Crypto Adoption Accelerates as Stripe Enter the Space

GB Market Commentary 13/10/2021

by Marcus Sotiriou

Regardless of uncertainty in global markets, Bitcoin has continued to show strength. Since the $39.7K bottom around a couple of weeks ago, any dips have been shallow and aggressively bought up. This morning, Bitcoin is seeing an expected retracement, however, after it rallied almost 50% in 2 weeks. The price is currently $54,600 approximately and there is a strong support level at $52,900.

Data from Coinshares (shown above) shows institutions are investing in crypto at these prices – there were inflows of $225 million last week from institutions, around 5% of which invested into Solana. Famous fund manager Bill Miller said recently in an interview “Bitcoin is a lot less risky at $43,000 than it was at $300. It’s now established, huge amounts of venture-capital money have gone into it, and all the big banks are getting involved.” Other institutions are advancing the mass adoption of cryptocurrency. For example, the payments giant Stripe, whose platform is being used by millions around the world, are building a bitcoin and crypto team. Also, the Israeli software company Wix has enabled its Software as a service (SaaS) e-commerce product to accept crypto-asset payments for 12 different cryptocurrencies. This company is one of the most widely used web development platforms with over 210 million users. In my opinion, these businesses getting into the space further proves that mainstream adoption is inevitable.

Many crypto businesses are putting their foot down with funding extra projects within the industry. Coinbase have announced they are launching their own NFT marketplace. Coinbase said they will make “minting, purchasing, showcasing, and discovering NFTs easier than ever,” and will “grow the creator community exponentially.” Binance have announced a $1 billion fund which is the biggest funding program of its kind in the whole cryptocurrency industry. They aim to not only accelerate adoption of Binance Smart Chain but also the whole blockchain ecosystem. Lastly, Ripple have announced a $44 million fund to support solar energy projects in the US as part of an environmental, social and governance (ESG) joint venture partnership with fintech provider Nelnet Renewable Energy. This new fund is expected to offset over 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide over 35 years, which is equal to the energy usage of 180,635 homes per year. Ripple also launched a $250 million fund to support NFT growth on XRP a couple weeks ago, making use of XRP’s incredibly low fees. In my opinion, Ripple’s extravagant spending shows their confidence regarding the result of the SEC lawsuit.

Despite bullish news recently regarding adoption, regulation continues to be a concern, particularly in Turkey, which has one of the largest cryptocurrency adoption rates.

One of the biggest crypto exchanges in Turkey, called Coinzo, has shut down with no reason given. This follows two other Turkish crypto exchanges, Thobex and Vebitcoin, who shut down earlier this year. This comes after Turkey’s president stated in September that Turkey is “at war” with cryptocurrency. It appears that Turkey may follow the US in terms of their approach to regulating the industry. In addition, Binance have shut down trading for the Yuan, which was one of the last workarounds for Chinese citizens to use crypto, after Beijing’s ban on all cryptocurrency transactions. This may explain why decentralised exchange tokens like DYDX and UNI are up around 5% today, as people are speculating increased usage of these platforms.