Bitcoin booms above $14.8K; Ethereum tops $400

It may be that Bitcoin investors are encouraged by the U.S. presidential election seeming to appear to tilt toward the Democrat; or perhaps they expect a bitter, prolonged dispute. Either way, the 2020 crypto market boom resoundingly expanded its blast zone Wednesday into Thursday with big moves for BTC and ETH.

Despite vying-for-world-leadership contentiousness, BTC rose to $14,800 as of 8:45 a.m. Thursday morning (EST) on an 8%-over-24-hour-period jump that pushed returns for the year above 100%. Over the past month, the mother of all cryptos is up more than 40% as investors anticipate more Fed stimulus, hence more inflation, thus a weaker dollar, which is increasingly viewed as being in danger of losing its status as a bastion of stability in the eyes of the world.

Ether was up 5% to $404 over 24 hours as of early Thursday, which having not slept since Tuesday felt like Wednesday.

European stocks, sensing perhaps Biden was edging agonizingly closer to winning a few more key states to put him on a path to victory, reached recent highs relative to a fortnight ago.

The tiny pink horn in the Uniswap logo is still pointing upward if you really look close. True, UNI has tanked in the past few months. But when compared to its all-time low of about a dollar when it was born in mid-September, UNI is up 77%. UNI's all-time high, reached soon after its launch, is $8.40. As of Thursday morning a.m., UNI was trading $1.82, up 0.4% during the few moments it took to read up on some whales who have been selling their tokens (Blockchain News).

That DeFi seems in decline can’t be shrugged off. But let’s not also overlook the run that, say, yearn.finance, has been on this year.

YFI was $31 in July. Its in-limited-supply token now sits at roughly $8,000. Over the past month, though, YFI is down 58%.

While the heavily contested presidential election dominated financial market narratives, there were several interesting developments in congressional elections and state ballot initiatives. A “green wave” brought legalization of marijuana to five new U.S. states. And the first QAnon conspiracy theorist is set to join the House of Representatives. Here's one more curious result: a Bitcoin holder, Cynthia Lummis, was elected to the Senate by the state of Wyoming. Which is going all-in on crypto.

Fintech firm Cashaa is determined to make digital wallets a thing in India even if it means getting physical.

Cashaa, aiming to build India's first crypto-friendly banking platform, has announced a plan to begin a new physical branch network in India to further facilitate widespread take-up of digital transactions. The firm envisions a network of 100 walk-in offices. The first ones will be in Delhi and Gujarat. This news follows Cashaa’s new wallet offering for Indian investors. That was initiated last month along with an announced partnership with United Multistate Credit’s 30-branch system.

Cashaa is just the latest Indian fintech player to begin offering crypto in the wake and in spite of a ruling earlier in the year by the Supreme Court of India which, for all intents and purposes, quashed crypto transactions. Government officials are calling for a review of potential options for a framework moving forward. Crypto entrepreneurs increasingly seem unwilling to wait around (Cointelegraph).

With the world fixated on the Trump-Biden race, a couple of dubious digital transfers occurred. A suspicious wallet, dormant since 2013 but closely watched by the crypto community, drew some serious attention Tuesday when its contents – almost 70,000 BTC worth about $1 billion – was transferred. The wallet is believed by analysts to have been connected with the Silk Road dark marketplace shut down by U.S. federal authorities in 2012. Meanwhile, the following day, $3.5 million looted from KuCoin also was, slyly, timing-wise, in motion (Decrypt).

AP’s Election API: The Associated Press has been publishing election results on the Ethereum and EOS blockchains (Cointelegraph). Through the AP Elections API, results are being immutably written to blockchain by Everipedia’s OraQle software as a way to deliver an indelible, unhackable record of the news agency's calls for each state as they come in.

U.S. authorities have warned that Russian hackers were anticipating uncertainty around election results and preparing to sow chaos.