Weekly Market Snapshot - April 8, 2019

Coin of the Week 

Undoubtedly, our Coin of the Week goes to Bitcoin! Bitcoin once reached $5307 with a 26.4% weekly price increase. A sign of crypto market maturity as U.S. SEC has published a new regulatory framework for digital assets this week. Is crypto spring coming? 

Top News to Watch 

Bloomberg: Bitcoin price spike can be attributed to Algorithmic Trading  

According to Bloomberg, there had been 17 new algo or quantitative funds in trading space since September, and particularly for Bitcoin, there is an increase in 20 percent for the price on April 2 after the opening of Asian market. These algo funds reported gains of 3-10% during crypto winter. 

SIX Swiss Exchange lists XRP ETP on April 2 

Amun AG – the cryptocurrency derivative development company launched an XRP-based Exchange Traded Product (ETP) on SIX Swiss Exchange – the principal stock exchange in Switzerland. Earlier on 28 February, Amun AG had launched the first Bitcoin ETP (ABTC) on SIX Swiss Exchange. 

Blockdata: China is the world leader with most blockchain projects 

As cited by Blockdata, China is running total of 263 blockchain projects which ranked 1st in term of the number of projects. Three major internet giants including Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu had launched their own blockchain initiative and Alibaba currently ranked 1st in the Top 100 Blockchain Enterprise Patent Ranking. 

DataLight: Bitcoin will become the biggest payment system in 10 Years 

DataLight released a report on April 2 which predicts that if Bitcoin can keep up with its current growth rate, it can outperform Visa, MasterCard and Paypal as the largest payment system in 10 years. 

PayPal invests in Blockchain Startup 

The global online payments giant PayPal make an investment in blockchain startup – Cambridge Blockchain which enables users to gain more control over their digital identities using blockchain technology. An unnamed PayPal spokesperson said, “We made an investment in Cambridge Blockchain because it is applying blockchain for digital identity in a way that we believe could benefit financial service companies including PayPal.” 

Swiss Study: Fintech sector is growing while traditional banks remain stagnated in Switzerland 

The report “IFZ FinTech Study 2019” from the Lucerne University of Applied Studies and published by SwissBanking on April 1 shows that the fintech sector in Swiss had a dramatic growth in 2018 and the grow percentage is 62 percent with 356 companies active in the sector while the number of traditional financial organization and its employees have shown a decline. 

SG Blocks partner with BHCV to develop decentralized data centers 

SG Blocks – The construction company focuses on cargo shipping containers had partnered with US-based Blockchain firm – Blockchain Holdings Capital Ventures (BHCV) to design decentralized data centers, according to the press release on April 1.  

Okta: 61% of global digital companies had invested in Blockchain 

Okta report shows that 72% of decision makers from global digital companies claimed that they had invested in IoT, and 68% claimed that they had invested in AI, and 61% invested in Blockchain. 

Week Ahead 

Crypto Invest Summit 2019 

Date: 9-10 April 2019 

Venue: Los Angeles 

Theme: Crypto investment strategies, tokenization