O C T O B E R 2 0 2 0 - I S S U E 1 4 OCTOBER OVERVIEW IN THE NEWS Paypal: The Modernization of Products WHAT'S INSIDE THIS ISSUE: Debatably, the most influential news in the space through the month of October was Paypal announcing their new service - Paypal: The regarding cryptocurrencies. On October 21, 2020, the Modernization of Products company released, “a new service enabling its customers to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrency directly from their Paypal - Silvergate: The Leading account, and signaled its plans to significantly increase Bank in Cryptocurrencies cryptocurrency’s utility by making it available as a funding source for purchases at its 26 million merchants worldwide.” In ECI’s June 2020 Report, we predicted “that Paypal will help - $BTC + $ETH Analysis to support adoption with older generations,” through the launch of this product. Now that the product has been formally And More... announced, our team continues to predict that Paypal will be a significant catalyst for cryptocurrency adoption. Paypal has clearly aligned their objective with this prediction, “PayPal has increased its focus and resources on exploring the next generation of digital financial services infrastructure and enhancements to digital commerce through an internal blockchain-focused research team.” Along with Paypal, a number of known companies within the financial industry have made significant investments into cryptocurrencies service or even cryptocurrencies themselves. Among them, Square invested approximately 1% of their total assets into Bitcoin directly. “Corporations are often trend-following and we can expect a number of other corporations to follow the lead of Square and Microstrategy, as the returns of the assets continue to impress,” according to Lanre Ige, a researcher at 21Shares. These moves are indications of a large shift towards the interconnectedness of the global financial system and digital currencies, ECI predicts this shift will continue to occur slowly overtime. Sources: NewsRoom | Cointelegraph Silvergate: The Leading Bank in Cypto Currencies Silvergate, one of the first banks to physically allow cryptocurrency companies to open accounts, has realized significant growth due to their first mover advantage. Over the past two years, the bank has continued to witness strong deposit, customer, revenue, and operational growth. This can be attributed, as Silvergate executives credited; to “strong price appreciation, the adoption of bitcoin as an investable asset class by corporate treasuries, and significant new funding from venture capital firms.” During this most recent quarter, Silvergate realized an additional $586 million in cryptocurrency deposits, pushing their total cryptocurrency assets to $2.1 billion. The bank has also witnessed a steady increase in customers, which has led to a large number of prospective customers sitting in their pipeline or onboarding processes. Alan Lane, the current CEO of Silveragate; continued to provide optimistic guidance and reiterated their first mover success following the third quarter results. Specifically, he mentioned that Silvergate has “an ample runway for further growth given the numerous opportunities to expand.” These opportunities include, gaining new institutional customers, or building out one of their Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN) products. The SEN and SEN Leverage are attractive cryptocurrency products for traditional institutional investors, and provide a significant opportunity of growth for the bank. ECI believes it is necessary to publish news regarding such an institution due to its piece in the overall puzzle of cryptocurrency adoption. Since the new Comptroller of the Currency, Brian Brooks, announced that banks would be allowed to provide a variety of services for assets issued on the blockchain, ECI knew that this space was soon to be crowded. As Silvergate has determined, due to the seismic shifts in legal framework and cryptocurrency adoption; there is an opportunity to “generate actual revenue from dealing with assets issued on a blockchain.” Competition is going to enter this space fast and from every direction, as already witnessed with Paypal. We at ECI view this as a positive underlying indicator regarding the general sentiment towards the cryptocurrency industry. Normalizing banks and financial institutions involvement in the space, normalizing consumers owning and or transacting with virtual currencies, and normalizing the concept and technology behind the currencies themselves. These variables of adoption are only going to continue to appreciate the value of certain currencies that prove their utility valuable overtime, and ECI will continue to locate and invest in these technologies at an early stage. Sources: Forbes| Coin Desk THE MARKET Bitcoin opened October at $10,795 and closed at $13,780 reaching the $13.8k and $14k levels not witnessed since Q3 2019. This month’s close comes within $100 of the highest monthly close in Bitcoin history. There is minimal resistance above $13.8k - $14k; a breakout above this level likely results in an extended continuation of the current trend. Bitcoin’s network to value transaction ratio (NVT) is a significant leading metric to look at as the cryptocurrency sits under historically strong resistance and takes aim at its previous all time highs. NVT assesses the entire value of the network against the value of transactions facilitated through it and is an approximate valuation for Bitcoin with organic investor velocity on the blockchain. “A high NVT means the value of the network is higher than the value that is transmitted through it.” The chart below shows Bitcoin’s historical NVT value since 2011and highlights its break to new all time highs that were observed on October 27. Mining difficulty reached 20 T, another new all time high, after a pair of adjustments of -.09% on October 4 and 3.62% on October 17. Network hash topped 146m TH/s before taking a steep dive in the later half of the month, as shown by the chart below. This has set the network up to experience a negative difficulty adjustment approximate to that of the COVID adjustment in March. The steep drop in hash can be attributed to miners in Sichuan, China, who have halted operations as the rain season ends in the province. Chinese miners move to the region to mine Bitcoin during the rain season to benefit from cheap hydro-electric energy, however, when the rain season concludes miners will leave the province and halt operation. The University of Cambridge’s Bitcoin electricity consumption index suggests Sichuan made up approximately 18.5% of the network’s global hash power; thus the steep decline in hash power as Sichuan miners vacate the network. This decline in difficulty offers a better entry point for new miners as those in the Sichuan region relocate to other provinces around China to continue operations, which could lead to a quick rebound in hash. Bitcoin’s ascent from $11.9k to $12.7k and from $13k to $13.7k came on days when the S&P 500 dropped, in some cases as much as 200 bps. Bitcoin and traditional markets have moved together throughout much of the year since the effects of COVID have gripped financial markets. However, October has brought signs of a decoupling. This month the S&P 500 lost approximately 3.2% while BTC gained 27.65%. The chart below shows the start of a decoupling between BTCUSD and the S&P 500. Correlation between Bitcoin and traditional markets will become an increasingly more relevant topic as the U.S. election quickly approaches and uncertainty surrounding a second wave of COVID lingers. Moreover, the day of the U.S. election marks the one hundredth consecutive day Bitcoin will have traded above the $10,000, which is a historically important milestone. Data from CoinMetrics highlights a historical trend in BTC value after trading above certain price points for a full one hundred days. In the past, it took BTC 122 days to reach $100 after trading above $10 for 100 days and just 2 days to reach $1,000 after trading above $100 for one hundred days; this trend continued again when BTC reached $10,000 150 days after trading above $1,000 for one hundred consecutive days. The relationship between Bitcoin and Ethereum showed irregularities this month as ETH failed to crack resistance at $400 and closed the month at $387 (7.3% gain). ETH has led Bitcoin price action through most of this year and has dictated the pace for the market as a whole, however, the dynamic flipped in October. A slowdown in capital flowing into DeFi hints at this shift in dynamic with fundamentals still looking strong for the ETH network. The launch of ETH2.0’s Phase 0 is slated for November which is anticipated to boost network efficiencies and allow users with >32 ETH to stake their coins. Despite Phase 0 not including shard chains and state execution which will provide the network with the greatest boost in functional efficiencies, the event is a net positive for the network. REFERENCES TO READ MORE ABOUT THE PRECEDING TOPICS AND TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED IN CRYPTO THIS MONTH, PLEASE REFER TO FOLLOWING LINKS AS RESOURCES Follow Up on October News Research Paypal: The Modernization of Products https://cointelegraph.com/news/paypal-s-crypto-integration-means-bitcoin-could-triple-its-user-base https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2020-10-21-PayPal-Launches-New-Service-Enabling-Users-to-Buy-Hold-and-Sell- Cryptocurrency Silvergate: The Leading Bank in Cryptocurrencies https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2020/10/26/silvergate-breaks-record-with-586-million-in-