At press time, Bitcoin is trading at $63,929, according to CoinMarketCap data. However, BTC only broke through $64,000 on August 23 for the first time in 20 days and struggled to hold higher before briefly moving back to $63,500. The breakout came after dovish comments from US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell further bolstered US investors’ confidence that an interest rate cut was coming. Although he did not provide a timeline.
$64,000 had previously been seen as key support for Bitcoin in the months following the approval of Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on January 11. However, the recent decline on August 5, also known as crypto’s ‘Black Monday’, has seen that level become resistance for Bitcoin. Currently, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) of Bitcoin is 66.11. During Bitcoin’s all-time high of $73,679 in March this year, the RSI rose to 79.79. (The RSI index, which suggests that the price of Bitcoin is not yet overbought, is above 70, and this indicates that the market may be overbought. When it is below 30, it suggests that the market may be oversold).
Meanwhile, at the end of August, Bitcoin holders will be able to earn passive income through BTC staking. This will be possible thanks to new developments in the decentralized financial applications sector. On August 22, the Babylon protocol was launched on the Bitcoin network. It promises to provide holders of the first cryptocurrency with passive income from staking. The launch has already brought miners an additional $3.2 million in income and increased transaction fees on the Bitcoin network.
At the first stage, BTC holders will be able to lock their tokens in the Bitcoin network. For security purposes, Babylon sets a limit of 1,000 BTC ($57.9 million) that users can stake in total. Each participant is allowed to send no more than 0.05 BTC per transaction, which led to increased activity on the network and a record increase in fees during the launch to $132. Interestingly, the Babylon developers explain the investment limits per wallet by the desire to prevent the participation of a limited number of large players and to create fairer conditions for entering the project. Previously, Babylon developers received about $90 million in investments from Paradigm, OKX, and Binance exchanges, as well as several other large venture funds. The project is led by Stanford University engineering professor David Tse, known for his previous research in information theory while working at the University of California, Berkeley. The project is supported by more than 200 “finality providers” who will approve transactions to maintain the operation of the network protocol, similar to the role of validators in proof-of-stake ecosystems.
Against the backdrop of such a rather modest growth of assets, one of the legitimate and stable forms of investment for obtaining a consistently high passive income is investing in the ASTL project (Hong Kong), which gives investors the opportunity to directly invest fiat and crypto assets in a stable passive income, which obviously exceeds inflation expectations and is not subject to any sanctions, blocking or confiscation. The ASTL project is a simple and elegant solution for potential investors – investing in the development of the real sector of a diversified cryptocurrency portfolio with a fairly high annual interest rate (up to 14%) with payments in stablecoin (USDT) and the possibility of a full return on investment through the subsequent sale of accumulated ASTL tokens on leading crypto exchanges. Details can be found at https://astl.world.
