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Table of contents
- Solana network activity surpasses Ethereum amid memecoin frenzy
- World’s largest pension fund considers Bitcoin investment
- MicroStrategy buys additional Bitcoin, now holds over 1% of total supply
- Judge declares Australian computer scientist is not Satoshi Nakamoto
- Standard Chartered updates end-of-year Bitcoin prediction to USD $150K
Solana network activity surpasses Ethereum amid memecoin frenzy
Memecoins have driven the price of Solana back over AUD $300 for the first time in years – but co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko is none too pleased.
Let’s rattle off some monthly (30d) numbers here:
- Bonk (up 90%+)
- Dogwifhat (up 600%+)
The big winner of all this (well, aside from the meme coins) is Solana. The lightning-fast blockchain has laid its claim to being the next-in-line for DeFi behind Ethereum, and its prevalence as a building block for meme coins shows its popularity among the community.
The network’s native token, SOL, has gained 74% itself over the past month and even eclipsed the USD $200 milestone, before settling a little under. Although the coin is a little off its 2021 high, this growth represents an outstanding recovery after the project was staring into the depths following the FTX collapse.
And now, the DeFi community has started to pay attention. On consecutive days, Solana’s daily transaction volume exceeded Ethereum’s, with users spending upwards of USD $3B. The surge was largely driven by memecoin mania, as investors bought and sold large sums of tokens involving dogs, dogs with hats and so on.
Despite it seeming like good news for Solana, there were a couple of downsides to the frenzy. The network couldn’t handle the increased capacity as well as predicted, with transaction failures spiking to nearly 30-40%. Additionally, the Solana blockchain’s co-founder, Anatoly Yakovenko, was not impressed with the memecoin absurdity. Like a stern owner talking to their very own Shiba Inu, he tweeted out against the millions of dollars being pumped into speculative meme coin pre-sales.
But no matter whether you love or hate them, Solana’s performance when (or if) the steam runs out of memecoins will make for an intriguing watch.
World’s largest pension fund considers Bitcoin investment
The trillion-dollar fund plans to research Bitcoin, among other alternative assets, as potential diversification methods.
Nobody wants to work their whole life, only to retire and find their bank account in disarray. This is something the Japanese Government takes seriously – which is why they are responsible for the world’s biggest pension fund. The Government Pension Fund (GPIF) is worth 225 trillion yen, which is equivalent to AUD $2.3 trillion, or a one-bedroom house in Sydney.
Amid evolving social, economic and technological times, the Japanese Government has turned its attention to modernising the pension fund. At the moment, the fund primarily comprises investments in stocks and bonds. But in the interest of diversification, the government is embarking on a five-year research plan to uncover if “illiquid assets” will be suitable for the long-term risk profile.
While Bitcoin is the talking point of the government’s announcement, the study will also look into several other potential additions, including precious metals, other cryptocurrencies and farmland. An interesting crossover may occur if the GPIF decides to invest in gold or silver – but uses tokenised assets to do so.
It’s worth noting that the government hasn’t made any commitments to investing in Bitcoin. In terms of the crypto market, five years is a relative lifetime – the crypto market is bound to look vastly different by then. But either way, the fact it’s even being considered by a government shows that institutional interest is rising across the board.
MicroStrategy buys additional Bitcoin, now holds over 1% of total supply
The tech company, owned by Michael Saylor, now holds over 200K BTC worth hundreds of billions.
Don’t you wish you had someone believe in you the way Michael Saylor does Bitcoin? One could fill a novel with adoring Saylor quotes referencing BTC. Here’s just a couple from his latest public appearance:
“The highest best use of capital is to buy Bitcoin and hold the Bitcoin. Bitcoin is going to appreciate in value faster than the S&P index. It’s going to appreciate in value faster than commercial real estate…There’s no point in selling the winner to buy the losers…Bitcoin is the winner.”
And then there’s this 2020 classic.
The long-standing commitment to Bitcoin has intensified over the past month. Just a week after MicroStrategy sold millions worth of convertible notes to buy BTC…they did the exact same thing. This time, MSI raised USD $604M worth of capital from shareholders to purchase Bitcoin at an average price of USD $67.3K.
Put it all together, and MicroStrategy now owns 214,246 Bitcoin – more than 1% of the total BTC that can ever be in existence. No, that is not a typo. The overall value of the company’s BTC holdings is a whopping USD $14.6B. The next biggest corporate holder, Galaxy Digital, is barely a speck on MSI’s radar, owning just over USD $1B worth of BTC.
Judge declares Australian computer scientist is not Satoshi Nakamoto
Dr Craig Wright had long claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin and regularly sued those who suggested otherwise, while also filing patents for important blockchain tech.
Outside of a few fleeting moments in the dark days, nobody in the crypto community really believed that Craig Wright was the man behind the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. Nobody other than Craig Wright, that is. However, that didn’t stop the Aussie computer scientist from going on a litigation spree, attacking podcasters and companies for defamation after refusing to acknowledge Wright as Bitcoin’s founder. Despite coming up short in most of these legal battles, Wright was not to be deterred, and over the past decade filed some 4,000 patents, most of them pertaining to the blockchain and Bitcoin.
The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) is a public community with one clear goal – to ensure that distributed ledger technology remains a developing sector by removing restrictive lawsuits and disputes over ownership. Considering that Wright has submitted literally thousands of patents, it’s easy to see why they took exception to his actions. So, they gave the computer scientist a taste of his own medicine and sued Wright to prove once and for all that was not the creator of Bitcoin.
And the trial went exactly as you’d expect.
The Judge was resolute in his findings – Craig Wright is not, was not, and never will be, Satoshi Nakamoto. So ends his reign of terror upon hard-working developers and dedicated community members.
But perhaps the funniest outcome of the case isn’t even related to Bitcoin. Allegedly, in attempting to prove his identity as the founder, Nakamoto, Wright falsified several documents using artificial intelligence. As well as unintentionally opening several holes in his defence, this act may come under the hammer or perjury, something that COPA is pushing for. Justice Mellor is now considering whether he will pursue this claim against Wright – which would make for a very delicious case of irony.
Standard Chartered updates end-of-year Bitcoin prediction to USD $150K
The crypto-friendly bank increased its prediction by $50K amid improving economic conditions and a stellar response to spot BTC ETFs.
Bitcoin’s had a topsy-turvy few weeks after hitting a much-anticipated USD/BTC all-time high. Upon breaching the USD $72K barrier, Bitcoin copped a beating and fell by close to 15% as investors got cold feet. But with several supports in the $60K (and high $50K) levels and a positive Federal Reserve outcome, the coin quickly rallied 8%.
The rollercoaster ride has several analysts scrambling to make heads-and-tails of the current market, with many lowering their medium-term expectations. But there’s one analyst that’s going full steam ahead – US bank Standard Chartered. Instead of tempering predicted growth, analysts at SC actually raised its end-of-year target by $50K. As of March, the institution believes BTC will eclipse $150K by December this year, and will breach $250K at some point in 2025.
So what’s behind the optimism?
The rapid response and impressive inflows from the spot ETF approval is a major factor. BlackRock and Fidelity now manage billions of BTC for investors after just a few months of trading, outperforming most predictions. Standard Chartered believes this situation is analogous to when gold ETFs became tradeable, which correlated with a 400%+ increase in the precious metal’s price through the next decade.
Standard Chartered Head of Research is predicting a USD $200K “end price” for the current bull run, which would be a superb outcome for BTC holders and the industry as a whole.
