Earlier this month Bitcoin officially became legal tender in El Salvador. Country President Nayib Bukele made the initial announcement back in June that Bitcoin would be a parallel currency in El Salvador. To facilitate adoption, his government also launched a digital wallet called Chivo to enable Bitcoin as a method of exchange.

Earlier this week, President Bukele tweeted to his millions of followers that more than 2.2 million Salvadorans have downloaded the Chivo wallet, adding more than 140 new users per minute.


Critics were skeptical whether Bitcoin could scale at a country-level, and Bukele stated that the Lightning Network has been able to average around 65,4000 transactions per second – so the network seems stable as well. To drive usage, the Salvadorian government deposited $30 worth of Bitcoin into each wallet.

Not only is Bitcoin gaining ground in Central America, its momentum is building in some Latin American countries as well.

According to Chainalysis’ most recent Global Crypto Adoption Index, three Latin American countries are in the global top-20 of fastest crypto uptake: Venezuela (#7), Colombia (#10), and Argentina (#11) respectively.


The index researchers found that emerging countries, such as those in Latin America, ranked due to their high volume of peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions once wealth-per-capita and internet-use multipliers were calculated. The report also found that many residents in developing economies rely on P2P crypto exchanges since they don’t have access to centralized exchanges.

The index also states that many developing markets have severe inflation, forcing residents to convert their fiat currencies into crypto to preserve value, as well as the following factors:

“Others in these areas use cryptocurrency to carry out international transactions, either for individual remittances or for commercial use cases, such as purchasing goods to import and sell. Many emerging markets represented here limit the amount of the national currency that residents can move out of the country. Cryptocurrency gives those residents a way to circumvent those limits so that they can meet their financial needs.” (Chainalysis, pg. 6).
In addition to those countries, Uruguay, Panama, and Paraguay are continuing to craft and consider various pieces of legislation that would make it easier to use virtual currencies within their respective borders.

On The Flipside
Emerging countries are outpacing developed countries when it comes to crypto adoption.
In the Chainalysis index, since last year, the U.S. slid from sixth to eighth in the ranking, while China fell from fourth to 13th — in large part due to its ongoing crypto crackdown.source

Premier decentralized exchange Uniswap wrapped up Q3 with new, exciting updates to the network
The Uniswap Auto Router launched, helping users automatically find better prices on their trades
UNI, the native tokens of Uniswap, now features its first large-cap fund, thanks to a Grayscale listing
Uniswap also announced that the Uniswap App can now fully support EIP-1559 tokens.
Uniswap has become a household name after becoming the first project to provide more than $1 billion for liquidity providers. Next-generation decentralized exchanges like Uniswap are believed to be the future of finance.

Uniswap leverages multiple crypto assets, including UNI, to provide services similar to traditional exchanges, but eliminates the need for a central operator or an administrator. So, how has this decentralized exchange performed in recent times?

Recent Developments
Uniswap had a satisfying entrance into Q4 of 2021 as Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest crypto asset manager, listed Uniswap (UNI) on one of its large-cap investment funds.

The Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC) is the first large-cap fund UNI will feature, despite being in the Grayscale Defi Fund since it launched in July 2021. While UNI contributes about 1% to the large-cap fund, it dominates the Grayscale DeFi fund, with approximately 45.20%.

In the last fortnight of Q3, Uniswap rolled out some exciting updates in preparation for Q4. The Uniswap Auto Router was one of the new features launched on the network. Uniswap stated that its Auto Router uses advanced smart order routing algorithms to find better prices for traders in the Uniswap app.

According to Uniswap, the Auto Router has improved the pricing on 13.97% of all trades. For trades between the top 10 tokens by TVL, the Auto Router has reduced pricing by up to 36.84%.


Entering the tail-end of Q3, Uniswap announced that the Uniswap v3 deployments on Optimistic Ethereum and Arbitrum are ready to graduate from alpha to beta. In addition, the update enabled users to seamlessly access all supported networks directly in the Uniswap App.

To improve the speed of both Layer 2 networks, Uniswap released a fast confirmation UX. However, Uniswap added downtime detection so that the Uniswap App will report any liveness recorded of the network.

Optimism Ethereum aids Uniswap in supporting any Ethereum app. Since its launch two months ago, it has processed over 2.2 million transactions, saving over $100 million in gas fees. Optimism Ethereum currently has over 100k unique addresses. Arbitrum posts more impressive stats.

Also, Uniswap announced to its community that the Uniswap App can now fully support EIP-1559 tokens. In addition, Uniswap stated that Since the Ethereum London fork, over 43,577 ETH has been burned through transactions with the Uniswap Protocol.

Future Events
Uniswap is one of the event-driven blockchain projects. As the NFT mania grows more intense, NFT Tech, the world’s most accessible NFT Marketplace, is preparing to list on Uniswap on October 21.

NFT Tech has completed its mainnet launch, which is interoperable between Ethereum and the Binance Smart chain. The project has also announced plans to launch a liquidity matching engine down the road.

The Defiant Terminal, a protocol that enables investors and analysts to track all DeFi data in one place, is also gearing up to launch on the Uniswap Network. Upon launch, users will be able to create charts and tables in relevant metrics.

The Defiant Terminal has promised to support MakerDAO value locked against MKR price, Dai lending rates, Uniswap versus Sushiswap users, token prices for the top smart contracts platforms, and more.

Price Updates
While Uniswap has been outperforming many projects in development, UNI’s native tokens have retraced and consolidated, following a huge spike amidst China’s ban on crypto.


The 24-hour price chart of Uniswap (UNI). Source: Tradingview

UNI now trades at $25.2329, after a drop of 1.47% over the last 24 hours. Uniswap still remains the 12th largest crypto project, with a market cap of $15.46 billion.

On The Flipside
While UNI has struggled in recent times, the token remains a long-term winner
Year-to-date, UNI has gained over 430%, making it one of the best performers
Community
As one of the foremost crypto projects and decentralized exchanges, Uniswap has built an enormous community with great networking. Members of the Uniswap community address each other as Unicorns.

Uniswap currently has one of the biggest communities, with over 53k Unicorns on Reddit, 66k on Discord, and over 647k on Twitter.

The DailyCoin team discovered that Unicorns are particularly bullish about developments in the ecosystem. Replying to the Grayscale listing, @KKB2010 wrote on Twitter;


On the flipside, community members are always ready to call the attention of the Uniswap team to issues identified on the network. For example, with the early launch of the Uniswap Auto Router, many users drew attention to a bug.

A tweet shared by the user, @theRealMoonCat, can be seen among several members. He wrote:


Another user, @Blackgirl_Alex, wrote;


Other Unicorns are still ardent believers in the project and its prospects. A user, @bneiluj, wrote: source

According to a survey of 1,001 registered U.S. voters conducted by polling and data analytics firm Echelon Insights, 33 percent percent of Americans have heard about Dogecoin.

The meme cryptocurrency comes in second place in terms of name recognition (behind only Bitcoin). Considering that it enjoyed incessant news coverage because of its monstrous rallies and Elon Musk's tweets, it's not surprising that it has made its way into mainstream consciousness.   

Ethereum is in a distant third place with 13 percent, followed by Litecoin (8 percent), Tether (4 percent), and Binance Coin (4 percent).

card

Only a minuscule 3 percent of American voters have heard about Ripple-affiliated XRP and Polkadot.

Dogecoin
Meanwhile, Cardano has the same name recognition as Safemoon.

17 percent of the surveyed voters believe that crypto is a good way to build one’s wealth. Only 8 percent of them are currently invested in digital assets. source

Bitcoin (BTC) and the U.S. dollar fell in tandem while the S&P 500 refreshed its record high at open on Friday as the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation indicator surged to its highest levels in almost three decades.

According to data shared by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the US Core Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCI) rose 0.5% in May, coming in below the estimation of 0.6%.

Nevertheless, the expenditure rose 3.4% year-over-year, the highest level since 1991. The Federal Reserve treats core PCI as its benchmark metric to gauge inflation. The U.S. central bank has indicated that it would tolerate inflation above 2% until it ensures a stronger labor-market recovery.

The prospects of higher inflation fueled volatile bullish rallies across the risk-on markets in 2020, including Bitcoin and the U.S. stock market.


Bitcoin and the S&P 500 rallied in tandem against Fed's expansionary policies. Source: TradingView
Investors considered them as better safe-havens as the Fed elected to hold interest rates near-zero and maintained its $120B monthly asset purchase program to contain the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the U.S. economy.

However, the central bank's policy ended up pushing the U.S. bond yields lower while hurting the dollar's demand globally, thereby shifting investors to riskier haven alternatives, including Bitcoin.

But the flagship cryptocurrency dipped after the latest PCI readings, hinting that investors chose to ignore its safe-haven narrative over risks concerning China's latest crypto ban and amid speculations that the U.S. would impose strict regulations on the cryptocurrency sector, on the whole.

The BTC/USD exchange rate slipped to an intraday low of $32,350 shorty after the New York opening bell Friday. Meanwhile, Gold, Bitcoin's top safe-haven rival, recorded early morning gains after higher core CPI readings, with the August Comex Gold Futures trading 0.73% higher at $1,789.70 an ounce in the morning session.


Bitcoin dips despite higher inflation data. Source: TradingView.com
Investors also snubbed the so-called safest safe-haven, the U.S. dollar. As a result, the greenback's index against a basket of foreign currencies fell 0.33% to 91.525 in the early morning trade Friday. It later recovered back to 91.749.

Alexander Vasiliev, co-founder and CCO of Mercuryo said that demand for the dollar among corporate and retail investors would remain weaker against the prospects of higher inflation. Instead, they would rather hedge in assets with lower depreciation potential. He explained:

"While Bitcoin has won the argument as a suitable asset in this regard, its currently collapsing price will favor gold much more at such a time as this, and as such, investors may favor the latter more than the former. The price impact of these inflation figures on the asset classes will be more visible in the days and weeks ahead."
Bitcoin dipped also as investors' focus shifted towards the Wall Street equity markets following President Joe Biden's latest stimulus deal worth $1T. The S&P 500 index surged 0.27% to an all-time high of 4,280.55. The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite went up 0.1%.


Fed's mixed signals and Bitcoin
Francesco Sandrini, senior multi-asset strategist at fund manager Amundi, stated that inflation readings would keep going higher in the months ahead. Meanwhile, markets would struggle to find confidence in terms of how to protect them from higher consumer prices, especially as the Fed officials send mixed signals about whether inflation should result in tighter monetary policy.

For instance, Fed's chair Jay Powell has called the recent inflation spikes in the U.S. economy, which could wipe long-term returns from stocks and bonds, as "transient" in nature. But St. Louis Fed president James Bullard said on Thursday that inflation may keep rising in the sessions ahead.

The Federal Open Market Committee's latest set of economic projections took a hawkish turn as it suggested dual-rate hikes in 2023. As a result, Bitcoin turned lower on the news.

Related: 4 reasons why Paul Tudor Jones' 5% Bitcoin exposure advice is difficult for major funds

"We remain unsure as to exactly what will happen to inflation over the coming 5 years," noted CoinShares, a digital asset management firm, in a report published on June 21.

"But we see adding bitcoin and other real assets as a prudent measure to protect portfolios from the tail-risk of out-of-control inflation," the firm added.

Vasiliev noted that strong anti-inflation narrative would keep investors' interest in Bitcoin in the coming months, adding:

I believe a recovery to $40,000 is the goal, while investors look toward breaking the previous ATH of $64,000 in the mid to long term.
source

After BTC.com, Binance Pool has also started mining Bitcoin Vault.

Bitcoin Vault (BTCV) is not to be confused with Bitcoin (BTC), as it is a completely different cryptocurrency, based on a different blockchain, and shares only the name with BTC.

The Bitcoin Vault project was born in October 2019 with the intention of creating a new cryptocurrency that allows you to void transactions and send fast and secure payments.

In fact, this cryptocurrency is the first in the world that allows users to cancel transactions after they have been posted on the blockchain, within about 24 hours (144 blocks) of their registration. The protocol on which BTCV is based in fact confirms payments with 144 blocks, allowing for example the recovery within 24 hours of funds sent with transactions that were the result of theft, errors or bugs.

In common with Bitcoin is the SHA-256-based Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm, which allows BTCV to be mined.

Bitcoin Vault mining
Previously, another mining giant, BTC.com, had also started mining BTCV, and with Binance Pool there are now two large pools mining Bitcoin Vault.

Now therefore users of the Binance Pool will be able to participate in BTCV mining with their computing power.

Currently, Binance Pool ranks among the largest mining pools in the world, with about 10.1 EH/s on SHA-256 (BTC/BCH/BSV) and about 8.73 TH/s on Ethereum.

Currently, Bitcoin Vault developers hold 90% of the computing power, and to increase decentralization they need other mining pools to commit their computing power to Bitcoin Vault mining. The project plans to achieve decentralization by the end of 2024.

Electric Vault’s Chief Communication Officer Radek Popiel, who is the developer of the BTCV project, said:

“This is another step we have taken in the decentralization of Bitcoin Vault mining. We are glad to be able to cooperate with such trusted and well-recognized partner in the crypto industry. As Bitcoin Vault developers, we have committed to releasing 10% of BTCV’s mining to trusted external partners until the end of 2021, and we have fulfilled this goal”.source

Galaxy Investment CEO Mike Novogratz published a tweet calling Bitcoin "the future" for Africa. The post was published in response to a tweet about an essay by HRW chief strategy officer Alex Gladstein.

In his paper titled "Fighting Monetary Colonialism with Open Source Code", Gladstein reported that at one time Colonial France used the franc to control 15 African countries and 180 million inhabitants of the continent.

Gladstein called this data shocking and posed the question, ''Can Bitcoin be a way out of this situation?''

Retweeting the message, Novogratz said that while he was sympathetic to the latter in yesterday's match between Portugal and France, his views had changed after reading this text. Novogratz called it a "strong intuition" and concluded that Bitcoin is the future for Africa.

This is a fascinating tweet storm. I was cheering for France in yesterday’s game vs Portugal but after reading this might switch allegiances. Crypto has a future in Africa. That’s a strong intuition. https://t.co/q97rRTWPcT

— Mike Novogratz (@novogratz) June 24, 2021
Novogratz is an ardent supporter of Bitcoin and regularly makes statements in support of the first cryptocurrency. The day before, he had already stated that all cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin are a gigantic venture bet. He is sure that Bitcoin will inevitably change the whole financial system in the future.

It is worth noting that recently there have been serious trends in the African continent regarding the introduction of blockchain technology.

The Digital Africa conference is currently taking place to discuss the most important prospects for blockchain. For example, the Nigerian Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Isa Pantami has already spoken about the importance and revolutionary nature of this technology.source

Popular online video game Fortnite has added a new skin called “Etheria,” which has the cryptocurrency community speculating that it is somehow related to the second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum. Aestheticdemon is the concept creator of Etheria. The name is not the only thing that bears a resemblance to Ethereum. The images circulating online also have an object that looks similar to Ethereum’s diamond-shaped logo. But this seems to be reaching as by this standard “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War” could be into Ethereum as well as an energy source in this game is called “Aetherium Crystals.” This could very well be a case of Apophenia, trying to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things. Ethereum subreddit meanwhile remained hopeful and continued to cope after Ether’s latest sell-off to $1,700, a drop of more than 61% from last month's peak. One such hopeful Redditor commented, “Eth to 40k confirmed.” But it’s not just the ETH community; the entire crypto market is looking for a bullish narrative after the latest deep rout — a catalyst to bring back the bullish sentiments and push up the prices again. https://twitter.com/AlexSaundersAU/status/1407565001066385410 Fortnite, however, is no stranger to cryptos or even Ethereum as a year ago, when Reddit launched two types of Ethereum-based cryptos, Moons, and Bricks, they were a hit among the gaming community. These Ethereum-based “Community Points,” which were also launched in cryptocurrency subreddits, got more interest from gamers than the crypto community and gained more than 10,000 users in just a week. Epic Games, which has a valuation of about $28.7 billion, launched Fortnite in 2017. “Fortnite” creator Epic Games said on Tuesday that it now has over 500 million accounts and that it has 2.7 billion friend connections across “Fortnite,” "Rocket League," and the Epic Games Store. As of June 2020, Fortnite has 350 million registered users. The video game developer is currently fighting a legal battle with Apple Inc. As we reported last August, the lawsuit claimed that Apple’s anticompetitive conduct eliminates alternative payment options like Bitcoin to be used in the game, which the tech giant confirmed, saying it violated the App store guidelines regarding in-app payments. Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney is actually very bullish on NFTs and the crypto metaverse. The company raised $1 billion in funding this April to support its long-term vision for the metaverse. While he called the crypto investment a “wild, speculative mess,” earlier this year, Sweeney added, “the tech is going places.” source

As you can see for yourselves Bitcoin’s price is currently tumbling, making a lot of investors freak out. Anthony Pompliano, on the other hand, is dropping some pretty important advice on social media.

Check out how his thread begins.

Bitcoin is under $30,000.

Here is a quick thread to document what I’m thinking right now and what my strategy is during these price drawdowns.

👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) June 22, 2021

He continues the thread and says the following:

2/ My strategy with bitcoin over the last few years is simple — accumulate as much bitcoin as I can.

The word accumulate is important. That is an action you do with no intention of selling for profit later.

— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) June 22, 2021

He also said:

4/ The dollar cost average strategy relies on the idea that “time in the market is more important than timing the market.”

This has historically been true in bitcoin. The asset has an annual compound growth rate of over 100% throughout the last decade.

— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) June 22, 2021

We suggest that you check out the complete thread in order to see everything that he had to say about the issue.

11/11 So here is what I’m thinking and doing right now:

– Strong belief in bitcoin
– Long term view on asset
– Dollar cost averaging aggressively
– Not worried over short term price
– Plan to hand bitcoin to my grandchildren

Could I be wrong? Sure. I’m not betting on it though.

— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) June 22, 2021

PlanB is also extremely optimistic about the price of BTC these days.

What a difference 3 months make!

41% now thinks bitcoin will stay below $100K in 2021 (invalidating S2F model) vs 16% in March (when BTC was $55K). pic.twitter.com/S9PKR8FSnb

— PlanB (@100trillionUSD) June 22, 2021

At the moment of writing this article, BTC is trading in the red and the king coin is priced at $29,433.28.source