The Miami Bitcoin Conference kicks off with great symbolism, and the bitcoin price is down, but we’ll tell you why it could be a good thing. Additionally, Solana and Terra are now in a head-to-head race to steal some of Ethereum’s liquidity.
All that and much more!
TL;DR
- Miami Bitcoin Conference highlights.
- Bitcoin down… When is the right time to buy?
- Solana and Terra EVM race.
- Solana NFTs go live on Opensea.
Miami Bitcoin Conference highlights
The yearly Miami Bitcoin Conference kicked off today with the grand unveiling of Bitcoin’s newest status symbol, the Bitcoin Bull, a futuristic update of Wall Street’s bull.
The conference was laden with an abundance of alpha from keynote speakers. A few of the highlights:
- Brain Estes “Valuing Bitcoin,” min (US$1m by 2024/2025) beginning in min 2.
Source: YouTube
- Mark Yusko “Investing in The Bitcoin Ecosystem” begins at minute 12.
- Kevin O’Leary “The Kevin O’Leary Bitcoin Keynote”.
- Mike Novogratz “Politicians Need To Embrace Bitcoin”.
Tomorrow’s lineup is just as star-studded, but there is one speaker everyone will be watching closely, Jack Mallers. What will Jack have to say about Apple? That’s one speech we won’t miss! Make sure to follow the @TheBitcoinConf Twitter for an updated schedule and tune in to Crypto Banter‘s coverage of Jack’s big reveal.
Market update 🌍
After consolidating for a week, Bitcoin (BTC) broke out of the 45-47.5k range. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the direction we all wanted. Some traders are eyeing the downward trend line (~41.5k) as the next support bitcoin is likely to test (white), and others the upward trend (~40k) that began in late January (blue). Bitcoin completed the US session, down 5.10% to US$43,150.
Source: Trading View
On a positive side note, Terra’s LFG purchased another US$230 million in BTC yesterday, and over US$500 million in leveraged positions were liquidated in the previous 48 hours.
Source: CoinGlass
The Federal Reserve (Fed) released its March meeting minutes under a hawkish tone yesterday, despite making no adjustments to last month’s original balance sheet reduction plans. The Asian markets reacted negatively before the meetings, pushing the S&P 500 futures down 1.22%, before the US traders steadied the price pushing Nasdaq up 0.80% for the day and the VIX (volatility index/fear gauge) down from 24.77 to 22.18.
Fundamentally, very little has changed in the markets, and markets remain in overall upward trends. So, strong support levels could prove to be good accumulation areas for bitcoin and altcoins while markets are retracing.
| US markets close | Gain |
| S&P 500 | -0.97% |
| Nasdaq | +0.85% |
| Dow | -2.87% |
| VIX | +4.99% |
Notable Gainers (24h)
| Protocol (Coin) | Price ($) | Gain (%) |
| Mina Protocol (MINA) | 3.37 | +6 |
| Kusama (KSM) | 178.56 | +2 |
| TitanSwap (TITAN) | 5.19 | +71 |
| Anchor Protocol (ANC) | 3.07 | 14 |
| Velas (VLX) | 0.25 | +7 |
| Multichain (MULTI) | 17.66 | +18 |
| Balancer (BAL) | 18.39 | +17 |
| Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index | 34 Fear (-14) |
| “Crypto” Google Trends | 33 (+2) |
| “Bitcoin” Google Trends | 36 (-1) |
Newswatch 📰
Stablecoin regulations. Stablecoin regulations. Senator Pat Toomey released the initial draft of a stablecoin bill titled “Stablecoin Transparency of Reserves and Uniform Safe Transaction Act,” or Stablecoin TRUST Act. The bill focuses on defining “stablecoin” under three definitions, with “payment stablecoin” being the most notable. A “payment stablecoin” would constitute a stablecoin backed by “cash or cash-equivalents or level 1 high-quality assets denominated in United States dollars.” In 2021, Tether revealed that various risk-denominated assets back USDT. As a result, the bill could put Tether’s USDT, the most widely utilized stablecoin, under the microscope.
USDC enters TradeFi payments. USDC issuer Circle has partnered with FIS Worldpay. The USDC adoption will allow FIS customers to receive, hold and transfer USDC, allowing faster and more efficient transactions. More than 1,000 companies currently utilize FIS as their payments system, including the American Red Cross.
Clean up the fund. Grayscale removes SushiSwap (SUSHI) and Synthetics Network (SNX) from Grayscale Large Cap Fund to add Avalanche (AVAX), Polkadot (DOT) and Cosmos (ATOM) in its quarterly rebalancing.
On-chain ⛓
- Terra DeFi.Terra engineer Neel Somani’s post “The Future of Terra DeFi” centered around UST’s use case after Anchor reserves begin to get depleted. Somani is currently building Terranova, an EVM-compatible Terra ecosystem that will allow dApps, such as Uniswap and Curve, to deploy on the Terra ecosystem quickly.
- All kUSD on Polkadot and Kusama parachains has been updated to aUSD, cementing aUSD as the native stablecoin for the sister networks.
- Ethereum dApps on Solana? Neon EVM deploys on Solana (SOL) devnet for developers and testers to battle-test, laying the initial ground for Ethereum-based dApps on Solana.
NFT & metaverse update 🐵
- Tom Brady’s NFT company, Autograph, teams up with ESPN to release a non-fungible token (NFT) collection that will coincide with Brady’s docuseries “Man in the Arena: Tom Brady” on ESPN+ and Disney+.
- Solana NFTs on Opensea. The largest NFT marketplace, Opensea, initiates support for Solana-based NFTs. So now go buy those Sol Apes!
Notable mints
| Project | Community score | Mint price | Date of mint | Time (UTC) |
| Shinsekai | 80 | 0.15 ETH | April 7 | 03:00 |
| Scab Shop Pass | n/a | 0.10 ETH | April 7 | 13:00 |
| Playing the Market | n/a | n/a | April 7 | 13:30 |
| Gummier Gang | 80 | 0.07 ETH | April 7 | 09:00 |
| Nyoki Club | 80 | 0.09 ETH | April 9 | 01:00 |
Banter’s take
So much Bitcoin alpha, it’s making our heads spin, and the most significant announcement is still ahead. The conference has grown year-to-year in epic proportions, representing a growth in the entire ecosystem of cryptocurrencies. The world is paying attention now. So, don’t be put down by the insignificant slides in BTC price. Instead, utilize the opportunities to find discounted tokens while the rest of the market becomes fearful. The conference helps us realize one crucial thing, that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have a bright future ahead.
Gabri
