ETH is now worth more than gold! The staple of wealth and luxury has been surpassed by another cryptocurrency this week, that being Ethereum. It comes as NVIDIA (most well-known for their popular graphic cards), have announced their release of chips that will help mine Ethereum, which is set to come out next month. Meanwhile, Apple has begun setting things in motion to implement a crypto payment service with partners BitPay, which could change how day-to-day payments are made.
Price Changes / Market Fluctuation
After surpassing gold in value earlier this week, Ethereum now looks to target $2k with a 9% increase in 7 days. It comes as gold continues on a downward trend vs. USD, with most cryptocurrencies, on the contrary, shooting to new heights.
Announcements
These milestones Ethereum continue to break haven’t gone unnoticed, as tech giant Nvidia have designed new CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processor) chips suited to mining ETH. Set to be released in March, these chips have been designed to solve difficult mathematical problems and on completion, the user will be granted with some ETH, which could be over $2k soon. Will you be picking one up?
Whales
From mining Bitcoin to investing in Bitcoin, it has come out that the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock has acknowledged Bitcoin, as they ‘start to dabble in it’. It comes as they are open to investing some of their cash reserves into Bitcoin.
Institutional investment / Mainstream adoption
That’s not the only big news this week, as Apple starts to support crypto payments using Apple Pay. It comes as Apple strikes a partnership with Bitpay, a Bitcoin payment service provider, as they hope to broaden their service with new currencies. This could make contactless purchases much easier, but will people use it? Or will they continue to HODL?
In any case, cryptocurrency shows great potential and Bitcoin has exposed the ‘fragility of traditional infrastructure’ according to billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya. CEO of Social Capital, Palihapitiya, sees Bitcoin as a revolution to finance, believing that BTC will cause a huge shift to conventional financial methods as he sees it continuing to moon.
Also this week, Bitcoin will soon be able to be purchased at specific ATM locations in the United States, as banks look to innovate the future of finance. This will make it extremely convenient, for the average person, to visit their nearest ATM to buy Bitcoin .
Crypto has been getting a lot of commercial attention recently, from America to Russia who look to possibly switch Rubles for crypto. This week there was a crypto tax bill reading at State Duma (a lower house of government) which passed its first hurdle. The bill would view cryptocurrency as property liable to taxation and would put Russia in the driving seat to become the first country to make cryptocurrency a legal currency as it continues to excel. Discussions are well underway and the implementation of a digital Ruble some may come time this year!
Finally, in other news, one of the world’s largest and most well-known auction houses, Christie’s, has chosen to accept Ether as a form of payment in a Digital Art Sale. It makes sense, Digital Art — Digital Currency. But could this be the stepping stone for more auction houses to use cryptocurrencies?
Important Information
Cryptocurrencies are generally not regulated and investors do not have access to recourse or compensation schemes such as, for example, in the UK, the Financial Ombudsman Service or the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Investing in cryptocurrencies can be high risk and investors should carefully evaluate their appetite for risk and their understanding of trading cryptocurrencies prior to entering into a transaction.
