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alternative markets update march 2021

24/3/2021

Alternative Markets Update March 2021
In the current uncertainty in the markets, macroeconomic factors play an important role aside from Covid-19 and the vaccination efforts. Inflation is a major concern in 2021, even though it was very obvious in 2020 already. However, in 2020, it was completely overshadowed by Covid-19 and the tremendous surge in equity markets among others. Inflation is a concern around the world, caused by the severe interventions undertaken by central banks. In particular in the US, where the FED intervened with money printing on such a scale that it cannot be compared to any other economy. This was largely required, as conventional monetary policy was not enough, for example, lowering the interest rates to the area around 0%. Even quantitative easing could not solve the problem, even though the FED’s balance sheet ballooned. Figure 1 shows the FED’s balance sheet over the last five years. At the beginning of the crisis, the federal reserve was at around $4.3tn. In 2020, this increased by 76% to $7.3tn and is still rising in 2021. Currently, it is at almost $7.7tn. In comparison to 2008, during which the federal reserve increased by 151%, the balance sheet increased by “only” $1.3tn in absolute terms. It is important to note that during the last two decades, the FED’s balance never declined by more than 1% on an annual basis with one exception being 2018 with a decrease of 8%. Interest rates in the US have recovered quite spectacularly over the last months. Figure 2 shows the development of interest rates in major economies over the last few months. The US interest rates are higher than any other interest rate from the UK, Europe or Japan, both short- and long-term. The short-term interest rates have remained very stable, while the long-term rates have increased a lot, for example, the 10-y US treasury note is soon back at 2%.

alternative markets update march 2021 & NFT by paul veradittakit

14/3/2021

Alternative Markets Update March 2021
Cryptocurrencies surged enormously since the beginning of 2021. Towards end of February, this reversed strongly, and most coins lost between 20% to 35% within a few days. They remained fairly stable afterwards for almost two weeks. On 8th March 2021, Bitcoin (BTC) started surging again and since then, it surpassed its previous high and set a new record high of $61,711. As of the time of writing, BTC is trading at $60k. Figure 5 and 6 show the price developments of BTC and Ethereum (ETH) in 2021 so far. ETH was hit harder than BTC during this drawdown, as it fell by almost 35%. It traded above $2k before crashing and fell to below $1,400. Its recovery was also slower. While BTC has surpassed its previous high again, ETH is still quite far away, it is just surpassed the $1,850 mark again. BTC has managed to surpass the $1tn market cap again, while ETH remains at around $200bn in market cap. Nevertheless, ETH still outperforms BTC by a wide margin in 2021, which is largely due to very strong surge in the first few days of the year. Just before the surge, influential people, such as Winklevoss named ETH the most undervalued cryptocurrency by far at the time. Similar to what was written before for equities, the space is looking at an interesting time ahead. The only thing that can reasonably expected is volatility. There are many indicators for both a bullish and bearish market going forward. For BTC in particular, it has been widely accepted by institutional clients as a viable asset class. Furthermore, its seemingly unstoppable bull run that started since December 2020 has stopped, but it recovered quickly. Another indicator for the wide acceptance of BTC as storage of value is shown in Figure 7. Since its bull run started in last December, investors sold their gold position in ETFs and moved it to BTC trusts. Moreover, the space also benefits from similar promising outlooks with regards to the macroeconomic conditions currently.

What are NFTs?
Dorsey’s tweet represents a formative, valuable part of Twitter history, much like how archeological artifacts in museums might represent important, valuable parts of a historic society’s way of life. These items, whether physical or digital, have value. However, physical items, like artifacts and paintings, have established protocols for how they’re exchanged, such as auctions, brokers, and more. Digital items, like computerized art or Internet mementos, lack a comparable infrastructure for trading and selling items.
That’s where NFTs come in. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a type of cryptographic tool used to tokenize digital items (like art) to be traded on the blockchain. The token is “non-fungible,” which means that it cannot be replaced with an identical asset. Some financial assets, like fiat cash and Bitcoin, are fungible, because 1 dollar or 1 Bitcoin can always be replaced with 1 identical dollar or Bitcoin. Items like art, which have a unique value generated by the creator, are not fungible because there are no identical items that can replace them. When a user buys an NFT for a digital art piece, they can be completely confident that the item they are purchasing was created and signed by the original artist and is not a copy or fraud. Another user might be able to screenshot the piece and try to sell the art, but such a situation would be akin to selling an iPhone photo of the Mona Lisa. In essence, an NFT represents an “ownership” right to some kind of digital property.
Digital marketplaces for non-fungible assets (like domain name sellers, in-game stores, art, etc.) have existed for a long time, but most digital items lack an efficient means of exchange. Moving assets from one user to another often requires the use of third-party services, an escrow account, slow payment rails, and complex means of transfer. This inherent friction has significantly limited the potential of marketplaces for digital items, since everyday users struggle to exchange their goods.
NFTs standardize digital items in tokens that can be exchanged on various public blockchains like Ethereum, bring liquidity and cash flow from DeFi into marketplaces for digital items, and provide strong cryptographic guarantees around ownership, censorship, and fraud & plagiarism. This makes it easier than ever for everyday users to participate in marketplaces for digital items and “own” pieces of the Internet, without having the endure the friction and fraud risks of former approaches.

alternative markets update march 2021

alternative markets update march 2021 & NFT by paul veradittakit

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