Market Update

Oil futures expired last week triggering a huge selloff for all who didn’t have the capability to take delivery. The price action was historic, traders were actually paying people to take the contract instead of selling it. Equities have continued to sit in limbo closing Friday at a loss for the first time in the last few weeks. Where equities go next is anyone’s guess but Gold has continued to perform well with an ounce lingering over $1700.

Large cap cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ether, continue to show correlation to traditional markets. In less than a month from now, middle of May, Bitcoin is scheduled for its third halving. This event happens roughly every 4 years resulting in a decrease in the miner’s reward for solving the next block. Historically, the previous two halvings proved to be major catalysts for Bitcoin price appreciation in the 6-18 months following the event.

The most recent jobless report tallied in another ~4 million claims which brings the total number of unemployed American’s above 26 million. With such staggering unemployment numbers the government has been forced to act quickly with another stimulus package for small businesses. The House passed another package totaling $484 billion for small businesses, hospitals, and additional testing.

New Developments

1. Dharma, a mobile app that integrates a Dai Savings Account, has added the ability to send Dai to anyone with a twitter profile regardless if they have a Dharma account. Once someone receives a message the Dai has been sent to them, that Dai is immediately earning interest and ready to be claimed once the user downloads the app.

2. Coinbase has once again shown support for the DeFi community by adding the “Coinbase Price Oracle” which will provide critical information to all DeFi applications and protocols built on Ethereum.

3. Binance launches Bundle App in Nigeria as a crypto/fiat payment app. The app will support Bitcoin, Ether, Binance Coin, and Nigerian naira.

4. BitMex adds ETH/USD futures contract making Ether and Bitcoin the only two cryptocurrencies with USD pairs.

Industry Opinion

Lex Sokolin, Head of Global Fintech at ConsenSys, on Libra2.0:

• “The Libra rails will be fully permissioned,” he explained.“There is no decentralization and self-sovereignty in this proposal.” This move could pose a greater threat to individuals who rely on the system.

Marshall Hayner, Fred Krueger, David Moss on Banking and Crypto:

https://youtu.be/VQHbCwUglEA 

FinTech/Python Activity

For Loops:

For loops provide a way to iterate through a defined list. In this example I have created a list and am telling the computer to iterate through the list and print any number within the list that is greater than 50.

list = [2, 5, 10, 19, 27, 53]

for number in list

if number > 50

print(number)

—————————————-

53

Quick Earn Opportunity

Crypto Faucets are often overlooked but can prove to be a great way for someone new to experiment on a blockchain without buying the native blockchain asset. A faucet is what it sounds like, but with a little twist. It is typically a website that allows anyone to submit their cryptocurrency address for a micro amount of crypto for free. Usually it is enough to cover a couple transaction fees depending on the chain and the faucet. Two faucets I believe to be worthwhile are Horizen’s- zen.cash and Tezo’s- faucet.tezos.com.