Hello Uptrennd Community!
Welcome to This Week in Crypto!
"This Week in Crypto" is designed to save you time and energy.
We give you a quick glance at the most important news of the week and provide insights into
what to expect moving forwards in the crypto space,
along with how to optimally position yourself in the market.
First of all, congrats to our contest winner Mark Travers, who won himself $250 ofUptrennd 1UP tokens in the Bitcoin Price Prediction Contest. Every week, we run a contest to see who can guess the price of Bitcoin the following Sunday at 1am UTC time. Mark was the only one who swang for the fences and predicted a pump, so congrats to you Mark! Post your guess in the comments below on Uptrennd.com to be eligible to win this weeks contest of $250 of 1UP tokens.
You can scroll below this video and see the timestamps for when we’ll be talking about particular subjects, so you can choose your own adventure, or watch it all!
This week is a good one!
#1 @ 6:50 Samsung announces their flagship S10 will have built in cryptocurrency wallet supporting Ethereum and Bitcoin @
2+3) @10:07 Elon Musk and the founder of twitter, Jack Dorsey with endorsements for Cryptocurrency
#4 @13:30 Jack Dorsey, tweets about “tippin”, the bitcoin lightning network browser extension used for tipping bitcoin over twitter and simultaneously opens his own.
#5 @19:45 Fidelity takes the lightning torch, transactions take less than 2 seconds
#6 @21:55 MEW allows for kyc-free fiat withdrawal
#7 @24:40 Binance DEX is live in testing now, but with some shady news overshadowing them...
#8 @31:15 Price action and looking forwards
1) Samsung announces its flagship phone, the S10 will have abuilt-in cryptocurrency wallet.
- On average, Samsungs flagship phones sell 30- 50 million units.
- The Samsung S10 is still, in my opinion, a far better than storing on an exchange as you control the private keys. It is still not “the safest option” as it is a hot wallet, meaning it is connected to the internet. But it is a much better alternative than to trust an exchange with the custody. We saw what happened with QuadrigaCX recently where the CEO died and was the sole person who had the private keys. Over $140 million was lost because users were not the tangible owners of their own crypto.
- What implications does the S10 have on ledger and trezor:
* they are still by far the safest cyptocurrency storage option, as they are not connected to the internet.
2) Elon musk said that he sees Bitcoin as a “quite brilliant structure”.
“It [cryptocurrency] bypasses currency controls. … Paper money is going away. And crypto is a far better way to transfer values than a piece of paper, that’s for sure.”
There has been a big push for Elon Musk and to integrate cryptocurrency with Tesla, but he says because of how energy intensive it is, it isn’t the right move for Tesla at this time. Many people, including CZ ofBinance, have been trying to get Elon Musk to carry the Bitcoin Lightning Torch that we’ll talk about later, but he has yet to set up his own wallet to receive it.
3) Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey showed massive support for cryptocurrency stating that Bitcoin will likely gain mass adoption worldwide by becoming the Internet’s single native currency.
“I believe the internet will have a native currency and I don’t know if it is bitcoin. I think it [bitcoin] will be; given all the tests it has been through and the principles behind it, how it was created. It was something that was born on the internet, that was developed on the internet, that was tested on the internet…It is of the internet.”
4) Jack Dorsey additionally tweeted about “Tippin”, the Bitcoin Lightning Network browser extension created for tipping Bitcoin on twitter and simultaneously opened up his own up for tips.
Developed by Spanish coder Sergio Abril, Tippin adds a “lightning” button next to Twitter’s “retweet” button that, when clicked, brings up an address to which people can send Bitcoin microtransactions. The app has been around since December, but since its Chrome extension was released Monday, it’s been a highlight of conversation To work the app, users need only to set up a Lightning Network-enabled digital wallet, such as “Blue Wallet”
*** Okay hold on, what is the lightning network anyways? ****
The lightning network is an add-on upgrade to the Bitcoin Blockchain that will allow it to do more transactions per second, and for less expensive. For reference, the baseline bitcoin blockchain can perform seven transactions per second. Compared to Visa’s ten thousand transaction per second, it has a long way to go. Some people, like Roger Ver have thought to simply increase how many transactions the base layer of Bitcoin can perform by increasing the block size. However, many people are against this theory as it moves the mining and consensus power into the hands of only the big players like massive mining farms and other corporations. Big block sizes bring exponentially less opportunity for the everyman, while synonymously creating a greater centralization of power to “big money players”. Many people believe Bitcoin should be decentralized, and that is why they are against big block sizes.
To address this “big block size” concern, is the lightning network. The lightning network is a second layer solution that interacts with the base layer of the bitcoin blockchain. To oversimplify it, multiple transactions can happen between users off-chain and then the transactions are then re-appended at a later date. This allows for one on chain transaction to include potentially hundreds of second layer transactions. Transactions on the second layer lightning network can confirm in seconds as opposed to the ten minute block times of on-chain bitcoin transactions.
So without increasing block sizes, Lightning network provides a cheaper and faster way to send bitcoin.
5) Fidelity an institution with over seven trillion dollars under management becomes the first institution to take the lightning torch.
The lightning torch is a movement that was started by username @hodlnaut on twitter.
Hodlnaut started the torch by sending 100,000 satoshis ($3.40), the person who then recieved the torch added 10,000 satoshis, to make the total 110,000 satoshis, and passed it on to someone else.
Fidelity has gone on record in the past couple weeks stating that they will be rolling out a crypto custody solution for their clients. They gave crypto another huge vote of confidence being the 229th torchbearer and the first institution to hold it.
6) MEW allows for kyc-free fiat withdrawal
Most exchanges are currently plagued by mandatory KYC, where users are required to upload their Identification documents for access.
MyEtherWallet has partnered with a Swiss company calledBity to allow for withdrawals under $5,000
7)Binance DEX is live in testing mode now, but with some shady news overshadowing them…
** A decentralized exchange or DEX has no middleman, users interact with each other directly on the blockchain.
TheBinance DEX however has been set up as a hybrid of decentralization and centralization.
The “Binance Chain” that this DEX is running on is currently not open consensus. The only nodes that are allowed to verify on-chain transactions are chosen by binance.
That being said,users can set up witness nodes to be able to see and report any activity that may be deemed shady or fraudulent.
Binance states that in the future they do intend for open consensus where users can run validator nodes.
This weeks drama in Cryptoland:
Blocknet, a competitor DEX to Binance has released information on Binance having used their position to pull/extort detailed information from the Blocknet team, who is also building a DEX.
Blocknet submitted a standard form to be listed on Binance. In response, binance sent back another questionnaire form that had highly technical questions and were much more in-depth than would be needed for a listing. They had over four people from the binance team contributing to the question list that poked at every corner on how they were building their DEX and how they were going to be solving problems that presumably Binance was facing themselves while building their own DEX.
Some people of the opinion that binance was just doing due diligence for listing and that blocknet could choose to reveal or not reveal whatever information they wanted.
However, Binance is clearly in a strong position of power being by far the largest and most sought after exchange to be listed on. They essentially had Blocknet under their thumb, answer our questions, or don’t get listed. After Blocknet answered all of the over-the-top questions, Binance cut all communications with Blocknet.
I understand that binance is a for-profit business, and that outplaying and outsmarting competitors is crucial to success, but the way they leveraged their power to pull a bait and switch on blocknet borders borderline unethical
8) Price Action
In the last week we saw bitcoin rise from to $3,600 to $4,200, then flash crash back down to $3,750 within the hour.
On this rise, the sentiment had 100% shifted. When we were at $3,600, the large majority of people were calling for $2,400 per BTC and many calling for lower. After we wenton a couple day pump, which did NOT conclusively break the long term resistance line of 4,200-4,300, the majority of people were calling for $5,000 per BTC. Crowd mentality is far too easily swayed.
Then of course, once the price dumped. Crowd mentality instantly switched back to bearish... Critical thought and not following the crowd is clearly critical in the crypto space.
So what sparked this sudden pump?
Three things that I can tangibly see:
a) What wetouched on at the start of the episode: The weekly MACD indicator was looking extremely bullish, and once it crossed, a pump wasimminent.
b) Someone placed a 80,000 BTC long on futures trading to coincide with this MACD crossover.
c) Ethereum will undergo a network upgrade at block 7,280,000, estimated to occur on February 28th. Among many things, this upgrade will allow Ethereum to undergo more transactions per second and will also reduce the block rewards from 3ETH per block to 2ETH per block, known as “The Thirdening” The whole market tends to move in unison alongside ETH and BTC, so ETH could definitely be aiding drive the bullish charge.
I believe we have seen the bottom. I also believe that we have a slow but erratic climb ahead, full of high-volatility, "manipulation" and profit-taking.
The crypto space in the last year has undergone so much progress it's lucrative. The ceiling is much higher than 20k now.
If we stay within this channel, we'll remain bullish in the short term:
The market works in cycles, and Feb 1st marked the longest bear market in Bitcoin history. The changing of the tides in inevitable.
What do you think we will see first BTC at $3,000 or $5,000? Is crypto winter finally over? Let me know in the comments below and don’t forget to put in your guess for $250 of Uptrennd 1UP tokens.
See you next week!
Hello Uptrennd Commu..
Luke 
Romana Grubesic
Adam Snyder
