recognition, up to 8% of respondents were aware of Chainlink, Tezos, Atom, EOS, OMG, Kyber Network, and 0x.

Consumers’ knowledge and understanding of cryptocurrencies as a financial asset appears sharply divided, with 47% agreeing or strongly agreeing that they don’t know enough about them for use or investment, while 38% considered them too risky for investment overall. However, 28% already believe that cryptocurrencies are a good investment for the future.

That said, consumer understanding appears to be trending higher. Almost a third (29%) of respondents said they know more now about cryptocurrencies than the same time last year, with a quarter (26%) saying they are more likely to invest in cryptocurrencies today compared to 12 months ago.

There was no clear opinion on what makes cryptocurrency useful, with 27% considering them the future of payments, while 26% referred to crypto as a good store of value, and 26% said they are the future of banking. Nonetheless, only 17% said they used crypto for anything other than investment or speculation.

Up to 9% of respondents had used crypto as a payment method in the past month, with almost all (97%) of these trying it for the first time in the last year; 59% of those that had done so in the past month say they are now using crypto to pay frequently, and 44% claim this is now their preferred payment method. However, overall, the vast majority of respondents currently use a combination of debit cards (54%), credit cards (52%) and digital wallets (43%). But overall, almost a quarter (23%) of consumers agreed that payment in cryptocurrencies would become mainstream

“Cryptocurrency adoption has rapidly increased to heights nobody could have imagined even two years ago,” said Rossen Yordanov, Senior Vice President, Skrill and NETELLER, at Paysafe. “We’re seeing that crypto is no longer a niche phenomenon, and our research provides further evidence of that, but there’s a significant opportunity to grow awareness about its potential for payments and transfers. We are working hard to make it easier for people everywhere to buy and sell cryptocurrencies with Skrill and NETELLER.”

Top 10 Aspiring Crypto Coins for June

This article will take a look at ten cryptocurrencies that have interesting developments lined up for the month of June, which could also have a positive effect on their price.

Stellar (XLM)

Current Price : $0.419

Market Cap: $9,641 Billion

Market Cap Rank: #16

XLM is the native token of the Stellar foundation. Originally based on the Ripple protocol, it was created on June 2016 by Jed McCaleb, who had just left the latter.

Its aim is increasing financial inclusion in territories which are devoid of financial institutions. In addition, it assists firms in connecting with one another through the use of their technology.

It is also known for its tiny fees, which are a fixed 0.0001 XLM.

The Stellar network will soon update to Protocol 17. On June 1, there will be a public network upgrade vote. There will be numerous updates, such as the Stellar Core v.17.0 and Horizon v.2.3.0.

XLM has decreased considerably since it May 16 highs at $0.798, currently being 46% below them. However, it has bounced at the $0.35 area, creating two long lower wicks, which are a sign of buying pressure.

XLM Movement

ICON (ICX)

Current Price : $1.11

Market Cap: $700,258 Million

Market Cap Rank: #98

ICON is a blockchain protocol for decentralized applications. It focuses on interoperability, meaning that it assists independent blockchains in operating with each other. The native cryptocurrency of the network is ICX.

One of the more interesting developments in the ICON platform is EPICX, which is a decentralized gamified trading platform. The beta version of it will be launched on June 1.

Furthermore, old ERC-based tokens will be swapped for new tokens on the native ICX mainnet on the ICONFi app, on June 8.

ICX has been decreasing sharply since May 8, falling by 74.59% in 15 days. This culminated with a low of $0.79, on May 23, right above the 0.78 Fib retracement support level.

Ethereum (ETH)

Current Price : $2571

Market Cap: $299,787 Billion

Market Cap Rank: #2

Ethereum is a decentralized open-source blockchain. The native currency employed in the blockchain is ether (ETH). It was officially launched in July 2015 by Vitalik Buterin.

Story continues

The Ethereum platform also allows for the creation and management of decentralized applications (dApps). So far, more than a thousand have been built on the platform.

In addition, as noted with ICX in the prior section, other cryptocurrencies can use their ERC-20 compatibility, in order to be hosted on the ETH blockchain.

ETH activated the Berlin hard fork on April 15. This takes it one step closer to ETH 2.0. In the lead up to the London hard fork in July, three mainnets will be tested in June:

Ropsten – June 9

Goerli – June 16

Rinkeby – June 23

ETH has been decreasing since reaching an all-time high price on May 12. However, it bounced at the $2,050 support area, on May 23, and created a bullish engulfing candlestick the next day.

The closest resistance levels are found at $2,750 and $3,050, respectively.

BitTorrent (BTT)

Current Price : $0.00397

Market Cap: $2,632 Billion

Market Cap Rank: #43

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing network and torrent platform. In July 2018, it was purchased by the TRON blockchain platform. BTT is the native token, which uses the TRC standard.

Several dApps are powered by BTT, including BitTorrent Speed and BitTorrent File System.

BTT will hold an airdrop in June. The snapshot for it will be taken on June 10, in which all addresses holding BTT will receive a non-fungible token (NFT) airdrop.

BTT has been decreasing inside a massive descending wedge since reaching an all-time high, on April 5. The wedge is considered a bullish reversal pattern. In addition, it has bounced at the $0.0035 support area.

Coti Network (COTI)

Current Price : $0.2081

Market Cap: $140,199 Million

Market Cap Rank: #200

COTI is a platform that focuses on helping organizations to build their own payments systems. It is self-appointed as ”the ultimate power grid of payments’.’

At the core of its infrastructure is Trustchain. Based on machine learning, it is a consensus algorithm that processes more than 100,000 transactions per second. COTI offers the seven elements believed to be necessary for a payments infrastructure:

Scalability

Simplicity

Buyer-seller protections

Cost-effectiveness

Price stability

Instantaneity

Security

The end of June will have numerous interesting developments, as outlined in the roadmap for 2021.

They include, but are not limited to, the release of Paywize, a credit card processing solution, introduction of margin trading to the platform, and complete the integration with the long-time partner, Celsius.

COTI has been trading inside a extensive descending parallel channel since March 1. On May 23, it bounced just below the support line of the channel and at the 0.786 Fib retracement support level. It created a bullish engulfing candlestick the next day and has been increasing since.

Zcash (ZEC)

Current Price : $139.45

Market Cap: $1.653 Billion

Market Cap Rank: #56

Zcash is a decentralized cryptocurrency, whose main focus is anonymity and privacy. Unlike the majority of other cryptocurrencies, which are pseudonymous, ZEC is fully anonymous. This means that it does not reveal the identity and public address of its users.

It does this by using zk-SNARK zero-knowledge proof technology. ZEC was released in October 2016.

The Zcon2 Lite conference will be held on June 8-9. It is an annual conference which will focus on the Zcash ecosystem and more broadly on privacy themes. Furthermore, the NU5 testnet will be activated on June 30.

ZEC began to decrease, on May 12, and continued the downward movement for 11 days. Throughout it, it fell by 76.30%, culminating with a low of $87.38, on May 23.

It has been increasing since, and is trading inside a range between $100 and $200.

Dusk Network (DUSK)

Current Price : $0.13

Market Cap: $78,333 Million

Market Cap Rank: #473

DUSK is a privacy blockchain mainly used for financial applications. Businesses use it in order to tokenize financial instruments. It uses a proof of blind bid, in order to protect the network’s privacy. Its main uses cases are:

Confidential Smart Contracts

Confidential Security Tokens

Zero Knowledge Utility Tokens

Security Token Exchange

The Dusk Network is a leader in privacy technology, and it remains to aim so. Therefore, it has announced a $5 million dollar grant program to attract the best talent in the field. The first round of applications begins on June 1.

DUSK has been decreasing since April 9, when it reached a high of $0.46. The downward movement continued for 44 days, inside which the token lost 81% of its value. It culminated with a low of $0.0842 on May 23.

Afterwards, it bounced and reclaimed the $0.11 area. The same area acted as resistance for the entirety of 2020, before the token finally managed to break out in February 2021.

Beam (BEAM)

Current Price : $0.666

Market Cap: $79,057 Million

Market Cap Rank: #417

BEAM is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that runs by using a combination of two blockchain protocols, one of them being the Mimblewimble protocol. It uses a proof-of-work algorithm.

Its goal is to allow financial counterparties reliable and safe transactions. It supports different custom transaction methods, such as time-locked swaps, atomic swaps and escrows.

The 6.0 hard fork for BEAM will launch on June 5. New updates will include shaders and confidential assets. BEAM has been decreasing since April 11, when it had reached a new all-time high price of $2.10.

The downward movement continued for 42 days, leading to a low of $0.256, on May 24. This amounted to a decrease of 78%. The main support and resistance levels are found at $0.52 and $0.96, respectively.

Orion Protocol (ORN)

Current Price : $7.38

Market Cap: $191,974 Million

Market Cap Rank: #245

Orion is a protocol which aims to create a single decentralized platform, which includes every single centralized and decentralized exchanges. The platform is named Orion Terminal and will also add swap pools.

The Orion liquidity pool will be launched in June, allowing users to monetize their idle assets. In addition, the pilot phase of the Orion Liquidity Boost Plugin will also begin the same month.

ORN has been decreasing alongside a descending resistance line since March 22. While following it, it has lost 73% of its value.

On May 19 and May 23, it bounced above the $6.50 support area. However, it has yet to reach the previously mentioned descending resistance line.

Argon (ARGON)

Current Price : $0.1022

Market Cap: $8 Million

Market Cap Rank: #1138

Argon will be the first blockchain-based freelancer platform, launched on the Binance chain network. The goal is to eliminate issues arising from trust between two entities. In addition, it will charge zero commission. This is possible due to the native coin for the platform, ArgonToken (ARGON). The platform will be launched on June 1.

ARGON has been decreasing since April 1, when it reached an all-time high price of $0.449. In addition, it has fallen below the $0.135 support area. The next support area is found at the all-time lows of $0.07.

For BeInCrypto’s latest bitcoin (BTC) analysis, click here.