Crypto Trends, Investing, News, NFT

Abra – This week in Crypto for April 5, 2021 – Alts on the Move, Record Abra Deposits

Market update

Alt season or just time for alts?

For the first time in awhile, market moves over the past week were not dominated by bitcoin. While the price of BTC did largely trade between $55k and $59k during the week, the real market movements belonged to ETH and other crypto assets.

Ethereum: ETH hit an all time high. The price of ETH reached $2.1k this past week, and has stayed over the $1950 level since. Ethereum has had a tailwind of strong news over the past week:

  • Visa announced that Ethereum will be a settlement layer for USDC (US Dollar stablecoin) transactions. In his Bankless newsletter. Ryan Sean Adams, the newsletter’s creator wrote, “One of the largest payment networks in the world now using Ethereum to settle transactions. Let that sink in… Visa effectively just became an Ethereum sidechain. While they’ll start off slowly, a few transactions per day, Visa is setting a precedent. Financial institutions are now experimenting with public blockchain networks. And their first step is exploring how they can leverage Ethereum’s block space to improve their processes.”
  • DeFi: The amount of assets locked up in DeFi has doubled since the beginning of the year. The current DeFi token market cap is about $50 billion and growing. All of the leading DeFi projects use Ethereum as the underlying protocol.
  • NFTs: We’ve talked about the NFT boom in other newsletters, but the interest and investment continues to grow (check out this story about a blog post that was converted to an NFT and sold for 2.2 ETH on the new crypto-native platform, Mirror).
  • Cardano (ADA) is getting some serious press attention these days!

Abra Boost Update


Image: Abra Boost rates holding steady

We’re excited to report a record week of Bitcoin, Ethereum and USD deposits into our Abra Boost product. Interest rates are holdings steady!

You can now easily move your holdings off of exchanges like Coinbbase and Kraken into your Abra Boost account and start generating interest on your crypto and stablecoins.

Abra Trade Update

Abra Trade now supports another 12 cryptocurrencies in our growing portfolio of tradeable cryptocurrency assets.

Maker (MKR) is now available globally, including the US, to all Abra users.

Outside the US we added: Polkadot (DOT), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Uniswap (UNI), Aave (AAVE), Kusama (KSM), Universal Market Access (UMA), Graph (GRT), RenVM (REN), Kyber Network (KNC), Band (BAND) and Balancer (BAL).

As always you can trade directly between any two cryptocurrencies with Abra. For more information see your Abra App.

Filecoin has an amazing week: FIL popped at the end of last week on news of Grayscale Investments adding to its Filecoin Trust’s holdings. FIL hit an all-time high last Thursday when it traded at $231. The price is currently at $171. You can keep tabs on FIL price movements from right in your Abra app.

Crypto narratives start to go mainstream

 

Image: Bitcoin Magazine Headline Showing Mainstream Coverage of Bitcoin

A report from an analyst at JP Morgan Chase revised the bank’s price target for BTC to $130,000 citing lower volatility. The report goes on to say that bitcoin will compete with gold for market share.

In another recent report from investment banker BNY Mellon says that the bitcoin stock-to-flow modeling is worthy of attention. As I’ve been saying for months the stock-to-flow model shows Bitcoin reaching $100,000 this summer. We’ll see if it holds.

In the crypto space these are mature narratives. Traditional finance has some serious catching up to do. Some will catch up. Some will die trying when it’s too late. At Abra we are leading the charge with this crypto first narrative. We are building a new form of global, user-centered finance that is defined by openness and ease-of-use built on a crypto foundation.

Here comes the taxman


Image: Zendesk Crypto Tax Services

If ordinary taxes are complicated then crypto taxes are mind-numbing. But with the right tools, documenting and calculating crypto taxes doesn’t need to be that hard. We have a partnership with ZenLedger that will help with DeFi and crypto tax issues. Get 10 percent off any ZenLedger tax plan by using discount code Abra10 at checkout. Take advantage of your discount here.

 

Understanding NFT’s


Image: Beeple NFT

This week I’ll be participating in an online webinar on understanding the NFT opportunity. I’ll be focused on financing opportunities and how to use a crypto wallet to finance NFTs. You may not know that Abra provided the financing for the Kings of Leon NFT sale back in March. Many NFT buyers are purchasing Ethereum and WAXP with Abra to complete their NFT purchases. You can register here for the event and learn more.

 

Peace and Love.

Bill

 

 

Disclaimer: Abra Interest Accounts are issued by Prime Trust, a Nevada Chartered Trust Company. Rates for Abra Interest Accounts are subject to change. Digital currencies are not legal tender, are not backed by any government, and Abra Interest Accounts are not subject to FDIC or SIPC insurance protections. Any opinions, news, research, analyses, prices, or other information provided here is a general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice. Abra does not recommend that any cryptocurrency should be bought, sold, or held by you. Do conduct your own due diligence and consult your financial advisor before making any investment decisions. Abra will not accept liability for any loss or damage, including without limitation to, any loss of profit, which may arise directly or indirectly from use of or reliance on such information.

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