Hello Hive Fam!

I'm back with another Fintech Flash, where I go over the biggest news happening in Fintech and blockchain over the last week. I got a little out of the habit of loading them to 3speak during the holidays - but I'm back and excited to start sharing them here again!

Here's what was covered in Episode 20:

Bitcoin has surged to a record high amid rising interest from investors and claims that the volatile cryptocurrency is on the way to receiving mainstream adoption. Having quadrupled in value during 2020, bitcoin began 2021 strongly by breaking through the $30,000 mark for the first time, less than three weeks after first trading above $20k. On Sunday, it hit a new high of more than $34,800, on the 12th anniversary of the bitcoin network being created.

Retail investors are largely uninvolved as Bitcoin price chases $40K. In 2017, Bitcoin’s bull run was largely believed to have been fuelled by retail investors who were placing speculative bets on the BTC market and other smaller-cap cryptocurrencies from the ICO craze. Fast forward to 2020, and the investor landscape has changed dramatically. Institutional investors, who largely remained on the side-lines in the first bull run, have been the face of the rally this time around.

Ethereum has broken a critical price point against Bitcoin, signalling that altcoins may be about to see a surge. Data from Cointelegraph Markets, Coin360 and TradingView showed the ETH/BTC pair pass the essential 0.026 level in just one daily candle on Jan. 3. After staying weak throughout December, Ether has rebounded in the first few days of 2021.

Is XRP the third largest financial collapse of all time? XRP’s market capitalization was roughly $140 billion in January 2018 and has recently slipped under $10 billion,an estimated loss of $130 billion in under three years. This effectively makes the “collapse” of XRP third behind only the $327 billion bankruptcy of Washington Mutual and the failure of investment giant Lehman Brothers — a financial meltdown valued at $691 billion — in 2008.

DeFi Quietly Breaks Records as Investors Lock Up $15 Billion. The biggest projects in the space right now are three lending protocols: Maker, Aave and Compound. This time last year, the amount of money locked in to the DeFi industry stood at $689 million, which is an increase of 2,077%. At one point, a billion dollars a week was being added to the total value locked into the industry last year.

Around 89% of the max Bitcoin supply have already been minted. However, the actual amount of BTC available to use or trade is much lower than the circulating supply suggests. One of the main ways Bitcoin is removed from circulation is by simply being lost. Since Bitcoin owners need access to their private keys or recovery phrase to transfer their Bitcoin, anybody that loses access to these will also lose the ability to spend their funds. It is estimated that approximately 3.7 million Bitcoin are probably gone forever.

Hope you enjoyed it and i'll be back next week for another Fintech ⚡️Flash!

XO, Lea