Tom Lee’s Bullish Outlook & JPM Coin Bombshell | Hodler’s Digest

Don't call it a comeback, but this week crypto analytics website coinschedule revealed that ICOs are still a big deal. Not 2018 big, 2017 big. Their data indicates that in January almost 300 million was raised via ICOs, substantially less than in early 2018, but that's up from January 2017, when ICOs raised about 80 million this the data also shows at least 63 ICOs are active, and a further 18 are upcoming. Also this week, Maduro gets desperate, the quadriga debacle continues, Fundstrat's 2019 crypto outlook and the crypto community turned to derivatives to survive the crypto winter. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Molly Jane and this is your Hodler's Digest. Let's have a look at the latest market updates. In an unprecedented move for a major bank, JPMorgan Chase is launching its own crypto. The JPM coin will aim to increase settlement efficiency initially in three areas. The coin will help to speed up international settlements by major corporations, which currently take longer on Swift. In addition, treasury services and securities transactions stand to benefit if applications for JPMorgan expand. Only the bank's big institutional clients who have passed regulatory checks will be able to use the fixed value token backed by the bank. J.P. morgan plans to roll out their nascent crypto gradually. A tiny fraction of funds involved in the three areas would involve JPM Coin initially. This is a surprising move, to say the least. Last year, Jamie Dimon was infamous in the crypto community for calling Bitcoin a fraud. In a segment for CNBC host Andrew Ross, Sorkin questions whether other cryptos would survive if the JPM was successful.

Does this validate the world of other cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and give them more value over time? Or does this eventually crowd out the need and even the value proposition of a bitcoin and and therefore lower its value?

He skipped the part about why Satoshi created bitcoin in the first place, largely as a response to the 2008 financial crisis, of which JP Morgan played no small part. This is horribly surprising from a man who, during Occupy Wall street, was fielding calls from bank executives who were growing increasingly worried about the protests. Major crypto exchange Coinbase is about to launch a new feature for its software wallet. Users will be able to back up their private keys on cloud storage platforms such as Google Drive and iCloud. This backup feature is designed to provide customers an alternative way to access funds in case their private keys get lost or stolen. According to the announcement, private keys will be encrypted and stored on a cloud platform which will be accessible only with the wallet's password. According to the announcement, neither Coinbase nor the cloud service provider will have access to customers funds as the user is the only one to have the password to access them. Unlike other centralized exchanges which are in full control of customers funds, Coinbase fully aligns with the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency by allowing customers to store their funds in a decentralized wallet. That also comes at the price of a higher responsibility for users who are the sole custodians of their private keys. The backup feature was met with a fair share of criticism on social media as many users pointed out that cloud services are unsuitable for storing private keys as they prove to be vulnerable to hacks and security breaches. Among the critics of Coinbase's cloud backup feature is Kraken CEO Jesse Powell. He wrote, cloud storage, while convenient, is constantly compromised, especially with all the SIM porting 99% chance that people who would unwittingly use this do not have passwords strong enough to withstand professional cracking. Powell's words are reminiscent of the 2014 Great Faffening when a group of hackers sneak into Hollywood's icloud accounts, leading to the biggest leak of celebrity nudes in history. 2019 will bring some joy to the crypto world, according to Fundstrat Global Advisor, a US banked financial advisory firm. It's in the recently published 2019 outlook, Fundstrat's researchers said that while it is still too early to talk about mass adoption, a significant increase in crypto prices is expected for 2019. As Fundstrat's head analyst Tom Lee posted on Twitter, nine main factors will make Bitcoin rise again. First of all, the expected weakening of the US Dollar will have a positive influence on BTC prices. Researchers also expect an increase of institutional money coming into crypto and attracted by the development of investment vehicles and custody solutions in the space. On the blockchain side, the progress of scalability solutions will also have the effect of boosting investors confidence. However, some obstacles will still be there. For instance, the US SEC's hesitant approach towards crypto regulation is still playing a major role in slowing down the market's recovery. We talked to Tom Lee and asked him to give us more details on the report.

There's regulated infrastructure that's really being developed and I think the most important ones are, you know, the launch of Bakt, which is going to be sometime in 2019. We are starting to see chunks of new institutional money come in. And this is primarily through the endowments and pensions. We estimate that there probably are six endowments that have already invested in crypto. Out of a huge universe, you know, there's hundreds of endowments, but also it looks like we got the first pension funds too. One of the things that's kind of promising in 2019 is that Bitcoin is probably going to improve technically because bitcoin is now below its 200 day. But by August it looks like bitcoin is likely to cross back above its 200 day. And that's the opposite of 2018, where Bitcoin fell below its 200 day and then spent most of the year below.

The 200 day the strange case of the Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX and its locked cold wallets continues. This week it was revealed that the exchange supposedly transferred nearly $500,000 in Bitcoin to its cold wallets by accident. The mishap apparently incurred earlier this month adding further complications to the fate of the already embattled exchange. Founder of Quadriga Gerald Cotton died last year in India from complications to Crohn's disease. He was the only one apparently to have access to cold wallet keys that held 145 million million in crypto. Suspicions were raised when his death was reported an entire month after it happened, not to mention the fact that he filed a will just 12 days prior to his death. As this story has unfolded, numerous Internet sleuths have been busy. One Analyst has found five addresses apparently associated with QuadrigaCX transactions sent to the addresses are about the same amount of Bitcoin Quadriga inadvertently sent to its locked cold wallets. The Anna was posted on Reddit writing that he found the bitcoin that came either directly from a QuadrigaCX wallet or one transfer removed. The Redditor went on to express the limitations of his research at this point, due to the plausible deniability and lack of transparency, we have reached the extent of what we non law enforcement can 100% know for now. He then went on to say, with minimal understanding of the Bitcoin blockchain, though, there are some big leads we can follow but can only speculate on. Recently Ernst and Young was appointed as an independent third party. The Big Four audit company is monitoring the proceedings in the creditor protection case. They released a report with an update dealing the inadvertent transfer of 103 bitcoin to cold wallets and the ongoing efforts to retrieve funds. Ernst and Young secured various Quadriga electronic devices owned or used by Cotten, including four laptops, four cell phones and three fully encrypted USB keys. The devices are believed to be in a safety deposit box rented by Ernst and Young. Venezuela's crypto regulator sunacryp set forth regulation apparently already in effect regarding the requirements and procedures for the sending and receiving of remittances in crypto assets. There is a monthly limit and SuniCrypt can take up to 15% commission on transfers. The minimum fee for a transaction in crypto is about 28 cents. Despite widespread derision from ordinary Venezuelans as well as internationally, regulators also felt the need to set up a monthly limit on the Petro 10 Petros a month, which comes to around $600. 50 Petros or around 3,000 is the absolute limit, according to the regulator. As we mentioned last week, trading volumes on peer to peer platform local bitcoins surged to an all time high in the country. Hyperinflation, economic and political turmoil led Venezuelans trading nearly $7 million a week. This new taxation is yet another typically ill thought out project from the corrupt regime that brought you to Petro. For instance, in 2013, Maduro allegedly took a $35 million bribe from a Brazilian construction company. But one man who pays some of his business taxes in crypto back in the US is Overstock CEO Patrick M. Byrne. He recently proposed blockchain can make government super efficient and incapable of being drived. However, Byrne's use of language when talking about Venezuela somewhat hints of a couple. In an interview to MarketWatch, he said we could step into Venezuela with six laptops and create not only a functioning society, but arguably one with the most advanced government systems in the world. We could bring them to central bank on the laptop. Let's hope his libertarian instincts keep him on the path of the straight and decentralized. If you were alone on Valentine's Day, you might be looking out the window asking yourself questions like is she really going out with him? The same question could be asked about JP Morgan in crypto. So is this an unholy union fraught with betrayal and deceit, or will it be a love story for the ages? Let us know in the comments. And as always, remember to like subscribe and HODL Cointelegraph like subscribe and HODL. Sa.