Market Update

By the end of last week at least 80 million Americans received their “stimulus” payment per the CARES Act. According to The Washington Post the majority of the money is being used to buy fast food, gas, and pharmacy items, with over half used at pin-based ATM’s or grocery stores. The only question is, will that be enough? Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin publicly stated he thinks the $1200 “bridge liquidity” payment should last people for up to 10 weeks. Introduced by House Democrats on April 15, The Emergency Money for the People Act outlines a plan to give every American, above the age of 16 who made less than $130,000 as of last years tax filing, $2000 per month for at least 6 months or until unemployment numbers are back to where they were before the lockdown. Many believe a one-time stimulus payment of $1200 to 80% of Americans will not be enough to cover the money lost from the crisis. It will be interesting to see how and if another stimulus package will play out in the coming months.

All major markets seem to be uncertain which direction to go after a 50% bounce off March low’s. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) released a new report claiming the world is heading toward the worst economic downturn, “The Great Lockdown”, since the Great Depression. To go along with that, another 5.2 million Americans filed for unemployment as of last Thursday’s latest report bringing the total unemployed past 22 million total.

Grayscale released their Q1 2020 Digital Asset Report with staggering insights.

• Total Investment into Grayscale Products: $503.7 million

• Majority of Q1 investment (88%) came from institutions, mostly hedge funds

• Average Weekly Investment in Grayscale Ethereum Trust: $8.5 million

New Developments

1. Visa announced a partnership with Fold to roll out a Bitcoin-back Credit Card.

2. PieDAO launches BTC++, a synthetic Bitcoin token, on Ethereum where it will be tradable on uniswap.exchange and numerous other exchanges.

3. Reddit plans to roll out Karma points as an ERC-20 token on top of Ethereum. By doins so they are educating their hundreds of million user-base how to use digital wallets, what an Ethereum token provides, and private and public key best practices.

4. Reflex Bonds is a new stablecoin concept to be built on top of Ethereum. Rather than being pegged to a fiat currency, the Reflex Bond will be a stable store of value pegged to a basket of Ether.

Industry Opinions

Cuy Sheffield - Head of Crypto at Visa

Cuy Sheffield @cuysheffield 1/ One of the most interesting areas of consumer fintech to watch over the next 5 years is whether global crypto wallets and exchanges will be able to replicate the features of banks before existing banks replicate the features of crypto wallets and exchanges

April 5th 2020

27 Retweets186 Likes

Marc Cuban on “The Pomp Podcast”:

Stance on Bitcoin, “It would have to be completely friction-free and understandable by everybody first.” So easy, in fact, that “grandma could do it.”