After yesterday's confident upward movement of bitcoin, the activity of buyers decreased, however, it remained at a high level. Let me remind you that bitcoin and several other cryptocurrencies and tokens have resumed their growth after the announcement that PayPal Holdings Inc customers will be able to use their cryptocurrency to pay for purchases from millions of online merchants around the world, which can significantly increase the use of digital assets in everyday trading. In a statement, the company said: Customers who have bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash, and litecoin in PayPal digital wallets will now be able to convert their assets into fiat currencies to make purchases. This message led to an instant strengthening of the bitcoin exchange rate in the area of 59,000.
Today, it became known that the manufacturer of electric cars Tesla found a bug in the BTCPay network and provided assistance to fix it, which is another proof of Tesla's digging about its views on cryptocurrency. The car manufacturer discovered a bug in the open-source bitcoin payment processor on the BTCPay wallet server and also helped the project team fix the bug.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has announced that it will launch smaller bitcoin futures contracts, which has led to a surge in volatility in the current bitcoin contract. This will be done to provide more extensive access to the market for more people who believe in the future of the first cryptocurrency. The CME said that the new contracts in the size of one-tenth of one Bitcoin will be available for trading starting from May 3 this year. The calculations will be made using the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate. "The introduction of micro-bitcoin futures is a direct response to existing demand from a wide range of customers," said Tim McCourt, head of investment products at CME Group.
Another piece of good news this time came from Tether. The company behind the largest USDT stablecoin released the results of an audit by independent firm Moore Cayman. It says that Tether has more than $ 35 billion in various assets in its accounts, providing its USDT token. Let me remind you that some experts in this field have warned that Tether is engaged in printing tokens that are far superior to its assets, and a drop in confidence in this company can seriously hit the cryptocurrency market.
As for the technical picture of bitcoin, yesterday's desperate attempt to break above 58,500 and gain a foothold at this level is still failing. However, the upward potential will remain even if there is a downward correction to the area of large support of 54,700, where you can again observe the activity of bitcoin buyers. If the bulls manage to regain control of the resistance of 58,500, then, most likely, the bullish trend will resume, and we will see an update of the historical maximum in the area of 62,000. If the pressure on bitcoin increases and buyers do not show activity in the support area of 54,800, it is better to postpone purchases until the levels of 50,300 and 44,900 are updated.
Moving a little away from the topic of cryptocurrencies, it is worth noting a recent speech by the President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, who said that her institution could launch a digital currency around the middle of this decade, but provided that it is necessary. The new digital euro will be discussed this summer. "We have to make sure that we do everything right - we have a great responsibility to the Europeans," Lagarde said in an interview with Bloomberg. "Let's be realistic - the entire process of developing and implementing the digital euro may take about four years, and maybe more," Lagarde said. Let me remind you that the European Central Bank conducted an extensive study and received about 8,000 responses to questions as part of the public consultation process on the potential launch of the central bank's digital currency. The study will be sent to the European Parliament, and then the ECB's governing council will decide in the middle of this year whether to continue experimenting in this direction or not.
If you quickly run through the digital currencies of other countries, there is no special breakthrough in this direction yet. Only in 2020, the Bahamas launched a digital currency called the "sand dollar", however, it is more of a "dollar" for a narrow circle of people. Brazil, which has long been working on digitizing its currency, plans to launch it in 2022. Canadian authorities are still working on developing the infrastructure needed for the digital currency, however, there are no plans to launch it yet. As for the Middle Kingdom, China is preparing to launch a pilot digital yuan only in 2022, while Japan is only planning to work on a digital currency.
The best situation is in the United States, where the new digital dollar, which has already been dubbed Fedcoin, can create a lot of problems for the entire banking system of the country, as well as for companies engaged in financial services. It is expected that in July of this year, representatives of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will publish their research on this subject and the first results of their work. This was stated last week by James Cunha, who heads this project at the Boston Fed.
