(An RBI booklet on payment systems issued on 25th Jan also showed that the central bank is exploring whether to issue a digital version of the rupee)
In the legislative order of business for the budget session of 17th Lok Sabha that commenced today, the Government has listed a bill providing for the banning of all private cryptocurrencies in India such as bitcoin, ether, ripple and others. The bill also provides for the creation of a legislative framework on an official digital currency.
An RBI booklet on payment systems issued on 25th Jan also showed that the central bank is exploring whether to issue a digital version of the rupee. “Private digital currencies have gained popularity in recent years,” the central bank booklet said. “In India, the regulators and governments have been sceptical about these currencies and are apprehensive about the associated risks.
Nevertheless, RBI is exploring the possibility as to whether there is a need for a digital version of fiat currency and, in case there is, how to operationalize it,” it noted. A previous RBI ban on the use of bank channels for payments associated with cryptocurrency issued in 2018 was overturned by the Supreme Court in March 2020 creating a vacuum in the regulation of cryptocurrency in India. Posted by Technical Mechzone
Led by losses in index heavyweight Reliance Industries, private lenders and select IT stocks, benchmark indices extended their losses to the fourth day on Wednesday. Weak global markets, a mixed set of Q3 earnings and selling by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) dented the domestic market mood in today’s session. Meanwhile, investors chose to book profits ahead of the Union Budget on Monday, February 1. The BSE barometer Sensex plunged 938 points to 47,410 while its NSE counterpart Nifty slipped below the 14,000 mark to end at 13,968, down 271 points.
The broader market trend was mixed with Nifty Midcap 100 and Nifty 500 indices down 1.58 per cent and 1.68 per cent, respectively, while Nifty Smallcap index added 0.15 per cent. The volatility also remained high ahead of the monthly F&O expiry on Thursday, with India VIX rising 4.93 per cent to 24.39 level. Here are the top factors behind the market crash today. Weak global cues
Asian equities slipped on Wednesday as investors looked to the Federal Reserve’s guidance on its monetary policy while futures for US tech shares jumped after strong earnings from Microsoft. European stocks are expected to slip a tad, with EuroStoxx 50 futures down 0.3 per cent and FTSE futures shedding 0.4 per cent. Global stocks are mostly treading water near record highs as US corporate earnings roll in. Meanwhile, new coronavirus variants that sparked fresh lockdowns and other restrictions are weighing on the market mood.
Frustration over vaccine distribution is also increasing. In a Facebook post last week, Italian Prime Minister described delays in consignments by Pfizer Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc as “unacceptable” while the UK’s health minister warned that vaccines may be less effective against new variants of the coronavirus. That apart, investors are also seeking more clarity on the timeline for President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan. “Delay in US paycheques and overall correction in global markets are driving indices lower. Liquidity is a critical factor right now and any fall in liquidity will lead to a sharp fall in markets,” said Abhimanyu Sofat, Head of Research at IIFL Securities. Budget blues
The Union Budget, set to be unveiled on February 1, is a highly anticipated affair as it comes on the heels of a pandemic that has altered India’s economic landscape. Amid this backdrop, investors have booked profits and are waiting on the sidelines. The government needs to raise resources to help increase spends, but analysts at Bernstein believe equity markets will consider any form of tax increases negative. Those at Credit Suisse, on the other hand, caution against the limited spending room the government has. “While the government appears to be willing to spend now, as it believes the growth multiplier would be higher in an economy without Covid-19 restrictions, Rs 4.2 trillion of extra spending may be difficult to execute. It may choose to be conservative on GDP growth assumptions, and also target a lower deficit, which would imply 13 per cent total expenditure growth. In this scenario, spending on residual heads could be 40% higher than in FY20, but the absolute increase a more reasonable Rs 2.5 trillion,” wrote Neelkanth Mishra, managing director, co-head of Asia Pacific Strategy and India equity strategist at Credit Suisse in a recent report co-authored with Abhay Khaitan and Prateek Singh.
Q3 earnings In the December quarter earnings season, the companies have posted a robust performance but this was mostly pencilled in by the market. However, a performance by Reliance Industries disappointed investors, leading to a massive fall in the company’s shares and subsequently the benchmark indices. Going ahead, analysts are concerned about lower margins. “We are lowering in expectations for forthcoming quarters on margin front as they are expected to peak out in the current quarter,” said Sofat. Valuation concerns The market is overvalued from the perspective of PE multiple and market-cap to GDP ratio. The overvaluation is more than 50 percentage points higher than the historical average. “Profit-booking is normal, particularly when valuations are high, like now,” said Vijay Kumar, adding that such profit-taking is healthy and desirable.
For the third consecutive session on Monday, Nifty50 formed a Long Bear Candle. “The three sessions consecutive decline was formed in the market after the time span of four months. Hence, this pattern could be in-line with the reversal formation in the market at the highs. The last swing high of 14,753 of January 21 could be a reversal high for the near-term,” said Nagaraj Shetti, Technical Research Analyst at HDFC Securities in a note on January 25. Nifty on the weekly chart, formed a Doji and high wave-type candlestick pattern back to back in the last two weeks, Jasani said, adding that this market action could be considered as a beginning of major profit booking in the market from the high.
Bitcoin’s price could exceed $50,000 over the longer term as the digital asset vies with gold for investment flows, according to cryptocurrency exchange Luno and brokerage OSL.
We’re talking about Bitcoin over the next three, five, 10 years slowly inching away at gold’s market capitalization,” Vijay Ayyar, head of Asia Pacific with crypto exchange Luno in Singapore, said in an online question and answer session with Bloomberg Tuesday. If that happens, “you are way over $50,000,” he said.
Bitcoin quadrupled last year, eventually reaching an all-time high of almost $42,000 in early January before sliding back by about $10,000. The rally split opinion, with some commentators pointing to increased interest from long-term investors and others citing speculative buying.
While Bitcoin has been popular for trading, “increasingly the new to market money that we are seeing is buying Bitcoin as a hedge to inflation and as digital gold,” said Matt Long, head of distribution and prime brokerage at digital-asset platform OSL in Hong Kong.
Predicting a price for Bitcoin is challenging but it’s likely to rise longer term as funds and family offices assign 0.5% or 1% of their portfolios to it, Long added.
Bitcoin, which has climbed 9% this year, was trading at about $31,500 as of 7 a.m. in London on Tuesday.
By the time Indian companies and individuals get the regulatory certainty they need to start buying bitcoin in larger sums, will the price be so high that they will only be able to afford a fraction of what they could buy today? In 2020, a number of public companies such as Square and MicroStrategy made headlines for buying large amounts of bitcoin to hold as a reserve asset.
No Indian company has done so yet. As bitcoin ownership grows in the US, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and even China, many Indians are watching and wondering when their turn will come. By the time Indian companies and individuals get the regulatory certainty they need to start buying bitcoin in larger sums, will the price be so high that they will only be able to afford a fraction of what they could buy today? And who will Indians buy it from? How much bitcoin do Indians own?
According to current estimates, roughly 5 million Indians own or have owned bitcoin or other crypto assets.
By extrapolating from the volumes on ZebPay and our partners in the Indian crypto industry, we can estimate the maximum amount in Indian wallets. Our best guess is that Indians own less than 1% of the world’s bitcoin.
We can say for sure that Americans own much more than 1% of the global supply. The same is true for the EU, Japan and China. There will soon be long-term haves and have-nots in bitcoin. India has a chance to join the haves, but time may be running out .
The usual argument against crypto is that it could be used for money laundering or other illegal activity.
Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, a global leader and adviser to several governments, reported that illicit activity accounts for only 1% of all bitcoin transactions. As the US Department of Treasury has confirmed, the dollar is still by far the criminal’s favourite.
The risk of some illicit activity has to be weighed against the larger risk of being left out of what may well become a blockchain economy in the coming decades. Recently, the World Economic Forum and blockchain company Chainlink published a report on integrating traditional infrastructure with blockchain technology.
By integrating blockchain into the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, India could provide crop insurance to millions of farmers with lower cost, better coordination, and greater transparency and accountability. This is just one example of the hundreds of crores of economic potential waiting to be unleashed if India can close the bitcoin gap and give its citizens access to blockchain and crypto with healthy regulation that ensures both safety and innovation. Can we have just blockchain without cryptocurrencies? Not really.
Crypto tokens are the units that allow the blockchain to function. By investing in a project’s crypto token, people power (often literally, by paying for the electricity) the innovation that the project is trying to achieve.
Across India today, hundreds of innovators are working on blockchain-based solutions to some of the nation’s most pressing problems. They could lower costs, reduce corruption, increase inclusion and create jobs. Nothing is more essentially Indian than innovation. By closing the bitcoin gap and creating healthy regulation that promotes innovation and protects citizens, India can gain a long-term economic advantage. Posted by Technical Mechzone
Following Bitcoin and Ethereum, the other leading cryptocurrencies based on the market cap are Tether ($24.8 billion), Polkadot ($16.1 billion), XRP ($12.4 billion), Cardano ($11.2 billion), Chainlink ($9.7 billion), Litecoin ($9.3 billion), Bitcoin Cash ($8.2 billion), and Binance Coin ($6.4 billion).
Cryptocurrency king Bitcoin’s closest rival Ethereum has scaled up from $414 price with a market cap of $46.8 billion to $1,323 and $151.4 billion in market cap – a 219 per cent increase in price and 223 per cent jump in valuation in the past three months, according to the data from CoinMarketCap.
Despite being the biggest alternative to Bitcoin, Ethereum doesn’t even come close to bitcoin’s craze and market cap. However, it has managed to create significant buzz around investors. It has drawn the attention of blockchain stakeholders for its use beyond just processing crypto transactions. Ethereum has so far been used for enabling the deployment of smart contracts and decentralized apps to be created and operated without any fraud or interference from third parties, unlike Bitcoin.
The growing popularity, rising valuation, a growing number of exchanges offering Ethereum, and more have been among the reasons for investors flocking to it. Ethereum’s market cap has jumped over 200 per cent in the past three months.
Source: CoinMarketCap In order to buy Ethereum, one can register on one of the crypto exchanges such as BuyUCoin, CoinDCX, Unocoin, and more. Completing KYC and/or anti-money laundering norms are mandatory for Indian jurisdiction. Along with this, the Aadhaar-linked mobile number is also necessary.
One can further secure his/her Ethereum wallet with Google’s 2-step verification following which bank account details have to be added to begin trading Ethereum in India with INR currency. As a user, one can set his/her monthly or weekly, or even daily targets and decide the markets you would want to trade. Be certain of how much risk you are willing to take on every trade and based on it, figure out your risk-reward ratio.
Apart from INR, one can also buy Ethereum with credit and debit cards, UPI, or bank transfers, etc.Following Bitcoin and Ethereum, the other eight leading cryptocurrencies in the top-10 list based on the market cap are Tether ($24.8 billion), Polkadot ($16.1 billion), XRP ($12.4 billion), Cardano ($11.2 billion), Chainlink ($9.7 billion), Litecoin ($9.3 billion), Bitcoin Cash ($8.2 billion), and Binance Coin ($6.4 billion), as per CoinMarketCap. Bitcoin, at the time of filing this report, was trading at $32,305 with a jaw-dropping market cap of $606 billion. Posted by Technical Mechzone
(Technical Mechzone) — A lot of investments have gone berserk lately, but none stand out quite like Bitcoin. Its price quadrupled in a matter of months to touch a record high of more than $41,900 in early January, propelling the cryptocurrency back into the limelight less than three years after a spectacular 75% crash. (It traded at around $36,400 on Jan. 19.)
Posted by Technical Mechzone
Experts are warning of a bubble building up in Bitcoins, especially considering the sudden spike in volatility and increasing institutional participation The latest global fund manager survey published by BofA Securities showed that buying Bitcoin is being viewed as the most “crowded trade”.
After Bitcoin’s massive rally in recent months, it is hardly surprising that this cryptocurrency is fast regaining its lost glory. From a low of $4,000 in mid-March last year, the price of the world’s first and most famous cryptocurrency has risen by nearly 900%.
Currently, Bitcoin is trading at $34,750. Long Bitcoin jumps to top with 36% of fund manager survey investors saying it is the most “crowded trade” dethroning “Long tech” for the first time since October 2019,” said the survey report. “Investors who have been tracking Bitcoins in the past would recollect that a similar rally in 2017 was followed by a crash. In 2017, Bitcoin rallied from the low of around $790 to a peak of $1,9041 in December. Interestingly, in the December 2017 BofA survey, Bitcoin topped the list of most crowded trades.
In 2018, it crashed by 74%. Even now, many experts have been warning of a bubble building up in Bitcoins, especially considering the sudden spike in volatility and increasing institutional participation. “Most cryptocurrencies are notoriously volatile, and the increase in institutional participation may be making things worse.
While demand would increase and volatility ease should corporations hold Bitcoin for business purposes, the opposite is true when institutions gain exposure for speculative purposes. Empirical evidence from other asset classes suggests that higher participation by institutional investors could increase volatility due to their more opportunistic investment approach,” Michael Bolliger, chief investment officer, global emerging markets, UBS Switzerland AG said in a report on 14 January.
Ultimately time will tell what holds true for Bitcoin investors but those in the bullish camp see further upside. For instance, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bitcoin has the potential to reach $146,000 in the long term as it competes with gold as an asset class. Posted by Technical Mechzone
Bitcoin sell-off a threat to major cryptocurrencie Bitcoin prices have rebounded slightly, following a sell-off from Friday’s high, where BTC/USD broke above $40,000, before facing a wall of resistance formed by the key psychological level of $42,000.
The three day sell-off resulted in a $10,000 depreciation in the digital currency, raising concern that the Bitcoin ‘bubble’ had officially burst. However, the pullback in prices is no comparison to the massive 949% surge from March 2020 low. Bitcoin TradingBitcoin Trading Meanwhile, fundamental factors appear to be influencing price action, with Bitcoin recently portraying the same characteristics as Gold, Silver and other safe-haven assets, which benefit from US Dollar weakness. On the regulatory front, additional drivers of price action have been attributed to warnings from both the New Zealand and UK regulators (FMA & FCA respectively) who have cautioned individuals against trading Bitcoin and other digital currencies.
BITCOIN (BTC/USD) TECHNICAL ANALYSIS After plunging approximately 11% in yesterday’s trading session, Bitcoin bulls were able to bounce off trendline support, pushing price action to a zone of resistance, formed by the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement (between November 2020 low and January 2021 high) at $35,866. The 20-period Moving Average (MA) continues to provide additional support, while the Relative Strength Index (RSI) now rests beneath 70, indicating that BTC/USD may be exiting overbought territory. Building Confidence in TradingBuilding Confidence in Trading What does it take to be a confident trader? . Get My Guide Bitcoin (BTC/USD) Daily Chart If bulls are able to break above current resistance, a bullish continuation could be probable, with the potential retest of $40,000. However, if bears are able to drive prices lower, a break below current support, could bring the 50% Fibonacci retracement into focus at $29,023 BITCOIN (BTC/USD) SENTIMENT Bitcoin (BTC/USD) Bulls Bite the Bullet How to Use IG Client Sentiment in Your TradingHow to Use IG Client Sentiment in Your Trading RECOMMENDED BY Technical Mechzone How to read client sentiment Get My Guide At the time of writing, retail trader data shows 84.05% of traders are net-long with the ratio of traders long to short at 5.27 to 1.
The number of traders net-long is 7.02% higher than yesterday and 16.14% higher from last week, while the number of traders net-short is 15.08% lower than yesterday and 20.86% lower from last week. We typically take a contrarian view to crowd sentiment, and the fact traders are net-long suggests Bitcoin prices may continue to fall. Traders are further net-long than yesterday and last week, and the combination of current sentiment and recent changes gives us a stronger Bitcoin-bearish contrarian trading bias. Posted by Technical Mechzone
जानिए क्या है बिटकॉइन करेंसी क्या है बिटकॉइन बिटकॉइन एक तरह की क्रिप्टोकरंसी है. ‘क्रिप्टो’ का मतलब होता है ‘गुप्त’. यह एक डिजिटल करंसी है, जो क्रिप्टोग्राफी के नियमों के आधार पर काम करती है. इसकी सबसे खास बात ये है डिजिटल होने की वजह से आप इसे छू नहीं सकते. बिटकॉइन की शुरुआत 2009 में हुई थी. बिटकॉइन की कीमत लगातार बढ़ रही है. यह एक तरह की डिजिटल करंसी है. जैसे भारत में रुपया, अमरीका में डॉलर, ब्रिटेन में पाउंड चलता है और ये फ़िज़िकल करेंसी होती हैं, जिसे आप देख सकते हैं, छू सकते हैं और नियमानुसार किसी भी स्थान या देश में इसका इस्तेमाल कर सकते हैं, लेकिन क्रिप्टो करेंसी की कहानी कुछ अलग है. दूसरी करेंसी की तरह इसे छापा नहीं जाता और यही वजह है कि इसे आभासी यानी वर्चुअल करेंसी कहा जाता है. कैसे काम करता है बिटकॉइन बिटकॉइन विशेषज्ञ बताते हैं कि बिटकॉइन वर्चुअल कॉइन हैं, जो अपनी कीमत बनाने और बढ़ाने के लिए डिजाइन किए गए हैं. इस तरह पैसों के लेन-देन के लिए आपकों बैंकों तक जाने की जरूरत नहीं है. अगर किसी भी व्यक्ति के पास बिटकॉइन है, तो इसकी कीमत और वैल्यू ठीक उसी तरह मानी जाएगी, जैसे ईटीएफ में कारोबार करते समय सोने की कीमत मानी जाती है. इस बिटकॉइन से आप ऑनलाइन शॉपिंग भी कर सकते हैं और इसे निवेश के रूप में भी संभाल कर रख सकते हैं. बता दें कि ये बिटकॉइन एक पर्सनल ई-वॉलेट से दूसरे पर्सनल ई-वॉलेट में ट्रांसफर भी किए जाते हैं. ये ई-वॉलेट्स आपका निजी डेटाबेस होते हैं, जिसे आप अपने कंप्यूटर, लैपटॉप, स्मार्टफोन, टैबलेट या किसी ई-क्लाउड पर स्टोर करते हैं. भारत में बैन है बिटकॉइन भारत में बिटकॉइन बैन है. भारत में बिटकॉइन ट्रेडिंग को अपराध माना गया है. बिटकॉइन में निवेश करने वाले अमीर लोग वे हैं, जो इस ऑनलाइन करंसी के जरिए अपनी पूंजी को तेजी से बढ़ाना चाहते हैं. भारत सरकार का कहना है कि उसके पास वर्चुअल करंसी का कोई डेटा नहीं है और इसलिए इसकी ट्रेडिंग में खतरा हो सकता है. रिजर्व बैंक ने भी बिटकॉइन पर सख्त हिदायत दी है. Posted by Technical Mechzone
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