Bitcoin Passes $60,000 for First Time, NFT Tokens Soar, BCH, MANA, WAX, Mar. 15

BTC

Bitcoin continued its rebound from the pullback into March as the coin traded above the $60,000 level for the first time. Bitcoin got a further boost last week after the US government finally approved the second stimulus package. The move will see $1,400 stimulus checks being sent out to the public and traders expect much of this to end up in stocks and cryptocurrencies.

The market has been waiting on this second stimulus bill since before the election in November. Last year’s stimulus bill was the start of the summer rally that took BTC from around $9,000 to its current levels.

Despite a two-day pullback in Bitcoin, the market cap still trades above the $1 trillion level. The next path for the market could be driven by the Federal Reserve this week. The Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s press conference on Wednesday will likely see a commitment to stay patient on policy measures, despite the economy improving. Yields on 10-year Treasury bonds moved higher again on Friday, to the highest levels in about a year and a dovish Fed may rattle markets once more. 

There was some negative news on Monday with Reuters reporting that India may be about to introduce a ban on cryptocurrency. The rules, “would criminalize possession, issuance, mining, trading and transferring crypto-assets”, according to a government official.

The move comes after a January government plan that called for a ban on private virtual currencies, while they build a framework for an official digital currency. Investors had hoped that they would be more lenient, but if the bill passes the Narendra Modi government then investors could have six months to liquidate or face penalties. 

BTC could pull back this week on the news and it will likely do that if it can’t get back above $60k. 

BCH

Bitcoin Cash has drifted out of the top ten list of coins in recent weeks as newcomers see their valuations growing.  

The coin has been left behind in the recent rally with the coin’s market cap peaking at a record above $60 billion, but now trades around the $10 billion level. BCH never really recovered from the hard fork and acrimonious split with BSV and the recent news from India highlights what I said a long time ago- that governments won’t allow a private currency to disrupt their power structure.

The coin was also hit at the start of the month as OK Coin de-listed both coins over what the CEO Hong Fang called a “malicious misinformation war” which was being driven by high-profile heads of both projects. 

She was talking largely about Craig Wright who has long claimed to be the creator of Bitcoin. A recent attempt to copyright the Bitcoin white paper drove Fang to take action and “protect the open-source community.”

BCH did get some potential market cap-boosting news over the course of the BTC rally as it was added to PayPal’s recent dive into cryptocurrency, while Japanese retail giant Rakuten also added the coin. The Rakuten payments app is supported by over 50,000 retailers, including McDonald’s, and 7-Eleven.

The addition to the platforms failed to spur BCH and it now sits in a lonely space, with the door closing to large-scale payments and investment flows going to other areas of the ecosystem. The only thing that the creators will take heart from is that the coin is still 3x the size of BSV with a price of $530.

MANA

Decentraland’s MANA coin has seen a meteoric rise in the last few months as the NFT art craze took hold.  

The platform started life in 2017 as a virtual role-playing blockchain game where users could buy land with MANA tokens. The coin started the year at the $0.08c level and has since moved to $1 per coin for a return of 1150%.

Big money is being spent in the NFT art marketplace, while the Dallas Mavericks basketball team announced that they would be using Dogecoin for merchandise and ticket purchases. 

Recently the company saw games company Atari leasing a piece of land within the Decentraland world in order to build a cryptocurrency casino in “Vegas City,” which is one of the districts in the Ethereum-based world. 

The launch of the casino is set for April and will feature prizes in the form of NFTs, ATRI, and DG. Atari is partnering with Decentral Games for the casino, which will use their $DG currency. 

WAX

Wax is another token that has been rising on the back of the NFT art craze as the project releases digital collectibles from names such as Garbage Pail Kids and Streetfighter, alongside fan-created collections. 

Wax is short for The Worldwide Asset eXchange™ and is billed as, “the world’s leading decentralized video game and entertainment network.” The Wax network also houses Atari collectibles. 

The boom in digital Non-Fungible Token (NFT) art culminated recently with a private auction of a piece by digital creator Beeple selling for $69 million. Beeple is an American digital artist from South Carolina who has been creating digital artworks for 13 years.

As the popularity, and rewards, grew in NFTs, coins such as WAX and ENJ have risen from their platform solutions in the space. 

WAX now has a project valuation of $1 billion at number 117 in the list of coins with a coin price of $0.27.