DigiFinex Co-Founder Kiana Shek Shares Her Insights At World Blockchain Summit (WBS) Singapore
World Blockchain Summit, organized by Trescon, is one of the most popular blockchain and cryptocurrency conferences in the world. This year WBS Singapore kicked off with a blast. Many industry leaders exchanged their valuable opinions during keynote or panel discussion, such as Tim Draper, a well-known American venture capital investor who is a major proponent of Bitcoin and decentralization. As a guest speaker, DigiFinex co-founder Kiana Shek also shared her observation and insights with the audience on “3 Signs That Cryptocurrency Bull Market Is Here.”
In the past several years, we have witnessed a cyclical pattern emerging in the cryptocurrency space, and with each cycle, we reached exponentially greater heights. During the peak of the 2017 cryptocurrency bull run, many skeptics compared bitcoin to the Tulip Mania of the 17th century, with most convinced that bitcoin was a bubble.
However, since 2017, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have come a long way in terms of maturity. Bitcoin fundamentals are stronger than ever, institutional interest is at a new all-time high and mainstream adoption has been on the rise. Today we will also share with you some of our first hand experiences in growth as a successful global cryptocurrency exchange.
First of all, let’s take a look at some of the bullish indicators of bitcoin– the king of cryptocurrency. We have seen a surge in bitcoin price since the first week of May, when it jumped from $5,000 to $13,000 in just 2 months. While there are multiple factors causing the price increase, here we’d like to emphasize one of the fundamental facts of bitcoin, which is its block reward halving. As we know, bitcoin is a highly scarce asset, with a total supply of only 21 million. And every 4 years, the block reward of mining bitcoin is halved, which means the production of new bitcoin will be reduced by 50%. Now we are less than a year till the next bitcoin halving, which is around May 20, 2020.
Historically bitcoin halving has been a price driver because it reminds people of how scarce bitcoin is.
According to coinmetrics, bitcoin’s on-chain average transaction volume is topping $3 billion per day. To put things in perspective, PayPay’s average daily transaction volume (DTV) in 2019 Q1 is $1.89 billion. Therefore currently bitcoin’s DTV has already surpassed PayPal.
This bitcoin DTV data shows an impressive uptrend in bitcoin’s transactions over the past 90 days – on April 17, the average daily value was at $1.04 billion as compared with $3.24 billion on July 17, an almost 210% increase. Since the majority of bitcoin transactions are from its trading activity, many market observers believe that this significant spike underlines the increasing interest of institutional investors, which we will discuss more later.
Next, let’s take a look at bitcoin’s hash-rate, the speed at which a bitcoin mining machine operates, is reaching an all-time-high of 79.75 million terahashes per second (TH/s). Which means the bitcoin blockchain is more secure than ever and breaching the network would require unimaginable computing power as of now, and it’s unprofitable to hack the network anyway.
Growing institutional interest of cryptocurrency bodes well for the prospects of bitcoin.
According to CME Group, one of the world’s largest bitcoin derivatives marketplace, “bitcoin open interest rose by a record 643 contracts in a single day, establishing a new all-time high of 5,311 contracts on June 17, reached a record $250 million in notional spot value.” This equates to around 26,555 BTC, which shows an 80% increase compared to last June’s figures, isn’t this an amazing sign that the cryptocurrency bull market is back?
A recent research done by Fidelity Investments shows that institutional investors are finding appeal in digital assets and many are looking to invest more in digital assets over the next 5 years.
As part of their research, more than 400 U.S. institutional investors were surveyed, including pensions, family offices, cryptocurrency and traditional hedge funds, financial advisors and endowment and foundations.
Nearly 7 in 10 respondents cited certain characteristics of digital assets as appealing, such as the innovative technology of blockchain and the fact that cryptocurrency is less correlated to the other assets.
Grayscale Investments, a New York-based digital currency asset management firm, released its investment report for Q2 2019 last week. The company’s assets under management (AUM), primarily held in its Bitcoin and Ethereum trusts, have almost tripled in the past few months. The growth was largely fueled by institutional demand, which is one of the key reasons why we believe that the cryptocurrency bull market is back and will grow stronger in time.
(In December 2018, Longhash revealed Grayscale was the largest institutional holder of bitcoin, owns over 1% of BTC circulating supply.)
What does it mean when there are more institutional investors entering the cryptocurrency market? As we can see that the total market cap of cryptocurrency is only about $280 billion, compared to the $90.4 trillion global money supply or $1,200 trillion derivatives, it’s just a drop in the ocean.
Cryptocurrency entrepreneurs Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, also known as the Winklevoss twins, think bitcoin has plenty of room to run and is very undervalued at anything less than a $7 trillion market capitalization. For perspective, bitcoin’s current market cap is only about $189 billion.
On the other hand, when it comes to trading, many people would compare cryptocurrency to Forex. The size and depth of the Forex make it an ideal trading market. Its liquidity makes it easy for traders to sell and buy currencies without delay. This creates tight spreads for favorable quotes. Low costs, large scope to various markets and flexible trading times make it the most frequently traded market in the world.
While there are, in certain areas, large differences between the cryptocurrency and Forex markets, there are also many similarities and great potential for more convergence as cryptocurrencies cement themselves in the global financial system.
Traders embrace volatility. As George Soros says: “Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux, and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.”
DigiFinex has been developing consistently since our launch in December 2017, even during the crypto winter. And now we see signs of significant growth in our business that indicate a cryptocurrency bull market has come back.
We have listed over 70 new projects on DigiFinex this year, with 21 listings in this month alone. Which is a positive sign of blockchain startups continue to build and engage with the wider communities. These project teams are from different parts of the world, and many of them are based in Korea, thanks to our good reputation and strong relationship with our Korean partners and associates. As for our users, one of the many benefits of using DigiFinex is receiving token airdrop, what we call “candies” sometimes, from new project listings. Since January we have given out more than 1.3 million USDT worth of tokens to our users. So if you would like to receive some “candies” too, remember to register on DigiFinex later!
Now, for some of you who are wondering what is the best way to buy cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, we have the answer for you. Because recently we have partnered with Simplex to provide our users a simple and secure way to buy cryptocurrency. Our record has shown that in the first week of July, the number of people buying bitcoin on DigiFinex has tripled, a bullish sign indeed!
Below is a video introduction of our fiat-to-crypto gateway. Let’s take a look!
Last but not least, we are hiring! As a fast growing company, we value every one of our team members and treat each other like family. We encourage everyone to test new ideas, because you will never know if you never try.
We started small, but with good support across different teams and acting fast on our strategies, we are able to execute our big plans efficiently. So do join our great team and let’s grow in a rapidly developing industry together.
In conclusion, today we have shared with you 3 signs that indicate a current cryptocurrency bull run, from market research as well as our first hand experiences running a successful cryptocurrency exchange. Crypto Never Sleeps, and that’s us- DigiFinex.
Do you have a blockchain project you wish to launch? Do you want to list your project’s token on our exchange?
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