The current COVID-19 crisis has created a lot of economic effects that have touched on cryptocurrency industry. Owing to the recent events, The Italian bank Banco Sella has moved to establish a Bitcoin trading service.
The trading service will be provided by the bank’s Hype platform, in which Banco Sella will play an intermediary role in the mitigation of the expected cyber threats with crypto exchanges.
Considering the fact that Italy surpassed China in recording the highest number of deaths due to corona virus, it appears that the bank moved in to capitalize on the national lockdown – looking to take advantage of a possible spike in crypto adoption as a safe international money transfer option.
Hype Attracts Massive Usage
As far as Banco Sella is concerned, about 1.2 million Italians have hoped on the Hype bandwagon by using the Hype platform to execute financial transactions. In principle, users have been accorded the opportunity to exploit Bitcoin in transacting funds between various locations, including the purchase of goods and services.
While commenting on the recent development, Antonio Valitutti, Hype’s General Manager, said that the platform’s relevance is anchored on the current crypto and Bitcoin market dynamics. In his words, more people continue to express interest in virtual assets as the pathway towards gaining the much-needed control over money management issues.
The Italian Crypto Boost
It can be inferred that the last few months have been eventful for the virtual currency industry, with increased crypto interest being registered across Italian institutions.
In perspective, blockchain technology was employed in an electronic voting exercise in the southern City of Naples. Apart from the recent case of e-voting in the corona-hit country, two Italian educational institutions resolved to record diplomas on blockchain. The Italian Red Cross has also created a Bitcoin fundraiser in joining efforts to help the country deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Reality of Bitcoin’s Performance Amid Corona Fears
The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc across the financial markets – all hell seems to be breaking lose. But amid the current wave of uncertainty and investor fear, most Bitcoin enthusiasts have been led to believe that cryptocurrencies were designed for such moments of lockdowns.
A number of crypto pundits have attempted to distinguish the crypto from traditional financial markets in that the two corridors do not intersect – terming virtual assets as a safe option to cushion people against the devastation of market crashes like those that have been witnessed amid the corona crisis.
Much to the disappointment of the proponents of the above notion, Bitcoin and the entire crypto market has taken a blow along with the traditional stock market. In fact, it appears that virtual assets reacted to the market shockwaves quite fast. While it took more than two weeks for the stock market to tank towards the bear market status over COVID-19 fears, digital currencies did so in less than a day.
Statistics by CoinMarketCap showed that Bitcoin and other digital assets had taken a plunge in early trading last week, with Bitcoin dropping by 23%. This phenomenon reflected on other virtual currencies with Ethereum dropping by more than 30% while XRP was off 24%. Indeed, the crazy fluctuations have thus demonstrated that cryptocurrencies are not a safe haven in times of market crises as thought before.
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