 Welcome to Digital Asset News, taking top stories in cryptocurrency digital assets. Man, break them down to bite-sized pieces today. Interesting stuff to think about. First up, crypto could kill credit cards, says Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham. When we get into the details of this, we can see exactly what's going to happen in the future because of the lack of innovation on banks as well as credit card companies also. I always had this question about why MicroStrategy is so bullish on Bitcoin. This is a great article by Ambi Crypto. They state why MicroStrategy will not stop investing in Bitcoin. And if you missed it today, we did a quick little snippet because MicroStrategy hit 650 million in Bitcoin. So we'll take a look at this and why they are so absolutely bullish on the top cryptocurrency. Also, Theta News, Theta Network enhancements usher in smart contract capabilities. And this is a good product of what they're doing. But there's one more thing that came along with this that I think is massive. And finally, bitcoin.com wallet adds shareable payment link feature where you can send Bitcoin to cash anyone like via text, email, and social media. So it's just as fast, if not faster and as easy as sending a payment via Venmo. And we're getting all that stuff. But first, let me remind you that the 12 days of Christmas is right on the corner. It is going to be happening on Monday. And each day we'll be giving away some pretty great prizes. So all you have to do is just show up on those days, watch the video and I'll tell you exactly what to comment and we will be drawing the different winners on each and every day until Christmas December 25th. And also double your opportunity to win something. Take a look in the description of my videos. There's a link to the exchange of wallet fees and the fourth one over SwiftX, which is a Australian exchange. Everybody though can enter their 12 days of Christmas. All you have to do is just click on the link right here. And they also have some fabulous prizes, which will culminate on the 25th where they're going to give away one complete Bitcoin. So go ahead and check that out. Sign up. There's multiple ways to do it and check out SwiftX. Quickly, let's take a look at the market. So today it is December 11th. It is about 3pm. El Paso, Texas time. And what do we got? Well, Bitcoin is up a little bit and I'm happy to say it's finally up in the 18,000 range. Not too fantastic, but we will take a little bit of gains that we can do. So 18-1 Ethereum took a big drop, 550. And for the week they're down almost 11%. And again, if you're from the traditional markets, just hold on to your pants because this happens like all the time. Not a big deal. XRP is up a little bit and that flair drop is going on if it hasn't already gone on already. For all you XRP holders, sit tight because you're going to get a lot of spark airdrop. But just so you know, you will only get a percentage of your complete airdrop. They will be doing more airdrops as time goes on. So I think this is a smart idea actually. So people don't just dump their XRP, just buy a bunch of XRP, get the airdrop and then dump it. The spark will be actually going on for the next year, I believe. Correct me in the comment section. Tether's tether, nobody cares. Bitcoin cash is down. Everything's down. Everything's down, down, down, down. Great. Monero's up. Good for that. 3.7 OKB. I had nobody cares. Maybe OKB holders. I don't know. So we'll take a look at this. And actually today I'm not going to take a look at Bitcoin. Everything's down. Who cares? So that's what's happening. Let's just take a look at what's going on in the news. All right. This was fantastic. And the reason why it's fantastic is because of this guy. So if you don't know why Combinator is a venture capitalist firm and they put a lot of money into some pretty important startups. Now, they don't all have winners, obviously. But just so you know, these guys, they have actually launched over 2,000 companies, including Stripe, Airbnb, which just crushed it this week with their IPO, Cruise Automation, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, Dropbox, Twitch and Reddit. So when you think about some of the big tech names out there, these guys were behind funding it initially. So what do they say about cryptocurrency? Well, come down the rabbit hole. So Paul Graham, the co-founder of Seed Money Startup, why Combinator believes that the future of credit card companies is grim if they continue to black ball customers. And before we go on, let me know in the comments section how many of you have been screwed over by your credit card companies because you tried to or even debit cards. You've tried to actually use your credit cards to purchase cryptocurrency or digital assets on an exchange, and they either reversed you, they stopped the payment, or they just cut off your credit card because I remember these things happening all the time back in 2017-2018. Just want to see if it's still going on. Anyhow, he states this, possible future scenario, credit card companies become increasingly picky about who they'll process transactions for, and this becomes the thing that tips the general public into using crypto and transactions, ultimately killing credit cards. And I would not have agreed with this statement if it wasn't for PayPal this year coming into the fray, and then people can actually discover what cryptocurrencies are. And this is the thing, this is why I try to educate so many people as best I can. I try to direct them to DanTeachersCrypto.com, which is a 100% free website. It explains why it's not a great idea to have, you know, paper Bitcoin, paper Ethereum, but to actually hold your cryptocurrency assets and have your private keys. So when they talk about this and credit cards really just being killed, or excuse me, getting killed by the public and going into cryptocurrencies, they can because you can use them anywhere, you can do anything with them. You can pay, you know, somebody in India who has no account and just has a smartphone and just shoot it all over there. And that's exactly how it'll work. Now the thing with MasterGuard and Visa is they're the gatekeepers and they've got too much power. They actually have 90% of the credit card market. So when you have this much consolidation, this much power, there has to be a shift and there has to be something that goes on. I think that's what cryptocurrencies are here for. So here's what happened this week. They cut off Pornhub earlier this week, because they said, we're not going to have anybody at Pornhub use MasterGuard and Visa to purchase anything over there. So the, and check this out, the 10th most popular website in the world, Pornhub. Who to think it that pornography would be big with over 3.3 billion monthly visits, describe the move as crushing for its models. And they state this news is crushing for the thousands of models who rely on our platform for their livelihoods. However, there is a silver lining this September, Pornhub, they started to accept Bitcoin and Litecoin. So what a beautiful move right there. They said, hey, MasterGuard and Visa might shut us down or might shut payments down. So we want you to give the option of accepting Bitcoin and Litecoin. Now the people that did that, which I'm sure it was very few, because you're like, oh, that seems so volatile. They're making all like bandits right now, like bandits. Because I mean, look at how much Bitcoin and Litecoin, I mean, especially Litecoin, Litecoin is just really hit its stride. They're in the money and good for them if they just would have, you know, taken that plunge. But this is the interesting part. And I think I know what's going on here. So Bitcoin surpassed the market cap of MasterCard in late November during this recent run up. And at the peak of the previous bull market, Bitcoin actually trumped Visa as far as market cap. You can see this in July or this is in December 2017, 251 billion. They're about the same right there. So I think that MasterCard and Visa, if I look at this going, wow, hold on, there's a technology that will allow anybody to send a payment anywhere in the world in under 30 minutes from next to nothing. And we don't need a middle man like us. Well, that's not good. We don't like that. And I think if they kind of look down the road because they've already gone into applying for patents, Visa and MasterCard for blockchain technology. So it's going to be a race and it's a race to see who is going to capture the hearts and imagination of the global population at large for payments. And the way things are moving, it's looking like crypto could be the potential winner. Anyhow, let me know what you think in the comments section. Let's move on. Why micro strategy will not stop investing in Bitcoin? Well, it's kind of easy because it'll make a lot of money. That's really what it comes down to. They make it a ton of money and they're making everybody else look stupid. So we actually covered this in today's Dan snippets or Dan's bite size pieces where we talked about real quick that micro strategy, they had actually tried to raise 400 million. They made, they raised 650 million and they're going to buy a ton more Bitcoin. But the question always is, is why are they doing it? Why are they doing it? Why are they doing it? Because it's a very ballsy move. So the sole purpose in the beginning for micro strategy to invest in Bitcoin was to preserve its cash reserves, purchasing power by converting it to Bitcoin. And Michael Saylor had always talked about how his cash was essentially on a melting iceberg and was just kind of being wasted away, especially with the quantitative easing and the federal government, the Federal Reserve, was actually decreasing the purchasing power of its dollars rapidly and they couldn't really do anything about it. And the best thing they could do was to invest in Bitcoin, which is what they did. The thing they didn't expect to happen was that their stock price went through the roof. So when they're looking like, wow, first of all, as of today, the 475 million that they purchased back in August is worth 741 million. So they're looking like geniuses. So when you take something like that and you put that into your company, you start to have people look at your company a lot different and go, wow, these guys are visionaries. I want to be on top of this. First of all, as many know what micro strategy does, I'm just going to ask the question. And a lot of people don't. I mean, not everybody doesn't know. I mean, some people do, but it's a data analytics firm. And they're really good at what they do. They are a multi-billion dollar company, I believe. That's fantastic for them. But when people are looking to invest, a lot of people just throw their money around like, well, they're visionaries and they're out of the game, someone to get into it. And I think that's what's going on right here. So we always talk about micro strategy and we're like, ah, it's great. It's great. Great. But I think that a lot of people don't know what micro strategy does. They're like, well, I just know the guy invested into Bitcoin. So that's good enough for me. But this is what's happening with their stock price. So when you compare the NASDAQ right here compared to micro strategy and Bitcoin, of course, Bitcoin has far outperformed the NASDAQ this year in 2020. And the NASDAQ did pretty good. I mean, it was like an all-time type of high. It was awesome. Everybody's like, oh, it's a fantastic thing and so on and so forth. But micro strategy beat the tar to them and Bitcoin beat the tar to everybody. So when you take a look at this, the company itself is like, well, if we keep investing in Bitcoin, then we'll get more people that will invest in our company and we'll make even more money. So it's like they're double dipping and that only makes sense to me. And this was an important piece I felt because we always talk about correlations. Is Bitcoin correlated to the stock market? We're trying to decouple from the stock market. We don't want to have Bitcoin go down with the S&P 500 because that's not what Bitcoin's for. Bitcoin's a thorough value. We're just supposed to be. And we want to actually make it seem to be that thing. And we don't want to be coupled with that traditional market because we are not a traditional market. We are a cryptocurrency market and digital assets. So when we talk about decoupling, that's a good thing. And this is what is also happening with micro strategy. And it states the spike in stock value has taken flight since the start of the Bitcoin investment program. Following the same time, the correlation flipped with micro strategy having a 52% correlation with Bitcoin and only 21% with NASDAQ at the time of writing. And you can see this in red with the micro strategy. This is when they actually made that announcement around August or somewhere around there. Yeah, August. And then it kind of went a little bit of a bump, a little bit of sideways and a spike, a little bit of sideways, a spike, sideways, and then to the moon. And you can see what happened with NASDAQ, just a little slight elevation, but still did pretty good. So the question is, why is micro strategy so bullish? Like I said, it's good for business. It's good for business on both ends. Now the real question is going to be what's going to happen when Bitcoin has that inevitable pullback and it could be frightening. Will everybody call for Michael Saylor's head or has he already prepped them and said, look everybody, it's going to go up, but it's also going to go back down. So don't bother me. Hopefully he's done that. I would assume he has, but let me know anything in the comment section. Let's move on. Next up, data network enhancements usher in smart contract capabilities. If you don't know, Theta is a pretty great project. It allows bandwidth to be optimized by all Theta token holders or people who actually run the nodes to use their resources so that you can actually stream in HD, 1080p or whatever else it is, especially really good for live streams and also in gaming. So I think they're one of those people that are really into the market. I like Theta also because they're not trying to compete with YouTube. They've said many times, we are here in conjunction to help out with YouTube and for their streaming needs. So I think that Theta is a pretty good, pretty good buy, but that's just my opinion. So what's going on here? Well Theta's main net now hosts smart contract capabilities as a block height, 8 million, blah, blah, blah. So that's great. They're going to get into smart contracts just like XRP is going to do with the spark air drop, just like every other cryptocurrency out there. I think it's kind of like, if you don't have a smart contract, you're kind of falling behind other times, but again, I could be wrong. Noting another benefit of the update. And this is what I found to be pretty bullish because right now, if you want to stake or have a guardian node for staking and actually be able to earn Theta and T fuel, you needed 10,000 Theta tokens. But now with this update, the guardian node staking threshold has been decreased to only a thousand. So I went from 10,000 to a thousand and I've kind of bummed about this, but I'm kind of excited because I just got my 10,000 Theta like a week ago or so. So I was going to set up my guardian node. And of course, right when I get it, they're like, eh, you only need a thousand, but whatever. I still got, still got 10,000. I'm pretty happy about that. And then they said, and just to be clear, they said this upgrade will not require existing token holders to take any action or move any tokens. There is no token swap of any kind. So it all pretty much goes on in the background on the main net. So you can stake and also the smart contract functionality, which I'm sure we'll hear more about as time goes on. And this was interesting. This last piece, it said Theta launches main net earlier in 2020, making several headlines in the crypto space this year. And then a full year of positive price action, Theta rose over a thousand percent in price during the first half of 2020. And I have to tell you, I gotta tell you, you know, when you do a lot of dollar cost averages, like I do, sometimes you don't even realize how much things have gone up. Like I have a spreadsheet. I just don't even check it anymore. I just put my money in and I do it every day for, you know, my certain projects and other products I have every three days and some I have every week. And I don't really check it too much. I just kind of look at the price every so often and go, man, what's up? That's good. And so like when I see a thousand percent, I'm like, damn, has it really been? Wow. All right. So that's just another positive news. And I'm excited to see what'll happen in Theta. All right, let's move on to our last piece. The last piece is Bitcoin.com adds shareable payment link feature, send Bitcoin to anyone, text email and social. I think this is cool because this is exactly what we need to make things mainstream. This is what people are used to. People are used to Zell. They're used to Venmo. They're used to Apple Pay. So it's just like, just send a text and off you go, which I think is kind of how it should be. Let's be honest. So I always go to Bitcoin.com to get a lot of news stories. They always have like honestly, they have like the best news stories. I don't know who is in that department to like curate all these news that they get, but it's fantastic. So when I saw this, I'm like, oh, I probably would like to know about this. So let's scroll down. There's just two pieces here. First of all, if you have an old Bitcoin.com wallet, you need to upgrade. So if you have an Android or an iPhone, whatever else, just go to the play or the Apple store and it's upgraded because that's what's going to give you this functionality and it allows you to send Bitcoin the same way you share a link or a meme, which I was like, that's interesting. So like here it is. So just like how I use Venmo essentially, like I have my people in the contacts, I click on them and just says pay and then off it goes. Like I know Coinbase has it, and you can use via email, but I mean, it's just easier to use in text message. So I think something like this is pretty awesome. Also, if you notice on the 23rd of December, Bitcoin.com, they are actually giving away $100 of B-cash. So I want to get, see this guy right here, this guy right here, that's Danish. He's the one that runs the exchange. I want to get him on the show because he told me something very interesting that he told me never to say until he says it. So I want to get him on the show so we can actually say it because it's a pretty big thing. I'd like him to talk about it. But yeah, I mean, I own Bitcoin Cash. I have, you know, I need to get the wallet because I don't have that, but I'm definitely going to get that for this. So let me understand the comment section. There's just one more thing I got to make mention and that is for iTrust, the crypto IRA service. There's two things to go over. First of all, I was talking to Anthony. He's the head of the marketing department and he tells me that they are going to be supporting the XRP Air Drop. So we already talked about that. The second thing he told me was pretty interesting was that they're going to get into DeFi, meaning that all these DeFi tokens, they're going to start to carry them. So you can put those in your IRA and nobody is doing that right now. So I thought it was pretty interesting and they're going to do that in Q1 2021. The second thing he told me is this. He's like, you know what, man? He goes, we've had so many people come on that we're kind of backed up a little bit. So I'm just going to tell you right now that you can go to iTrust IRA. There's a link in the description. You can check it out and everything else. You can go to their website, schedule a call and stuff. But just so you know, they are bombarded right now with people trying to get into an IRA. And I think it kind of makes sense with what's going to happen coming out of the pipe, as far as like with capital gains and the new president-elect that's coming in, whether you believe it or not. So everybody's trying to get in, but I think there's a wedding list now. So just so you know that they are getting bombarded, but it's a great service. I like it. I still believe in it. Just, Anthony tells me that they just hired a bunch of people to get up with the demand. So that's what's going on. All right. So that's it. Just want to let everybody know. Thanks for watching. Hey, I appreciate it all the way to the end. If you like these types of videos, there's going to be two more that's going to pop up on your left and right. I'll just let YouTube do its magic. And that's all. So thanks for watching and I'll see you on the next one.