BLOCKCHAIN BATTLES

BEHIND THE DIGITAL CURRENCY BULL RUN. Central bank policies around the world are a big part of what’s driving more widespread moves into crypto-currencies. That’s according to Yoni Assia, CEO of EToro, who spoke recently to Cointelegraph.com. 
EToro bills itself as the “world’s leading social trading and investing platform.” The company sports a popular app, complete with Alec Baldwin (“put the coffee down”) as a pitchman.
Assia also believes the economic effects of the COVID lockdowns on the American economy are having an impact. 
“I think there is a confluence of circumstances that’s leading for this all-time high, both in crypto, as well in the stock markets. We’re seeing unprecedented monetary and fiscal sort of reactions from federal governments all around the world leading to zero interest rates, and even negative interest rates in some places.”
Bitcoin (BTC) traded below $4,000 as recently as March 2020, when COVID was being used to shut down countries around the world. Since then, the “king” of cryptos has seen a run to as high as $60,000, with some fits and starts. Along the way, other prominent cryptos like Ethereum have also seen their valuations skyrocket, and even relatively obscure blockchain technologies have seen investment money pour in.
As the Trends Journal has consistently forewarned, COVID-accelerated inflationary monetary policy is a big factor driving events. As Assia put it:
“We’re seeing an unprecedented amount of money being printed by governments all around the world—some of them in a very unique and new concept of direct stimulus checks to consumers. That has definitely raised the biggest discussion in human history about the value of money—a discussion that started very passionately within the crypto space.”
Bitcoin is designed to have a maximum supply of just 21 million coins. Its ledger can’t be altered. And it can be exchanged directly and fractionally between holders and those who want it, although many people buy and sell Bitcoin and other cryptos via exchanges.
The Bitcoin network’s built-in scarcity is a concept that average investors can understand, said Assia. In the Cointelegraph interview, he also pointed out that crypto and stock purchases are easier to get into because of easy apps and online exchanges.
He said all those factors were behind the latest crypto bull run, noting there’s a “renewed interest that hasn’t been seen before since December 2017, so since crypto rally 1.0, we haven’t seen so much interest in cryptocurrency as we are seeing right now with crypto rally 2.0 upon us.”