Bitcoin broke back above $50,000 on Monday for the first time in three months as investors piled back into the cryptocurrency on bargain-buying. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, reached as high as $50,152.24, the highest since mid-May, up 2.5%.

With a 24-hour trading volume of $28,398,835,669 USD, the current Bitcoin price is $49,989.49 USD. Bitcoin has gained 2.53% in the last 24 hours. With a live market cap of $939,522,428,109 USD, CoinMarketCap currently ranks #1.

A crypto wallet is a place where you can securely keep your crypto, be it Bitcoin or Ether or Dogecoin or any other token. These currencies are secured through the use of private keys, and you can store these keys in a number of different ways, all of which are simply called wallets. 

There are many different types of crypto wallets, but the most popular ones have hosted wallets, non-custodial wallets, and hardware wallets.  As a crypto investor, you don’t need to ‘mine’ the tokens you own — you can simply buy and sell them on an exchange or even directly from others, and once you do that, you transfer the ‘keys’ to the coins in order to access them. 

Private And Public Keys:-

As the name suggests, cryptocurrency is based upon encryption technologies and this uses a combination of keys: a public one to identify the block of tokens, and a private one to access them. That’s already a massive oversimplification, but if you’re simply here to learn to trade about crypto, then it can be simplified further. 

Such as your username on a payment app that allows you to receive money, your public key on a crypto wallet allows you to receive tokens. Private keys are the passwords that allow you to check your balance, execute transactions and other services. Remember both are equally important.

 Cryptocurrency wallet

A crypto wallet is essentially software or an app on your mobile device where you store your digital assets such as Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum. Not just that, you also use the same wallet to digitally sign your cryptocurrency transactions. A crypto wallet also keeps your digital currencies secure as access to it is protected by a password.

If someone likes holding a wallet, you can opt for a physical device on which you can run your wallet apps. Bitcoin price in India stood at Rs. 29.75 lakhs, Dogecoin price in India stood at Rs. 15, and Ethereum price in India stood at Rs. 2.05 lakhs as of 11 am on August 6. 

Hosted wallets

The most popular and easy-to-set-up crypto wallet is a hosted wallet. When someone buys crypto using an app like Coinbase, your crypto is automatically held in a hosted wallet. It’s called hosted because a third party keeps your crypto for you, similar to how a bank keeps your money in a checking or savings account. Some people face “lose their keys” or “losing their USB wallet” but with a hosted wallet you don’t have to worry about any of that.

The main benefit of keeping your crypto in a hosted wallet is if one forgets their password, then he/she won’t lose their crypto. A drawback to a hosted wallet is you can’t access everything crypto has to offer. However, that may change as hosted wallets start to support more features.

One can set up a hosted wallet as following:-

1. Choose a platform on which you trust. Your main considerations should be security, ease of use, and compliance with government and financial regulations.
2. Create your account. Enter your personal info and choose a secure password. It’s also recommended to use 2-step verification (also called 2FA) for an extra layer of security. 

Buy or transfer crypto. Most crypto platforms and exchanges allow you to buy crypto using a bank account or credit card. If you already own crypto, you can also transfer it to your new hosted wallet for safekeeping.

Non-custodial wallets

A non-custodial wallet, like Coinbase Wallet or MetaMask, puts you in complete control of your crypto. Non-custodial wallets don’t rely on a third party — or a “custodian” — to keep your crypto safe. While they provide the software necessary to store your crypto, the responsibility of remembering and safeguarding your password falls entirely on you. If you lose or forget your password — often referred to as a “private key” or “seed phrase” — there’s no way to access your crypto. And if someone else discovers your private key, they’ll get full access to your assets. 

Why have a non-custodial wallet? In addition to being in full control of the security of your crypto, you can also access more advanced crypto activities like yield farming, staking, lending, borrowing, and more. But if all you want to do is buy, sell, send, and receive crypto, a hosted wallet is the easiest solution.

The next option could be a hardware wallet:-

A hardware wallet is a gold standard for security. It is a physical device you must purchase, like a Ledger Nano S, which is designed to allow you to interact directly with your coins from a device exclusively in your possession. It has major advantages over software wallets, including:

• private keys are often stored in a protected area of a microcontroller, and cannot be transferred out of the device in plaintext
• immune to computer viruses that steal from software wallets
• can be used securely and interactively, as opposed to a paper wallet which must be imported to software at some point
• Much of the time, the software is open-source, allowing a user to validate the entire operation of the device.

Bitcoin investment products and funds registered outflows for a second consecutive week in a row, according to information from digital asset manager CoinShares released on Monday, highlighting the cautious sentiment of investors in the cryptocurrency space as prices continue to slide. 

Bitcoin outflow reached $10.4 million (approximately Rs 77 crore) in the week ended July 16. . For the month of July, bitcoin outflows amounted to $15 million, though inflows for the year were still a robust $4.2 billion. Bitcoin price in India is Rs. 22.2 lakhs on July 20 at 10:30 am IST.

Overall the data shows that the cryptocurrency sector had a net inflow of $2.9 million (approximately Rs 20 crore) in the latest week.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was down 12.1 per cent this month. On Monday, it was testing the key support of $30,000 (approx Rs 22 lakh) and was down 3.4 per cent at $30,694 (approx Rs 22.9 lakh).

“Bitcoin is looking uncertain and trading lower with global markets due to concerns about an economic recovery,” said Pankaj Balani, chief executive officer of derivatives trading platform Delta Exchange.

“Volatility is also starting to increase. If bitcoin breaks below $30,000 (around Rs 22 lakh), we could see a sharp downside move,” he added.

That said, James Butterfill, investment strategist at CoinShares, pointed out that bitcoin outflows last week were minimal relative to May and June this year. He also believes that the timing of some of the crypto investment product launches, in which investors gained access for the first time, has led to recent profit-taking.

Ether-based investment products and funds, the token used for the Ethereum blockchain, had $11.7 million in net inflows last week. So far this year, ether inflows were close to $1 billion. Indian price for Ethereum is Rs. 1.29 lakh on July 20 at 10:30 am IST.

Ether’s price, however, was down 20% against the U.S. dollar and was last 4% weaker at $1,819.

Grayscale remains the largest crypto asset manager,  but the assets under its watch have grown further to $27.681 billion (approximately Rs 2,07,220 crore).

CoinShares, the second-biggest digital asset manager, saw its AUM dip to $3.1 billion from $3.3 billion the previous week.

On Tuesday Bitcoin tumbled amid a broad crypto crackdown from China that saw it drop below $30,000 for the first time since January before recovering from some of the losses in late-morning. The world’s biggest cryptocurrency regained the psychological level of $30,000 to recover from five-month lows on Wednesday, as the market continued to see value buying at lower levels.

The Bitcoin fell more than 11% to about $28,911, below the $29,026 level where it ended 2020, according to Coin Metrics. The cryptocurrency then bounced and was up 0.43% after 4:00 pm EST to $32,637.54 on the session, according to Coin Metrics.

On Monday Bitcoin hit a two-week peak just shy of $40,000 (around Rs. 29.2 lakhs), after another weekend reacting to tweets from Tesla boss Elon Musk, who fended off criticism over his market influence and said Tesla sold Bitcoin but may resume transactions using it.

Bitcoin has gyrated to Musk’s views for months since Tesla announced a $1.5 billion (around Rs. 10,980 crores) Bitcoin purchase in February and said it would take the cryptocurrency in payment. He later said the electric car maker would not accept Bitcoin due to concerns over how mining the currency requires high energy use and contributes to climate change. Bitcoin price in India stood at 28.7 lakhs at 12pm IST on June 14.

“When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50 per cent) clean energy usage by miners with the positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions,” Musk said on Twitter on Sunday.

“The market had been going through another round of correction over the weekend … until Elon Musk’s tweet of accepting BTC again for Tesla purchases changed sentiment,” said Bobby Ong, co-founder of crypto analytics website CoinGecko.

He said the market was also supported by the software company and major Bitcoin-backer MicroStrategy raising half a billion dollars to buy Bitcoin.

Musk’s tweet was made in response to an article based on remarks from Magda Wierzycka, head of cybersecurity firm Syria, who in a radio interview last week accused him of “price manipulation” and selling a “big part” of his exposure.

“This is inaccurate,” Musk said. “Tesla only sold ~10 per cent of holdings to confirm BTC could be liquidated easily without moving market.”

Musk had tweeted in May that Tesla “will not be selling any Bitcoin” and “has not sold any Bitcoin,” but investors are keenly awaiting Tesla’s next earnings update – due next month – for any disclosure of changes to its position.

Musk has taken issue with the vast computing power needed to process Bitcoin transactions and in early June posted messages appearing to lament a breakup with Bitcoin.

Other cryptocurrencies were steady after weekend gains, with ether at $2,491 (around Rs. 1.8 lakhs) and one-time Musk darling Dogecoin buying about 32 US cents (around Rs. 20) on crypto exchange Binance. And Dogecoin price in India stood at Rs. 23.78 at 12:30 pm IST on June 14, 2021.