Weekly Wrap-Up: Tesla Will Only Accept Bitcoin If This Happens (June 14, 2021)
Xian Gaza, Xian Coin, Axie Infinity, and BPI were the hot stories last week. Also DICT conducted a blockchain basics seminar.
Market Price as of June 14, 2021:
| Bitcoin | $39,148 | +9.76% |
| Ethereum | $2,517.77 | +5.83% |
| BNB | $365.25 | +20.25% |
| DOT | $22.09 | +5.95% |
| ADA | $1.57 | +6.08% |
| DOGE | $0.325040 | +4.85% |
| SLP | $0.14 | +8.2% |
Bitcoin closed June 13, 2021, at $39,148 per BTC. We’re up 9.5% in the last 7 days and down 21% in the last 30 days. This is also 39.59% below the all-time high of $64,804, which was hit on March 13, 2021.
Bitcoin’s market capitalization stands today at $734,973,178,012 which is 43% of the entire cryptocurrency market. The entire crypto market, by the way, now has a market cap of $1,682,524,223,074 (6.3%).
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.
Zoom Out
El Salvador is the First Country to Make Bitcoin Legal Tender
Last week, a pre-recorded video of El Salvador’s controversial President Nayib Bukele was shown to attendees of Bitcoin 2021 Conference in Miami. He said he will be sending a bill to his country’s congress to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender.
If a currency is a legal tender in a country, then it can be used to pay for goods and services and the other party cannot just say they don’t accept it. Taxes are also paid in legal tender.
It actually happened. And the event was livestreamed on Twitter.
By Wednesday last week, El Salvador’s congress passed the “Bitcoin Law” allowing the cryptocurrency as a “satisfactory form of payment for any monetary debt” as per The Block. This makes El Salvador the first country to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender.
Businesses can legally accept Bitcoin, merchants can acquire and sell Bitcoin. Bitcoin is also excluded from capital gains tax. El Salvador will also be running some training and educational materials so that the general populace can understand how Bitcoin and transactions on the blockchain work.
While certainly a milestone, many have voiced their concern about the marriage of state and crypto in El Salvador, when Bitcoin was initially made to get rid of such connections. We can examine this in a future article.
Silvergate Cuts Ties WIth Binance
Silvergate is one the few crypto friendly banks around the world, very friendly especially if your money’s in USD. Binance, the largest crypto exchange, announced last December the launch of a funding option through USD for international users through Silvergate. With this, users can deposit and withdraw USD to and from their accounts on Binance.
Last week, Binance sent an email to customers informing that they no longer allow USD deposits and withdrawals via the Silvergate Bank through SWIFT starting June 11, The Block stated. Binance said it is working hard to find an alternative.
Binance.US remains unaffected. Silvergate said on Twitter they continue to have a relationship with the exchange’s US arm.
Taproot Achieves Activation Lock In
Taproot, Bitcoin’s privacy-focused upgrade is set to be integrated later this year. Taproot is the protocol that can obscure complicated transactions and lower transaction fees. This is considered as one of the most important upgrades to the Bitcoin blockchain since SegWit in 2017.
Tesla to Resume Taking Bitcoin as Payment If…..
…if there’s confirmation that Bitcoin mining is 50% green, meaning if 50% of the industry is doing responsible Bitcoin mining by using renewable energy. How Elon will fact-check this is unclear. But what stands is that Tesla will actually accept Bitcoin again at some point in the future, once that condition is met.
(A good recommended read on Bitcoin’s energy consumption is this article from Nic Carter.)
Whether Elon’s pronouncement is bullish or not, the fact remains that Bitcoin’s price was boosted the moment he posted the tweet. This had an effect on the entire crypto market, which has been on a downtrend recently.
Zoom In
A lot of stuff happened last week on the local side of crypto. Either that or I was just more aware of what’s happening.
SEC: Stop Investing in Xian Gaza’s Xian Coin
The SEC said that upon investigation, Xian Coin is a centralized digital currency that is “exclusively traded by its coin holders.” It is owned and issued by a “virtual crypto bank” where investors can exchange their coins to Xian Coin. Xian Coin claims to be a superior form of money that will create a “powerful, unregulated, and untraceable financial payment system.”
The Commission warns of heavy penalties to those acting as salesmen, brokers, dealers, or agents of these unauthorized entities; they may be criminally prosecuted and penalized with a maximum of five million pesos or be jailed for up to twenty one years. SEC is advising the public not to invest or stop investing in anything related to Xian Coin or its promoters.
BPI No Longer Allows Crypto Transactions
Members of the PH crypto community who have accounts with BPI confirmed in several posts that the bank is no longer allowing transactions related to crypto, such as deposits and withdrawals to and from Binance, an international crypto exchange. In our article, we look at reports from different people and it appears BPI really did block transactions when it’s related to crypto. For many, this doesn’t make sense because GCash by Mynt, a sister company of BPI has signaled that it’s considering cryptocurrencies on the GCash app.
Manny Pacquiao to Release an NFT Collection?
The news that came from Ethernity Chain last week is sparse of details but the Senator’s Twitter account also retweeted the announcement. So that means it’s real and confirmed. Check out the article here.
DICT Conducted Crypto & Blockchain Seminar
The DICT conducted a seminar last week about Blockchain Basics featuring the Women in Blockchain Group. The seminar ran for more than an hour and some of the panelists talked about Axie Infinity, which we will discuss next.
Feature – Axie Infinity
We wrote some in-depth features about Axie Infinity this week:
Axie Infinity Scholarships Guide (Tagalog)
For breeders and managers to find out how to create scholarships. Also for scholars to find out how scholarship guilds work. We recommend this article to people on the fence about Axie, especially if you don’t know what “scholarships” are. (By the way, the article is only available in Tagalog for now.)
In the Philippines, More People are Searching for Axie Infinity than DeFi, Ethereum
Using publicly available data reveals more people in the Philippines are searching for “Axie Infinity” more than they are searching for “NFT”, “DeFi” or even “Ethereum”. It appears, from our view, that people are getting introduced first to Axie before they get introduced to blockchain and crypto.
Happening Soon
New Cryptocurrencies Coming to PDAX
Philippine Digital Asset Exchange (PDAX) is teasing the launch of seven (7) new coins that can be traded on its exchange this June. This announcement comes after the platform launched its #StartWithPDAX campaign and released a new version of its mobile app.
The announcement was made on Facebook, teasing that the new coins will be launched this week.
This article is published on BitPinas: Weekly Wrap-Up: Tesla Will Only Accept Bitcoin If This Happens (June 14, 2021)
Featured Image Source: Daniel Oberhaus (2018)
