Summary of the Week
Despite some relative sideways action during the week, there was a lot of excellent news and even more bullish news; a new layout for this week’s roundup. It was another week of ETFs, billionaires and politicians being bullish and Jack Dorsey’s companies pushing further into the bitcoin space. Let’s have a look at this week in bitcoin.
Monday
The week started off bullish, despite dipping below $60,000 last weekend. A report revealed that Mastercard, in partnership with Bakkt, plans to allow its merchants worldwide to accept bitcoin payments in the near future. Sadly, VanEck’s bitcoin ETF was delayed from launching on Monday.
Billionaire investor, Anthony Scaramucci, confirmed that his bitcoin investment was worth over $1 billion dollars, seeing a dramatic climb over the last few months and Notorious “crypto clown,” Elon Musk, confirmed that both he and Tesla were still holding onto their bitcoin. U.S. Senator Rand Paul also stated that bitcoin will become the reserve currency of the world.
If all of that wasn’t hyperbullish, news broke that payments giant Square would release the white paper to the not-so-secret bitcoin exchange project some time in November 2021. Reports also emerged that Twitter was testing bitcoin tipping for Android.
Tuesday
Tuesday had big shoes to fill and started with news that Argentina’s largest futures market was working on creating bitcoin futures and options contracts. An Ohio Senate candidate told voters at a rally that they should “buy bitcoin and avoid debt.” The U.S. FDIC chair, Jelena McWilliams, stated that they were working on a more precise set of rules for banks interested in engaging with bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
U.S. footballer Tom Brady, gave a fan who returned the ball he used to score his 600th goal 1 BTC, despite estimates that the ball could be worth over $600,000. FTX, the crypto exchange Brady is a shareholder in, bought their first U.S. Super Bowl ad. The Super Bowl sees over 90 million viewers during each game.
Wednesday
Wednesday started off on a bullish note with the third largest bitcoin whale adding 105 BTC to their holdings, bringing their total balance to 106,459 BTC with over $4.4 billion in gains from their original investment. The only other news from Wednesday was Twitter’s CFO stating that bitcoin would be a great way for the country to facilitate commerce, hinting at further plans to implement bitcoin payments on the platform.
Thursday
On Thursday, Valkyrie hashed their logo onto the Bitcoin blockchain, leaving an easter egg for the global Bitcoin community on block 70,966. El Salvador revealed that they had bought the dip, adding 420 BTC to their treasury, bringing the total of bitcoin held by the South American nation to 1,120 BTC.
Later in the day, Elon Musk and many other billionaires’ alma mater, Wharton, announced they would start accepting bitcoin for tuition payments. A report from Kraken suggested that bitcoin’s surge during October was likely fueled by miners stockpiling bitcoin instead of selling it, indicating the bull run is far from over.
Post Oak Motor Cars, a Houston-based luxury car dealer, announced a partnership with NYDIG, which would see the company integrating bitcoin into its business operations and start accepting bitcoin payments. Furthermore, Michael Saylor stated that MicroStrategy is committed to continuing purchasing bitcoin.
Finally, India dropped plans to ban bitcoin, instead introducing plans to regulate bitcoin as a commodity, making a huge u-turn and opening its over 1 billion citizens to invest in bitcoin with little to worry about in terms of bans or hard regulation.
Friday
Friday started with Forbes stating that they expect to see a rise in interest in bitcoin in “all facets of life.” The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has given early approval to fund managers seeking to launch bitcoin spot exchange traded funds. Bullish news from the land down under.
How ETFs, The Avoided India Ban And More Add Up
India deciding against a bitcoin ban is probably one of the most important bits of news this week, the world’s largest nation isn’t forcing over a billion people to stop investing in bitcoin and it may end up bullish for the nation as a whole.
Then, there’s ETFs, the launch of which may be bullish in the short term, but I see it becoming bearish in the long run as futures trading will most certainly see volatility and price swings becoming more prominent as positions get liquidated at certain milestones.
El Salvador is already up 20% at worst over the last six weeks since officially adopting bitcoin as legal tender, those citizens who claimed at the right time and continued to hold their bitcoin are most certainly better off. This should prove inspiring as more nations consider adopting bitcoin as legal tender or at least offering citizens the option to purchase goods or services using crypto.
The bitcoin “virus” is spreading fast, symptoms include financial freedom, generational wealth and obviously some cool internet money to troll boomers with. It’s undeniable at this point that bitcoin isn’t here to stay and that it won’t make a huge impact in the global financial ecosystem over the next few decades. Hedge against inflation? Yes. Global reserve currency? Coming.
Once again, it becomes important to keep an eye on PlanB’s stock-to-flow model as October comes to an end. The model, created in June of this year, accurately predicted the monthly close for August and September and now it seems almost certain that October will be the same. He predicted October closing above $63,000 and it’s pretty close. Then there’s November closing above $83,000 and December over $135,000; all of which hyper-bullish. He has said these estimates were his lowest and that it may very well end up going much higher. Only time will tell.
For the time being, stack some sats and enjoy the ride.
This is a guest post by Dion Guillaume. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.