Weekly News Roundup: Meitu Converts Cash to BTC, Norwegian Oil Billionaire Invests in Bitcoin, U.S. Approves $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Package

It’s been another wild and busy week in the world of cryptocurrencies. A popular Chinese app is trading large amounts of cash for Bitcoin, and Norway’s second-richest person is jumping on board the Bitcoin train. United States Senate approved Joe Biden’s latest stimulus package and a few other catalysts have cryptocurrency on the rise yet again.

Here’s your weekly news roundup.

Selfie App Converts Cash to Bitcoin and Ethereum

Meitu isn’t exactly a name that rolls off the tongue, but if you live in China you’ve probably heard of it. It’s the name of a tech company behind a popular photo editing app for people who like to take selfies (who doesn’t like to take selfies these days?). The company purchased $40 million USD worth of cryptocurrency this week. $18 million in Bitcoin and $22 million in Ethereum.

The fact that most of the capital went into Ethereum is no coincidence as institutional investors are starting to wise up to the idea that Ethereum is fundamentally undervalued. Time will tell if this trend continues.

Norway’s Second Richest Person Buys $58 Million in Bitcoin

Kjell Inge Rokke is a Norwegian oil tycoon worth an estimated $5.4 billion USD. He’s investing $58 million USD in Bitcoin. Despite his huge investment, Rokke acknowledges that Bitcoin ‘may still go to zero’, but he also says the future success of the project is ‘nearly inevitable’.

Clearly Rokke is putting his money where his mouth is and betting on the latter opinion to come to fruition.

Germany Is Using the Blockchain to Store Data Related to Covid Vaccines

Not everything built on the blockchain is about making money for investors. Germany’s Federal Ministry of Health offered 29 companies just five days to apply to a ‘secret competition’ where the winning competitor would offer a decentralized digital certificate on the blockchain as verification for having received the coronavirus vaccination.

Only seven companies felt they had a reasonable solution available in such a short period of time and now a local German company called Ubrich (along with IBM) have each been awarded government contracts to work together on their proposed solution.

Ubrich CEO, Stephen Noller, says the system will be ready to run in the next eight weeks. The government awarded contract is worth €2.7 million to start.

United States Senate Approves $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Package Pushing Cryptocurrencies Higher

Bitcoin’s all-time high is $73,979.43 Canadian. That high revealed itself on February 21 of this year. At the time of this writing, one Bitcoin is worth about $71,000 Canadian. Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion USD stimulus package getting approved in the United States Senate is a big reason for the bounce back. The market saw a more than 20% pullback to start this month, and here we are flirting with the all-time high again.

As more and more dollars get printed off by governments, more and more money floods into traditional and crypto markets. Plus, the U.S. Dollar Tether token settled the lawsuit in the last several weeks and will now begin printing more Tether tokens (which also has a positive impact on the Bitcoin price). Clearly, the short-term prospects for Bitcoin remain promising.

Securities Exemption Bill Reintroduced to Congress

All of the positive news coming out about cryptocurrencies this week has to be capped off by the fact that United States congressmen, Warren Davidson, is reintroducing a bill that proposes a 3.0 version of the Token Taxonomy Act. The act would make cryptocurrencies exempt from United States securities laws.

Securities law surrounding cryptocurrencies is a lot more relaxed here in Canada. That’s why Canadians can actively invest in most initial coin offerings and initial decentralized offerings, whereas most Americans cannot.

The exemption of cryptocurrencies from securities laws would offer a whole new pool of investors to new and innovative projects trying to get off the ground. It will be interesting to see if the third time is a charm for this bill.

The easiest way to buy Bitcoin is through an online crypto trading platform Netcoins that offers Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies.

You’re now up-to-date on this week’s happenings!