03.01.[News of the day] • BTC celebrates its 13th birthday • and other articles

Welcome to today’s overview:

MARKETS

BTC last experienced high price fluctuations at the end of 2021. A sudden price pump lifted it from below $ 47,000 to $ 48,500, but the bears quickly caught on. In the following hours, they pushed the asset down about $ 3,000 and BTC bottomed below $ 46,000. BTC then began to recover and traded around $ 47,000.

In the past 24 hours, BTC has launched another rise, which has resulted in a touch of $ 48,000. However, it has not been able to overcome this level and BTC is now trading around $ 47,000 again.

Although the altcoin area is generally known for its increased volatility, the first three days of 2022 were quite the opposite, as most assets remained calm. ETH continues to face the $ 3,800 mark. The second largest cryptocurrency exceeded this level yesterday, but has fallen slightly since then and is now just below it.

Technical analysis of BTC – the risk of a bearish trend has increased

Polkadot Analysis – Price shapes potential reverse pattern

Cryptocurrencies

BTC celebrates its 13th birthday

The Hong Kong Bitcoin Association was one of the first to celebrate Genesis Day when Asian markets woke up and began the first trading week of 2022.

The association also added that it would be useful to make sure that your BTC is in the wallet you control, referring to both public and private keys. This date is also known as the “Key Evidence Celebration,” an event designed by Bitcoiner pioneer Trace Mayer.

The Proof of Keys website celebrates this annual event, which encourages BTC holders to take control of their assets.

Happy Genesis Block day! Today, Bitcoin is 13 years old. It’s also a great day to withdraw your coins to a wallet you own and control! #ProofofKeys 🔑

— Bitcoin Association 香港比特幣協會 (@bitcoinorghk) January 3, 2022

The BTC hashte reaches a new maximum

According to data provided by BitInfoCharts, the BTC hashrate has reached a new record high of 203.5 exahash per second, which means that the network is the strongest ever.

The difficulty of BTC mining is expected to climb to 24.98 trillion by the end of this week, just a short distance from the $ 25 trillion mark in May before the ban in China. Mining difficulty is automatically adjusted every two weeks based on BTC hashrate. The more saturated the net, the more coins are mined, and therefore a positive adjustment is needed to avoid overproduction (and vice versa).

Banks, crypto exchanges, companies

The Japanese company Square Enix has revealed its ambitions in the field of blockchain games for 2022

Yosuke Matsuda, president of Square Enix, the game developer behind Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and Kingdom Hearts, recently reiterated the company’s blockchain ambitions while acknowledging lingering concerns about the new trend.

In a New Year’s letter published on Matsuda’s website, he emphasized that incorporating blockchain technology into games has “the potential to enable games to grow independently,” with each game having its own token economy. He further explained that token economy will motivate players to participate in interactive game content and naturally promote game diversity, which is key to self-sufficient game growth. Matsuda revealed that his company is considering issuing its own blockchain-based token in the future.

Matsuda also praised the NFT and metaverse as the quintessence of trends in 2021, adding that the company has since begun to allocate investment and R&D more aggressively in the areas of identified artificial intelligence, cloud and blockchain games.

Samsung announces NFT support for smart TVs in 2022

The spectacular growth of the NFT industry has also affected the electronic giant Samsung. The Korean company said in a January 3 announcement that it had announced several new products that Samsung plans to incorporate into its new line of smart TVs.

The NFT Aggregation Platform will include several features that allow customers to view their digital collections. It will be available on Samsung MicroLed, Neo QLED and The Frame models and will also allow users to purchase NFT directly from TVs.

As the name of the platform suggests, it will aggregate data from several marketplaces and provide information about works of art such as who created them and what blockchain network it uses. The giant thus wants to become the first company in the field of electronics to place the NFT in televisions.

The holding of Bitcoins by public companies increased sharply in 2021

The number of bitcoins held by private companies increased significantly in 2021, following the increase from the previous year.

In a January 3 tweet, on-chain analyst Willy Woo claimed that public companies holding “significant amounts of BTC gained market share from spot ETFs as a way of accessing BTC’s exposure to public stock markets.”

Since MicroStrategy's "Bitcoin for Corporations" conference in Feb 2021, public companies* holding significant BTC have gained market share from spot ETFs** as a way to access BTC exposure on public equity markets.

* MicroStrategy & public mining companies
** Mainly Grayscale pic.twitter.com/e18OEfgiEW

— Willy Woo (@woonomic) January 2, 2022

This has become more pronounced since the MicroStrategy “BTC for Corporations” conference, which took place on February 3 and 4, 2021. The aim of the online seminar was to explain the legal aspects for companies seeking to incorporate BTC into their business and reserves.

CBDC, Regulation

The Bank of Mexico plans to launch the CBDC by 2024

The Central Bank of Mexico has announced on Twitter that it plans to launch the digital currency of the central bank (CBDC) by 2024.

The announcement said that Banxico (Bank of Mexico) would have its own CBDC in circulation by 2024 because it considered “these technologies and state-of-the-art payment infrastructure to be high value options.”

El @Banxico information that in 2024 a digital internal market will be introduced in circulation, taking into account the sum of new technologies and the infrastructure of last generation generations as large value options for access to financial inclusion in the country.

– Gobierno de México (@GobiernoMX) December 30, 2021