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China Dropping USD for Bitcoin!

 

China Dropping USD for Bitcoin – Iron Importers Favoring Crypto Over the US Dollar

The Chinese iron ore sector seems to be completely shifting towards blockchain-powered cross-border platforms when it comes to conducting trade deals in the national currency Yuan (RMB for short), rather than using the more usual USD transactions.
According to China Economic Net, many of the world’s biggest iron miners are on board for the adoption of blockchain platforms rather than using USD as they did before. The report suggests that importers also want to adopt the up-and-coming digital yuan as soon as it launches officially, all in order to make transactions less dependent on USD.

Powered by blockchain

Ansteel Group International Economic and Trade Co., Ltd., as well as Rio Tinto Group, completed a $14.44 million cross-border settlement transaction recently. This transaction was, unlike the previous ones, powered by blockchain.
During an interview with the International Finance News, a Rio Tinto Group representative commented on the transaction settled on the blockchain:

“As early as 2014, we started conducting RMB transactions with Baosteel. In 2019, we established a port business. Now, Chinese customers have the opportunity to buy our products in small quantities from Chinese ports and pay for them in RMB. As the main supplier of individual Chinese customers, we believe that these port sales can help us better serve our existing customer base.”
Xinhua News Agency reported that in the first half of the year, RMB cross-border transactions amounted to RMB 12.7 trillion (which equates to $1.83 billion), a year-on-year increase of 36.7%.
This proves a point of China trying to move away from the US dollar and into other alternatives, with the main one being blockchain.

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Grayscale Extremely Bullish on Bitcoin! The Next Bull Run Is Now!

Grayscale Extremely Bullish on Bitcoin: Bitcoin Market ‘Looks Like 2016, Before Historic Bull Run’

A new report coming from crypto fund manager Grayscale Investments proposes an argument that Bitcoin’s market structure currently “parallels that of early 2016, right before Bitcoin began its historic bull run.”
Grayscale predicts that the demand for Bitcoin will grow significantly as inflation accelerates, therefore highlighting the need for a scarce monetary commodity.
The report identifies many on-chain indicators that show growing interest in cryptocurrencies, noting an increase in long-term holding rather than short-term speculation. Grayscale also notes that the number of daily active addresses is at the highest level since 2017’s all-time highs.


Grayscale notes that the increasing dependence of the US economy on quantitative easing to simply stay afloat and that history shows that this is a difficult addiction to quit.
Despite the US dollar remaining “structurally quite strong relative to other currencies,” the report also shows that investors are constantly searching for ways to protect against the, now than ever, ever-expanding money supply. Grayscale also notes that the investors found Bitcoin to be a good a store of value and a great protection against inflation, simply due to its deflationary nature.

Grayscale cites the scoring system that is used by hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones and which assesses Bitcoin’s attributes against other financial assets, such as cash, gold, and others.
Quoting Jones, the report noted:
“What was surprising to me was that Bitcoin scored as high as it did. BTC had an overall score of almost 60% of that of financial with a market cap that is 1/1200th of that. Bitcoin scored 66% of gold as a store of value with a market cap just 1/60th of gold’s total value.”
Paul Tudor Jones then added that “Something appears wrong here and my guess is it is the price of Bitcoin.”

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How Much Bitcoin Do You Have? Rich Dad Poor Dad!

 

How Much Bitcoin Do You have?’ Rich Dad Poor Dad Author Robert Kiyosaki Bullish on Bitcoin

Robert Kiyosaki, the popular author and writer of the bestseller ‘Rich dad poor dad,’ says there is no longer any time to just “think about” buying safe havens such as Bitcoin, as dollar weakness continues worsening.
Bitcoin is an essential investment as the whole world is about to face a “major banking crisis,” Kiyosaki has warned.

“Major banking crisis coming fast”

The reasoning behind his statement was, he said that Warren Buffett dumped bank stocks altogether. “WHY is BUFFET OUT OF BANKS? Banks bankrupt. MAJOR BANKING CRISIS is COMING FAST,” Kiyosaki tweeted. “Fed & Treasury are supposed to take over the banking system? Well, Fed and Treasury’ helicopter fake money’ directly to people to avoid mass rioting? Not a time to just ‘Think about it.’ How much gold, silver, and Bitcoin do you have?” he added.
Kiyosaki is a well-known Bitcoin supporter, frequently advising the public to buy and actively think about the downward trajectory of fiat currencies. The COVID-19 crisis has only exacerbated his calls to quickly exit dependency on fiat, and to start moving into safe havens such as, as he stated, gold, silver, and Bitcoin. He is not the only one openly speaking about this, as the public saw many well-known Bitcoin proponents who fear that the COVID-19 crisis responses by governments have put a nail in the coffin of already inflated paper money.

In the intervening period that started in March, macro assets crashed in a major way, but both Bitcoin and precious metals saw huge gains, fueled by the US dollar currency index hitting its two-year low.

The weakness of the USD vs. a strong stock market

One thing that investors certainly could not predict is that the traditional markets would keep going strong despite everything that is happening to the world economy. While it is true that some sectors, such as tech and entertainment, should be seeing an increase in value due to more people turning to it during the time of the pandemic, it is certainly not reasonable to think that the major indexes should reach record highs every single week.
“Fed balance sheet is back above $7 trillion, giving investors the green light for further stock market gains as S&P 500 P/E (just spell them, read them as P, E) trades in tandem with the Fed balance sheet,” market commentator Holger Zschaepitz summarized.
Meanwhile, institutions are becoming increasingly focused on Bitcoin as a trade opportunity.

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BitMEX Are Now Mandating Users to Perform ID Check!

 

BitMEX Mandating Users to Perform ID Check

Cryptocurrency derivatives exchange giant BitMEX will be launching a user verification program starting Aug 28, requiring all its customers to complete an ID verification within the next six months.
In order to sweeten the pot and make this verification worthwhile for its customers, BitMEX is offering a trading competition that would be available to verified customers only.
BitMEX was founded in 2014 and has become one of the largest derivatives exchanges in the whole world, with one of its main features being that the platform doesn’t require user verification.

Ben Radclyffe, the Commercial Director of BitMEX, announced that all of BitMEX’s customers have to complete the new verification process by Feb 12, 2021:
“User verification has been on our checklist of things to do. We’ve been getting ready for this, as ID verification was becoming necessary in order to run a scalable, responsible, as well as a compliant platform moving forward. This is a building blockchain for BitMEX to grow and do business in the future.”
With numerous jurisdictions across the globe coming out with explicit regulations for the cryptocurrency industry, Radclyffe noted that having a user verification process will help exchanges meet new operating requirements. User verification will, as he said, allow BitMEX to better understand its diverse user base, allowing the platform to develop tailor-made products for customers.
Details regarding the large-scale trading tournament that would be available only to verified customers will be announced in the coming weeks.

It won’t take more than 5 minutes

Young woman putting off a mask of herself

According to Radclyffe, BitMEX’s verification program should take customers no longer than five minutes to complete.
Users will go through a four-step process similar to ID checks that many other crypto exchanges conduct. Customers will be required to provide a photo of an ID and a proof of address. In addition to that, a number of multiple-choice questions relating to their funds and trading experience will be asked.

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Litecoin Gets its Own Visa Debit Card!

Litecoin Gets its Visa Debit Card


The first Litecoin-native Visa debit card is being launched by BlockCard.
The creator of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, said that this is their second attempt at creating a Litecoin-native card as the previous one failed: “We worked with LitePay on a debit card but ultimately failed when they went out of business.”
Lee also made a few distinctions between this Litecoin-native debit card and other cryptocurrency cards that only support Litecoin, but are not Litecoin-native:

“There are other crypto debit cards that are available today, and most of them support Litecoin. However, they only support funding with LTC. This card is natively Litecoin, so funds are kept in Litecoin until you swipe the card.”
Although Litecoiners already have the option to sign up for the card, the service itself will be available only in a few weeks. On a lighter note, Lee clarified his opinion on crypto maximalism, saying that there is no such thing as a “Litecoin maximalist”:

“I don’t think that that even exists. Most Litecoiners support and hold Bitcoin also.”
Users will be able to deposit any of the twelve most popular cryptocurrencies, including all the major stablecoins. According to Lee, somewhere around 300 users have signed up so far. In the meantime, Litecoin has continuously stayed among the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. It also has one of the biggest followings on social media.

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Digital Yuan Taking Over As China Expands Trials To Beijing!

 

Digital Yuan Taking Over – China Expands Trials to Beijing and Other Provinces

China’s Commerce Ministry made an announcement that it will expand the trials of China’s central bank digital currency to include Beijing, as well as Hebei and Tianjin provinces.
According to the Wall Street Journal report on Aug 14, the time when this expanded pilot program will begin. However, the nation’s Ministry of Commerce said that the policy framework should be done by the end of 2020.


The expanded pilot testing will also include the Hong Kong Greater Bay area, which consists of nine cities, including Shenzhen and Guangzhou, as well as Hong Kong and Macau.
A representative from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced that the trials will cover much of China’s most wealthy regions. Poorer regions such as central and western China will also join the testing, though the reasoning behind this is not explained. The People’s Bank of China, which is China’s central bank, will lead the pilot.


China’s CBDC is also known as a digital currency electronic payment (DCEP for short) and is by many influential people around the world expected to be the first operational national digital currency. The People’s Bank of China tested this DCEP in mid-April as part of a transport subsidies scheme for government and enterprise workers in Suzhou, a major city in Jiangsu Province.
Earlier this month, state-run banks in China were also reported to be performing testing a digital wallet that was specifically designed for DCEP usage on a large scale.

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Get Crypto Cashback from Shopping at Walmart!

 

Get Crypto Cashback from Shopping at Walmart

Users of the loyalty platform StormX will now be able to earn cashback in cryptocurrencies from shopping at Walmart.
According to an announcement made on Aug 14, StormX users are now able to earn up to 4% cashback in crypto for all purchases made at Walmart. Users that achieve the “Diamond” rank can even earn up to 14%. CEO of StormX Simon Yu said that he believes that this Walmart partnership will bring new users to StormX as well as to crypto:

“As the only cryptocurrency cashback program for Walmart worldwide, StormX is confident that users will take advantage of this reward program to earn their favorite crypto while shopping at their favorite retailer.”
As the announcement said, Walmart is the latest addition to StormX’s pool of partners, which now counts over 650 companies. Among these companies are market giants such as Microsoft, eBay, Adidas, Nike, Target, Samsung, and Dell. StormX says it has already distributed over $2 million to its users.

In June, Walmart’s Chinese subsidiary reached a partnership deal with VeChain, a blockchain-based supply chain management platform, in order to create a system for tracing food products. At the beginning of March, Walmart joined the Hyperledger blockchain initiative. All this indicates that the retail giant is well aware of what crypto and blockchain could bring to the company, both in terms of convenience and marketing, and that they are taking full advantage of it.

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California Treating Digital Assets as Securities

 

California Treating Digital Assets as Securities

 

Senate Banking and Financial Institutions committee of California has passed a bill with the goal of defining digital assets as well as measure its impact on the state.
Assembly Bill 2150, which has the power to potentially influence how federal regulators approach crypto and digital assets, unanimously passed the Senate’s committee. The bill will be discussed in the Committee on Appropriations from August 17. The bill had also passed the California Assembly before moving through to the Senate.

The bill was first proposed by California Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon, who initially wanted to classify digital assets as non-securities. However, amendments to the bill that were made by the Senate refrained from further defining crypto assets. It now focuses on directing the California’s Department of Business Oversight to create and conduct a study to see if the state can enact policies similar to the SEC Proposed Securities Act Rule 195.

The study ultimately wants to see how treating digital assets as securities for a brief amount of time can impact consumer protections and benefits to the state.
The Department of Business Oversight also has to provide suggestions for regulatory frameworks as well as define key terms.

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Pompliano on Goldman Sachs Interest In Blockchain

 

Pompliano on Goldman Sachs’ Interest In Blockchain

With Mathew McDermott assuming the role of global head of digital assets for Goldman Sachs, the market can expect this banking giant to be quite involved in cryptocurrencies very soon.
“In the next five to ten years, we could see a financial system where all assets and liabilities will be native to a blockchain, and all transactions natively happening on-chain,” McDermott in a CNBC article on Aug 6.
Tweeting out this quote on Aug 6, Anthony Pompliano, Morgan Creek Digital co-founder, responded:
“Wall Street companies are about to learn why technologists often say innovate or die.”

McDermott’s plans include expansion

Taking over for Justin Schmidt, which was Goldman’s previous head of digital assets, McDermott plans to hire new Asia-based as well as Europe-based team members, with the goal of ultimately growing his lineup by 100%.
Additionally, the new Goldman executive mentioned a potential future native asset that they might develop. “We are exploring the viability of creating Golman’s own fiat digital token,” said McDermott for CNBC.

The era of digital money

Among many advantages of a blockchain-based digital system, McDermott specifically mentioned efficiency, describing how the new ecosystem could essentially have the same activities, except they would all be digital instead of physical.
“That includes debt issuances, loan origination, securitization; essentially, you’ll have a digital market ecosystem, and the options are pretty vast,” he explained.

Oli Harris, former head of digital assets strategy for JPMorgan Chase, who assisted with the outline of the JPM Coin, also took a position at Goldman thanks to McDermott.
McDermott, in his interview, also noted increased institutional attention, which is something the crypto industry has been wishing for over the past several years. “We’ve definitely seen an increase in interest across some of our institutional clients as they are exploring how they can participate in the crypto space,” he explained.

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ETC Price Stable After Two 51% Attacks – Why?

https://youtu.be/RHEy8317eTw

 

ETC Price Stable After Two 51% Attacks – Why?

After suffering two major 51% attacks over the past week, Ethereum Classic has seen its hash rate go down considerably – all due to people being scared of another such attack.
As a consequence of Ethereum Classic’s miner capitulation, the estimated cost of performing a 51% attack targeting Ethereum Classic using hash power simply rented from NiceHash went down from $12,000 per hour to less than $4,000 per hour.

Despite this, the market price has been unaffected by the fragility of the network, with ETC actually gaining more than 2% since news of the second 51% attack broke. ETC is currently trading for $6.95.

Exchange volume report 

With the 24-hour trade volume being up roughly 10% from the level posted a few days before the first 51% attack, orders are continuing to execute across most of the top exchanges, including Coinbase Pro, Binance, Bitfinex, as well as KuCoin.
The increase in trade activity is occurring despite the suspension of withdrawals, deposits, and margin funding services among a number of leading cryptocurrency exchanges.

ETC and its market signals

The strength of ETC’s markets is quite high despite exchange’s having disabled wallet activity. This raises a question regarding whether algorithmic bots may be driving the trading activity at the moment.
A 2019 report published by Blockchain Transparency Institute made an estimate that Ethereum Classic was one of the three assets traded the most by the bots, with more than 80% of the volume being flagged as suspicious.

Ethereum Classic miners capitulation

After hovering between five and six terahashes per second through July, ETC’s hash power dropped to somewhere around four terahashes per second over the past seven days.
The second attack saw hash power spike up to 9 terahashes per second, just before plummeting to less than 2.5 terahashes per second afterward.

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Monero Is Going To Be Huge Because of It’s Real World Applications!

 

Monero’s Hashrate Skyrocketing – Biggest Daily Gain Ever Recorded

Monero has experienced the biggest daily increase in its hashrate since the network’s creation in 2014 on Aug 6.
The Monero hashrate managed to increase from 1.67 Gigahashes per second on Aug 5 to 2.2 Gigahashes per second on Aug 6. The 0.52 Gigahashes per second single-day gain represents the highest increase in the project’s history. Prior to this, the most significant daily percentage gains came in Monero’s early days.


Banks should embrace privacy coins 

On Aug 3, Coin Center submitted various comments to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Federal Savings Association and National Bank Digital Activities. The submitted comments suggested that banks should be embracing privacy coins rather than fighting them.
“We argue that Banks shouldn’t only be able to use trustless mixing technology or privacy-enhanced crypto such as Z-cash or Monero, but that they may be obligated to do so so they could protect the privacy of their customers.” – was written in one part of the submission.

Monero is a unique value proposition

It is unclear what made Monero’s hashing power explode in such a way. In a world where many people feel that they are becoming watched and tracked by the governments more and more, Monero may simply present a unique value proposition.
Various reports have indicated that Monero is currently the best major privacy-preserving cryptocurrency. While other privacy coins like Dash and Zcash can be traced with relative ease, Monero proves to be quite a challenge. The sheer fact that it is hard to track has led to several centralized exchanges delisting it.

Monero trails only Bitcoin in its adoption rate amongst Dark Web users and dealers, for whom the privacy-preserving features of cryptocurrencies are sometimes quite literally a matter of life and death.

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Bitcoin Is As Big As The Bank of America!

 

Bitcoin as Big as Bank of America

All the capital invested in Bitcoin at the moment totals to a few billion dollars less than Bank of America’s market valuation.
Bitcoin’s current market cap currently sits just over $217 billion, while Yahoo Finance’s data shows Bank of America’s market cap at just over $226 billion.

Bitcoin’s market cap is still climbing 

Although it has endured a lot of dramatic price fluctuations, Bitcoin’s price managed to grow substantially in 2020, rising past several wealth comparisons along the way.
The United States Central Bank injected $168 billion into the economy back in March, just before COVID-19 measures. At that point in time, Bitcoin’s market cap was nearing $145 billion.
If we take a look at April, Jeff Bezos’ net worth came out at approximately $140 billion, while Bitcoin’s market cap neared $130 billion.
Since then, Bezos’ net worth managed to reach a staggering $193 billion, while Bitcoin’s valuation went even higher, to the point it is at currently, at $217 billion.

Bitcoin could reach astronomical heights

Morgan Creek Digital co-founder Anthony Pompliano forecasted a future Bitcoin market cap of over $80 or $90 trillion at some point. This forecast happened during an Aug 4 crossover podcast episode featuring Peter McCormack.

Pompliano, however, expressed his uncertainty on whether Bitcoin would reach such a market cap within his lifetime.
As a long-time Bitcoin advocate, Pompliano has stated his position on Bitcoin as well as crypto, in general, many times.

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Pantera Capital Founder Foresees Bitcoins $100K+ Rise!

 

Pantera Capital’s Founder Foresees $100K+ Bitcoin

Pantera Capital is the oldest crypto investment company in the United States. When Dan Morehead, the company’s founder, was asked to make a Bitcoin price prediction during his recent interview, he mentioned an investment letter published by Pantera Capital. This letter contained, based on the stock-to-flow model, a bold prediction that Bitcoin will reach $115,000 by August 2021.

Morehead expects Bitcoin to grow

Morehead thinks that the prediction is still possible, despite the fact that in just one year, Bitcoin’s price would have to increase around ten times its current value. Still, his personal prediction is a bit more modest, though not modest at all in an absolute sense. He said:
“My common response is that it’s been growing at a rate of 209% for nine years and that I think it’s going to grow at least 209% for the next couple of years. That puts you at around $100 000, probably in the next two years, and I do think that will happen.”

If Bitcoin grows 209% annually as it did up until now, it will reach the $100,000 mark in 1.92 years. However, if it were to reach $115,000 in just one year, than Bitcoin would need a 900% annual growth rate.
Morehead noted that he is tired of skeptics that constantly pose questions such as “What is Bitcoin’s killer app?”. In his personal opinion, Bitcoin itself is the killer app with the primary use case as a store of value. Bitcoin does it better than gold, which now has a market capitalization of $9 trillion, said Morehead.

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Binance Confirms Crypto Debit Cards Are Shipping Out! Get Yours!

UPDATE – Binance Confirms: Crypto Debit Cards Now Shipping to Europe

Binance has confirmed that the shipping of its crypto debit cards to European countries following a tweet from Changpeng Zhao, the CEO Binance. Zhao, also known as CZ, posted a tweet announcing that Binance has begun with shipping a limited quantity of Binance crypto cards on July 24. He added that the cards are, for the time being, only being shipped to users in the European Economic Area.
CZ’s social media post regarding the card shipments.


While most companies would issue a press release boasting about the card shipments, CZ did this in quite an unorthodox way: by tweeting the news out unofficially on July 25.
“They started shipping in limited quantities as of yesterday. That’s what I heard,” the Binance exchange CEO said, referring to the Binance Card.
Binance made an announcement regarding the issuance of the card in April 2020, right after the company’s acquisition of Swipe, a company specializing in digital asset debit cards.
Binance future crypto card plans


The crypto exchange platform giant noted that the card would soon expand its reach out of just Europe. A Binance representative confirmed that the Binance Card would be available to order in the UK shortly.
The representative did not give any specific details on the card’s geographic expansion, but he did confirm that compatibility for additional countries will come as time passes.
While most businesses struggled during the worldwide economic uncertainty, Binance continues its growth in 2020, with its crypto debit card holding as one area of expansion.

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Americans Trading Depreciating Dollar For Bitcoin!

 

Americans Trading Depreciating Dollars For Booming Bitcoin

A Bloomberg article that came out recently claims that Americans are foregoing the largest fiat currency, the US dollar, for more speculative assets such as stocks, gold, as well as Bitcoin.

High saving rates, low yields

As the COVID-19 lockdown continues in the US, the personal savings rate of Americans is at a historic high. On the other hand, the yield offered to them by financial institutions on savings accounts is close to zero. Meanwhile, assets like Bitcoin, equities, and gold, all made double-digit gains since March.

The article talks about a 28-year-old Californian who said that he is soon going to take out his $15,000 savings that were held in a high-yield savings account at Ally Bank and convert them into Bitcoin.

USD July performance

If we look at USD from an objective standpoint, the reality is even worse than what Bloomberg article suggests. The dollar is rapidly depreciating against almost every single leading fiat currencies. As a matter of fact, according to the Financial Times, July is by far the worst month USD had in a decade.

With yet another round of stimulus checks just around the corner, as well as most of the US still affected by COVID-19 restrictions, it is quite possible that this problem will most likely only get worse. Americans may have more depreciating USD on their hands in the short term, which they could seek to convert into higher-yielding assets, such as crypto. However, as they say, there is no such thing as a free lunch, as higher rewards always bring higher risks.

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Grayscale Can Now Publicly Trade BCH and LTC! FINRA Approved!

Grayscale Can Now Publicly Trade BCH and LTC – Approved by FINRA

Crypto fund manager giant Grayscale Investments will now make Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin available for public trading. This will be done through shares of the firm’s cryptocurrency trusts.

A July 20 announcement stated that Grayscale got verified by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA for short) to transact shares of the firm’s Bitcoin Cash Trust as well as Litecoin Trust. The two stocks will be available for public trading very soon. They will go under the tickers BCHG and LTCN.

Grayscale reported that it has 2,725,300 shares in its BCH Trust for $5.8 million assets under management, as well as 509,400 shares of the LTC Trust totaling $2 million as of June 30.
Publicly traded tokens
Grayscale’s trust will provide a means of investing in crypto without actually having to hold the tokens. According to the investment firm, this investing strategy avoids “the challenges of buying and storing digital Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin directly.”

Shares of BCH and LTC are the fourth and fifth public offerings that came from Grayscale. The firm previously received approval to list shares of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ethereum Classic. Horizen, Stellar Lumens, XRP, and Z-cash, are available for trading through Grayscale’s trust directly.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin are valued at $251.11 and $48.37, respectively. According to CoinMarketCap, BCH is rated as the fifth largest token by market cap, while LTC is the eight.

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When Will BTC Hit $20,000 Analyst Opens Up!

 

When Will BTC Hit $20,000? Analyst Opens Up

Capriole digital asset manager Charles Edwards made a statement that, in his opinion, Bitcoin will pass $20,000 if US banks invest even 1% of their assets in crypto. On top of that, he added that this was not impossible as the unfolding trend is “not hard to see.”
“If US banks put even just 1% of their assets into Bitcoin as an investment, insurance or hedge… the Bitcoin price will more than double” he wrote on Twitter, further adding:

“Just Grayscale already owns 2% of circulating Bitcoin supply today. It is not hard to see which direction this is going in.”
Edwards uploaded a chart of US banks’ asset balances as further proof of the potential impact they could have if they leaned even slightly towards BTC.

Institutions quietly buying BTC

While this is the opinion of only one analyst, the current market development is showing that this is not just an opinion. US lenders received a green light from regulators to engage in cryptocurrency custody activities last week, which opened up a lot of possibilities.
Whether an influx of buyers from the banking sector would ultimately benefit Bitcoin remains a contentious topic, but the overall opinion of the community leans towards this being beneficial, if not mandatory, for Bitcoin’s price development.
As time passes, we will see more and more institutions reaching towards crypto, therefore increasing the demand. “It’s not a matter of it being good or bad,” Edward said.

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Where Did They Go? 10,000 Antminers stolen!

 

Where Did They Go? 10,000 Antminers ‘Missing’ From a Facility in Mongolia


The power struggle at crypto mining giant Bitmain is continuing. Not only have the accusations of certain “illegal power seizures” made headlines, but the physical theft of mining hardware as well.
Bitmain-owned Antminer’s Wechat channel made a post alleging that former Bitmain staff has “illegally moved” around 10,000 Antiminer Bitcoin mining rigs from a Mongolia-based company-owned facility.


The machines included models from the S17 and T17 series, as well as the flagship S9 miners, and they were reportedly removed in mid-July. This reportedly caused serious economic losses to Bitmain and its customers. The fact that the incident has been reported to the police as well as public security authorities acts as further proof that this allegation is not just another story.
At stake is not only Bitmain’s personal hardware but also hardware belonging to its clients, as there are many who choose to have their mining hardware hosted at the manufacturer’s mining rigs.
Bitmain’s co-founder, Micree Ketuan Zhan, accused his other co-founder Jihan Wu of being the one responsible for the “illegal transfer” of the mining hardware.

Bitmain’s power brawl

Wu Jihan, the co-founder of Bitmain Technologies Ltd., poses for a photograph in Hong Kong, China, on Friday, May 18, 2018. The Coingeek Conference runs through today. Photographer: Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

This conflict seems to have drawn two co-founders further apart, as they are now furiously fighting over who has the position of the legal representative at Bitmain.
This public battle started in October 2019 when Jihan Wu reportedly considered Zhan responsible for the illegal power seizure.

This battle is apparently growing out of the business field, as Bitmain’s CFO was arrested in May after supposedly participating in a purported “mob attack” on the co-founder Micree Ketuan Zhan. In June, reports showed that Zhan had hired guards to forcibly seize control of the Bitmain’s Beijing office.
At present, Jihan Wu retains formal authority over Bitmain’s operations based in Hong Kong.

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About Time! Binance Sending Out Its Debit Cards!

 

Binance Sending Out Its Debit Cards – Crypto Cards Taking Over


After months of planning and testing, the crypto giant Binance has begun delivering its crypto debit cards to customers.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, posted a tweet on July 25 as a response to a community member that has expressed interest in the product. CZ said that they started shipping debit cards in limited quantities.
As the previous reporting shows that the plan was to do an August launch for the card in the European region, it can be inferred that CZ meant that Binance started shipping to European customers at the time being.


Binance debit card timeline

One of the largest platforms in the crypto industry, Binance, unveiled its plans for a crypto debit card in April 2020, which would go by the name Binance Card. The company then proceeded to acquire crypto debit card company Swipe, using the acquisition to further its plans for the Binance Card project.


CZ and Binance tested out the payment option in July, which the CEO revealed in a July 10 Twitter post. This was done as a part of the product’s initial testing.
Four days later, Binance announced its plans for an August card launch in certain regions of Europe, guaranteeing cards’ compatibility with four digital assets. Bitcoin and Binance’s BNB cryptocurrency were among the four assets listed.

CZ’s recent tweet shows that the development for Binance’s card is going along quite well, as well as that the company is respecting the timeline that it has given. Binance itself has also posted a number of headlines in 2020 amid all the setbacks that happened due to the COVID-19 situation.

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Don’t Get Your Hopes Up! New Ruling That Negatively effects BTC…

 

 

Don’t Get Your Hopes Up – New Ruling That Classifies BTC as ‘Money’ Isn’t Anything Special

A recent court case in Washington D.C. saw a man being prosecuted on multiple counts for operating a so-called Bitcoin tumbler — a popular method of hiding Bitcoin transactions.
The Washington court charged the defendant on three counts in December 2019, with those counts including operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, as revealed in a July 24 court document.

The document noted that “After examination of the relevant statutes, case law, as well as other sources, the Court concludes that BTC is money under the MTA and that Helix, as the indictment described, was an ‘unlicensed money transmitting business’ under the applicable federal law.”

Even though this particular instance appears to be a ruling in favor of Bitcoin as it classifies it as money, the current law requires a money transmission when dealing with Bitcoin, even though the cryptocurrency is not technically under any monetary classification.
The defendant operating a Bitcoin mixing service
Larry Dean Harmon, acting as the defendant in the case, allegedly ran a Bitcoin mixer business named Helix. The project was run on the dark web. Mixers such as Helix muddy the data around Bitcoin transactions, therefore making transaction traceability difficult.
Harmon saw roughly 354,468 BTC flow through his business from the year 2014 to 2017, the court document stated.

Washington D.C. court accused Harmon of three separate illegal acts: 1. Conspiracy to launder monetary instruments
2. Operating unlicensed money transmitting business, and
3. Engaging in money transmission business without a proper license.
BTC is “Money”? Not a big deal!

As mentioned previously, the ruling appears in favor of Bitcoin as it classifies it as money. However, the court’s “move” was done in order to lay out the need for cryptocurrency exchanges to operate with money transmitter licenses. Therefore, while the first thought on Bitcoin being considered as money is great, the underlying move the court made can actually be considered a net negative thing for Bitcoin and its centralized exchanges.

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How To Launder 1.4 Billion Dollars!

 

Over $1.4 Billion of Laundered Money Came to Crypto Exchanges

 

Money laundering concept. Yellow clothes peg hold Bitcoin and one hundred dollar banknotes.

The latest report by Peckshield, a company specializing in blockchain security, shows that over $1.4 billion of laundered money found its path to crypto exchanges in 2020.
Peckshield has been collecting data from both online and offline sources for more than one year, and then, verified and analyzed it. In this process, they were able to identify more than 100 million transaction addresses.


The company found that around 147,000 Bitcoin, currently worth more than $1.4 billion, has moved onto top exchanges this year.
These assets were associated with hacks, the dark web economy, illegal gambling, etc.
“We ranked the exchanges by the amount of stolen money on them, and found that the top ten exchanges for illegal funds were: Huobi, Binance, Okex, then ZB Gate.io, Bitmex, Luno, HaoBTC, Bithum, and lastly Coinbase.” – Peckshield stated in its report.
The company also said that some of the monitored addresses moved their funds to crypto mixers, which made it difficult to continue tracing them.

“As of June 30, we have monitored the high-risk address, out of which $1.62 billion flowed into the blacklisted address, while $15.9 billion went into the mixed currency service provider. It should be emphasized that the majority of the funds that went through the mixed currency service have been successfully laundered, and were untraceable after that.”

Wallets associated with the PlusToken scam have been followed by suspected massive open-market sales on crypto exchanges. In turn, this created fake spikes in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoin prices.

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Is High Frequency Trading Stabilising 𝐁𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐨𝐢𝐧?

 

High-Frequency Trading Made Bitcoin Boring?

 


The Bitcoin market has been quite slow lately. Some would say a little too quiet. As of July 14, Bitcoin’s volatility levels dropped to levels unseen after 2017. In recent weeks, Bitcoin was left behind as investors piled into altcoins such as Chainlink and Cardano.

One possible explanation for why Bitcoin is consolidating for so long may be an increase in the presence of high-frequency trading (or HFT for short) firms in recent months. Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex, believes that HFT is a major reason behind Bitcoin’s volatility.
“Crypto is back to the old days of HFT before everything became the zero-sum game that it became today. HFT crypto firms can make a lot of money by deploying relatively straightforward strategies, such as cross-exchange arbitrage or exploiting the spread between one exchange and another” – Ardoino said.

HFT and cryptocurrency

High-frequency trading is a trading method that uses trading algorithms to transact an enormous number of orders in fractions of a second. While it has existed in the crypto space for a long time, the scope of its existence was rather small. However, just as billionaire Paul Tudor Jones revealed his BTC holdings recently, other institutional investors are showing interest and joining the market. This may explain the greater influence of HFT on the market.
Bitfinex, which claims it is “huge for HFT in crypto,” just recently revealed that between 80% and 90% of its platforms’ volume was now generated by HFT companies. Bitfinex partnered with a company called Market Synergy and started offering “institutional standard crypto connectivity.”

This crypto exchange platform concludes the growing use of HFT represents an increase in “maturity in the crypto space.”
However, why would Bitcoin volatility go down instead of up, with the increased use of HFT? Ardoino explained that, while the volatility is reduced, the liquidity of the market has drastically increased, which is exactly how HFT operates.

“As Bitcoin becomes an established asset class, the high levels of volatility associated with crypto will recede,” he explained. “There is an inverse correlation between liquidity and volatility, especially when HFT is involved.”
Bitcoin is famous for moving aggressively to the upside and downside for a short period of time. If we take a look at the previous year, Tom Lee of Fundstrat reminded everyone that the majority of Bitcoin gains came in the ten best trading days of the year. However, the evergrowing presence of HFT may as well be changing the “rule of 10 best days” as well.

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AXIA Coin & It’s Incredible Ecosystem That May See It Become A Front Runner In The Crypto World

 

Axia Coin

 

Thank you for joining our educational webinar, where today we will be looking at a New Kid on The Block regarding digital currency.

So just what is the Axia coin?

Marketed as a non-mineable token, Axia is a digital currency with its particular ecosystem, including its own secure wallet. From the Greek word açai, meaning value and worth,  the coin was specifically designed with blockchain technology security, and is asset-backed, which will no doubt give this particular currency some added weight in a marketplace has become something of the Wild West and has a reputation for extreme market volatility, manipulation, depreciation,  and fraud.

At the moment, we are not quite sure how the token is backed, whether it is cash, pledges, stocks, gold, or other securities, most of which are subject to price movements and up and down valuations in the real world. However, the company says it has addressed the above negative attributes for other digital currencies and that its ecosystem makes it less vulnerable to these negative traits. One of the unique features of the access platform is that it is designed to combat declines in value.

And while the company’s website markets the coin as the new reserve currency for the world, which is something of an overstatement, clearly, they have a place in the market and have considered how the features and applications could give them a Leading Edge as the marketplace for digital currencies develops.

The company markets Its ecosystem as stable, scalable, with low fees, full transparency, safe and secure, responsible, community-based, and is custom-built for global adoption.

The Axia Coin ecosystem is supported by its own wallet and features the AX exchange, debit card, gift card, mobile app, top-up facility, marketplace, video call, Axia chat feature with contacts.

They also have built-in cross-platform consistency and user rewards with merchant benefits, although, at the time of writing, we were not able to ascertain exactly what those benefits are.

They have their own branded debit card feature, which can be used wherever major credit cards are accepted, and transactions can be made online and in-store, and their USP here is that they say it will save customers on foreign exchange transactions adding value to the entire community.

The downloadable app can also be used to send messages, images, and files and is available on IOS and Android. It also boasts encrypted end-to-end communication with no data tracking and can facilitate a web conferencing with a cloud-based virtual meeting room.

Axia also offers a SIM card that offers rewards simply for making calls surfacing the web and sending text messages, which boasts of reduced or eliminated roaming charges and no contractual obligation.

Clearly, a great deal of thought, let alone investment, has been given to the AXIA Ecosystem. Also,  we do not see it taking over the world as the new reserve currency anytime soon it will clearly have a respectable following and take up,  and if all its promises, especially around security, hold fire, we would expect continued growth for this innovative New Digital currency. Certainly, as the world of commerce modernises and changes in the economic paradigm shifts towards the digital realm, the digital currency revolution will remain unstoppable. Organisations such as Axia who take A more holistic approach,  and especially have asset-backed coins will fare better than most.

Questions remain to be answered, such as exactly the nature of the asset backing for the digital token, and we hope to learn more about these aspects in due course.

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US FDA Considers Using Blockchain for Food Security – Blockchain Is The Future!

 

US FDA Considers Using Blockchain for Food Security

The US Food and Drug Administration recently released a blueprint as well as a pilot study for food safety, which highlighted blockchain as a viable option for many of the identified challenges.

The blueprint, which was released earlier this week, breaks down some of the challenges that the food distribution throughout the country faces, as well as looks at how smart technologies such as blockchain could solve them:
“Our world is evolving and improving at a breakneck pace. With the evolution comes new technologies, from new digital tools to even new sources of food ingredients. This advancement provides new tools and approaches for tackling food safety issues, but also presents new issues to consider when trying to regulate food safety.”
The technologies mentioned in the blueprint include artificial intelligence, the IoT, sensor technologies as well as blockchain. They are looked at in terms of tech-enabled traceability, retail modernization, prevention, and outbreak response and food safety culture.

The FDA didn’t just realize that blockchain has potential recently. In fact, it has been talking about it for the last two years. Stephen Hahn, the FDA’s Food and Drugs Commissioner, as well as Frank Yiannas, the Food Policy and Response Deputy Commissioner, noted the devastating impact of COVID-19 on the food supply chain sector. They both stated that blockchain is one of the technologies that will make it easier to track products through the supply chain and certainly improve how the industry operates.

IBM has laid the groundwork

IBM is the one that brought blockchain to the agriculture and shipping industry by implementing its FoodTrust program that launched in conjunction with Walmart. This program is servicing many of the major retail giants in America, while the blockchain records food product information as well as certification, therefore reducing pain points such as certification storage and product recalls.

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Grayscale Stopped Buying Bitcoin! What This Means For Bitcoins Future Price!

Grayscale Stopped Buying Bitcoin – What Happened?

For several months, Grayscale Investments was buying more Bitcoin than miners were able to produce. However, this trend came to a halt a few weeks ago.

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust Fund would file a Form 8-K with the SEC on a weekly basis, declaring its most recent Bitcoin acquisitions. However, the last report was filed on June 25, when the company disclosed that it purchased almost 20,000 BTC. The lack of reports after June 25 indicates that Grayscale completely stopped buying Bitcoin. According to its Q2 report, GBTC invested an average of $57.8 million per week.

A Grayscale spokesperson said that the halt in BTC purchases is only temporary, and is caused by a quiet administrative period.


Grayscale indicates institutional interest in Bitcoin

One thing to note is that GBTC is not a hedge fund, which means that it doesn’t buy assets and expects a return on them. Rather, the trust buys assets only when investors buy shares of the trust. As 84% of Grayscale’s investments came from institutional investors, mostly hedge funds, Grayscale buying Bitcoin is a great indication of institutional interest in crypto.


July tends to be a somewhat slow month for investment activity due to many asset managers taking vacations, which may have caused Grayscale to stop buying Bitcoin. Another reason might be that institutions lost some short-term interest due to Bitcoin not moving much recently. Bitcoin has been stuck price-wise ever since early May.

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Crypto News! Twitter Promises Additional Security After Another Major Hack…

Twitter Promises Additional Security Measures After Major Hack

Twitter vows to add more security training as well as measures in order to protect its platform from breaches such as July 15 wide-scale hack.
Twitter made a statement saying that it is continuing its investigation into the hack while also looking to provide more security training against social engineering tactics. These measures will be in addition to cybersecurity coaching that they get during onboarding as well as ongoing phishing exercises.

Around 130 accounts were compromised on July 15 when hackers took over these prominent Twitter accounts in a Bitcoin giveaway hoax. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Kanye West, current presidential candidate Joe Biden, as well as many crypto firms like Binance, Coinbase, Gemini, and BitFinex were among the hacked accounts.
“We’re aware of our responsibilities to the people who are using our service and to society more generally. We are embarrassed, we are disappointed, and more than anything, we are sorry,” Twitter said.

Twitter said that the hack did not only allow hackers to access the accounts, but also to view personal information such as email addresses and phone numbers.

How did this happen?

The attackers targeted employees, as Twitter said, using schemes that intentionally manipulated them to perform specific actions in a certain way, therefore revealing information. Hackers got their hands on and used Twitter employees’ credentials and accessed internal systems, which explains how accounts with two-factor authentication were compromised.
This large-scale hack has been deemed a wake-up call for all centralized platforms and possibly paved the way for decentralized platforms to emerge.

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100% ASIC Mining Could Increase Bitcoin Security!

100% ASIC Mining Could Increase Bitcoin’s Security 2,000 Times


New research has found that the wholesale embrace of ASIC (read as a-sick) mining for Bitcoin could increase the cost of a 51% attack up to 2,000 times.
Rod Garratt University presented the research that it co-authored with Maarten van Oordt from the Bank of Canada, regarding varying costs of a 51% attack on the Bitcoin network. The research shows that by switching the network to 100% ASIC miners, the security of the network will be increased by up to 2,000 times.
The main reason for this is because ASIC miners have very little use, as well as value, outside of Bitcoin mining. For this reason, an attacker would not be able to obtain that much of a return from the sale of equipment previously used in an attack. In order to perform a profitable attack, however, they would then need to double-spend a much greater amount of coins, which is far more costly and difficult to do.
The researchers’ estimate of a profitable attack occurring after the next halving shows that it would require between 157,000 and 530,000 Bitcoin if 100% ASIC mining were in place.

What is a 51% attack?

A 51% attack is a network attack that seeks to manipulate a blockchain network by being in control of 51% of the mining power. The attacker would then create an alternate blockchain next to the ‘real’ chain, and transition the rest of the network to accept his new, manipulated chain as the correct one.
The most common thing attackers do after a 51% attack is to spend the same coins twice, commonly referred to as a double spend.

Bitcoin’s security concerns

Some people in the Bitcoin community are very much against ASIC miners, which even caused a hard fork in 2017 that resulted in an ASIC-resistant cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Gold. This adversity to ASIC equipment was, according to many, the reason why Bitcoin Gold had a number of successful 51% attacks that resulted in the double-spend of $18 million in coins. On the other hand, Bitcoin is yet to receive its first successful attack.

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Dogecoin TikTok Pump Explained! Desperate Or Genius Pump & Dump?


Dogecoin TikTok Pump Explained

Dogecoin has been in the public eye as TikTok social media enthusiasts created a challenge that was trying to bring this popular cryptocurrency to $1. However, the hype around it, as well as the price has fallen notably in the past couple of days.

OKCoin CMO Haider Rafique said that “The Dogecoin TikTok effect is really down to the vitality of the TikTok platform, rather than the crypto industry because it thrives off of creating viral challenges. This is exactly the category in which this Dogecoin challenge fits”.
He added: “TikTok challenges come and go in very short cycles, and just by looking at the 20% drop in Dogecoin’s price in the last 24 hours, the trend has likely run its course already.”

TikTokers creating Dogecoin awareness

A viral movement on TikTok saw people buying Dogecoin, as well as urging their viewers to do the same. The ultimate goal of the effort was to send Dogecoin’s price to 1$. However, while the move did bring an increase to Dogecoin’s price, Doge’s price did not break above a penny during the challenge. During the TikTok movement, however, Dogecoin managed to double in price before going back down.

Dogecoin internet traction falls


Other than Dogecoin’s recent price plummet, other metrics are also hinting at Haider Rafique’s conclusion. Google Trends shows that searches for Dogecoin came back to a more normal level.
“We in the crypto market should be very careful of these viral moments as they detract from our long-term goal of creating a global and equitable financial system,” Rafique added.

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Bitcoin Price Will Never Go to $0!

Bitcoin Price Will Never Go to $0!

 

It is now official: Bitcoin can face many price crashes, but not to the extent that it ends up costing $0. This is because one man decided he is going to buy all of it.
Entrepreneur and outspoken Bitcoin bull Alistair Milne posted a tweet on July 9, revealing that he had placed a buy order for 18.52 million BTC (currently worth $174 billion).

Milne uploaded a screenshot of his Bitfinex order book, proving that he did, in fact, place an 18.52 million BTC order, buying them all at 1 cent.
“I hereby confirm that Bitcoin will never go to zero,” he wrote.

“I’m buying them all at 1 cent.”
In order to complete this purchase, Milne will need a sum of $185,200 — currently equating to 19.7 BTC. He would, of course, also need Bitcoin to drop to a valuation of $0.01.
Bitcoin at $0 is a hard sell

Despite all the factors pointing to the overwhelming likelihood of Bitcoin never dropping to anywhere near zero in the future thanks to network incentives, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is not without its vocal detractors.
Gold bug Peter Schiff remains among people who believe that Bitcoin is worthless and ultimately going down.
Other critics, however, may no longer be quite as sure as they once were. Ex-PayPal CEO Bill Harris claimed in 2018 that Bitcoin would go to $0, while just two years after that, rumors of PayPal integrating crypto payments began spreading.

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Bitcoin vs. Gold and S&P 500: Correlation analysis

 

Bitcoin vs. Gold and S&P 500: Correlation analysis

 

 

While many want to believe that Bitcoin is a non-correlated asset, that doesn’t seem to be the truth. Though Bitcoin’s correlation with gold is diminishing, the asset’s correlation with the S&P 500 index is on the rise, as reported by the researchers at the crypto exchange Kraken.
Kraken Intelligence, which is a research part of major US cryptocurrency exchange, Kraken, has released a “Bitcoin Volatility Report” for the month of June 2020.


Bitcoin’s volatility 

The new report shows a 31% drop in Bitcoin trading, resulting in a 6-month low of Bitcoin’s annualized volatility.
The significant decline in volumes, as well as volatility, marked June as the least volatile month since February 2020.


Correlation with gold drops 

Bitcoin’s 30-day correlation with gold went down and passed its one-year average of 0.24 to the downside. This signified a four-month low correlation of -0.49, the researchers announced. The move towards the downside followed a modestly positive trend that started in the second half of May (and ended above a one-year average of 0.50).


Correlation with the S&P 500 on the rise

While Bitcoin is showing fewer signs of correlation with gold, the cryptocurrency’s correlation with the stock market indexes such as the S&P 500 seems to be growing. Kraken Intelligence reported that the trend reversal caused Bitcoin’s correlation with the S&P 500 to climb to the highs of up to 0.65.
Kraken’s data on Bitcoin and S&P 500 correlation is not a “lone wolf” since other exchanges’ research shows the same. OKCoin posted data earlier this week, saying that the exchange witnessed high levels of Bitcoin and S&P 500 1-month realized correlation. Daniel Koehler, liquidity manager at OKCoin, said that “The last time we saw SPX and BTC 1-month realized volatility spread being this low was prior to the March 12th BTC price crash”.

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UC Berkeley Professor Say Libra Will Never See The Light Of Day!

UC Berkeley Professor: “Libra Will Never See The Light Of Day”

Barry Eichengreen, an economic historian, and UC Berkeley professor, argues that Facebook’s Libra stablecoin faces way too many “insoluble” problems, as well as too much resistance from governments, to ever properly launch.
“Libra is certainly an interesting idea, but it will never see the light of day,” Eichengreen said. He also asserts that the stablecoin sector as a whole is largely ignorant of monetary economics and history.

After talking to a lot of stablecoin founders, he concluded that they all knew everything about blockchain, but not much about monetary economics.

“Stablecoins are either fragile in terms that they are prone to attacks and collapse, which happens if they are only partially backed, or they are expensive to scale-up if they are fully or over-collateralized.”

Stablecoin advocates are naïve

While many analysts believe in Libra’s potential to disrupt the existing financial system, Barry Eichengreen disagrees and points out that Facebook’s stablecoin remains plagued by many “insoluble” challenges, even after the second whitepaper this year was published.
There are concerns that Libra will be used to “undermine the effectiveness of national monetary policies,” both in emerging and developed states.
Libra’s planned over-collateralization leads the scholar to predict that the excess backing will have to be provided by transaction fees. However, as high fees drive adoption away, Eichengreen predicts that the fees might be kept low, raising questions about how the capital buffer will be provided.

A Libra central bank?

The economist also pointed out that “Libra is going to need a central bank if the markets around it want to be stable. However, there is almost no chance that national governments are going to just let Facebook create a privately-owned and operated central bank.

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IRS Intends to Track Privacy Coins! Is It Possible?

 

IRS Intends to Track Privacy Coins and Lightning Network Transactions

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is seeking information as well as tools to help it trace transactions that are using privacy coins, side chains such as Plasma and OmiseGo, as well as layer two protocols such as the Lightning Network.

The U.S. Department Of The Treasury published an information request, revealing the IRS’ Criminal Investigation Division seeking submissions for “an interactive prototype” for analyzing distributed ledger-based transactions that are involving privacy coins as well as other privacy-enhancing blockchain technologies.

IRS and Privacy

The document is very specific in which cryptocurrencies the IRS wants to track. The list includes Monero, Zcash, Dash, Grin, Komodo, Verge, and Horizen, among the privacy coins that the IRS hopes to target. In addition to these, the IRS also wants to track layer two solutions such as Raiden Network, Celer Network, and Lightning network.

The IRS requests prototypes with which to declutter transactions and track a single user’s transaction regardless of the method used to obfuscate or hide the transaction location. The agency also requests the prototype to include a mechanism for importing and exporting the data gathered.

Hard to track privacy coins

Despite the bold ambitions the IRS has shown in trying to track cryptocurrencies, the agency acknowledges that tracking the movements and addresses of privacy coins is close to impossible at the moment.

They stated that currently, there are a few investigative resources for tracing transactions that are involving privacy cryptocurrency coins, side-chain ledger transactions, layer-two network protocol transactions, or transactions on distributed ledgers that are using signature algorithms that provide privacy.

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A New Way To Trade Bitcoin – Is This The Key To Huge Gains?

New Way To Trade Bitcoin – Is This The Key To Profitability?

NEW YORK, NY – JANUARY 25: Chief Executive Officer David Lissy, joined by members of Bright Horizons’ leadership team, celebrate their IPO at the New York Stock Exchange on January 25, 2013, in New York City. (Photo by Ben Hider/NYSE Euronext)

 

According to the data currently circulating on social media, Bitcoin’s volatility is not spread out as well all may thing. In fact, the volume, as well as volatility of Bitcoin, seem to be highly correlated with the opening of the United States markets.


US stock markets vs. BTC

When compared to the London and Asia stock market opens, the US market open has a much greater of an impact on Bitcoin’s price volatility as well as volume. Further data from the on-chain analysis company Skew confirms the trend. Their data shows that Bitcoin trading is most intense around 4 pm UTC.


As an example, the past 30 days have shown Coinbase having an average of $6.5 million in volume between 3 pm and 4 pm UTC. We can clearly see the difference if we compare it to 9 am UTC, where Bitcoin saw just $2 million on average.


Bitcoin trading and regional changes

While this data doesn’t sound too important, it may indicate a trend of US institutions stepping into the crypto market. When compared with the 2017 to 2019 data, we can see that Asian traders have less of an impact now, while US traders have more of an impact.

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SK Telecom Thinks Blockchain Can Revolutionise Phone Insurance!

 

SK Telecom Thinks Blockchain Can Revolutionize the Phone Insurance Industry

South Korean telecommunications company, SK Telecom, made an announcement of a blockchain-based document submission process for their mobile phone insurance. This new protocol is an improvement to the company’s current antiquated paper-processing methods.
Until now, users had to visit a technical repair office in order to receive insurance benefits for their damaged phones. Successful visits would be concluded with a claim receipt, which they would then have to forward via email to the insurance company. The new protocol, which lies on the blockchain, will greatly improve how this system operates.

SK Telecom’s new system allows its customers to skip this outdated process and complete everything they wanted online, quickly and securely.

The announcement SK Telecom made states that replacing paperwork with electronic certificates will be used to help the company to safely and securely manage inquiries sent to the insurance companies. They also hope that the blockchain-powered new method will help with the prevention of document forgery.

Blockchain saving money and improving performance

SK Telecom expects this method to ensure fewer costs for mobile phone service centers as well as insurance companies, as well as to improve processing speed, allowing them to handle customer complaints in a more timely manner.
The company states that Samsung’s Galaxy series will be the first phone fully compatible with the new service.

Kim Seong-soo, SK Telecom’s sales manager, even said that the adoption of Blockchain technology will certainly expand to “various service areas in the future.”

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Free Crypto Indicator! Trade Like Institutional Traders Thanks To Coinmetro!

 

Trade Like Institutional Traders – Institutional Market Sentiment Data Now Available

CoinMetro, an Estonian exchange, has made their cryptocurrency sentiment analysis tool available to everyone, rather than just institutional traders. This tool is the same one that crypto hedge funds use.
Even though the tool seems rather simplistic, CoinMetro CEO Kevin Murcko said that the key thing to note here is that regular traders get access to exactly the same data that institutions are getting.

CoinMetro will handle regulation

Murcko also said that CoinMetro has a huge advantage over the other exchanges because of how they handle regulation. The days of the Wild Wild West are coming to an end – he said – and CoinMetro will benefit from this change.

Binance’s days are numbered

At the same time, he also believes the additional regulation will bring increased costs, and that this will force many exchanges out of the market. He said that if the regulatory oversight gets tighter, the cost of running the business will get much higher. Most cryptocurrency exchanges are profitable only because they can gouge their customers, and once regulations come, they will face real competition.
Murcko also expressed his opinion on Binance, where he said that, while it is more compliant than many other exchanges, its days are numbered in his opinion.

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Binance Is Now 10x Faster After the Biggest Update In It’s History – Ready For The Next Bullrun!

Binance 10x Faster After the Biggest Update in its History

Binance just completed its largest upgrade on June 28, making the platform even faster, announced Binance’s founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ.

CZ’s thoughts on the update and the next bull run

The largest trading platform in the world has reportedly re-written all code and switched its matching engine to a new programming language, all in an attempt to make it faster and more suitable for even the most demanding traders. It’s said to be Binance’s biggest upgrade in two years. The trading platform can perform ten times faster for traders for the next bull run.


CZ added that, in theory, the platform could handle 100x their current volume. But when real volumes hit, he said that there would probably be some other peripheral systems that may temporarily cause a bottleneck. However, he is certain that they would be fixed quickly.
Although Bitcoin’s price dropped below $9,000 for the second time this week, traders seem bullish and are continuing to buy on each dip.

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Grayscale Will Own 3.4% of All Bitcoin By January! The Monopoly Continues!

Grayscale Owning 3.4% of All Bitcoin by January – What’s Happening!?

It is not a secret that Grayscale Investments has been buying a lot of crypto lately. The company has purchased almost half a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin since the block reward halving in May. On top of that, Grayscale bought around three times the BTC block reward for the past week.
According to a June 25 tweet coming from crypto analyst Kevin Rooke, Grayscale bought 19,879 Bitcoin — worth $184 million worth — just in the last week. This brings Grayscale’s total number of coins to roughly 400,000.
Rooke added that “Grayscale *alone* has taken all BTC mined and 14,000 more BTC on top of that since the halving.”

Grayscale becoming a crypto giant

At this moment, there are 18.415 million BTC in circulation, while the rest are presumed lost. Grayscale managed to buy 53,588 BTC in total since the May 11 halving, which would equate to an average of 1,190 BTC per day. If Grayscale keeps buying at this same daily rate, it will own exactly 3.4% (or 625,069 BTC) of the world’s BTC supply by January 2021 and 10% of the world’s BTC supply by the time of the next halving in 2024.

Grayscale and the rest of the cryptocurrencies


Besides buying enormous amounts of Bitcoin, Grayscale is investing in Ethereum as well. Grayscale’s Ethereum Fund owns $396 million in Ether. Grayscale had, as one report shows, purchased $110 million worth of Ethereum in 2020 as of June 5.

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Crypto Cards Not Working Anymore UK!

Crypto Cards Not Working Anymore? UK Regulators Suspend Wirecard Subsidiary

 

Wirecard’s subsidiary responsible for issuing debit cards has been suspended by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA for short).
According to a statement the regulators have issued on June 26, Wirecard’s subsidiary is now required to stop conducting any of its regulated activity and not dispose of any of its funds. It also must communicate on its website as well as to its customers that it is no longer permitted to conduct the previously-mentioned regulated activity. This left many users affected as the FCA’s decision froze their assets.

The FCA explained that, following the news showing an over 1.9 billion euros shortfall in Wirecard’s bank, it began working with the card-issuing subsidiary to make sure that the customer funds are protected. The regulator then took “additional measures” and forced the firm to stop all regulated activities on Friday.
Kris Marszalek, the CEO of Crypto.com, reassured his customers that their funds are secure and are owned by the company. He then added that, in case of a disruption, they would rapidly proceed to credit the funds back to the company users’ crypto-wallets. Crypto.com is not the only company affected by this decision, as many cryptocurrency projects used Wirecard’s cards to operate.

Scandal in the making

Wirecard’s problems became public when the company admitted to lacking over 32% of the assets it claimed it has. This number would be around $2.1 billion.
The CEO of Wirecard, Markus Braun, resigned and was almost immediately arrested by German authorities. The prosecutors believe that the company’s management tried to do a long-running fraud by misrepresenting the company’s earnings and assets. Wirecard filed for insolvency due to the sudden shortfall.

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LocalBitcoins Darknet Transactions Dropped 70% Since Enforcing KYC

LocalBitcoins Darknet Transactions Dropped by 70%

LocalBitcoins, one of the largest peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchanges, has made significant improvements towards ensuring the safety of its users, which resulted in an over 70% decrease in darknet market transactions between September 2019 and May 2020.

Jukka Blomberg, CMO at LocalBitcoins, said that the drop comes because of the Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer regulations that were adopted by the platform in September 2019.

The calculations regarding darknet transactions are based on blockchain analysis done by major crypto analytics firm Elliptic as well as in-house “clustering tools.”

A true 70% drop, or just a play on words?

Increase Your Customers or Business Process as Concept

A 70% drop in transactions associated with the darknet might sound better than they actually are, as LocalBitcoins experienced a massive decline in the sheer amount of traded Bitcoin in 2019. Their weekly Bitcoin trading volumes collapsed from nearly 14,000 BTC in January 2019 all the way down to about 4,000 BTC in January 2020.
However, LocalBitcoins saw only a 20% decline in BTC trading volumes between September 2019 and May 2020, making the 70% drop, as they say, still notable.
LocalBitcoins seeing healthy growth in the recent months
LocalBitcoins has reportedly seen an increase in popularity in the past 2-3 months, which may be a result of it being a safer environment to operate in.
LocalBitcoins said that the new customer registrations had surged over 50% just since the start of 2020 — counting from around 4,000 new daily sign-ups to now- over 6,000.

Some crypto analysts, however, maintain their view on LocalBitcoins as a place that facilitates a large number of illicit financial transactions.
CipherTrace published a report showing that LocalBitcoins received over 99% of the criminal funds among all Finnish exchanges in the first five months of 2020. As a Finnish company, LocalBitcoins works with Finnish authorities in regard to crypto regulations.

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US Firm Buys 17,000 Bitcoin Mining Rigs! Largest Ever Purchase!

 

US Firm Buys 17,000 Bitcoin Mining Rigs From Bitmain

Core Scientific, a US-based blockchain hosting provider, signed a deal to buy the next-generation Bitcoin mining machines from Bitmain. The company will purchase over 17,000 S19 Antminers from the Chinese magnate Bitmain on behalf of its clients as well as for its own use. This purchase will be the largest number of S19 machines purchased by a single entity, according to Core Scientific.

Kevin Turner, former COO of Microsoft and current president and CEO of Core Scientific, said, “Core Scientific has received, and started testing the first of Bitmain’s newest S19 ASIC miners, and has seen material success in increasing existing hash rate to achieve a 110 TH/s (terahashes per second) ± 3%.”
All this is happening because the state of Texas started attracting a number of mining facilities with its pricing and incentives. Just last October, Bitmain opened a facility for Bitcoin mining in Rockdale, Texas.


Bitcoin interest growing in North America

Russell Cann, Core Scientific’s Chief Customer Service Officer, acknowledged the increased interest in the growing hash rate via North American mining operations. He said that he views the increase in interest can be attributed to the growing acceptance of cryptocurrencies as an asset class, as well as a testament to North America having much better investing characteristics than before. On top of that, when it comes to mining, North America has, in his opinion, stable geopolitical and regulatory environment, suitable climatic conditions as well as multiple energy sources available.
Cann noted that the most important thing for mining facilities is that they don’t have to worry about regulators changing their opinion on mining every other day, which is one of the main reasons they chose Texas. On top of that, the recent collapse of energy pricing just makes the whole North American region more attractive.

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Bank of Thailand Launches A Digital Currency Pilot!

 

Bank of Thailand Launches a Digital Currency Pilot

The Bank of Thailand announced its plans to develop a prototype to test real-life business use-cases of its central bank digital currency.
The bank made an official statement saying that, before it launches a CBDC payment system for all businesses, it has plans to test it with large-scale enterprises.

They have entered a partnership with the largest cement and building material provider in Thailand, called Siam Cement Group (SCG), as well as Thailand-based fintech firm called Digital Ventures Company Limited, with the intention of testing the new payment prototype system.

Bank of Thailand CBDC pilot

The pilot project test is scheduled to start in July of this year and end by the end of the year. With the aforementioned CBDC payments, the Bank of Thailand aims for a more efficient payment system that would have increased flexibility for various fund transfers as well as faster payment settlement between suppliers.
Other countries reviewing the potential of CBDCs
Thailand is not the only country that is interested in having their own CBDC. China has remained a frontrunner in regard to experimenting with this technology, while other countries are not that far behind.

The Bank of Canada seemingly entered the game by posting a job opening titled “Project Manager, CBDC,” which clearly signifies that Canada is interested in this technology. Banque de France also successfully tested a digital euro last month.

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Crypto Videos

Are Baby Boomers Now Actually Investing in Bitcoin?

 

Are Baby Boomers Actually Investing in Bitcoin?


San Franciscan Bitcoin Broken River Financial posted a statistic showing that their trading volume increase happened because of baby boomers. They said that baby boomers are responsible for as much as 77% of their volume growth.

Paul Tudor Jones effect

While most surveys so far concluded that younger generations are more susceptible to investing in Bitcoin, the data provided by River Financial says otherwise. Alex Leishman, the company’s co-founder, and CEO, told Bloomberg that Bitcoin is, as the time passes, becoming more mainstream and that many investors are following in the footsteps of the famous Paul Tudor Jones.

All the money comes from older generations

Many analysts have noticed that the institutional interest in Bitcoin in 2020 is on the rise, with Grayscale leading the “heard” and buying as much as the new supply, if not more.

Although millennials accepted the premise of cryptocurrencies in the first place, it is extremely important that the crypto market gets accepted by the older generations. Households in the older group possess 10 to 30 times more wealth as the millennial demographic on average. If the info posted by River Financials indicates more baby boomers coming into the crypto market, investors could expect a great year in terms of returns.

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Peter Schiff Comparing Bitcoin To Fiat – Does He Have A Point?

Peter Schiff Calls Bitcoin Fiat Following Fed Comments

A famous Economist and gold advocate, Peter Schiff, has once again bashed Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general in a tweet, basically calling it fiat currency.
He said that “The Fed gets Bitcoin right,” in a tweet, adding that “It categorizes it with fiat, which is in contrast to gold that has real intrinsic value. The Fed sees nothing new in Bitcoin, except in the way it’s exchanged. As the confidence in both traditional and crypto fiat is lost, people who want to save will return to gold.” This is not the first time Schiff bashed Bitcoin publicly.

The Fed classification of Bitcoin

Liberty Street Economics, a blog that is under the close watch of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, posted an article claiming that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are nothing but cash in a different form, rather than some “new type of money” as the crypto industry states.
The aforementioned article points towards the difference between money itself, as well as the way in which people transact or use it. The article also says that “The ability to perform electronic exchanges without a trusted party – which is a defining characteristic of Bitcoin – is radically new. Bitcoin isn’t a new class of money, but rather a new type of exchange mechanism that can support various forms of money, as well as other assets.”


Peter Schiff as a gold bug

After a number of comments on the topic of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, Peter Schiff has become known as a person that values gold more than anything and would take gold over Bitcoin any day.
Schiff can often be heard saying that Bitcoin is a young and unproven technology, as well as that Bitcoin, has no intrinsic value.
He projected gold price soaring and Bitcoin’s price plummeting for the years ahead while calling Bitcoin investors fools.

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Hacking Bitcoin Wallets With A MacBook!

 

 

Bitcoin Wallet Successfully Hacked (Intentionally)


Bitcoin and Lightning Network project developer called John Cantrell managed to successfully hack a BTC wallet address by checking somewhere around a trillion seed combinations over the course of 30 hours. This feat was accomplished as part of a major contest launched on Twitter by the CIO of the Atlanta Digital Currency Fund – Alistair Milne.
Milne published several hints to a 12-word Bitcoin wallet seed over the course of a couple of days. Cantrell then succeeded to brute force the entry with 8 out of the 12 words. Of course, this hack is considered a test of resilience, and everything went as intended, so there was no harm done.


Graphics cards renting to check more combinations

Cantrell saw that his computational power wasn’t enough to perform this task, so he decided to rent additional graphics cards through GPU marketplaces as well as Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service. It turned out that his high-end Macbook was able to check around 1,250 mnemonic combinations per second using Cantrell’s self-written CPU seed solver.
The fact that the mnemonic key was brute-forced in should not worry people, as there are way too many combinations in a 12-word key, let alone the 24-word one. In fact, this can only be a testament to how strong the network is and how hard it is to pass through the Bitcoin’s defense system.

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Bitcoin’s $20K All Time High Was Actually Fake!

One Crypto Analyst Claims That Bitcoin’s $20K All-Time High Was Actually Fake


Timothy Peterson, an advisor from Cane Island Alternative Advisors’, has claimed that Bitcoin’s near-$20,000 all-time high from December 2017 was actually “fake.”

In a tweet posted on June 11, Peterson said that it took almost seven years for people to accept that Bitcoin’s price was manipulated in 2013, referencing a recent Japanese court ruling upholding data tampering charges against Mark Karpeles, who was the former Mt. Gox CEO.
He then followed this statement up with another trivial one, saying, “How long before people understand that BTC was manipulated again in 2017 and again in 2019?”

What actually happened?

Peterson is not promoting the conspiracy theory of Bitcoin $20,000 all-time high never happening, but that it rather likely happened due to manipulation.
When he was asked what defines a ‘real’ all-time high in his mind, he responded that it was his math that said that these weren’t real all-time highs, rather than it all being “in his mind.”
He said that only if an all-time high is supported by fundamentals as measured by active addresses, hash rate, and transaction counts, it can be legitimate. Otherwise, the price is not sustainable.

What can we expect?

Peterson defended recent comments he made comparing the current Bitcoin price moves to the ones BTC made just before the 2013 bull run. If we talk about a proportionate bull run today, we could see Bitcoin’s price to hit $75,000 within weeks.
On the other hand, Peterson refutes any claims that a$75,000 Bitcoin is his prediction. Instead, he claimes to have simply posed the hypothetical question of whether the history will repeat itself?
Peterson, however, did recently predict that Bitcoin’s price will rise to $1 million by 2027, which he concluded based on an organically increasing number of users.

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Forex Expiry Options Review 12-06- 2020! Making Forex Easy!

 

FX Options Market Combined Volume Expiries. A weekly retrospective review for the financial week ending: 12, 06, 2020

Hello everybody, and thank you for joining us for the daily FX Options Market Combined Volume Expiries review for the trading week ending on Friday, 12th June 2020. Each week we will bring you a video taking a look back at the previous week’s FX option expiries and how they may have attributed to price action leading up to the maturities which happen at 10 AM Eastern Time, USA.

If it is your first time with us, the FX currency options market runs in tandem with the spot FX market, but where traders typically place Call and Put trades on the future value of a currency exchange rate and these futures contracts typically run from 1 day to weeks, or even months.

Each morning, from the FA website, our analyst, Kevin O’Sullivan, will bring you details of the notable FX Options Market Combined Volume Expiries, where they have an accumulative value of a minimum of $100M + and where quite often these institutional size expiries can act as a magnet for price action in the Spot FX arena leading up to the New York 10 AM cut, as the big institutional players hedge their positions accordingly.

Kevin also plots the expiration levels on to the relevant charts at the various expiry exchange rates and colour codes them in red, which would have a high degree of being reached, or orange which is still possible and where these are said to be in-play. He also labels other maturities in blue and where he deems it unlikely price action will be reached by 10 AM New York, and thus they should be considered ‘out of play.’ Kevin also adds some technical analysis to try and establish the likelihood of the option maturities being reached that day. These are known as strikes.
Please bear in mind that Kevin will not have factored in upcoming economic data releases, or policymaker speeches and that technical analysis may change in the hours leading up to the cut.
So let’s look at a few of last weeks option maturities to see if they affected price action.
Firstly, there were no notable options for Monday, 8th June.

So here is the early morning analysis for Tuesday as provided by Kevin on the USDJPY pair where there was an option maturing at 107.85 in 390M US Dollars.
I’ll quote you the text as provided by Kevin: USDJPY has found support at the level of the option maturity. However, the bear move was strong. Expect more downward pressure. The option expiry remains in-play.

 

Now, let’s roll on a few hours and to the candle, which closed at the 10 AM cut. The exchange rate at this time was 107.71. Just 14 pips below the strike. So we saw that the support held out, but the bears finally got their way and pushed through the support area. Prior to this, the 107.85 maturity had been acting as a magnet for price action.

Here is the analysis for the Euro USD pair, also on Tuesday, with a large maturity at 1.1300 for €802 M. Kevin mentioned that price action was in a sideways action and that at the time of writing it was fading and retesting the downside, but that it was oversold on the one hour chart and that there were important data out in the Eurozone area.


Now let’s fast forward a few hours. We can see an arrow above the candle, which took us up to 10 AM in New York cut. Subsequent to this price action pushed to a low of 1.1240, which was suggested by Kevin before rebounding. Price action was around the 1.1300 maturity one hour before the cut. However, momentum simply carried the pair up to the high of 1.1362. Traders who purchased a premium option for a Put would have been in the money as the price was above the maturity at the time of the cut.


On Wednesday we had two expiries on the Euro Usd pair, and Kevin’s analysis was based on the sideways price action of the pair on the one hour chart and also the fact that it needed to break above the resistance line and form a candle above it for a continuation up to the 1.1390 cut to be possible.


A few hours later, and this was the picture. Price did form a candle above the resistance line and moved to within two pips of the maturity, before falling lower.

Here, we can see that the price action at the maturity was 1.1366, just 24 pips away.


Let’s move forward to Thursday. Here we have the EURGBP pair, which was trading at 0.8959 at the time of the analysis where Kevin reposted the bull run was strong.

The pair continued to rally during the European session and hit 0.8990at the 10 AM Cut, just five pips away from the maturity.

 


On Friday the 12th, We had three option expiries for the EURO Usd pair.

 


The exchange rate at 10 AM New York was 1.1302, just eight pips below the 1.1310 option
expiration Kevin labeled in Red.


in fact price action remained elevated until the cut at which time the pair softened to a low of 1.1332


Lets now take a look at USD Japanese Yen; We have an option expiration at 107.35
Kevin suggested a dip in price action before a retracement to the maturity in his analysis.


There was indeed a slight pullback and then a continuation higher.


and here, we can see the exchange rate at maturity was 107.35, which was an official strike.

Please remember, Kevin’s technical analysis is based on exchange rates, which may be several hours earlier in the day and may not reflect price action at the time of the maturities.
We suggest you get into the habit of visiting the FA website each morning just after 8 AM BST and take the levels and plot them onto your own trading charts and incorporate the information into your own trading methodology in order to use the information to your advantage.
Remember, the higher the amount, the larger the gravitational pull towards the exchange rate maturity at 10:00 AM Eastern time.
For a detailed explanation of FX options and how they affect price action in the spot forex market, please follow the link to our educational video.

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Crypto Videos

Vitalik Buterin Speaks Out About Enormous ETH Fees!

Vitalik Buterin Speaks About Enormous ETH Transaction Fees

Multiple transactions that recently incurred millions in transaction fees on the Etheruem network, might be blackmail, says Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum.
Buterin posted a tweet saying that “The million-dollar transaction fees *may* actually be blackmail,” on June 12.


Buterin’s Theory

Vitalik Buterin proposed his theory on the situation regarding the transaction fees, saying that the hackers captured partial access to the exchange key, meaning that they can’t withdraw the funds, but that they can send a no-effect transaction with any gas-price they want. In turn, they threatened to ‘burn’ all funds via transaction fees unless compensated.
Multiple transactions have incurred extremely high network fees over the past few days. The transactions seemed absurd, as $130 worth of Ethereum was sent with a $2.6 million worth in transaction fees. Another transfer surfaced, transferring $86,000 in Ethereum, but having the exact same fee.

Alternative Theory

Buterin posted a second tweet, where he mentioned a possible alternative explanation that isn’t blackmail. He said that “Similar situations could possibly happen in ‘scorched earth’ games, such as ‘Moeser-Eyal-Sirer’ vaults.” In the same post, he tagged AVA Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer as well as Technion assistant professor Ittay Eyal.

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Craig Wright Admitted to Hacking MT. GOX!

Craig Wright Admitted to Hacking Mt. Gox?

 

Craig Wright’s legal team seems to have alleged that Wright controls one of the BTC addresses that is affiliated with the Mt. Gox hack.
Riccardo Spagni, one of the faces of the anonymous Monero coin, which is also known as Fluffy Pony, posted a tweet indicating Craig Wright’s affiliation with the Mt. Gox-related Bitcoin wallet.

Spagni tweeted, “Just so we’re clear, Craig Wright has openly admitted (through his lawyers) to be the person that stole 80,000 BTC from Mt. Gox.” Spagni also included court documents in the post.
The documents he posted indicate that the ‘1Feex’ address is the address where the stolen Mt. Gox funds were sent.

Mt. Gox address included among the Tulip Trust addresses

 

As a part of an ongoing legal battle, Craig Wright claims to have at least partial ownership of the Tulip Trust, which is a list of numerous Bitcoin wallet addresses that hold roughly 1.1 million Bitcoin. The aforementioned Bitcoin was allegedly mined by Wright and his business associate, Dave Kleiman, in Bitcoin’s earliest days.

Dave Kleiman passed away in 2013, leaving Wright completely unable to move the funds on his own. Spagni’s claim alongside the court document screenshots presented indicate that one of the alleged Tulip Trust wallet addresses contain stolen funds from the 2014 Mt. Gox hack.

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Is There No Way to Cash Out From Grayscale? #Fail

 

Is There No Way to Cash Out From Grayscale’s BTC Trust

Qiao Wang, an investor, analyst as well as head of product at the crypto market data firm Messari, raised some major criticism about the way Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust is set up.
In his tweet dating June 11, Wang cited Grayscale’s official website, which says that “Grayscale Bitcoin Trust does not (at the moment) operate a redemption program, which means it may halt creations from time to time.” Wang suggested that the absence of a redemption mechanism might result in GBTC trading at a discounted rate compared to the net asset value.


He later explained that, when an exchange-traded fund (ETF for short) trades at a discounted rate compared to the fund’s underlying assets, traders performing arbitrage can buy the contract on an exchange and then redeem it for the assets that back it.
“Without the ability to redeem Bitcoin, you are just donating your money to Grayscale.” – Wang said.

Grayscale’s growth since the Bitcoin halving

Recent news clearly shows that Grayscale’s cryptocurrency holdings are growing at an extraordinary rate. Grayscale has bought Bitcoin one and a half times faster than the miners were producing since May 11, which is the date of the Bitcoin block reward halving.
On top of that, Grayscale’s director of investor relations, Ray Sharif-Askary, has recently announced that Grayscale has also been aggressively buying Ethereum as well.

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Bitcoin vs Fiat currencies – Battle Of The Titans!

 

Bitcoin vs. Fiat currencies – The best investment in the past 1200 years!

Although it was not designed as an investment vehicle, Bitcoin’s value increase has made it the best currency investment in the last 1,200 years.
Its value appreciation over the past 11 years truly sets it apart from all of the world’s fiat currencies.
The first widely accepted Bitcoin commercial transaction happened on May 22, 2010, when Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for exactly 10,000 BTC. With the pizzas being worth around $30, this puts the transaction value to around $0.003 per BTC at this point.
If we take the price of $0.003 per Bitcoin as a reference point, Bitcoin’s price has appreciated over 320 million percent over the past ten years. Now let’s compare that with other currencies.

The US Dollar

The US dollar has been the only and official currency of the United States ever since the Coinage Act of 1792. In those 228 years, the US dollar managed to devalue quite a bit due to inflation.
According to consumer price index data, we know that $1 in 1792 bought the equivalent of today’s $26.71. In other words, the US dollar has lost over 96% of its value in these 228 years. The vast majority of the value dollar managed to lose actually happened since its decoupling from the gold standard, which happened in 1971.

The Euro

The Euro became an official currency on January 1, 1999, making it just ten years younger than Bitcoin. Therefore, we cannot say that currencies performed worse just because they are significantly older.
The Euro suffers from basically the same design issues as the dollar, the main one being inflation. One Euro today is worth the equivalent of just 0.70 euro in 1999, meaning that this currency has lost thirty percent of its value in only 21 years.

The British Pound

The British Pound is the oldest world currency still in use. It is actually over 1,200 years old. The decimalized pound sterling of today isn’t exactly what the original Pound was, which makes the comparison a bit inaccurate.
The original “pound” from the 8th Century was composed of 240 silver pennies. One Pound was equivalent to 350g, which is worth £156.45 ($200) at the current silver price. If we consider the original silver value rather than the spending power of the currency itself, in 1,200 years, the Pound has arguably appreciated by 15,545%.
Even if we do choose this optimistic way of measuring as our benchmark, the results still can’t even hold a candle to Bitcoin’s performance over the past ten years.