Celo Kuneco Conference Underway (April 22, 2021)

Good morning. Welcome to Thursday Thoughts, part of our new series: BitPinas Daily. We will look at the price of Bitcoin, Ethereum and the major cryptocurrencies. Crypto is global, but sometimes news that matters happens while we sleep. So we bring to you what’s happening in our space here and abroad.             

Market Price as of April 22, 2021:

Bitcoin closed April 21, 2021, at $54,190 per BTC. We’re down 14% in the last 7 days and up 83% since the year began. This is also 16.38% below the all-time high of $64,804, which was hit on April 14, 2021.

Bitcoin’s market capitalization stands today at $1,008,995,392,299 which is 48% of the entire cryptocurrency market. The entire crypto market, by the way, now has a market cap of $2,079,324,127,876  (-1.2%).

On the table above, there’s the cryptocurrency SLP. If you wonder what that is, check out this article: Playing Axie Infinity vs Minimum Basic Salary in the Philippines.

Coinbase

Coinbase Commits to Innovation Bets

Fresh from its recent stock market debut, Coinbase announced that it would dedicate 10% of its resources to supporting “disruptive innovation bets.” According to The Block, this is a plan titled “Project 10 Percent.” Surojit Chatterjee, Coinbase’s Chief Product Officer said in a blog post:

“The ’10 Percent’ refers to the amount of resources we’re dedicating to supporting these big bets in line with our philosophy that 70% of our time should be focused on core work, 20% on strategic bets, and 10% on innovative experimentation.”

Celo

Kuneco Conference Underway

The largest Celo Community Conference has beun and in this event, you can get to see what is being built and innovated upon on Celo. Day two is tonight (weird timezone, sorry) and you can register here. 

The first event last night, “Welcome from the Philippines” featured Bloom’s Luis Buenaventura II, Jefferson Estela of Youth Strike 4 Climate Philippines, and Angelo Kalaw of cLabs, who managed the implementation of the Grameen COVID019 relied in the Philippines (which we had an article here.)

Luis also talked about NFTs in the event and unveiled a video that collected the work of 14 extremely talented NFT artists in the Philippines:

BitPinas will have an article about the Kuneco conference soon. Also don’t forget to watch Day 2 of the conference tonight! 

JPMorgan

JPMorgan Says Bitcoin Liquidity “Likely to Remain Resilient”

We are still in awe that many banks who have steered away from Bitcoin in the past are now offering constructive opinions of it. Here are some of the things said at the note the bank released on Wednesday:

• Hashrate’s recovery suggests liquidity should continue to improve
• The depth in major exchanges has “dropped less and recover faster than other asset classes.”
• The 24/7 market contributes to market stability.

Ripple (#CryptoPH)

U.S. SEC Pushes Through With Ripple Lawsuit

With new chairman Gary Gensler on the helm, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will push through with its lawsuit against Ripple Labs. In a court filing, SEC asked a federal judge to deny Ripple’s demands that the Commission turn over internal emails. U.S. SEC accused Ripple of trying to harass the Commission and “gamemanship with respect to delivery.”

Ripple’s ODL to Aid iRemit Process Australia-Philippines Remittances

Still, Ripple continues to build in the Asia Pacific despite legal troubles in the United States through its new partnership with payments expert Novatti Group.

First announced in December last year, Novatti has joined Ripple’s global payment network and committed to tap into RippleNet’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service, which leverages the cryptocurrency XRP for instant cross-border payments. 

Ripple and Novatti’s effort first targets the Australia-Philippines corridor through a partnership with iRemit, a Filipino remittance service provider which also holds e-money and virtual currency exchange licenses. While the Philippines is the third largest recipient of remittances around the world, the amount of fees per transaction is significant to the recipient, coupled with the delay of around 2 – 3 business days before the beneficiary can receive the funds sent to them. 

What else is happening

• Bitcoin Mining is Going Cold in the Nordic Region
• 50 CryptoPunks NFT Go Fractional in New Collection
• Peter Brandt: ‘Laser eyes’ to blame for Bitcoin correction — but it’s ‘very mild’ anyway
• DeFi News with Erik Voorhees

This article is published on BitPinas: Celo Kuneco Conference Underway (April 22, 2021)