Bitcoin, which has rocketed about 200% higher in 2019, soared as much as 9% on Monday to over $11,000 as weekend uncertainty between China and the United States rattled global stock markets.

Hyperbitcoinization is a state where Bitcoin becomes the world’s dominant form of money. Bitcoin is socially wired and can be adopted exponentially. As it gains traction it will seem to be an organic, self-organizing process. Bitcoin is in the infrastructure build-out phase and an early form of money. However, when it passes a critical “tipping point” Bitcoin adoption, use and price will skyrocket. With rapid global acceptance, the cost…

Corporate coins are coming, Walmart is looking into its own US dollar-backed digital currency, along the same lines of Facebook’s much hyped Libra project.

A patent application outlines a method for “generating one digital currency unit by tying the one digital currency unit to a regular currency; storing information of the one digital currency unit into a block of a blockchain; buying or paying the one digital currency unit”.

According to a patent filing submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Thursday, Walmart’s currency would serve low-income households by offering a “fee-free…

The last three or four decades have seen a remarkable evolution in the institutions that comprise the modern monetary system. The financial crisis of 2007-2009 is a wakeup call that we need a similar evolution in the analytical apparatus and theories that we use to understand that system. Three features of the new system are central. Most important, the intertwining of previously separate capital markets and money markets has produced a system with new dynamics as well as new vulnerabilities. The financial crisis revealed those vulnerabilities for all to see.

New York Fed President John Williams, among others, has made the case that the Fed has limited medicine in the medicine cabinet to aid the economy and that it’s better to administer the pills at the first signs of trouble rather than waiting for full-blown illness when there might not be enough medicine left to make a difference. Interest rates are very low by historical standards. For example, the benchmark rate was over 5 percent before the Fed started reducing it in 2007. Now the benchmark rate is half that amount, meaning there will be less stimulus this time around from cutting rates.

America enjoys a unique position of power over the world’s financial system thanks to the supremacy of the US dollar. But several of the nation’s adversaries appear to think they’ve found a clever way around this decades-old setup: cryptocurrency. This is because an interest rate cut reduces the yield on a currency. Further, the liquidity added to the economy via rate cuts often leads to inflation and loss of purchasing power of the currency. Put simply, falling interest rates mean fewer reasons to hold U.S. dollars, as pointed out by Alan Silbert, executive managing director at INX Trading Platform. Silbert believes the Fed will deliver more rate cuts in the near future.

The Fed has cut rates less than 12 months away from bitcoin’s mining reward halving – a process aimed at curbing inflation by reducing reward for mining on the blockchain by 50 percent every four years. Essentially, BTC’s monetary policy is on a preset path – its supply is halved every four years. The monetary policy divergence would widen further if the Fed embarks on a full-blown easing cycle, as anticipated by Silbert. That would further strengthen bitcoin’s appeal as store of value and may bolster the bull market.

Sources: Travis Kling, Perry G Mehrling

https://www.coursera.org/learn/money-banking

Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market has been spiraling downwards after a minor spike yesterday to 10.4K, leading to a continuation of the downwards pressure that Bitcoin and other major alts have incurred over the past several weeks.

Now, crypto analysts, traders and notable personalities are noting that there is a high probability that Bitcoin’s recent pullback extends significantly lower, but that in the long-term Bitcoin’s price may be bolstered by growing global economic weakness.

Over the past week, the global economy has flashed several warning signals that may tell investors that…

Car discusses Bitcoin’s Next Wave. Some institutions were not investing in cryptocurrencies before 2019, but with the UAT launch of Bakkt on Monday and Fidelity Digital Assets which now offers both custody and trade execution for bitcoin to institutional investors, who has also seen institutional interest deepen over the last couple of months. We can almost guarantee they will now.

A recent report from BNY Mellon quoted the following,

Short Term Bitcoin Daily Chart

Bitcoin price action appears likely to keep coiling in the short-term as it aims for a retest of its critical…

When Neil Armstrong planted his foot on the lunar surface five decades earlier, he made good on what President John F. Kennedy promised would be America’s “moonshot bet.” The “moonshot bet” has become a familiar term in business culture. Recently, Jeff Sprecher, the Chairman and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, in his fourth quarter earnings conference call, termed ICE’s investment in Bakkt “a bit of a moonshot bet.”

Q1 2019 -- January 1, 2019 to March 31, 2019

ICE First Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call & Webcast WEBCAST May 02 , 2019

Q2 2019 -- April 1, 2019 to June 30, 2019

ICE Second Quarter 2019 Earnings…

Car discusses the Bakkt Institutional Digital Asset Summit on July 18, the testing phase is launching Monday July 22, Bakkt plans to start user acceptance testing (UAT) for its Bitcoin futures products. The first two contracts to be listed by ICE Futures U.S. are "Bakkt Bitcoin (USD) Daily Futures" and "Bitcoin (USD) Monthly Futures".

In order to provide "regulated custody in the Bakkt Warehouse, Bakkt has filed with the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) for approval to form a limited-purpose trust company that would serve as a qualified custodian of bitcoin under applicable law."

…

Car breakdowns the Libra discussions from the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday (July 16.) Overall, Tuesday’s hearing was heavy on Facebook-related questions and light on crypto issues, indicating that the lawmakers were more worried about the company than the technology.

Recap: Facebook first announced Libra last month, when it introduced Libra Association, a Geneva-based consortium of big-name “founding members” including Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Stripe, Uber and Lyft etc…

Looking Forward: Facebook’s David Marcus is set to appear before the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday afternoon July 17th 2019 for Round 2.

Good Background To Know…

Car discusses Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin press conference on Monday about Bitcoin “could be misused by money launderers and terrorist financiers” and that it was a “national security issue.”

Then he gives you 5 good minutes on why you should still hold your Bitcoin after today.

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Car discusses bullish scenarios for Bitcoin in 2019. The halving is in 314 days. Bitcoin's inflation rate will be cut to 1.8%. Why is that important? It will be lower than central banks target of 2% inflation. In 2012 when Bitcoin halved the price was $12.50. In 2016 it was $650, up 50x over 4 years. If Bitcoin appreciates 50x again, at the 2020 halving the price will be $32,000 per Bitcoin. If it does it again for 2024 the price will be 1.6 million a coin.

In 2019 most Bitcoin OG’s report, the geopolitical risks that weighed on global economic growth in the second half of 2018 would likely carry through to 2019. That uncertainty would be a boom for Bitcoin prices, as institutional investor demand is expected to increase Bitcoin's effective and increasing hedging role.