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Bitcoin has risen over 40% this month, reaching a new record price of $66,879 on expectations that the recently listed ProShares exchange-traded fund (ETF) tied to the cryptocurrency’s futures would bring more mainstream money into the market.

Such a steep ascent often has investors assessing whether the party is coming to a close, especially when popular technical indicators like the relative strength index (RSI) signal overbought conditions, as with bitcoin.

However, blockchain metrics like the MVRV Z-score and a lesser-known chart-based indicator, Mayer Multiple, suggest the bull run has plenty of steam left.

The market value-to-realized value (MVRV) Z-score that measures the deviation of market value from realized value and is used to assess undervalued and overvalued conditions, has doubled to 3.91 this month. However, the value is nowhere close to the red zone above 5.00 that has historically marked the final leg of the bull market.

The market value represents the total network value of the cryptocurrency and is calculated by multiplying the total circulating supply by the last traded price. Meanwhile, the realized value is calculated by valuing each coin at the price it was last moved.

Although bitcoin market valuations may not be cheap, they do not appear to be overstretched either, with there being a scope for an extension of the price rally.

“When market value is significantly higher than realized value, it has historically indicated a market top (red zone), while the opposite has indicated market bottoms (green zone),” blockchain analytics firm Glassnode said in the MVRV Z-score explainer.

The Mayer Multiple, which measures the spread between bitcoin’s price and the 200-day moving average (MA), also shows the bull market is still far from peaking. While the metric has risen to a five-month high of 1.39, it is well below the 2.4 threshold, above which previous bull markets peaked.

Both indicators back up analysts’ expectations of a continued price rally toward $100,000 in the coming months. That said, it may not be a smooth ride, and the cryptocurrency may see price pullbacks depending on the degree of leverage in the market.

The cryptocurrency remains vulnerable to macro risks and potential risk-off in traditional markets.

According to Reuters, there is a growing view in the market that the U.S. Federal Reserve may soon feel compelled to scale back stimulus more aggressively to contain inflation. “U.S. traders are now pricing a full rate hike into the Fed’s September policy meeting next year. But by that time, New Zealand’s central bank would have hiked five times, Canada’s three times and England’s four times,” Bloomberg report said.

Should the market start pricing more aggressive Fed rate hike bets, risk assets, including bitcoin, may face some selling pressure.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the country’s top securities regulator, issued a notice to advisers on Thursday warning them not to deal in assets that are not regulated in the country.

• SEBI said it would take action against any investment adviser dealing in unregulated assets, including digital gold. Cryptocurrencies are also considered unregulated assets.
• The notice comes on the back of recent comments from the CEO of India’s newest crypto “unicorn,” CoinSwitch Kuber, that the government and regulators are in talks with crypto companies for a plan to regulate the industry.
• The Indian government has seemingly relaxed its plans to ban crypto outright, and is now looking to regulate its use in illegal transactions.

Read more: India’s Securities Regulator Wants IPO Promoters to Sell Crypto Holdings: Report

A key manufacturer feeding crypto’s twitter’s tungsten craze is auctioning off an NFT tied to the largest tungsten cube it’s ever made.

The NFT’s title says it all: “The Tungsten Cube – 14 inch, ~1,784 lb cube held in Willowbrook, Illinois, USA by Midwest Tungsten Service.” Bidding on OpenSea begins Friday, e-commerce director Sean Murray told coindesk.

According to the description on OpenSea, the NFT grants its holder once-a-year visiting rights for the super-dense cube.

The NFT is the latest twist in a week-long meme saga that turned a sleepy metals manufacturer into crypto twitter’s unlikely celebrity…. And all because of super-dense cubes

Traders and journalists and tweeters and moonbois have all been acquiring these desk tchotchkes for hundreds of dollars or more. (Full disclosure: this reporter has his own Midwest 1-incher. It’s surprisingly dense!)

Keeping the 14-inch cube at Midwest Tungsten HQ might be out of necessity.

Murray previously told CoinDesk that Midwest Tungsten was considering creating a supremely heavy cube but wasn’t sure how to get transportation squared away.

He’d also sworn to keep Midwest Tungsten focused on the metals and not NFTs. But a week of surging sales changed the calculus.

“I wanted to let you know first that we’re going to try an NFT. Swerving out of our lane, I guess. The crypto twitter community’s enthusiasm for cryptocurrency and NFTs is contagious.”

Cryptocurrency traders are inadvertently pumping the price of a little-known altcoin they believe belongs to a project conceived by Sam Altman, former president of tech startup accelerator Y Combinator.

Altman, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence firm OpenAI, unveiled his “Worldcoin” (WC) project earlier on Thursday, promising fair distribution among as “many people as possible.”

“If a cryptocurrency were adopted at scale, it would vastly increase access to the internet economy and make applications possible that are now unimaginable,” the project’s webpage reads.

I am so excited about this, and users seem to like it too—here’s what growth has looked like during the beta tests (with less than 30 devices!).

We can see a path to a billion-person network pretty quickly. A network that big should be quite powerful. pic.twitter.com/RoKqpGknoP

— Sam Altman (@sama) October 21, 2021

The coin centers on a novel device WC developers call “the Orb.” The device captures an image of a person’s eye, which is converted into a short numeric code, making it possible to identify whether a person has signed up already.

If not, they receive their free share of Worldcoin.

The problem is, the coin has yet to begin trading on the open market, and the coin traders are associating Altman’s project something completely unrelated.

We would never make life changing money if it wasn’t for the dumb fucks in crypto.

You are apeing into Worldcoin – but its not Sam Altmans Worldcoin 🤦‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/vlL2uoKiJI

— Biz (flyingsaucer,flyingsaucer) (@Adouble212) October 21, 2021

WorldCoin (WDC), conceived as far back as 2013, is a cryptocurrency “designed to be the world’s first digital currency of the future,” according to its website. The goal of this altcoin is to become the “cryptocurrency of choice” for merchants and consumers for everyday transactions.

Over the last 24-hours, WDC’s price has gone from $0.05 to around $0.09, and is currently up 68.4%, according to data by CoinGecko.

Read more: Altcoins Surge as Crypto Market Regains Steam

A high court in Pakistan has approved a committee to explore whether cryptocurrencies are advisable under the country’s legal system, according to a report Friday by The News International.

The High Court of Sindh, the peak judicial body in the southeastern province of Sindh, granted permission for the committee to consider crypto trading and report its findings to the province’s Ministry of Finance.

Should the committee find crypto trading permissible under Pakistani law, then recommendations are to be forwarded to the ministry alongside a draft framework for crypto regulation, subject to modification.

The committee is to be chaired by a deputy governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) along with officials of Ministries Of Finance, Information Technology, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and Security and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, according to the report.

The court conceded that a decision whether to provide greater oversight around crypto trading activity in Pakistan came not by choice but by pragmaticism over the potential black market business dealings currently outside government purview.

Cryptocurrency has experienced a boom in recent weeks, with the price of bitcoin hitting a new all-time high on Wednesday above $66,000.

Popularity in trading digital assets and, therefore, tax receipts that occur from such activity are considered a strong source of revenue for governments looking to get their hands on a piece of the action.

Higher prices are continuing to drive new traders and are raising the industry’s profile among the mainstream.

While crypto trading is not strictly illegal in Pakistan, under current regulation imposed by the SBP in 2018, a ban is in place for those firms it regulates that are dealing in crypto.

In 2019, Pakistan’s federal government put in place tougher regulations for the crypto industry by mandating all Electronic Money Institutions be licensed to provide crypto assets under recommendations from the Financial Action Task Force.

Read more: Indian Investments in Crypto Have Exploded: Report

Quick Take

• Many NFT launches are fixed-price and first-come-first-served that result in gas auctions, and they provide a sub-optimal user experience
• Many NFT metadata is hosted on IPFS or centralized servers, with an increasing number of them getting hosted on Arweave recently
• NFT launches can be gamed if the associated metadata is predetermined

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this Genesis research on The Block.

This week’s launch of the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy Exchange-Traded Fund (stock ticker BITO) may have aided the cryptocurrency’s recent price surge to an all-time high, though the perception of bitcoin as an inflation hedge over gold is probably a bigger factor, a JPMorgan strategist wrote Thursday.

• In its first two days of trading, BITO amassed assets of over $1 billion, according to ProShares.
• Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas says the new ProShares fund is the fastest in the history of the ETF industry to  reach $1 billion in two sessions; such an ascent eclipsed  the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) ETF’s 18-year record at three days to reach this level.
• JPMorgan strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote in a note to clients  that there’s been a shift from gold ETFs into bitcoin funds since September, and there’s already existing vehicles for investors to gain bitcoin exposure; the bank sees this shift in flows being bullish for bitcoin into year-end.
• BITO saw trading volume of over 29 million shares Wednesday, representing over $1.2 billion, according to a representative from the company.
• Separately, billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones told CNBC earlier this week he currently prefers bitcoin over gold as an inflation hedge.

Germany’s World Wildlife Fund (WWF) announced today it will release an NFT collection to raise money for protecting endangered animals and their habitats.

The NFT artists tapped to create the art for the collection, which will feature endangered animals and is called “Non-fungible Animals,” include Bosslogic, Freehand Profit, Eric Peters, Vinzent Britz, Lea Fricke, Romulo  Kuranyi, Andres Ribon, Rocket&Wink, Etienne Kiefer and Anna Rupprecht.

The number of each artist’s NFTs will be tied to the current population of certain endangered species. For instance, there will be 290 NFTs to represent the 290 giant ibises left in the world.

WWF Germany will release the NFTs with the Polygon Network. 

Sales for the WWF’s collection will open on Polygon on November 2, and USDC  will be required to purchase an NFT. The WWF’s partners for the NFT launch include Publicis Groupe,  Meet Pablo, Max Penk, MoonPay, Polygon, Unifty and Moonwolf.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The waitlist for Robinhood’s crypto wallet is now more than one million customers long, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said at CNBC’s Disruptor 50 summit on Thursday.

• Robinhood announced last month it was planning to roll out a crypto wallet in early 2022 that would allow customers to trade, send and receive cryptocurrencies, as well as transfer them to hardware wallets.
• “Crypto is certainly here to stay as an asset class and the ease of use and the global nature of it, I think, has made it attractive to lots of people,” CNBC quoted Tenev as saying.
• Commissions from crypto trading accounted for 41% of Robinhood’s revenue in its second quarter, up from just 17% in the first quarter. Overall, Robinhood has said that more than 60% of its customer traded cryptocurrencies in the second quarter.
• Robinhood is slated to report its third-quarter earnings report on Tuesday, Oct. 26.

Fintech company Current is one step closer to bringing decentralized finance (DeFi) features to its 3 million users.

The firm said Thursday it is working with Bison Trails, the blockchain infrastructure company acquired by Coinbase in January, to sync up with Polkadot parachain networks Karura and Acala. The fintech first announced its crypto plans in May.

Current says it’s looking to combine DeFi services with the best of its traditional offerings in a bid to meet the growing needs of crypto-curious retail investors. Along with travel app Maps.me toying with DeFi features on Solana, Current represents an emerging crop of aspiring fintech-DeFi mashups.

“We’ve flirted with bringing crypto back into our project for a while now, but there were always obstacles in the way,” Current Chief Technology Officer Trevor Marshall told CoinDesk in an interview. “When DeFi really took off in 2019, we were able to get over a lot of the technical hurdles.”

The company first attempted to offer DeFi services with Ripple and later Ethereum, dating as far back as 2015, though neither came to fruition due to technical limitations, Marshall said.

“The launch of our cluster on Karura is the first step in the evolution of what we’ve been building over the past six years at Current,” he added in a statement.

Said Acala co-founder Bette Chen:

“These two organizations share our vision of a hybrid finance (HyFi) future, and we are excited to continue building products and networks that improve financial outcomes for the Current, Acala, and Karura communities.”