The Crypto Roundup: 19 February 2021

Latest price and news from the crypto space

Latest price from our hand picked list of digital assets

North America’s first-ever bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) launched on the Toronto Stock Exchange with a trading volume of $165 million on its first day, including $80 million in its first hour.

The charity unit of financial services giant Fidelity collected $28 million in cryptocurrency donations last year, up from $13 million received in 2019.

Decentralized finance project PancakeSwap (CAKE) has become the largest decentralized exchange by trading volume after flipping its doppelganger Uniswap, according to data shared by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.

Sponsored: Aventus, the blockchain protocol that makes transactions fairer, more transparent, and more affordable for any organization, today announces the launch of the Aventus Network (AvN).

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

Bitcoin ETF Launches With $165 Million Trading Volume in its Debut
Fidelity Charitable Received $28 Million in Crypto Donations Last Year
PancakeSwap Becomes Leading Decentralized Exchange by Trading Volume
Sponsored: The Main Net Aventus Network (AvN) Is Now Officially Live

Bitcoin ETF Launches With $165 Million Trading Volume in Its Debut

North America’s first-ever bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) launched on the Toronto Stock Exchange with a trading volume of $165 million on its first day, including $80 million in its first hour.

The new fund, called Purpose Bitcoin ETF (BTCC), invests directly in “physical/digital Bitcoin” and its trading volume, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart, was well above the typical trading volumes for an ETF’s first day in Canada.

While it’s early to tell, some analysts believe the ETF could trade without massive premiums, which could affect current Bitcoin trusts giving institutional investors exposure to the flagship cryptocurrency.

Todd Rosenbluth, CFRA Research’s director of ETF Research, was quoted as saying:

“There’s sizable untapped interest for a Bitcoin investment that has the benefits of an ETF. While most ETFs come to market globally with an educational hurdle to overcome, many investors are familiar with what is inside BTCC.”

The U.S. currently has several active filings for a Bitcoin ETF. In Europe, several crypto-tracking products that function like an ETF are already being traded.

Fidelity Charitable Received $28 Million in Crypto Donations Last Year

The charity unit of financial services giant Fidelity collected $28 million in cryptocurrency donations last year, up from $13 million received in 2019.

A report published by Fidelity Charitable details that after a long period of volatility, the surge in cryptoasset prices toward the end of 2020 left many cryptocurrency holders “with significant appreciation of their assets.”

It adds:

“Fidelity Charitable’s ability to accept bitcoin and other cryptocurrency donations allows donors to take advantage of the surge in appreciation to benefit charity.”

Donating to charity helps donors eliminate the significant capital gains tax they would otherwise have to pay. Two-thirds of Fidelity Charitable’s total contributions were from non-cash assets, with $1.6 billion worth of those being non-publicly traded assets.

PancakeSwap Becomes Leading Decentralized Exchange by Trading Volume

PancakeSwap is a decentralized exchange built on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), which offers users significantly lower fees than the Ethereum network, on which rivals including Uniswap and SushiSwap are built.

On social media, Changpeng Zhao invited Uniswap and other exchanges to build their platforms on the Binance Smart Chain as it’s “not easy running with weight on your ankles,” likely referencing the high fees on the Ethereum network.

According to BitInfoCharts, the average transaction fee on the Ethereum network is 0.011 ETH, about $21 at press time.

Daily Movers - BNB, DASH, and SXP

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 24-hour period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with rather liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes.

Binance Coin (BNB) - BNB powers the Binance ecosystem and is the native asset of the Binance Chain. BNB is a cryptocurrency created in June 2017, launched during an ICO in July. Its used to power the Binance Chain and its native chain token, as well as the Binance Smart Chain, an EVM-compatible network.

Dash (DASH) - Dash is an open-source cryptocurrency. It is an altcoin that was forked from the Bitcoin protocol. It is also a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) run by a subset of its users, which are called "masternodes." The currency permits transactions that can be untraceable.

Swipe (SXP) – Swipe’s native SXP tokens powers Swipe’s payment ecosystem. Token holders can enjoy multiple benefits related to cryptocurrency payments and staking. The primary aspect of the Swipe ecosystem is its Visa debit card.

The Main Net Aventus Network (AvN) Is Now Officially Live

Aventus, the blockchain protocol that makes transactions fairer, more transparent, and more affordable for any organization, today announces the launch of the Aventus Network (AvN). This new layer-2 blockchain protocol brings 100x scalability and 133x faster speed to Ethereum transactions.

The Aventus Network:

Is 133X faster than Ethereum, scaling up to 2,000 transactions per second
Cost just $0.01 per transaction – less than 1% of the average Ethereum transaction,
Is 100 times faster than Ethereum with transfers processed in 0.13 seconds,
Combines the best of Ethereum’s secure distributed ledger with complete interoperability with future or existing blockchains.

The Aventus Network is in the midst of processing 8.5m historic transactions from clients and recently launched a registration scheme allowing holders of AVT (Aventus’ publicly traded cryptocurrency) to become Validators by ‘staking’ their tokens. Validators receive $0.01 for each transaction processed.

AvN is built for interoperability with public blockchains and Aventus has made its technology totally open source for the developer community.

Alan Vey, co-Founder and CEO of Aventus, said:

“AvN is built on the belief that Ethereum is brilliant – the philosophy of decentralization, its high levels of versatility and security, and its incredible community of creative developers and enthusiasts. However, it’s limited, and we want to remove those limitations so that any organization that could benefit from blockchain has the opportunity to.”

Danny Masters, Executive Chairman of CoinShares, the digital asset management firm, and equity investor and Advisory Board member at Aventus, said:

“Aventus is at the cutting-edge of what can be achieved with blockchain and I am delighted to be supporting the project during this crucial time in its growth. With its huge potential and wide applications, I am excited to see how the Aventus network grows and develops over the coming months."