First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Gains as Trading Volume Surges

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Bitcoin looked strong on Monday as the largest cryptocurrency by market value gained ground, rising just under 3% on the day. Bitcoin was trading around $30,600 at the time of writing. The rally comes as trading volumes have seen a surge. For centralized exchanges, the cumulative daily volume (based on a seven-day moving average) reached $16.24 billion from Oct. 16 to Oct. 22, according to a note from Matteo Greco, a research analyst at Fineqia. This is the third-highest trading volume recorded in the last 60 days, with the boost being primarily attributed to bitcoin trading, said Greco. Bitcoin’s total volume during this period was $6.4 billion, 68.4% more than the $3.8 billion recorded in the preceding week.

Hong Kong’s financial regulator has relaxed earlier guidance that limited the sale of spot products to professional investors, allowing intermediaries to offer services to a wider range of clients. “The policy is updated in light of the latest market developments and enquiries from the industry seeking to further expand retail access through intermediaries and to allow investors to directly deposit and withdraw virtual assets to/from intermediaries with appropriate safeguards,” the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) said in a circular on Friday. The change comes amid mounting interest in spot bitcoin exchange-traded-funds (ETFs). Recently, JPMorgan said the approval of spot bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. could happen within months, and probably before Jan. 10, the final deadline for the Ark 21Shares application. It also comes after the authority accused crypto exchange JPEX of operating without a license, making arrests, and saying it would publish details of licensed applicants. The catch here is that Hong Kong still wants to avoid overseas virtual-asset products because it considers them “complex” and therefore particularly risky.

The first coins ever floated as an experiment by the creator of the decentralized exchange Uniswap are now trading at more than $3 million per token (yes, that’s not a typo), with a supply of just 4.4 tokens. The original tokens were released by Uniswap creator Hayden Adams in 2019, back when the exchange was in its very initial stages. While the first-ever coins to be seeded and traded on the platform were never intended to hold any value, and a large part of the supply was destroyed soon afterwards, a group of crypto traders stumbled upon some of the surviving tokens earlier in this month. They were able to acquire all 4.4 tokens available to the market – and called it HayCoin (HAY). The rest of the undestroyed tokens were held in a wallet owned by Adams. The limited supply helped boost the price of the open-market coins to hundreds of thousands of dollars shortly after being traded, giving a market capitalization of under $10 million. Adams, however, burned his stash on Saturday, effectively destroying 99.99% of the total supply and sending the price skyrocketing.

– Omkar Godbole