The co-founder of Stone Ridge explains his fascination with Bitcoin and why his company bought $162 million worth of it.

In brief

• Stone Ridge co-founder Robby Gutmann explained why the company recently bought 10,000 Bitcoin as part of its treasury reserve strategy.
• He also touched on why people are fascinated with Bitcoin, describing it as “flavors of crypto nerd.”
• Gutmann listed three observable trends, suggesting that investments in Bitcoin are poised to grow even further.

In mid-October, Stone Ridge Holdings Group, an asset management company with $10 billion worth of assets under its belt, revealed that it had bought 10,000 Bitcoin (BTC), currently worth over $162 million, as part of its treasury reserve strategy.

During The Breakdown podcast today, Stone Ridge co-founder Robby Gutmann shed some light on factors that led to this decision.

The fragility of fiat systems

Speaking about Stone Ridge’s long journey to Bitcoin, he started on a personal level. According to Gutmann, there are “three flavors of crypto nerd”—and he can relate to all of them.

Read more: Decrypt

Bitcoin’s seduction of mainstream investors continues as a new report suggests it’s a better performing asset than stocks and gold.

In brief

• Bitcoin pushes past $16000 as it outperforms stocks and gold.
• Ethereum suffered a brief hard fork but prices continued to climb.
• Stock Markets had a mixed day as US fails to halt rising COVID cases.

It was another strong day on the crypto markets as research highlighted Bitcoin’s market-beating performance when compared to traditional stocks and shares.

According to a note from analytics firm Messari, Bitcoin in comparison to real estate, stocks, gold and bonds delivers a higher rate of return over a four year period.

Bitcoin’s low correlation with other asset classes has made it an increasingly attractive asset to offset any losses seen in other parts of investor’s portfolios, said Mira Christanto, the Messari report author.

The report noted renewed interest from sovereign wealth and pension funds, concluding, “they have realized this opportunity and have begun new allocation strategies to maximize long-term value.”

The news helped crypto global market cap record its fourth straight day of growth. Prices ticked up 2.58% over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin took a healthy jump up with a 4.35% rise, thanks to its surge into the $16,000 at the time of writing.

Read more: Decrypt

From institutional investors, big endorsements and the Bitcoin halving, here are 5 key reasons for Bitcoin’s rising price.

In brief

• Bitcoin’s price has been increasing for months, and there are several reasons behind the surge.
• High-profile figures and companies have expressed support for Bitcoin.
• Other reasons include Bitcoin halving, which also has a direct impact on Bitcoin’s price.

The price of Bitcoin is above $16,000, having broken through for the first time in three years. Its current price of $16,081 represents a 28% increase in value over the last three months.

It’s been a rapid rise since March, when Bitcoin drastically fell to

its lowest point of the year, touching as low as $4,000. The coin has continued to bounce back and has fought its way above the $10,000 price point, going on to make new recent highs—and hit values not seen since Bitcoin’s epic 2017 bull run. Yet this time, an entirely different set of circumstances are accelerating Bitcoin’s price to new highs.

Why is Bitcoin going up?

There are a multitude of reasons for Bitcoin’s price rise. Investment from large institutions like MicroStrategy have led the way, as have major companies like Grayscale managing Bitcoin for their own clients. What’s more, it’s now easier to buy Bitcoin since PayPal began letting people buy and sell Bitcoin.

Bitcoin’s total supply has also halved, and this has also played a role in Bitcoin’s price increase. Each of these individual factors have combined to generate an impressive bull run for Bitcoin during the second half of 2020. But it all began with MicroStrategy.

Read more: Decrypt

Bitcoin price is well on its ways to touching its previous all-time high of $20,000, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken claimed in its latest Bitcoin Volatility Report (for October).

Kraken released it’s August Bitcoin Volatility Report 2 months ago. Then the cryptocurrency exchange sounded supremely confident about BTC registering higher highs as the year ends. In its October version of the same report, Kraken has maintained its bullish stance. November will see bitcoin log much higher price and volatility rallies. Also, BTC might as well be on the way to reclaiming the previous all-time high of $20,000.

Bitcoin Price And Volatility To Climb In November

If Kraken’s August Bitcoin Volatility Report is anything to go by, BTC has already left behind September’s crash in the rearview mirror and is on its way to register more ‘incremental volatility’.

The exchange pointed out that November has stood out to be the ‘third-best yielding month’ for bitcoin, on average. BTC has also showcased its best price-performance this month historically.

When it comes to monthly volatility, with 85 percent ‘average annualized volatility’, November stands fourth.

Kraken says that bitcoin will mirror its past November trend with regards to price and volatility this month too. But there’s a catch.

BTC dropped in the ‘suppressed volatility pocket’ on July 24 when the volatility figure plummetted to 23 percent. To keep the 8-year trend of November’s uptrend intact, bitcoin must revert back to its 315-day volatility moving average. 99 days have passed since BTC made the dip into the 15 – 30% volatility range. And the cryptocurrency risks dropping back in the pit again.

If bitcoin doesn’t galvanize back into action and volatility remains below 30 percent, the 8-year long 315-day moving average trend will not follow. But if BTC maintains its volatility numbers well above 30 percent, the cryptocurrency stands to clock as high as 66 percent wrt volatility, which in turn should boost prices too.

Read more: Crypto Potato

Is Bitcoin on its way to a six-digit price tag? At least the creator of the stock-to-flow model believes so, as the asset’s 2020 performance has resembled the events after the previous halving.

Bitcoin is following the plan like “clockwork” after the third halving, said the creator of the popular stock-to-flow model.

He also reaffirmed his belief that the S2FX model is correct, and BTC will trade between $100,000 and $288,000 per coin by the end of 2021.

BTC Moving Like Clockwork

The stock-to-flow model and its variations are among the most popular BTC price prediction tools within the cryptocurrency community. It was created by an analyst going by the Twitter handle PlanB.

The first version, namely the original stock-to-flow ratio, described the stock as the size of existing reserves (or stockpiles) and the flow – the annual supply of bitcoins on the market.

The upgrade that followed was more complex and comprehensive. Apart from including the “stock” and “flow,” it also considered the different phases that BTC has gone through since its inception in 2019. Those include the initial “proof-of-concept,” the “payment” phase, “e-gold,” the latest one – “financial asset.”

The Bitcoin halving is arguably the most vital part of the models because it cuts in half the creation of new coins; hence, it decreases the “flow.” As such, PlanB and the S2F’s supporters follow BTC’s price performance after each halving.

In a recent tweet, the analyst asserted that Bitcoin moves like “clockwork” after the third halving in May.

Read more: Crypto Potato

• A picture expeditor, Peninsula Visa partners with Coinbase Commerce to enable payment with Bitcoin.
• The company becomes the first to enable such a payment service for US passports.

It’s no longer news that digital currencies are holding ground as a viable means of payment in the globe today. In recent months, Cryptopolitan reported about several merchants and companies that announced support for cryptocurrency payment. Today, Coinbase is enabling the public an option to make Bitcoin payments for the United States passport services via a partnership. This is reportedly the first time people are allowed to pay for such services using Bitcoin (BTC).

Peninsula Visa now support Bitcoin payment

The Bitcoin payment is supported by Peninsula Visa following its Coinbase Commerce, the digital currency payment arm of Coinbase exchange. Peninsula Visa is a passport expediting company based in Silicon Valley. Per the announcement, the Bitcoin payments will also be secured by the Coinbase processor. Evan James, the COO of Peninsula Visa, commented that the company is the first to support such payment options for US passport services in the nation.

“Never before has anyone been able to pay for a US passport using a digital currency,” James said. Meanwhile, Bitcoin payments are currently supported for four passport services, with many slated to be rolled out by next year. Cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, have been gaining more adoption in the Travel industry.

Read more: Cryptopolitan

The American election is over, if not yet finally decided. But bitcoin (BTC) barely seemed to notice. It finished Election Day pretty much where it began — with within a few percent of USD 13,500.

That’s because basic economic reality remains unchanged.

Flagrant money-printing, once begun, is a tough habit to break. And debt has become so astronomical in size, the merest whiff of higher interest expense threatens to push vast swaths of the economy into bankruptcy.

That virtually guarantees near-zero interest rates will continue indefinitely.

This reality is causing a broad shift in sentiment toward crypto assets

Just a couple years ago, for example, investment market sentiment was overwhelmingly bearish. Talking heads on Bloomberg and CNBC routinely labelled crypto “the biggest bubble of all time.”

• Warren Buffett famously said bitcoin was “rat poison squared.”
• JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon declared bitcoin a “fraud,” saying: “If you’re stupid enough to buy it, you’ll pay the price for it one day.”

Fast forward to the present, and how dramatically things have changed. Now, JPMorgan analysts say BTC has “significant upside,” as it competes with gold as an alternative reserve asset — especially among millennials.

Their conclusion:

“Even a modest crowding out of gold as an alternative currency over the longer term would imply doubling or tripling of the bitcoin price from here.”

Read more: Crypto News

Bitcoin’s price has broken $15,000—breaking highs not seen since the 2017 bull run. But what’s propelling this momentum?

In brief

• Bitcoin’s price continues to rise, and institutional investment is a major reason for this increase.
• The world’s most popular stablecoin Tether has also played a significant role.
• Bitcoin is now closer to $20,000 than $10,000.

Institutional investment is one of the biggest reasons why Bitcoin’s price keeps going up. Bitcoin has added nearly $5,000 to its price in the last month, has shot up $2,000 in the last two days and is currently at around $15,600—quite the ride.

In August and September of this year, MicroStrategy invested a total of $425 million in Bitcoin. One month later, Square followed suit, investing $50 million in the famed cryptocurrency. Also in October, PayPal announced features that allowed users to trade in Bitcoin, as well as Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. All of these high profile moves have worked wonders for Bitcoin’s explosive growth.

“The recent flurry of institutional activity—particularly the involvement of a household brand like PayPal—has undisputedly impacted the price of Bitcoin as mainstream interest and trust in this form of investment often increases following such news,”

Antoni Trenchev, managing partner of Nexo, told Decrypt.

This wave of mainstream interest, dubbed by Jason Deane, Bitcoin analyst at Quantum Economics, as the “MicroStrategy Effect” has provided several highlight moments in recent months.

Read more: Decrypt