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Grayscale Bitcoin Trust shareholders now know they’re not going to be left behind in the bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) race, and that may help alleviate the discount at which GBTC has been trading for over a month, some analysts say. 

On Monday, Grayscale, which is owned by CoinDesk parent company Digital Currency Group, announced it would convert GBTC into an exchange-traded fund when the U.S. regulatory environment warms to bitcoin ETFs.

The conversion would mean GBTC shareholders would no longer have to put up with a six-month lockup or 2% annual management fee. The news could bring GBTC more in line with the net asset value (NAV) of bitcoin, or at the very least put a limit on how steep the discount might go, said James Seyffart, ETF research analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. (Currently, GBTC is trading at -5.64% to NAV, according to data from CoinDesk subsidiary TradeBlock.)

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Some analysts suspect that announcing the ETF conversion is a way to keep the fund, with $38.8 billion assets under management (AUM), liquid by making shareholders happy, especially investors who are coming to the end of their lockup period. 

“Once you go into, like, 14%, 15% discount, [there are] going to be people out there that are willing to buy the GBTC and hold it until it turns into an ETF,” Seyffart said. “At this point it’s not going to go to a 30%, 40% discount, like some people are talking about in hyperbole online.”

GBTC’s premium flipped to a discount around the end of February when Canadian bitcoin ETFs began to be approved by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), said Fundstrat lead digital asset strategist David Grider. 

“You compare [GBTC’s 2% annual fee] to the 44 basis points [0.44%] or whatever you’d get on an ETF and there should be a discount,” Grider said. “That’s the time value of the fee. … That’s also the market signaling it’s worried about the liquidity of GBTC, which doesn’t allow for redemptions.” 

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The top two verticals on which ETFs will compete in the future are fees and liquidity, Seyffart added. Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein said he wouldn’t make a prediction about GBTC’s liquidity at the time of conversion, but noted that it would be one of the most liquid commodity ETFs if it converted today. 

“If it were an ETF today, when compared to commodity-based ETFs, GBTC would be the largest in terms of assets under management, behind the SPDR Gold Trust,” Sonnenshein said. “It would be the third-largest in terms of notional trading volume with approximately $2.6 billion per week.” 

Grayscale plans to eventually convert all of its products to ETFs, Sonnenshein said. It’s unlikely the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will consider ETFs of other cryptocurrencies before 2022, Seyffart said. 

Currently, GBTC “trades on par with the top decile of ETFs,” Seyffart said, and Grayscale’s ETF success will also hinge on whether the SEC approves one bitcoin ETF at a time or a wave of ETFs at once. 

In addition to competing on fees and liquidity, ETFs will also compete on security, depending on how the bitcoin is stored and insurance policies for that bitcoin. Some ETF issuers may lend out the underlying bitcoin to create higher yields or they could do active trading with options or futures, Seyffart said.

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Bitcoin (BTC) drifted higher, changing hands around $59,000, as buyers awaited the next wave of institutional demand, according to Edward Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda, a foreign exchange broker.

A brief price pop earlier Monday came after MicroStrategy, the Nasdaq-listed business intelligence firm, bought $15 million of BTC at an average price of $59,339 per coin, adding to its already substantial hoard.

The largest cryptocurrency by market cap has risen by about 36% over the past month. Oanda’s Moya told CoinDesk in an interview that the bullish sentiment stemmed at least partly fueled by excitement over the much-anticipated public stock listing of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

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Now, the focus shifts back to institutional players with deep pockets, which could support the next leg higher above $60,000 in BTC.

• “We’re in wait-and-see mode, in what seems to be a healthy consolidation right now for bitcoin. Market is recycling all the stories about top investment banks that already put their position on crypto,” said Moya.
• Despite BTC’s struggle to break an all-time high around $61,000, Moya does not see short-term resistance as a barrier to continued upside. “Consensus is, a break above $60,000 is not a matter of if, but when. Next barrier is at $75,000.”
• Institutional demand is needed to sustain the rally as retail investors have spent their stimulus dollars in other ways than just buying up BTC.
• “Retail traders are probably bidding up altcoins after missing the big move in bitcoin,” said Moya.

Some altcoins have been outperforming BTC over the past month. Ether (ETH) reached an all-time high and is up about 60% since March. XRP is up about 90% over the same time period versus BTC’s gain of about 36%.

Read More: Latest ‘Altcoin Season’ Fueled by XRP, Tron, Stellar Pushes Crypto Market Value to $2T for First Time

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A New Jersey man pleaded guilty in federal court to running the defunct crypto exchange “Destination Bitcoin” without proper licensure. 

William Green, 53, told a federal judge he illegally converted clients’ cash into crypto between August 2017 and February 2019. He pleaded guilty Monday to running an unlicensed money-transmitting business. 

The guilty plea wraps up an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigation into Green’s crypto business that began in December 2018 and led to a criminal indictment eight months later. Agents brokered an undercover deal with Green that ultimately led to his arrest.

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Department of Justice officials did not say how much bitcoin Green bought for his clients, nor did they specify how much he made in fees amassed through the endeavor. Federal law requires money-transmitting businesses to acquire the appropriate licenses. 

Special agents at the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security led the investigation into Green, officials said. Both agencies utilize transaction-tracing tools that peel back bitcoin’s pseudonymity. 

Green is slated for sentencing on Aug. 10.

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Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs’ latest decision to retract from its bearish view on the U.S. dollar is receiving a thumbs down from financial markets. 

While bitcoin is trading nearly 1.5% higher on the day at $59,000 at press time, the dollar index, which measures the greenback’s value against fiat currencies such as the euro, pound and yen, is 0.5% lower at 92.56. 

Goldman Sachs on Friday recommended closing U.S. dollar short trades against a basket of currencies, including the commodity-sensitive Aussie and New Zealand dollars.

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“Although we still expect these currencies to appreciate versus the dollar over the coming quarters, firm U.S. growth and rising bond yields may keep the greenback supported over the short term,” strategists including Zach Pandl wrote in a note titled “tactical retreat,” according to Bloomberg. 

Goldman recommended short dollar trades on Oct. 9 when bitcoin was trading near $11,000, a far cry from the current $59,000. Bitcoin hit a record high of $61,557 last month.

Most major fiat currencies have also charted stellar gains over the past six months. Almost every asset denominated in dollar terms has rallied significantly over the past 12 months, courtesy of the Federal Reserve’s open-ended liquidity-boosting program. 

Betting against the dollar has been one of the most crowded trades of the last 12 months, as per Bank of America’s monthly fund manager surveys. 

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Goldman, however, now fears that selling pressure around the dollar may weaken due to rising Treasury yields. The 10-year yield has surged by 80 basis points this year, making the greenback attractive for income-seeking investors. 

The jury remains out as to whether the tide will turn in favor of the greenback, dragging bitcoin lower. If recent price action is a guide, the probability of bitcoin melting on a potential U.S. dollar index (DXY) rally appears low. 

Also read: Bitcoin Decoupled From Stocks in Q1 as Institutional Demand Strengthened: CoinDesk Research

The dollar index witnessed a corrective bounce in the January-March period, rising 3.66% following three straight quarterly declines. Even so, bitcoin surged 100%. 

The cryptocurrency remained bid as increased institutional demand offered clarity to investors about the digital asset’s value proposition relative to traditional markets, weakening its correlation with stocks, gold, etc. 

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On March 12, Vakseen, a 41-year-old digital artist based in California, accepted an 8 ETH bid (around $16,800 as of Monday) for the first of six editions of a digital painting featuring legendary basketball player Michael Jordan.

The exposure from the sale of the painting, which was minted as a non-fungible token (NFT), led to Vakseen being commissioned for another digital art piece. At the time of publication, the third edition of the Michael Jordan painting is priced at 9 ETH (around $18,900) and bidding is ongoing. 

Vakseen’s art was also on display at a NFT exhibition featuring Black artists from around the world. The exhibition, titled “Harmony & Balance,” mimicked a digital art museum and was created to support the Black NFT artist community. It featured over 100 digital art pieces by 30 Black artists, including Vakseen. The art featured in the exhibition was worth a total of around $500,000.  

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“There are so many hurdles and obstacles involved with gaining any sort of recognition within the art world as a Black man, as a man of color or as any person of color. The NFT space is changing that and the exhibition is giving us an opportunity to be seen,” Vakseen told CoinDesk.

Some Black artists told CoinDesk that, in addition to helping them independently monetize their work, the recent popularity of NFTs is opening up the typically exclusive art world to artists from diverse backgrounds.  

Art minted as NFTs exploded in 2021, leading to digital artist Beeple selling an NFT art piece for $69.3 million in early March. Since the sale, more artists from around the world have begun minting their work as NFTs for sale via a range of platforms including OpenSea, Rarible, Mintable and Makersplace. 

A number of initiatives geared towards amplifying Black artists in the digital space have come to life in the last year, including a Black NFT art club on social media platform Clubhouse to showcase Black artists, as well as the digital art gallery ONE/OFF, currently featuring 33 Black crypto artists. 

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According to data provided by ONE/OFF to Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, between January and November 2020 just 58 Black crypto artists sold “a combined 513 pieces of crypto artwork for 1,132 ETH (total market value of $736,000).” 

In the first two days after launching on March 27, the “Harmony & Balance” exhibition sold around 10 art pieces, one of which was valued at $4,000. 

These efforts are still small compared to the multibillion-dollar global art auction market, but Isaiah Jackson, author of “Bitcoin Black America” and host of “Community Crypto” on CoinDesk TV, believes it’s only getting started.

“The Black NFT art space has opened up a new world where crypto and creative minds come together … This is just the beginning, and I believe the Black creative community will be the leaders in the space for years to come,” Jackson said.  

Removing gatekeepers

In 2018, artwork by Black artists accounted for just 1.2% of the global art auction market. 

Even as NFTs were taking off in 2021, Seyi Awotunde, U.K.-based entrepreneur and creator of the “Harmony & Balance” NFT exhibition, felt that talented Black artists were still not getting the attention they deserve.

“First I looked at Christie’s, which sold Beeple, and I thought, why can’t that be a Black artist to go on? There are so many incredibly gifted Black artists in their own right. There didn’t seem to be a great platform for them right now so I thought, why not go do it ourselves,” Awotunde told CoinDesk. 

Awotunde began scouting for Black NFT artists to feature in the exhibition. One artist, 28-year-old Andre OShea, minted his first NFT artworks in October as a test run but never actually advertised or sold them. He minted another in February, which took 18 days to sell. But since then, thanks in part to advertising and the new popularity of NFTs, he sold three pieces ranging from 0.07-0.3 ETH ($150- $600) within 24 hours in March.

“As a Black artist, NFTs mean leveling the playing field and taking the keys away from traditional gatekeepers in the art world. It is also a way for me to uplift my community through creativity,” OShea told CoinDesk via an email. 

Awotunde also met 24-year-old Canadian-Nigerian multimedia artist Lizzy Aroloye on Clubhouse because she asked questions on information forums about how to set up her own NFT. Aroloye reached out to him a few days later saying she’d already sold her first artwork; she was invited to join the exhibition. 

Vakseen, familiar with the NFT world, was first scouted by NFT platform Makersplace to mint his art back in 2018. But Aroloye was new to the space and minted a collection of her art NFTs as recently as March 5. In under 24 hours she had sold one for 2.5 ETH (now around $5,000). 

“Obviously, not everyone has this experience right off the bat but it gave me this reassurance that this is our space, and if we continue to do the work that we’ve always been doing this can be such a game changer,” Aroloye told CoinDesk.

After the exhibition sold 10 art pieces within the first two days, Awotunde decided to extend the show until April 4.

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The cryptocurrency market capitalization hit an all-time peak of $2 trillion on Monday, according to data and market trackers CoinGecko and Blockfolio, as gains over the last several months attracted demand from both institutional and retail investors.

Price rallies for cryptocurrencies besides bitcoin (BTC) has helped push the digital-asset industry’s total market capitalization to about $2 trillion, doubling in just a few months.

These “alternative cryptocurrencies,” also known as altcoins, include ether (ETH) along with bittorrent (BTT), xrp (XRP), tron (TRX) and stellar (XLM). They have all logged double-digit percentage growth in the past 24 hours, according to data from Messari.

Prices for bitcoin have doubled this year, for a market value of $1.1 trillion, but the rally has paused in recent weeks, allowing altcoins to seize the market leadership. Bitcoin’s market dominance, or its share of the overall industry capitalization, has slid to about 57%, from around 73% at the start of the year, according to TradingView.

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Ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain and the second-biggest overall, recorded an all-time high near $2,100 last week. The digital asset has benefited from speculation that the Ethereum blockchain could see growing use as the network of choice for decentralized finance, or DeFi, consisting of automated, blockchain-based software protocols that might someday replace banks and Wall Street trading firms.

Galen Moore, CoinDesk Research’s director of data and indexes, wrote in an analysis that the outstanding performance during the latest “altcoin season” has come from digital tokens belonging to so-called smart-contract platforms that could compete with Ethereum or complement it. 

These alternative blockchains also have benefited from increased usage of stablecoins, which are digital tokens whose value is pegged to real-world currencies, primarily the U.S. dollar.

“I feel like the real value and application of stablecoin, decentralized finance on Tron, and BitTorrent has been identified,” Justin Sun, the founder of the Tron blockchain and CEO of BitTorrent, told CoinDesk via a WeChat message.

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Daily transaction counts on Tron have been consistently surpassing the transactions on Ethereum, according to data from CoinDesk and Coin Metrics. The number of tether stablecoin transactions on the Tron blockchain has also beaten Ethereum’s count, as CoinDesk reported.

Yet, for Ethereum the success has come at a cost: The network’s popularity has resulted in congestion, driving up transactional rates known as “gas fees.”

“The competition between public blockchains is a good thing,” Tron’s Sun said. “It is true that it is nearly impossible to launch new projects on Ethereum because no one want to use projects that come with hundreds of dollars of mining cost at a slow transaction speed.”

One example of the fast industry growth, according to Denis Vinokourov, head of research at Synergia Capital, is Binance Smart Chain (BSC), a smart-contracts blockchain sponsored by the giant cryptocurrency exchange Binance. 

“The narrative is that if you provide innovative products, competitive yields, then one can compete with the old-school establishment” of Ethereum, Vinokourov told CoinDesk. “The key is cheap, fast transactions.”

The total transaction volume on Binance Smart Chain in February alone hit more than $700 billion, according to a DappRadar report dated March 11. The unique active wallets on the blockchain increased to 108,000 in February from 30,000 the prior month. Ethereum in February had 67,000 unique active wallets.

“The growth of BSC is generally good for altcoins,” Vinokourov said. It “means you can compete against ether.”

A Binance spokesperson declined CoinDesk’s request to comment on the recent altcoin rally, including Binance’s BNB token.

Early crypto adopters vs. crypto newbies

Unlike bitcoin’s impressive growth since early 2020, much of it driven by institutional investors, the altcoin rally may have been fueled by early crypto adopters and retail investors who are newly arriving to the space.

“As institutional players enter the bitcoin market more and more, they have improved stability, which then begets more stability,” Chad Steinglass, head of trading at CrossTower, said. “While this new dynamic is a welcome development for many investors, it takes away some of the shininess and ‘wild wild west’ mentality that many early adopter crypto traders crave.”

Similar to retail investors’ interest in so-called “meme stocks” such as GameStop in the traditional stock market, many crypto traders like altcoins with higher volatility and risk than bitcoin – for the “excitement” and increased chances of “seeing multi-bag returns,” Steinglass said.

Arthur Cheong, founder and portfolio manager at DeFi-focused crypto fund DeFiance Capital, added that the renewed interest in altcoins also came from “unsophisticated retail” traders.

Traders who “don’t perform much research are coming back to the market,” Cheong said, citing increased trading volume of altcoins in South Korea, a country that’s primarily dominated by retail crypto investors.

What does the new alt season mean for bitcoin?

Though bitcoin’s market dominance has waned, analysts said the growing interest in altcoins will eventually benefit the largest cryptocurrency.

“These early adopters shifting to altcoins will both work to decrease volatility in bitcoin and also eventually help decide the winners from the losers in the alt space, which is kind of a necessary condition for any altcoin to emerge as a viable longer-term asset,” Steinglass said.

Ki Young Ju, CEO of blockchain data provider CryptoQuant, said the heightened capital flows could also migrate back to bitcoin as time goes by.

Bitcoin “will absorb the altcoin market cap sooner or later,” Ju said.

Recent announcements of moves into cryptocurrencies by established financial players like Visa, PayPal, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have strengthened traders’ confidence the industry is seeing greater mainstream adoption.

Bitcoin’s rally over the past year has been fueled by speculation the oldest and largest cryptocurrency might be useful for investors as a hedge against inflation in the wake of trillions of dollars of coronavirus-related stimulus injected into financial markets by governments and central banks.

In addition to the growing speculation over DeFi, there’s been a flurry of interest recently in non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which represent stakes in unique assets such as art, collectibles, even sneakers.

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Abkhazia, a Russia-supported autonomous republic north of Georgia, has been a Wild West of crypto mining in recent years. Now, the government is putting an end to it.

On Wednesday, the parliament of Abkhazia passed a package of bills introducing steep fines for illegal use of electricity and prolonged a ban on crypto mining that was originally set to expire in May. The measures are aimed at tackling ongoing power shortages. Now, all mining operations are illegal until May 2022, the online news website Kavkaz Uzel reported.

Abkhazia offers an example of how a crypto industry can bloom in the political and economic instability of a self-proclaimed state with a lack of international recognition and a struggling economy. It also shows the party can end as soon as the government gets nervous.

Related: Bitcoin News Roundup for April 5, 2021

It’s unclear how many miners and firms the ban will affect in Abkhazia because the industry has been operating in a gray zone for a while. 

Still, mining appears to be popular, even though Abkhazia routinely struggles with power shortages. The price for electricity has been extremely low for many years, which incentivized both commercial mining farms from abroad and local individual miners.

“Almost every household has some mining machines. Many people in the countryside do,” Abkhazian political expert Tengiz Jopua told CoinDesk by phone. 

Everyone in Abkhazia knows someone who’s mining, Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta wrote in March.

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“People would sell their cattle and cars to buy [mining] equipment. For some, it became the main source of income. The social and economic situation is quite complicated at the moment. Many people lost their jobs, many businesses are not profitable and the pandemic restrictions didn’t help. It’s a natural behavior of people in a situation like this,” Jopua said.

Struggling region 

Abkhazia, a nation of around 250,000 people, broke away from Georgia in 1999 and has since been recognized as an independent nation by only a handful of countries, including Russia, Syria, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nauru and Vanuatu.

The nation borders Georgia and Russia, on which Abkhazia heavily relies economically. Abkhazia and Georgia were at war in the early 1990s, and their relationship remains tense. 

However, they still share the Inguri hydropower plant, located on the border: Georgia takes 60% of the electricity the plant produces while Abkhazia takes 40%. In theory, the power plant provides enough electricity for Abkhazia, said former economy minister Adgur Ardzinba, but the power lines are so worn out that much of the electricity doesn’t reach consumers. In addition to this, the plant was shut down for repair in January.

The result is a constant electricity deficit, leading to routine nationwide power outages. Even in the capital, Sukhumi, people would have no power for a couple of hours each day.

“Every night they would shut off electricity for one to two hours, sometimes during the day, too,” Jopua said.

The country requested “significant amounts” of energy from Russia between 2017 and 2019, Ardzinba said over a call. 

In 2020, a new government came to power; in September, it legalized crypto mining, lifting a previous ban that had been in force since 2018. Electricity consumption spiked, Ardzinba said. 

The price for electricity in Abkhazia is less than 1 cent per kilowatt per hour, both for individual users and businesses, which made the country a mecca for miners.

“This price is not adequate. It’s the legacy of the war times,” said Jopua. “But the attempts to raise it are usually met with protests.” 

Abkhazia’s government will have to raise energy costs at some point, said Ardzinba.

The cheap electricity attracted many miners from abroad, especially from Russia, Jopua said, adding that locals often don’t have enough money to buy ASICs and can only purchase a small number of used machines on the secondary market. 

Jakhon Khabilov, CEO of the mining pool Sigmapool, believes there were tens of thousands of ASICs working in the region, owned by partnerships of Russian and Abkhazian entrepreneurs. By now, most of them have been unplugged, although not all miners have been able to get the machines out of the republic, he said. 

The number of machines imported to Abkhazia is hard to estimate because some are brought in illegally. Many farms belong to government members, although they won’t confirm that officially, Jopua said. 

Mining farms have been recently found on government-owned factories. An aide to a local lawmaker recently lost his job for illegally bringing mining machines to Abkhazia from Russia using a government-owned vehicle. 

The crackdown

This year the government took the situation seriously and began shutting down mining farms. Multiple venues with thousands of ASICs were reportedly shut down in a series of police raids. 

As a result, institutional miners started leaving Abkhazia, taking the equipment back to Russia. By now, most of them have left the country, an individual familiar with the local mining community told CoinDesk.

It’s harder to crack down on farmers who keep small bunches of ASICs in their homes and barns. “The country is small, people hear about raids in advance, they can unplug the mining machines before the raid and plug it back in after,” Jopua said. 

At some point, the internet providers were helping the government by blocking the IP addresses of mining pools, but it didn’t help in the long run as people circumvented the blocks, he added.

“Everyone needs free money,” Jopua said.

Sigmapool’s Khabilov believes that the ban might not last long and get lifted as soon as the repair of the Inguri plant eases the electricity shortage: “First, they halted everything to figure out who is mining and where, then, they will likely allow mining again, but with the new rules.” 

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CI Global Asset Management,  a unit of a firm overseeing more than $230 billion in assets, announced the launch of CI Bitcoin Fund, which it described as North America’s first mutual fund to provide dedicated exposure to bitcoin.

• Through the fund, Canadian investors would be able to access the bitcoin market at what CI said was an industry-low management fee of 0.40% (Series F) and with an initial minimum investment of $500.
• In February, Canada-based CI Global filed to issue North America’s third bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) and four days later filed for what would be the world’s first ether ETF.
• CI Global is a unit of CI Financial, one of Canada’s largest investment management companies.

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In a continuation of its plans to more thoroughly encourage the use of cryptocurrency, online payments giant PayPal (PYPL) has announced that it will allow users to pay in bitcoin (BTC) and other leading assets upon checkout with various vendors.

Grayscale Investments said it’s “100% committed” to converting its flagship Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an exchange-traded fund (ETF).

In a blog post, the world’s largest digital asset manager confirmed its intent to re-apply with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to offer an ETF.

“First and foremost we wish to make clear: we are 100% committed to converting GBTC into an ETF,” Grayscale said in the post. (New York-based Grayscale is owned by Digital Currency Group, the parent company of CoinDesk.)

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The U.S. approval of a bitcoin ETF has remained one of the white whales of the crypto industry, with the SEC rejecting dozens of applications in recent years. Some industry observers see an ETF, which provides traditional investors with access to BTC without having to hold the asset itself, as a potential game-changer.

“Grayscale first submitted an application for a Bitcoin ETF in 2016 and spent the better part of 2017 in conversations with the SEC,” the firm wrote in its blog post. “Ultimately, we withdrew our application because we believed the regulatory environment for digital assets had not advanced to the point where such a product could successfully be brought to market.”

GBTC’s collapsing premium

GBTC has been trading at a discount to the price of bitcoin for more than a month. Historically, GBTC had traded at a premium to the price of bitcoin. Shares of GBTC had traded at more than a 35% premium in mid-December, according to data from YCharts.

Analysts speculate the current discount is being caused by market competition.

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From alternatives like Osprey’s bitcoin fund to a flood of Canadian bitcoin ETFs, institutional investors now have more choices for seamless bitcoin exposure.

In early March, CoinDesk learned Grayscale was hiring several ETF specialists.

This story is developing and will be updated.

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The development of blockchain and digital currencies shows that in the future, global settlements might take place on a new technological platform rather than on the SWIFT payments network, said the deputy head of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Alexander Pankin, talking to the RIA Novosti news agency on Monday.

Pankin said future alternatives to SWIFT will be more advanced and not dependent on being a monopoly. The emergence of such alternatives will be “not only a reaction to the current geopolitical situation but a response to the need to modernize the existing payment methods using the top digital innovations,” Pankin said.

The statement comes after the country’s authorities voiced concerns recently that Western countries might cut Russia off from the SWIFT. In late March, the press secretary for Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said the Kremlin “cannot rule out” that threat.

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Fears of Russia getting cut off SWIFT have been voiced over and over in Russia’s ruling circles after the country got sanctioned in 2014 for annexing the Crimea peninsula. Back then, the first round of sanctions prompted the creation of a national payment system that would be working even if SWIFT was no longer available in Russia.

Read more: Bank of Russia Eyes Digital Ruble Prototype in Late 2021: Report

Those concerns apparently mounted further as the relationship between Russia and the West deteriorated this winter, after Putin’s most vocal critic, Alexey Navalny, was first poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent, then imprisoned in Russia soon after he recovered. At the moment, Navalny is in a penal colony. According to him, Navalny had been denied necessary medical help and his health has worsened significantly.

In a recent interview, U.S. President Joe Biden said he believes Putin is a “killer.”

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MicroStrategy, the business intelligence firm that has made bitcoin its main treasury reserve, said it purchased about 253 more of the leading cryptocurrency for $15 million in cash.

• The Nasdaq-listed firm said it paid an average price of $59,339 per coin including fees and expenses.
• As a result, MicroStrategy now holds about 91.579 bitcoin at a total purchase price of $2.23 billion, at an average price of $24,311 per coin.

The story is developing and will be updated.

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Hackers have been using GitHub cloud infrastructure to covertly mine multiple cryptocurrencies, The Record reported.

The attacks were first spotted by a French software engineer in November, a fact the development platform’s team confirmed to The Record last week via email.

The attack abused a GitHub feature called GitHub Actions, which allows users to automatically execute tasks and workflows triggered by a certain event happens inside their repositories. To launch crypto mining software, the attackers would fork an existing repository, add malicious GitHub Actions element to the original code, and then file a Pull Request with the original repository to merge the code back into the original, The Record wrote.

Related: Is It Alt Season? A Look At What’s Impacting Crypto Markets

The original project owner didn’t have to approve the malicious Pull Request because right after it was filed GitHub’s systems would read the attacker’s code and launch a virtual machine, which would download and run crypto-mining software, as Dutch security engineer Justin Perdok told The Record. He added that “attackers spin up to 100 crypto-miners via one attack alone, creating huge computational loads for GitHub’s infrastructure.”

The mining software, according to screenshots published by The Record, included SRBMiner, a software for mining multiple cryptocurrencies using easy-to-buy consumer hardware, namely GPUs and CPUs.

In any case, it looks like the attackers didn’t look to damage the repositories in any way, only to get free coins using GitHub servers, the report reads.

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Bitcoin (BTC) declined by about 5% during the weekend as sellers remained active at the $60,000 resistance level. The cryptocurrency stabilized at support near $56,000, but the intraday trend has weakened.

• The relative strength index (RSI) on the hourly chart is the most oversold since March 25, which preceded a near 20% price rally.
• However, oversold price moves have been limited to resistance near the 200-period moving average, similar to March 22-24.
• The uptrend on the hourly chart has weakened, with initial support around $56,000 and lower support around $54,000.
• BTC will need to break above $60,000 to resume the uptrend. But for now, buyers who have been active at support are met with sellers at resistance – typical of a consolidation phase.

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XRP, the cryptocurrency used in Ripple Labs’ payments network, is rallying on the coattails of altcoin leader ether‘s recent move to record highs. 

XRP rose to $0.72 early Monday to hit the highest level since Feb. 2 and was last seen changing hands near $0.70. The third-largest cryptocurrency by market value has gained 18% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk 20 data.

The price rise comes three days after the Ethereum blockchain’s ether token set new lifetime highs near $2,100. Since then, the second-largest coin has established a foothold above $2,000, helping XRP and few other alternative cryptocurrencies such as tron, stellar, orchid, bitcoin cash, and eos score gains amid the dull action in bitcoin – the crypto market leader. 

Related: Is It Alt Season? A Look At What’s Impacting Crypto Markets

“We’re not seeing anything specific to XRP and the move feels more like an altcoin season type move given outperformance in other tokens as well,” Joel Kruger, currency strategist at LMAX Digital, told CoinDesk. Names like TRON and siacoin “are performing even better than XRP on this more thinly traded Easter holiday Monday.”

With a move to two-month highs, XRP has now completely reversed losses suffered in December after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a case against Ripple for raising $1.3 billion by selling XRP in unregistered securities offerings. 

Ripple executives’ attorney James K Filan tweeted on Saturday that Ripple and the SEC have reached an agreement to keep the payment company’s two of the four private email correspondences from being scrutinized under the ongoing lawsuit. So far, analysts are not sure if that’s powering XRP higher. 

However, according to chart studies, the cryptocurrency’s prospects look bright, one analyst said. 

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“XRP has formed an inverse ‘head and shoulder’ pattern with head at 20 cents and shoulders at 40 cents, and neckline resistance passing through 70 cents,” Delta Exchange CEO Pankaj Balani told CoinDesk. 

Balani foresees XRP rallying to $1.00 and possibly $1.30 on a breakout above the neckline resistance. 

“The pattern has formed over the six months; therefore, in case of a breakout, the bullish move is expected to be quick and sustainable,” Balani said in a WhatsApp chat, adding that volatility is likely to remain high due to the SEC lawsuit. 

Also read: Ripple Touts Role for XRP in Central Bank Digital Currency White Paper

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The Bank of Japan (BOJ) on Monday kicked off the first phase of experimenting with a central bank digital currency (CBDC), having made the necessary preparations in the first quarter.

“In PoC Phase 1, the Bank plans to develop a test environment for the CBDC system and conduct experiments on the basic functions that are core to CBDC as a payment instrument such as issuance, distribution, and redemption,” the BOJ said in an announcement on Monday.

The blockchain PoC, or proof of concept, is a demonstration of the real-world feasibility of the project idea.

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BOJ’s Phase 1 will run through March of next year, following which the central bank will make a detailed assessment of the CBDC’s various functions, including the maximum amount of the currency a single entity can hold, as per Reuters.

Also read: Central Bank ‘Money Drops’ With Digital Currencies Could Fuel Inflation: Bank of America

Interest in CBDCs and contactless payments has grown in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and its requirement to avoid physical contact.

A survey conducted by the Bank for International Settlements this year showed 86% of central banks are actively researching the potential for CBDCs, 60% are experimenting with the technology, and 14% are deploying pilot projects.

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Decentralized finance (DeFi) hedge fund said it suffered an attack early Sunday morning that one analyst said was caused by five attackers, one of whom returned their stolen funds.

• The price of Force DAO’s native token FORCE plunged on the news and is now down more than 80% in the last 24 hours according to CoinGecko.
• According to a chain of tweets by Mudit Gupta, blockchain team lead at blockchain software company Polymath, there were five attackers with one of them having returned the funds they stole. The others made off with FORCE tokens worth about US$376,000.

This story is developing.

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Binance’s crypto derivatives platform Binance Futures continues to soar in popularity as more and retail customers add fuel to the bull run.

Open interest on the derivatives platform hit a record high of over $10 billion on Saturday, amounting to year-on-year growth of nearly 3,900%, according to data source CoinGecko.

The spike in open interest or the value of derivative contracts traded but not settled with offsetting positions reflects an increased inflow of money into the market.

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Some analysts consider Binance synonymous with retail traders. In their newsletter dated Feb. 26, blockchain analytics firm Glassnode’s founders Jan Happel and Jann Allemann cited increased signups at Binance relative to the U.S.-regulated Coinbase exchange as evidence of increased retail participation.

Binance Futures was launched in September 2019 with a single tether (USDT)-margined perpetual futures for bitcoin.

Since then, the derivatives platform has expanded its product suite to over 180 pairs – 107 USDT- or Binance USD (BUSD)-margined futures contracts, 34 coin-margined futures, 36 Binance leveraged tokens, and six options, the exchange’s representative told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat.

Binance is the largest bitcoin futures exchange by open interest at press time, contributing $4.33 billion, or 18.44%, of the global tally of $23.48, as per data provided by the crypto derivatives research firm Skew.

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Also read: Retail Gains Amid Institutional Influx in Q1: CoinDesk Quarterly Review

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It’s all very Inception-like. The folks at Saturday Night Live answered their own question “What the hell is an NFT?” well enough they were able to make an NFT of it.

• A skit in last week’s show sought to explain non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the hottest segment of the cryptocurrency universe (for the moment). It starred SNL regular Kate McKinnon as U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. It also featured the rapper Eminem and was set to his music.
• Now a segment of that sketch is itself an NFT and is being auctioned off on the OpenSea market place.
• The NFT up for bid captures a snippet at the end of the sketch in which four characters walk out of a classroom single file and then the background morphs into a street with the characters now on a crosswalk. Because there aren’t enough layers to this already, the scene channels another work of art, the Beatles’ album Abbey Road.
• Adding further to the Russian nesting doll vibe, last week’s skit showed this very segment being minted as an example of how things are turned into NFTs. Now it’s actually happened and it’s all very meta.
• Proceeds benefit @stopAAPIHate. Bidding ends just before midnight Monday.
• At press time, bidding was at 8.5 wrapped ether (US$17,618.29).
• Next up will be an NFT of the auction of the NFT of the sketch about NFTs….

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