Stablecoin flows hint at $50K Bitcoin after Tesla pump liquidates $500M in BTC shorts

Stablecoin flows hint at $50K Bitcoin after Tesla pump liquidates $500M in BTC shorts

Bitcoin (BTC) has extended its rally over $46,000 on Feb. 9, a day after a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing revealed that Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of BTC. The price of Bitcoin immediately soared from around $39,000 to $45,000 across major exchanges on Feb. 8 after the news began to spread.

BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: Tradingview

Mass Bitcoin liquidation

As the Bitcoin price initially rallied to $45,000, it caused $500 million worth of short positions to get liquidated.

Bitcoin liquidation. Source: Bybt.com, Twitter (@cryptounfolded)

The term liquidation in the Bitcoin futures market refers to when the price of BTC moves quickly in a short period beyond the liquidation prices of futures contracts.

For instance, if a trader borrows 10 times the base capital and trades a $100,000 Bitcoin position with $10,000, the position would get liquidated after a 10% price movement.

According to the data from Bybt.com, $1.34 billion worth of futures positions in the futures market were liquidated in the past 24 hours.

This indicates two trends; first, the derivatives market was extremely overcrowded with short-sellers. When the Tesla news broke, it caused a massive short squeeze, liquidating hundreds of millions of dollars worth of positions in several hours.

Second, it shows that many investors did not anticipate Tesla to actually invest in Bitcoin even after Musk changed his bio to “Bitcoin” on Jan. 29, 2021.

What happens next?

Meanwhile, cryptocurrency traders are cautious due to the extremely high funding rates across major futures exchanges.

BTC perpetual swaps funding rates. Source: Digital Assets Data

Funding rates increase when the majority of the market are buying or longing Bitcoin. When the funding rates are overly high, the market is vulnerable to a long squeeze, which can cause an intense short-term drop.

Nevertheless, a cryptocurrency trader known as “Loma” says that the market is not overconfident just yet. He said that when a point comes where traders are overly confident and do not expect a major drop, that is when a correction is likely to occur. He said:

“I want us to get to that point where people start talking about how it’s impossible for us to retrace 70-90% before I think of closing my spot $BTC positions. I remember feeling like there’s no way $BTC goes back below $10k in 2018. We went to ~$3,500. Never say never.”

Stablecoin inflows. Source: CryptoQuant

Meanwhile, CryptoQuant CEO, Ki Young Ju, emphasized that there is newfound buyer demand as stablecoin inflows into exchanges were spotted. In the near term, this would likely act as a catalyst for Bitcoin. He wrote:

“You can call me crazy, but I think we’ll see 50k soon. Just got another stablecoins deposit signal.”

Rice-based stable coin is being launched in Indonesia

MALANG, Indonesia, Jan. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ – Penjaga Lilin Nusantara, an Indonesian Cooperative in Malang- East Java is setting up Ricetron.com a Tron based DeFi (decentralized finance) to tokenized rice based stable coin. Ricetron aims to invite crypto enthusiasts to stake Tron and mint RET (Rice Economy Token), a governance token that will fund RIC (Rice Inventory Coin) stable coin.

RET & RIC token logo

RET token holder will benefit from 30% of all transaction fee and profit sharing of RIC DeFi, where once the DeFi platform running will be distributed back as Protégé Dividend to RET token holder wallets.

Total supply is 269,000 RET with only 190,000 RET minted through staking. It is TRC-20 token, using a TRX blockchain where the speed and the fee of transaction are much better compared to ERC based token.

Indonesia uses BULOG (state owned logistic agency) to stabilize staple price, which mostly focuses on rice. Due to lack of data reading skills, BULOG wastes 30,000 ton decayed rice every year, that amounts to almost 30 Million USD/year of Indonesian government budget.

Link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM0hoA90T1A&t=6s

“The whole idea came from our meeting with a cooperative chairman named Mr. Steven Henry Raharjo. His cooperative has a rice savings program where with this program, he is able to make price stability for its members. Besides that, rice savers can also get additional rice at the end of the year as well as give zakat and sadaqah (donations) to those around them who need it without having to spend any more money,” says Mr. Victorinus Widyanto, COO of Ricetron.

Thus, the cooperative came up with idea to tokenized premium grade Rice and also taking advantage of the recent cryptocurrency bull run. By creating rice based stable coin, it gives people more access to rice especially BULOG rice. In addition, RIC can also be converted to DeFi savings and collateral, and it guarantees RIC holders to fresh rice at the time of exchange, since it is backed by BULOG’s purchase order (voucher) with no time expiration. 1 RIC cryptocurrency equals to 1Kg of premium grade rice, with more Rice-based stable coins will be launched in the future with different grade.

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This project also benefits BULOG in creating consumers-based data, optimizing the agency rice procurement and the most important thing reducing annual government budget loss.

“Meanwhile RET will also be used as an anchor token for cooperative future projects. So people can participate to fund future projects by staking RET,” says Eka Suwandana, CTO of Ricetron.

Ricetron started the staking program on 15th of January 2021, it is divided in 7 rounds. They also now offering Youtube Staking Contest, where 67.6 RET in total will be given as Prize. Checkout their telegram: https://t.me/ricetron, channel for more information.

SOURCE Cooperative Penjaga Lilin Nusantara

Credit Card Companies Should Offer Stablecoin Payments or Be Left Behind: Gartner

Centralized payment companies such as Visa, Mastercard and PayPal will need to adapt if they are to survive the potential demand for blockchain-based stablecoin payments, according to research firm Gartner.

In a Thursday blog post, Gartner notes that, while new bitcoin (BTC) offerings from such firms are helping to prepare the transition to a future payment infrastructure, their revenue is based on charging transaction fees for clearing and settlement.

The fee strategy, which sit at odds with blockchain’s peer-to-peer model, could be the very thing that sees these firms fall behind the competition from stablecoin payment networks, per the post penned by Avivah Litan, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner.

Litan described such firms as “centralized decentralized finance” (CeDeFi) – in which centralized, mainstream firms with big bitcoin holdings bring innovation to the DeFi space and, conversely, adopt DeFi’s biggest apps.

But Litan points out that customers of these types of services are likely wondering if they will be obliged to pay centralized service fees for moving their cryptocurrency along the blockchain in the near future, defeating the technology’s initial promise.

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“Companies we speak to are justifiably skeptical of these services,” Litan wrote. “After all, the revolution of blockchain payments is that they execute peer-to-peer and eliminate central intermediaries and associated bank fees.”

However, the author added Gartner has yet to see a range of offerings from the crypto space for viable stablecoin payments, pointing to a lack of easily accessible applications and fees lower than are currently on offer from card networks or firms like Square and PayPal.

Litan said there’s potential for card firms to provide a range of as-yet-unseen offerings, such as transparent real-time stablecoin payments on the blockchain tied to underlying information regarding a given transaction, and protections for funds backing stablecoin sitting in partner bank accounts.

Card companies could provide the gateways for payors and payees and add functionality, according to the post.

“The card brands could still earn revenues from on and off ramp value-added services, and from interest on the reserves underlying the stablecoins,” Litan said.

By 2022, CeDeFi could be ready for enterprise adoption if the regulatory guidance is present, the research analyst predicted.

But, should the legacy payment companies fail to keep pace with the likes of fiat on/off ramps, such as fast-moving cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance and Gemini, other firms are going to step forward.