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Sacramento Kings to Offer Bitcoin Salary Option to All Players

The Sacramento Kings are set to become the first major sports franchise to offer a bitcoin payment option to all players and staff, team owner Vivek Ranadivé said on Clubhouse on Monday. News of the announcement first circulated on Twitter.

The move would strengthen the Kings’ longstanding claim to being one of the most crypto-forward teams in professional sports. The California National Basketball Association team began selling everything from tickets to hot dogs for bitcoin in 2014, and in 2019 launched rewards token for fans.

It was unclear at press time how the Kings will facilitate bitcoin payments to players and staff. It partnered with BitPay for the 2014 offering.

National Football League player Russell Okung made headlines late last year for becoming the first NFL player to convert some of his $13 million salary into bitcoin. Okung used Zap’s Strike product to convert dollars to BTC.

When reached by email Tuesday night, fellow NBA team owner Mark Cuban scoffed at the Kings’ plan.

“Any player can convert their income to any crypto they choose,” Cuban shared. “Paying in BTC or any crypto doesn’t really do anything. I would rather keep my BTC.”

NFT Frenzy Shows Signs of Cooling but Don’t Call It a Market Crash

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have sold for millions and drawn the attention of mainstream publications from the New York Times to Vanity Fair.

Recently, however, the tokens’ prices and trading volumes have declined, raising questions on whether NFT frenzy can be sustained, according to the website tracking this corner of the cryptocurrency world.

Is an NFT market crash in the offing?

“It almost seems that some have been eagerly awaiting a market correction to finally prove that NFTs have just been in a bubble,” according to an April 6 blog post on Nonfungible.com.

• “The average price of NFTs spiked quite astoundingly in February, peaking at around $4,000 in mid-February. Since then, record sales continue to follow, averaging around $1,500.”
• The volume of NFT sales has also declined from a peak of 80,000 in early March to around 40,000 as of March 29. Volume tends to lag price, which could be explained by a growing interest of new buyers following record sales.
• The average price of the 3 most expensive NFT type on the market peaked around $95,951 last month before declining by about 53% in just a few weeks.
• However, NFT average values tend to fluctuate over time, according to data from Nonfungible.com going back to May 2020.

The slowdown could calm what some experts have described as an NFT frenzy and bring inflated values to more reasonable levels. After all, market stability is important for professional investors who view long-term potential for NFTs.

It’s not enough of a pullback to call it an NFT market crash, though, Nonfungible.com said in the post. For example, the current average price of an NFT is about 10 times what it was six months ago.

“The trend seems more to show a stabilization on a high plateau following a speculative peak,” according to the website. In other words, if there’s an NFT bubble, it hasn’t popped.

Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer at Arca, a cryptocurrency investment firm, wrote Tuesday in a newsletter he sees further growth coming to the NFT space.

“NFTs will expand beyond current use cases such as collectibles, art and gaming into more traditional use case,” wrote. “Companies and projects that facilitate the growth and trading of NFTs could be big winners.”

Chart shows weekly average price and volume for all NFTs. Source: Nonfungible.com

Bloomberg Foresees Bitcoin Rallying to $400K This Year

According to Bloomberg bitcoin (BTC) analysts, the price could climb as high as $400,000 this year, from about $56,000 now. The uber-bullish prediction is based on bitcoin’s performance during the 2017 and 2013 bull runs.

“Our graphic depicts bitcoin on similar ground as the roughly 55x gain in 2013 and 15x in 2017,” Bloomberg Crypto noted in a monthly report published this week. “To reach price extremes akin to those years in 2021, the crypto would approach $400,000, based on the regression since the 2011 high.”

Bitcoin price trend chart, from Bloomberg Crypto. Source: Bloomberg Crypto

While past performance is no guarantee of future results, history might rhyme. The latest bull run comes in the wake of last May’s reward halving on the Bitcoin blockchain – an automatic, every-four-years, 50% reduction in the pace of new issuance of units of the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin chalked up staggering gains in the 12 to 18 months following the previous reward halvings in November 2012 and July 2016.

“The year after a supply cut (halving) is what 2021 has in common with 2017 and 2013, along with subdued volatility,” the Bloomberg bitcoin analysts wrote, adding that the December 2017 peak represented a 50-fold rise from the average price observed in October 2015, when the 180-day volatility reached lifetime lows.

The long-term volatility gauge almost revisited the record low in September 2020, analysts noted. Bitcoin averaged roughly $11,000 that month.

Some observers fear a faster rise in bond yields could dilute the appeal of inflation hedges such as gold and bitcoin, pushing their prices lower.

However, Bloomberg analysts foresee bitcoin remaining relatively resilient in a rising yield environment.

“Rising real yields are a headwind for gold prices, but less so for bitcoin, still in its price-discovery stage,” analysts noted. “Gold is fighting a battle with bitcoin, which can earn 6%-8% in crypto savings accounts and is well on its way to becoming a global reserve asset in a digital world.”

The cryptocurrency fell by 20% in the last week of February after the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield rose to then-12-month highs above 1.5%. The yield has continued to rise since then and recently reached a 14-month high of 1.77%. The bitcoin market, meanwhile, has held firm.

Crypto Asset Flows Bounced Back Last Week, Ending Record $4.5B Quarterly Haul

Investment flows into cryptocurrency funds jumped fivefold last week to $106 million, rebounding from a five-month low, according to a new report from the digital-asset manager CoinShares.

The prior week had seen the fund flows dry up to about $21 million, the lowest since October, as sideways trading action in bitcoin (BTC) and other digital-asset markets failed to inspire buyers.

The latest week’s tally wrapped up a record quarter for crypto fund flows, at $4.5 billion, some 11% higher than in the final quarter of 2020, according to CoinShares.

That pace represented a slowdown from the prior quarter’s growth of 240%, potentially indicating waning interest or indecision among digital asset investors — or maybe just the difficulty of increasing off a bigger base. CoinShares cautioned against drawing conclusions.

• “It is not indicative of a slowing trend, as quarterly growth rates tend to be highly varied,” wrote CoinShares.
• Bitcoin products garnered the majority of last week’s inflows, around $83 million, versus about $20 million for Ethereum (ETH) products.
• “Assets under management (AUM) for both active and passive digital asset investment products are now at an all-time high of $59 billion.”
• Active investment managers (strategies that adjust portfolio weightings based on market conditions rather than following an index) make up a decreasing amount of total AUM, to 1.5% of total AUM during the first quarter versus 3.6% in Q4 2020.
• That shift might reflect increasing demand for “passive” investment vehicles like trusts and exchange-traded funds, which aren’t yet approved for trading in the U.S. but have garnered substantial interest in other countries, including Canada.

Chart shows weekly crypto asset fund flows. Source: CoinShares

Singapore’s Central Bank Warns Crypto ‘Certainly Not Suitable for Retail Investors’

Tharman Shanmugaratnam, chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said Monday that cryptocurrency is “certainly not suitable for retail investors” in response to a parliamentary question.

• Shanmugaratnam added that the crypto market in Singapore remains small when compared to shares and bonds. The combined peak daily trading volume of bitcoin (BTC, -2.32%) (BTC), ether (ETH, -5.13%) (ETH) and XRP (-14.11%) (XRP) in 2020 was only 2% of the daily trading volume of securities on Singapore Exchange (SGX).
• The statement came days after Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was caught up in a token scam on blockchain social media platform BitClout.
• A profile appeared to have been set up using the Prime Minister’s name and photo without his knowledge or permission.
• According to a screenshot shared by Loong on Facebook last week, there were 27.3955 tokens created for the account priced at $357.85 each.
• One user had purchased $4.77 worth.
• Loong urged Singaporeans to “remain vigilant when dealing with cryptocurrency platforms” warning that they “won’t be protected by the laws administered by MAS” when dealing with unregulated firms.

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