Canada approves Bitcoin ETF, options markets do not cost $ 100,000 BTC

Editor’s note: Welcome to the year of the ox. Blockchain Bites will not be published on President’s Day, Monday, February 15th.

The first bitcoin exchange-traded fund in North America approved by Canada’s security regulator, a move some commentators see as the door for the US to follow. The US government is reluctant to approve a bitcoin ETF product, which tracks the price of bitcoin and is traded on a stock exchange, due to bitcoin’s supposedly shallow liquidity and risks that could manipulate the asset.

Bitcoin miners earned a record $ 4.06 million within only 60 minutes according to Glassnode data. The majority of the proceeds came from the bitcoin subsidy – 6.25 BTC issued about every 10 minutes – although about $ 47,000 was collected in network fees.

The Bitcoin options market has a 12% probability that prices will rise above $ 100,000 by the end of December according to a mathematical criterion called the Black Scholes formula. It looks at the strike prices, call option prices, the actual asset and US treasury to determine the fair price of an option contract.

PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said the payments giant wants to become a CBDC distributor if a central bank’s digital currency ever starts. ‘You think about how much [digital wallets] “We’re going to have the next two, three or five years, and we’re a perfect complement to central banks and governments to spread the digitalized forms of currency,” Schulman said at the company’s investor day.

Wall Street costumes pressure their employers to switch to crypto, according to CNBC. In response to internal questions, Daniel Pinto, co-president of JPMorgan Chase, reportedly said that the bank would consider bitcoin trading if the customer’s question was ‘there’, which I’m sure it will at some point be.’

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez drove everything from a bitcoin treasury to paying employees in the crypto. Yesterday, however, the city commissioners remained reluctant about these ambitious plans to first study their impact. Commissioners did vote to launch education campaigns in English, Spanish and Creole to inform people about crypto.

Figure Technologies, a blockchain training company, goes to the establishment of a special procurement company (SPAC), or a “blank check” company. The firm, Figure Acquisition Corp., will raise $ 250 million to start a competitive audience.

Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on Thursday that it has put forward plans to regulate cryptocurrencies in light of the central bank’s decision to ban them, according to a report by the Guardian Nigeria. This follows a meeting yesterday where the Senate in Nigeria convened the largest financial regulators in the country to talk about the bill, which has received public backlash.

India will give crypto holders a window of three to six months to cash out, as a proposed ban on cryptocurrency. The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, which was driven this year, wants to restrict private currencies in the country and set up a framework for a national digital currency.

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter announced on Friday that it will partner with rapper Jay-Z and donate 500 bitcoin (~ $ 23.6 million) to establish a new donation trust that supports Africa and India. Separately, Dorsey donated $ 1 million to the think tank Coin Center for Cryptocurrency Policy, which was announced Wednesday.

Pop bubbles?
Former CFTC chairman Christopher Giancarlo has broken the record of the trade regulator’s role to appear on the Bitcoin bitcoin market on CoinDesk TV this morning.

CoinDesk reported earlier that the Trump administration has acted to sting the 2017 bubble by paving the way for future products.

“We saw a bubble building and we thought the best way to address it was to let the market communicate with it,” Giancarlo said in late 2019. He said the launch of bitcoin futures contracts’ would have the impact of popping the bitcoin bubble. And it worked. ”

These comments have led to a conspiracy that US regulators are antagonistic to the growth of the cryptocurrency industry. Similar questions arose earlier this week after the Chicago Mercantile Exchange announced the country’s first regulated ether (ETH) futures contracts.

Giancarlo tempered this fear this morning. If it is added that the regulators of security and commodities do not have the power or ability to have such a heavy hand in capital markets.

The story is slightly more complicated. Derivatives, according to Giancarlo, are an essential part of any mature market.

“The ability to shorten a market is an essential point of aging in the development of any market,” he said, adding that the most modern market asset prices are not determined in spot markets, but at a higher order financial level. “The institutional role in bitcoin has made it a true investment grade asset.”

To the extent that bitcoin futures did blow the bubble, it was just a matter of good old capitalist pricing.

‘[Derivatives] brought back the price of bitcoin in line with its fundamental cost of production, ”Giancarlo said. “In 2017, bitcoin broke away from these fundamentals.”

So what does Giancarlo think about today’s foaming markets? He did not address the question directly, but we can go to the market ourselves again.

As noted by CoinDesk reporter Omkar Godbole, derivatives traders see a low probability by the end of the year that the market will inflate more than six figures.

“With the extreme volatility of the past two months, the market is not showing much conviction about how bitcoin will trade for the rest of the year,” CF Benchmarks CEO Sui Chung told Godbole.