90% of all Bitcoin has been mined. What’s next? ??; PayPal for Crypto raises $52M ??; Crypto craze in India????

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Last week (13-17 December) was a really hot and super exciting week in the world of Blockchain & Cryptocurrency.?We will look at?what it means that 90% of all Bitcoin has been mined & what might come next; the PayPal for Crypto; the crypto craze in India, and other interesting news and developments.

Without further ado, let us dive into what has happened in the Blockchain & Crypto sector last week. Let’s connect the dots.

90% of all Bitcoin has been mined. What’s next? ??

The milestone ???The biggest and most popular cryptocurrency has hit a new milestone as 90% of all Bitcoins have been mined as of Monday morning. This means 18.89M bitcoins – of a maximum of 21M – are now on the open market.

One must note that reaching the milestone took nearly 12 years since the first Bitcoins were mined on January 9, 2009. However, the remaining supply is not expected to be mined until February 2140, based on network activity estimates and Bitcoin’s halving schedules.

Available is less, actually… ??♂??Despite that BTC is capped at 21M, not all of 21 million Bitcoin is expected to be available on the open market. Crypto analytics firm Chainalysis?estimates 3.7M bitcoin?have been “lost” based on analyzing address activity, from reasons ranging from losing one’s private keys to even death.

A further 1M bitcoin is still held by Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, untouched because the pseudonymous person/s mined the amount in the network’s early days.

?? THE TAKEAWAY

So what’s next? ???When thinking about Bitcoin’s future, one must realize there are a lot of moving parts. First and foremost, Bitcoin didn’t respond to US inflation hitting a 6.8% annualized rate, which is the highest year-over-year inflation rate since 1982. This hence contradicts one of the most widely cited selling points of Bitcoin – that it’s an?inflation hedge, a place to put your money when fiat is losing real-world value. On the other hand, on-chain data shows that crypto investors appear to have resumed?Bitcoin accumulation, which is a sign they expect the price to rise. Blockchain data tracked by Glassnode shows the 7-day moving average of exchange flows turned negative a week ago, indicating net outflows. The level fell to -5,924 BTC on Sunday – the lowest reading since early August. According to IntoTheBlock, coins worth $3B left centralized exchanges last week, the biggest weekly outflow in 5 months. Yet, despite all of that, two prominent Bitcoin Core contributors?have?announced departures. Veteran open-source Bitcoin developer John Newbery and Bitcoin Core maintainer Samuel Dobson will step down from their roles, which obviously raises some questions. Add it all up, and the current sentiment seems to be more bearish than bullish. Yet, that could easily change… Bitcoin is currently trading at over $47,000, having declined about 30% from its peak of $69,000 earlier this year.

PayPal for Crypto raises $52M ??

The funding ???UK-based crypto payments infrastructure startup?Ramp?has raised $52.7M in a Series A funding round.

Series A raise was led by Balderton Capital. Existing backers NFX, Galaxy Digital, Seedcamp, Firstminute Capital, and angel investors such as Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus and TrueLayer’s Francesco Simoneschi also participated.

This Series A raise arrives 6 months since the company closed a $10.1M seed round, and is now partnered with over 400 developers.

The USP ???Founded in Warsaw in 2017, Ramp offers non-custodial, full-stack payment infrastructure that aims to open up cryptocurrencies and digital assets to more businesses and users. It styles itself as the?PayPal for crypto.

With its Ramp SDK, the startup is giving clients the ability to offer crypto-enabled services within a few hours. When multiple brands employ Ramp’s technology, there’s no need for consumers to enter the verification process for each individual payment gateway.?

Ramp received approval from the UK’s FCA in July 2021, recently received the seal of approval from US FinCen – the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, allowing the company to legally operate in the US, also receiving an Open Banking license from The Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) in 2020.

Numbers ???The company said it has seen monthly transaction volumes grow by a factor of 30 times in the past 12 months while tripling the size of its team.

?? THE TAKEAWAY

The PayPal for crypto play.?At the core, Ramp is all about the infrastructure. Infrastructure for opening up the digital asset world to new (mainstream) audiences, by allowing users to buy digital assets directly in-app in a convenient and reliable way, without needing to sign up for an exchange or set up a crypto wallet. If we believe in Web3, then any crypto-enabled app will need to onboard mainstream users, and Ramp is here to bridge the gap between the use cases that rely on crypto and fiat money. If we have learned anything from a massive?MoonPay fundraise, crypto payments infrastructure is crucial and it’s getting hotter every day.

Crypto craze in India????

The news ???WazirX, India’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, witnessed record-breaking activity this year after investors from smaller cities in the South Asian country jumped on the digital-asset bandwagon despite lingering regulatory uncertainty and market volatility.

The numbers ???Mumbai-based WazirX is an affiliate of the giant crypto exchange Binance. It posted very strong numbers recently:

• Registered annual trading volume was over $43B, marking a stunning 1,735% growth over 2020.
• While the exchange added more than 200 market pairs, bitcoin remained the most traded cryptocurrency, followed by stablecoin tether and meme tokens DOGE and SHIB, WazirX token (WRX), and Polygon’s MATIC.
• WazirX witnessed a massive surge in user signups leading to us crossing 10M users. Signups are up 700%.

?? THE TAKEAWAY

Uncertain yet huge market.?Crypto adoption has boomed in India despite a lack of clarity on the regulatory front. The Indian government has been sitting on a crypto regulation bill for at least a year and is unlikely to table the same in the parliament’s ongoing winter session. As noted earlier, India has the?11th-highest crypto adoption rate globally, according to Chainalysis. High consumer interest is fueled by a young, tech-savvy population seeking high returns from their investments. More importantly, people who have been excluded from mainstream financial institutions can easily access crypto platforms, which makes them even more attractive in developing countries.

Extra Reads & Quick Bites for Curious Minds??

• Crypto-fit ???SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said crypto fits into the "broad remit" of the SEC. "The public's anticipating some profit based upon the efforts of some entrepreneur or computer-science group that's raised money from the public. That fits in our broad remit at the SEC." Gensler reiterated his desire for more robust measures to protect crypto investors and invited crypto trading platforms to come to the SEC and work together to establish standards.?
• Crypto ads… ???The U.K. Advertising Standard Authority (ASA) issued rulings against seven of the sector’s biggest firms, including Coinbase and eToro, for misleading and irresponsible ads promoting crypto investments. The action taken by ASA comes after the regulator announced in July that misleading crypto marketing was a “red alert” priority and the agency would pay close attention to it. “We see this as an absolutely crucial and priority area for us” said?Miles Lockwood, director of complaints and investigations at ASA.
• Crypto move ???Germany-based broker and robo advisor?Scalable Capital?has announced enabling crypto trading on regulated stock exchanges in Germany through Scalable Crypto. The offer will be available soon for iOS and Android devices. Scalable Crypto combines trading securities on an exchange with investing in cryptocurrencies. Users are shown real-time crypto rates as well as information on the individual currencies. Then, customers can choose the currency they want to trade in, and enter the amount to be applied or the desired number of items in the respective cryptocurrency.

Money Moves??

• NFT music startup?Sound.xyz?raised?$5M to help musicians release NFTs tied to new releases.
• Crypto lender?Ledn?raised?$70M at a $540M valuation to extend product offerings, including a new BTC-backed mortgage product.
• Ethereum privacy startup?Aztec?raised?$17M to expand efforts to bring programmable privacy to Web 3 transactions and push for legal clarity on private crypto transactions.

Continue reading by subscribing to?Linas's Newsletter.?You will receive fresh news about FinTech, Blockchain & Crypto with hot takeaways every day.

P.S.?You might enjoy my earlier pieces as well:

???A Wise pitch deck that led to London’s biggest and most successful direct listing ever

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About: I am?a business developer, sales professional, FinTech strategist, as well as Cryptocurrency and Blockchain enthusiast. I'm highly passionate about Financial Technology and Digital Innovation, and strongly believe that it will change the world for the better. Apart from my daily job at a global payments startup where I'm leading the company's expansion into Europe, I'm an active member of the FinTech community and a TechFin evangelist.

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