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Weekly Wrap-Up: Liquidations and Dogecoins (April 19, 2021)

Also, the inaugural Lunacian Scholarship League kicked off last weekend!

Photo for the Article - Weekly Wrap-Up: Liquidations and Dogecoins (April 19, 2021)

Good morning. Welcome to Monday Markets Wrap-up, part of our new series: BitPinas Daily. We will look back at all the major news and updates that happened this week. 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. We highlight three to four important news of the past week and list down the rest.            

Market Price as of April 19, 2021:

Bitcoin$56,289-6.61%
Ethereum$2,245.76-4.23%
BNB$480.42-6.9%
XRP$1.41-9.03%
DOGE$0.320030+12.25%
SLP$0.04+2.4%


Bitcoin closed April 18, 2021, at $56,289 per BTC. We’re down 5.3% in the last 7 days and up 96% since the year began. This is also 13% below the all-time high of $64,804, which was hit on April 14, 2021.

Bitcoin’s market capitalization stands today at $1,061,337,121,020 which is 49% of the entire cryptocurrency market. The entire crypto market, by the way, now has a market cap of $2,158,815,190,246  (+7.5%).

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.

Liquidations

$7.6 Billion in Crypto Long Positions Liquidated in One Hour

Just when everyone thought there’s no way but up, we finally faced a $10k candle in one day. Only that it’s a red one. 

On April 18, 2021, Bitcoin went down 13% from a high of $60,453 to $50,835. According to The Block, over $9.2 liquidations have been liquidated in 24 hours, with $7,6 billion liquidated in just one hour. There’s a lot of explanations on Twitter such as the one below, but reports suggest that a lot of accounts (read: people) are overleveraging and building up their margin accounts. In a Reddit post, one redditor suggested, “and when they make money, they double down, and build even bigger positions.”

Photo for the Article - Weekly Wrap-Up: Liquidations and Dogecoins (April 19, 2021)

Of course if the price is going up, that’s okay, but what if the price dips below a certain point? Some of the margin accounts would be below their maintenance limits and they would get liquidated. This will create a feedback cycle that might end in the liquidation of the margin accounts. 

The lesson here is the old adage: Never risk money you are willing to lose.

Dogecoin

Dogecoin is the 5th Largest Cryptocurrency by Market Capitalization

The meme cryptocurrency meme’d and willed its way to become the 5th largest cryptocurrency by market cap last week. The significant price increase even caused the popular U.S. trading app RobinHood to shut down. 

What’s more interesting is that despite the price crash last week, Dogecoin still appears to chug along, almost as if unaffected:

Photo for the Article - Weekly Wrap-Up: Liquidations and Dogecoins (April 19, 2021)

This led Coindesk’s Adam B. Levine to boldly claim that Dogecoin may not be the next Bitcoin, bit it has tons of similarities:

“Doge has become the joke currency to beat. Everybody wants to be in on the joke, which pushes up the price, which makes the joke even bigger. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle. Sort of like bitcoin but for the luls.

Now, this could all end very badly: Lots of people buying DOGE at these prices don’t know the true story. As they say, easy come, easy go. But at least for now it sure looks like dogecoin is the gold standard of joke currencies, and maybe that’s just enough,” Levine concluded.

Binance

Binance Launches Tokenized Stock Trading Beginning With Tesla

Binance has begun allowing its users to to buy tokenized stocks, starting with Tesla, in what the company said is a demonstration of how it can democratize value transfer more seamlessly, reduce friction and costs to accessibility without compromising on compliance and security.

Tokenized shares meant they are not really shares of the stock of the company, like Tesla, but it gives an exposure to the underlying shares and other potential corporate actions, including dividends. 

According to Binance, each token is fully backed by a depository portfolio of underlying securities that represents the outstanding tokens. “Our partner CM-Equity AG, a licensed and fully regulated asset management firm in Germany, entrusts the acquired shares to a third-party brokerage firm for custody. In addition, CM-Equity AG will be monitoring all trading activity for compliance,” a Binance spokesperson told The Block.

HSBC

HSBC Bans MicroStrategy Stock

HSBC already blocks any transactions “tainted” with cryptocurrency. Now it no longer allows customers to trade the MicroStrategy stock because of its significant Bitcoin holdings.

In a letter to clients, the HSBC said this is due to a  change in the bank’s policy on virtual currencies and related products. 

In a statement to Reuters, the bank said:

“HSBC has no appetite for direct exposure to virtual currencies and limited appetite to facilitate products or securities that derive their value from VCs (virtual currencies).”

Coinbase

Coinbase Ends First Day on Nasdaq With $85.7 Billion Valuation

Following its direct listing on Nasdaq, crypto exchange closed its first day in the stock market at $328.28, which, when accounting for the fully diluted cap of 261.3 million common stock shares, puts Coinbase valuation at $85.7 billion. The chart below suggested that on opening day, the value of Coinbase ($COIN) briefly went up to $430 per share before settling at the $320 range:

Photo for the Article - Weekly Wrap-Up: Liquidations and Dogecoins (April 19, 2021)

This makes Coinbase the largest direct listing ever, eclipsing Spotify, Slack, and other popular companies who opted to go the direct listing route.

#CryptoPH

Iconic Filipino Brand TeamManila Unveils ‘Rizal with Sunglasses’ NFT

TeamManila released two NFTs last week week, the first of which is “Philippine Genesis,” a single edition NFT released on April 14 and available on Rarible, a popular NFT marketplace. Second, “Rizal Gold NFT Coin,” featuring the brand’s iconic “Rizal-with the sunglasses on” design will be released on the same day but will come in 20 editions. Check out the TeamManila Rarible account here: https://rarible.com/Teammanila 

Lunacian Scholarship League Aims to Remind Players What Attracted Them to Axie Infinity in the First Place

The Lunacian Scholarship League this weekend was a blast and the champions announced:

We wrote an article ahead of the tournament, where Peter Ing, Head of BlockchainSpace said:

“We want to remind the scholar community why they were attracted to the game in the first place and build a fun tournament program designed for them.”

Winners of Philippines VoxEdit Contest Announced

How Grameen Foundation and Celo Provided COVID-19 Relief in the Philippines

Photo for the Article - Weekly Wrap-Up: Liquidations and Dogecoins (April 19, 2021)

Last year, the Celo Alliance for Prosperity and the Grameen Foundation (a Prosperity member) launched an initiative to deliver aid to 3,453 women entrepreneurs in the Philippines impacted by COVID-19. The project leveraged the Valora App app developed by cLabs (Celo Philippines) to facilitate the distribution of financial aid, thereby relying on the Celo Alliance for Prosperity members’ crypto and blockchain expertise to deliver aid securely and transparently.

Through apps like Valora, and through the Celo Alliance for Prosperity and the Grameen Foundation’s initiatives, people on the fringes of society can have access to financial resources and assets that they need to prosper. “To me, that access is key. It’s not about relief. It’s about giving women and their families the tools they need,” said Gigi Gatti, Director of Technology for Development at the Grameen Foundation.

“Long term positive change is very important. Everything that we do is a step closer to leaving no one behind.”

What else is happening

  • Low-ish Ethereum Gas Fees Point to Flashbots Adoption
  • Why This DAO Bought Snowden’s NFT for $5.4 Million
  • Mark Cuban Invests in NFT Tracker CryptoSlam
  • Nvidia Revenue Outpaces Q1 Forecasts, Partly Driven by Crypto Chip Demand
  • NYSE Is Doing NFTs and No One Knows What to Make of It
  • Binance Coin’s Surge Elevates Token to Ranks of Crypto Titans
  • NFTs Will Be Far Bigger as Digital Clothes Than as Collectibles

This article is published on BitPinas: Weekly Wrap-Up: Liquidations and Dogecoins (April 19, 2021)

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