This article provides an overview of how Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Chainlink (LINK) have been doing over the past 24-hour period, covers recent news that might have affected their prices (or might do so in the future), and looks at interesting tweets about these cryptoassets from prominent members of the crypto community.

To give you a rough idea of how well the crypto markets are doing today, 15 out of the top 20 cryptoassets (by market cap) are currently in the green (against the dollar).

All market data used in this article was taken from CryptoCompare around 13:50 UTC on 9 May 2020.

Bitcoin (BTC)

Bitcoin is currently trading at $9,693, which means that it is down 2.04% in the past 24-hour period:

BTC-USD 24 Hour Chart on 9 May 2020.png

The past 7-day period has been quite interesting. Bitcoin started this period (on May 2) at $8,826 and currently (as of 12:49 UTC on May 9) is trading at $9,693; in other words, it is up 9.8% against USD.

And if we look at how Bitcoin has performed since the start of 2020, it is up an impressive 34.94% despite the fact that world is still in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yesterday, Thomas Lee, Co-Founder, Managing Partner and the Head of Research at independent research boutique Fundstrat Global Advisors, said that Bitcoin is the best-performing asset class in 2020:

Bitcoin’s current bull run seems to be powered partly by macro-economic factors, partly by speculation due to the upcoming Bitcoin halving (which is expected to occur around 02:39:24 UTC on May 12), and partly by the bullish comments about Bitcoin (as an inflation hedge) in the investment letter (“Market Outlook — Macro Perspective”) sent out earlier this month by Paul Tudor Jones II to clients of the $22 billion macro hedge fund “BVI Global Fund”, which is managed by his asset management firm Tudor Investment Corporation.

Bloomberg was the first to report (on May 7) that according to this investment letter, the offering memoranda for the Tudor BVI Global Fund had been updated to disclose that Tudor Investment Corporation “may trade Bitcoin futures” for the fund and that the “initial maximum exposure guideline for purchasing Bitcoin futures” has been set to “a low single digit exposure.”

Within a few hours of this news being reported, Bitcoin had surged past the $10,000 level for the first time since February 18. 

The fact that the Bitcoin has gone down slightly since then probably is due to some profit taking ahead of the halving since there are people who believe that the halving might be one of those “buy the rumor, sell the news” type events in the short term.

On-chain market intelligence startup Glassnode said on Thursday (May 7), approximately at the time that Bitcoin was trading around the $9,600 level, that “81% of the current #Bitcoin supply is in a state of profit”:

Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum is currently trading at $211.80, which means that it is up 0.5% in the past 24-hour period:

ETH-USD 24 Hour Chart on 9 May 2020.png

Ethereum, the second most valuable cryptoasset by market cap, has had a pretty good year so far, with the price up 64.3% (against USD) in the year-to-date period.

The two-day Ethereal Virtual Summit ended yesterday (May 8). One of the main sponsors for this event was ConsenSys, which published a blog post yesterday that offered six takeaways from this event:

  • “The COVID-19 economic shocks are waking people up to the potential of digital assets.”
  • “Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 is the most anticipated network development of 2020.”
  • “Ethereum 1.0 has big scaling solutions in order.”
  • “‘Enterprise Ethereum’ is just Ethereum with the privacy and compliance add-ons that enterprises need.”
  • “Devs are unlocking economic models that get people hooked. Dapp users are running businesses straight out of their Ethereum wallets.”
  • “Security is top of mind for DeFi.”

Chainlink (LINK)

Chainlink is currently trading at $4.15, which means that it is up 11.68% in the past 24-hour period:

LINK-USD 24 Hour Chart on 9 May 2020.png

In the year-to-date period, Chainlink, the 12th most valuable cryptoasset by market cap, has gone up an incredible 135.80% (against USD).

On May 5, Totle, the blockchain startup that “aggregates decentralized exchanges and synthetic asset providers into a suite of tools that makes it easy to access deep liquidity for DeFi assets at the best price”, announced that it was “making its DEX API available to smart contracts via Chainlink.”

Here is how this will work:

“Leveraging Chainlink’s external adapter technology, Totle’s aggregated data API will become accessible to Dapps through Chainlink oracles.

“Dapps can query Chainlink nodes to gain deep insights into the DEX space and use it in the execution of smart contracts.”

David Bleznak, Founder of Totle, had this to say:

“Chainlink’s role of securely sourcing and delivering data to smart contracts is crucial to the success of the DeFi ecosystem.

“A critical component of Chainlink’s process is being able to leverage high-quality data providers that have robust market coverage and accurate price calculations.

“We’re thrilled to integrate with Chainlink to make our high-quality DEX data readily available to market participants, further expanding the number of use cases possible in DeFi.”

Then, on May 6, MYKEY Lab, the startup behind the self-sovereign identity protocol KEYID and a non-custodial wallet that uses it, announced a collaboration with Chainlink. 

MYKEY said that “Chainlink provides MYKEY with secure and reliable connections to real-world data and legacy infrastructure”, which “allows the KEY ID self-sovereign identity protocol to be extended into various real-life scenarios based on the web of trust model, such as retail payments, electronic signatures, and biometrics.” 

Also, Chainlink enables MYKEY to “service as a data provider to smart contracts needing Decentralized Identity (DID) data solutions.”

Featured Image by “WorldSpectrum” via Pixabay.com