In February of 2021, Elon Musk tweeted that he found the prospect of holding Bitcoin ‘adventurous’ for an S&P 500 company, but BTC and EIH are overvalued: “Money is just data that allows us to avoid the inconvenience of barter—–That said, BTC & ETH do seem high lol—Cryptocurrency is promising, but please invest with caution!”.
Back in April’21, Tesla CEO Musk disclosed that Tesla is accepting Bitcoin (BTC) as payment for its cars and Tesla made a huge purchase of BTC/USD at an average price of around $36K in the last few months as a part of its treasury operations. Subsequently, BTC as well as other cryptos including ETH jumped on greater acceptance by corporations and institutions. The market was confident after Tesla other tech-savvy corporations like Google and Apple may also publicly embrace BTC/ETH and other Cryptos as a digital currency.
But BTC/USD as well as ETH/USD stumbled from the lifetime high in late May after Tesla’s quarterly report card showed huge profit booking for its BTC holding. Cryptos were also affected after Musk’s ‘U’ turn on crypto as Tesla suspends acceptance of Bitcoin due to growing energy/environment concerns.
Tesla & Bitcoin:
Musk further tweeted and batted for DOGE:
“Ideally, Doge speeds up block time 10X, increases block size 10X & drops fee 100X. Then it wins hands down. It is high time there was a carbon tax! To be clear, I strongly believe in crypto, but it can’t drive a massive increase in fossil fuel use, especially coal. Working with Doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency. Potentially promising”.
But Cryptos bounced back after Musk assured: “To clarify the position, Tesla has not sold any Bitcoin”.
BTC/USD also recovered from around 30K to almost 40K after Tesla CEO Musk tweeted through a combination of text and emojis, that Tesla had ‘diamond hands’, implying that the company maker would not be selling its $1.5B stakes in Bitcoin:
ETH may be a present better technology than BTC:
Over the last few years, Cryptos like BTC/USD and ETH/USD were seen as a volatile digital alternative of XAU/USD (Gold), especially after CME introduced the future contract of BTC/USD, providing the way for crypto trading. There was also increasing regulatory and institutional acceptance. But over the last few months increasing crypto scams, easy manipulation by celebrity investors/traders for their interest amid the lack of any regulator-institutions or corporates corporations are now hesitant to use it as an alternative asset. A mere crypto tweet by a celebrity trader like Musk often moves BTC/Cryptos abnormally.
Crypto is was a great tech innovation for system transaction efficiency a decade ago and to that extent, Bitcoin (BTC tech) is now obsolete, expensive, and has devastating EV impacts. BTC is like AOL or BlackBerry of the Crypto world with outdated technology.
Ethereum (ETH) is a decentralized open-source Blockchain platform with smart contract functionality. The programming language is called ‘Solidity’. As a Blockchain network, Ethereum is a decentralized public ledger for verifying and recording transactions. The network’s users can create, publish, monetize, and use applications on the platform, and use its Ether cryptocurrency as payment (rewards). Ethereum proposed to utilize Blockchain technology not only for maintaining a decentralized payment network but also for storing computer code that can be used to power tamper-proof decentralized financial contracts and applications.
Both ETH and BTC are based on Blockchain technology, but ETH is far more powerful. Though BTC flourishes as a peer-to-peer payment system, ETH outperforms when it comes to developing distributed applications and smart contracts. ETH is much quicker than BTC; has mining time around 10-20 secs against BTC’s 10-15 minutes. ETH transactions normally take seconds rather than minutes to complete, like BTC. Also, other Cryptos, or tokens, can be created on the ETH network using the same protocol as ETH but distributed on different public/private Blockchains. ETH was designed as a network for irreversible, programmatic contracts and applications using its cryptocurrency.
ETH experts call the decentralized applications on the network ‘Dapps’. ETH is an open-source Blockchain-based platform used to create and share business, financial services, and entertainment applications. ETH users pay fees to use ‘Dapps’. The fees are called ‘Gas’ because they vary depending on the amount of computational power required. As a Crypto, ETH is 2nd second in market capitalization after BTC.
Crypto trading here to stay with proper regulations and without an all-out banning:
After the Chinese Crypto crackdown, other Crypto savvy countries like U.S., South Korea, U.K. also acted on Cryptos to prevent money laundering, especially after a series of hacking incidents with a vital U.S. oil pipeline and payment of huge ransom money through Cryptos. Corporate hackers now are demanding ransom money in Cryptos. But Cryptos are here to stay as an alternative asset class with less volatility and not a legal/illegal tender/currency. There will be no blanket ban on Cryptos as such a ban will could cause a spillover/ effect on other asset classes like equities due to huge margin call, with everything being equal.
Bottom line:
ETHUSD plunged almost -13.36% in July (till 12th) after slumping -18.30% in May-June’21. But it jumped almost +185.67% from Dec-Apr 2021 and almost +4655.36% from COVID low around 81.52 in Mar 2020 to the lifetime high 4352.11 scaled in May’21.
Technically, whatever may be the narrative, ETH/USD (now around 1988), needs to sustain above 1680 levels above 1680; otherwise, it may further correct to 1200-710-450 levels. For any meaningful rally, ETH/USD needs to sustain above the 2405 zone for 3000-4200 levels. Looking ahead, synchronized global regulatory action may result in an orderly movement of all cryptos in a predictable range for investor protection (by ensuring AML/CFT compliances).
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