Category Archives: Bitcoin
Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP Plunge In Steepest Drop Since May – TheStreet
Bitcoin slumped to a two-week low Tuesday and other digital tokens including Ethereum, Cardano and XRP all traded lower after the surprise recovery of Colonial Pipelines recent cyberattack ransom raised concerns about Bitcoin's supposed gold-like infallibility.
Bitcoin was down more than 10%, extending losses endured Monday amid broader concerns about potentially tighter U.S. monetary policy. Ethereum was down nearly 12%, Cardano was down more than 135, and XRP was down 11.79%. Dogecoin was down 12.72%.
Investigators success in tracking down and seizing almost all the Bitcoin ransom paid tothe perpetrators of the cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline last month raised fresh concerns that Bitcoin is not as secure and untouchable as believed or as advertised.
Bitcoin has still risen 14% this year but the token has plunged from a peak of almost $65,000 in mid-April, casting a pall over the cryptocurrency sector. The selloff was exacerbated by Tesla (TSLA) - Get Reportco-founder and billionaire Elon Musks public rebuke of the amount of energy used by the servers underpinning the token.
Meantime, a Swiss-Danish group called Concordium AG is prepping to launch a new blockchain technology called Global Transaction Unit, or GTU, that it said will be able to meet if not exceed regulatory concerns and standards.
Backed by one of the founders of Saxo Bank A/S and a director at Volvo Cars, which both count Zhejiang Geely Holding Group as an owner, the project will on Wednesday introduceits blockchain, which has been developed with Denmarks Aarhus University.
The key difference between GTU and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will be its ability to provide the kind of transparency that regulators and members of the mainstream economy want.
At last check, Bitcoin was down 10.33% at $32,748, according to CoinDesk. Ethereum was down 11.91% at $2479.60, Cardano was down 13.5% at $1.51, and XRP was down 11.73% at 85 cents. Meme token Dogecoin was down 12.55% at 32.43 cents.
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Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP Plunge In Steepest Drop Since May - TheStreet
If you’re thinking about investing in bitcoin, consider these risks first If you’ve gotten – CNBC
A customer uses a bitcoin automated teller machine (ATM) in a kiosk Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021.
Angel Garcia | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Bitcoin was originally created to be like digital cash, but it's real-world use case has evolved since its inception. More than anything, investors are buying it now as a speculative investment.
The price was sitting at $37,100 asof Friday afternoon and has been struggling to rebound to its May highs after Tesla CEO Elon Musk began moving crypto markets, sending bitcoin lower. The cryptocurrency is the largest by market cap, which is $693 billion as of Friday, according to Coin Metrics.
Historically, bitcoin's demand has been driven largely by retail investors, but that narrative changed late last year as big investors and institutions began reconsidering their positions on it. Bitcoin has always and continues to suffer from reputational issues that are hard for it to shake, mostly because of its newness and therefore the lack of data or history to support its raison d'tre.
If you've gotten caught in the confusion and misinformation around bitcoin, here are the key things to focus on if you're considering bitcoin for your portfolio.
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If you're thinking about investing in bitcoin, consider these risks first If you've gotten - CNBC
China Reconsiders Its Central Role in Bitcoin Mining – The Wall Street Journal
Bitcoin enthusiasts prize the cryptocurrency as beyond the reach of any government. Yet up to three-quarters of the worlds supply has been produced in just one country, China, where a government push to curtail output is now causing global bitcoin turbulence.
The amount of electricity needed to power vast numbers of computers used to create new bitcoin are at odds with Chinas recent climate goals. The government, which manages its national currency with a tight fist, also frowns on cryptocurrency generally. No legal exchange of bitcoin has been permitted for years in China, even as the nations entrepreneurs emerged as the dominant source of its output.
Few governments have embraced bitcoin, but fallout from Beijings threats demonstrated how its grip on production left the cryptocurrency vulnerable.
The 24/7 number crunching required to create, or mine, bitcoin relies on ample supplies of cheap electricity and equipment, some of the same elements China harnessed to become the worlds manufacturing hub.
In their hunger for market share, Chinas bitcoin miners took advantage of an underregulated and overbuilt electricity-generating sector. They set up mining operations adjacent to hydropower producers in the mountainous Sichuan and Yunnan provinces where turbines churn snowmelt and seasonal downpours into electricity. When river flows eased each winter, miners packed their computers and headed north to coal-rich Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.
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China Reconsiders Its Central Role in Bitcoin Mining - The Wall Street Journal
El Salvador may be the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender – Yahoo Tech
El Salvador might become the first country to formally accept a well-known cryptocurrency. According to CNBC, President Nayib Bukele said he would propose a bill that makes Bitcoin legal tender alongside the US dollar. The government would team with digital wallet firm Strike to build a financial framework around the digital monetary format.
Strike's founder, Jack Mallers, claimed Bitcoin would help countries like El Salvador protect themselves against "potential shocks" of inflation for traditional currencies.
The bill is likely to pass when Bukele's party controls El Salvador's Legislative Assembly.
This move might not be as audacious as it seems. CNBC notes that money transfers from migrants represent about 20 percent of El Salvador's gross domestic product, and often include high transaction fees as well as lengthy delays. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could make those transfers more practical and immediate. Residents certainly like digital payments Strike's app became one of the most popular apps in the country when it launched there in March.
This still represents a significant gamble, however. Bitcoin isn't backed by either a stable resource like gold or a large country's government. Like other cryptocurrencies, it's highly volatile huge spikes and drops are often tied to events that would be considered minor elsewhere. A resident counting on a Bitcoin transfer to make ends meet could be devastated if the value drops with little warning.
Merely launching crypto payments also isn't a guarantee of success. Venezuela hasn't gotten far with its Petro currency, although it was mainly intended as an end run around international sanctions. It's also tied to oil, which has had its own volatility thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
If El Salvador's move succeeds, though, it could give Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies another foothold in the mainstream financial world by making it easy to do business with an entire country. Just don't expect other countries to harmonize on Bitcoin. The US Federal Reserve, for instance, is researching its own digital currency. Salvadorans might still have to deal with exchange rates and other hassles, even if an all-digital currency would eliminate some of their other challenges.
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El Salvador may be the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender - Yahoo Tech
Bitcoin of America is Hoping to Inspire Women to Join the Crypto Industry by Sending its Powerful Female Team to Bitcoin 2021 – PRNewswire
Bitcoin of America brought their Director of Business Development, Director of Marketing/ Tablet Sales, and Chief Operating Officer to the conference, all of them being female. Bitcoin of America's Director of Marketing and Tablet Sales, Jenna Polinsky, spoke out about her experience at the conference.
"When we first got there, I noticed almost immediately the lack of female presence in the room. There are so many powerful women in this country, and we want to make sure they are being represented at Bitcoin of America. We are hoping to use our influence to bring more women into the industry."
Alice Goredestky, Director of Business Development, had similar thoughts.
"Male presence is huge in the technology sector and in the crypto space. I am excited to be part of an inclusive company like Bitcoin of America who encourages women to succeed in a male dominant industry."
Bitcoin of America also announced their new podcast that launches next month. The podcast will be run by an all-female team.
SOURCE Bitcoin of America
Take that, Miami: Hong Kong hosts its own Bitcoin meetup – Forkast News
The City of Miami in Florida hosted Bitcoin 2021 the biggest live fest yet in the 12-year life of the original cryptocurrency. The Miami conferences total attendance exceeded 50,000 and featured some of the crypto worlds biggest stars, including Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, MicroStrategys CEO Michael Saylor, crypto progressive Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and the Winklevoss twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
As Miami Bitcoiners partied on, on the other side of Earth, 9,000 miles away in Hong Kong, a group of 30 or so people gathered for a Bitcoin Association HK meet-up. The Hong Kong Bitcoin fans were not high-profile names but no less enthusiastic. They ranged from blockchain technical experts, mainstream investment advisors, anti-establishment cypherpunks and crypto newbies trying to learn more about the digital assets that are changing the financial world.
Cryptocurrency meet-ups big and small are on the rise around the world. Many of these events can be found on Meetup.com, where gatherings focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain have grown by around 90% since last year, according to Meetup.com data. RSVPs to crypto-related meetings also have also surged by 127% since January 2020 despite the ongoing Covid-19 global pandemic.
The Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong was co-founded in 2014 by Leonhard Weese, who now serves as the clubs president, following the success of a few casual meet-ups that prompted the establishment of a more formal membership organization.
A self-described Bitcoin maximalist, Weese is a technical writer for Lightning Labs and also works to evangelize and promote the Lightning Network a layer 2 protocol for the Bitcoin network that allows faster transactions and negates the cryptocurrencys high fees.
As a student of economics, Weese became fascinated by Bitcoin. The idea that you could create money with a computer and that it exists outside of the realm of central banks or governments and defied the popular assumptions people hold about how money works or how about how the economy works, said Weese, in an interview with Forkast.News. In the beginning, the meetups were really just a tool to get people together to discuss BTC. There wasnt a lot of information about it back then and we ourselves didnt know what Bitcoin was.
Many of the Hong Kong events attendees on that night last week were there for just this purpose to learn more. Some were newbies like Ken Wong, an e-commerce executive who told Forkast.News that he had yet to invest in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency, but that he believed they held huge potential for the future.
A mainstream investment advisor who asked not to be named, out of fear that his interest in this nascent asset class could worry some of his high-net-worth clients, admitted he was perplexed by the force of the crypto market and had come out of sheer curiosity.
I really want to know where Bitcoins value is coming from they always say, Bitcoin is digital gold but even gold is not really of high value, and it also has a maximum value, the investment advisor said. But Bitcoin is not stopping. It just keeps on going up.
Eugenie Kwok, the owner of After Five at the Fringe Vault the cafe where Hong Kongs Bitcoin meet-up was held was accepting payment in Bitcoin via the Lightning Network. Kwok told Forkast.News that she had been investing in Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, since 2017, and she believed that cryptocurrencies definitely had a role to play in the future of financial transactions.
Accepting BTC was an easy decision, Kwok said. Throughout the evening many of the Bitcoin Association regulars did utilize the service, exchanging their Satoshis for drinks and food.
While everyone that our Forkast.News crew encountered was friendly, quite a few were unwilling to speak to a reporter on the record. Almost no one would provide contact details for follow up questions beyond highly encrypted platforms like Telegram and Signal.
A hot topic of discussion for the evening event was the position of Hong Kongs Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) which recently proposed to ban the vast majority of the territorys retail investors from buying cryptocurrencies while requiring crypto exchanges to get licenses.
Clifford Choi, the director of the Bitcoin Association, told Forkast.News that he had predicted this scenario years earlier.
Im not really surprised with the SFCs reaction, Choi said. We have the HK government, which is trying to protect this power elite structure, and we also have a lot of political instability, hyperinflation and other global economic pressures that are pushing corporations and governments into Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
But the SFC is too late to stop small investors from buying and selling Bitcoin, and the proposed regulations will likely only serve to create a far less safe environment for retail crypto traders, Choi said.
Theres a real disconnect between what the law and what software are doing, Choi said. Retail will always have access to decentralized exchanges and the law doesnt have jurisdiction over software.
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Take that, Miami: Hong Kong hosts its own Bitcoin meetup - Forkast News
Bitcoin is greener than many — including Elon Musk — think it is – MarketWatch
Its been three weeks since Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the electric-car company had dropped bitcoin as a payment option, citing concerns over the cryptocurrencys link to greater consumption of fossil fuels.
Since May 12, bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.86% has plunged by about a third, dragged down, in part, by criticism over its carbon footprint.
But the issue is not so simple.
Today Im joined by Alexander Benfield, a cryptocurrency analyst at Weiss Ratings. Instead of focusing on overall market dynamics, well talk about bitcoin and issues surrounding its energy consumption during the mining process.
The cryptocurrencys network relies on computers solving puzzles, which uses electricity. Annual power consumption of bitcoin mining is about 130 terawatt-hours, according to the University of Cambridge. To put that in perspective, the U.S. uses almost 4,000 terawatt-hours of electricity a year.
MarketWatch: A claim that bitcoin is an energy hog has been around for a while. How much merit is there to such a claim?
Benfield: That is a question with a multi-faceted answer. Yes, bitcoin does consume a lot of energy, but that does not necessarily translate into carbon emissions. Much of bitcoin mining uses renewable energy; depending on the source, that number ranges between 39%-73%, which is far higher than the percentage of renewable energy in the U.S. power grid. So even going by the low estimates, bitcoin is far more energy-conscious than the average industry. Additionally, a considerable amount of bitcoin mining actually uses excess energy that would otherwise be wasted in areas where it cant be exported to a nearby city infrastructure. For example, bitcoin miners in rural China use hydro-electric energy that would otherwise be wasted due to low local energy demand and the inability to transport that excess energy to an urban power grid.
MarketWatch: Some analysts say bitcoin is actually greener than many people think. What do they mean by that?
Benfield: Nic Carter has done some amazing research into this topic and is constantly trying to prove this point on television. (Carter is a general partner at Castle Island Ventures, a Cambridge, Mass.-based venture firm.) However, many critics dont care to listen. Cathie Wood recently took to Bloomberg to talk about potential ways of incorporating bitcoin mining into renewable energy providers power grids to capitalize on the intermittent periods when their excess energy is currently wasted. (Wood is CEO of active-ETF manager ARK Invest.) So perhaps bitcoin can actually help take advantage of much more wasted energy than was previously thought.
MarketWatch: So far, we have established that bitcoin is somewhat energy hungry. What is the purpose of all that energy expenditure?
Benfield: Bitcoins energy usage makes bitcoin more secure. The cost of attacking bitcoin rises along with the increase in the computational power and the energy consumed by those mining or securing the network.
MarketWatch: We hear a lot about the advent of cryptocurrencies that spend less energy than bitcoin does. What can you tell us about them?
Benfield: Many of the green cryptos are marketing their blockchain as energy efficient because this is better than saying that they have underdeveloped networks that nobody is using, validating or mining on. That being said, proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies are typically much more energy efficient and new projects will likely shift their attention toward proof of stake because of the energy benefits.
MarketWatch: Will bitcoin evolve and grow to surpass its hunger for energy? Whats next in store for the worlds most popular cryptocurrency?
Benfield: Much of bitcoins energy use to date has been for mining new coins and not the actual processing of transactions. After all the coins have been mined, energy usage is likely to come down, as the act of validating transactions uses far less energy than coin mining. There is also the possibility that scaling solutions and upgrades that have been in the works for years could help cut down on energy expenditure by offloading some transaction processing to layer 2s or sidechains. These sidechains or layer 2s would then checkpoint on the bitcoin blockchain, but similar to the lightning solution, individual transactions would be handled off the main chain and the summaries of those transactions would be stored on the main bitcoin blockchain during those checkpoints.
MarketWatch: Finally, is this energy issue big enough to jeopardize bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a store of value?
Benfield: No, at the end of the day the issue of bitcoins energy consumption boils down to whether the consumption is worth it. Bitcoins adopters will eventually need to demonstrate bitcoins societal value to the world to justify its energy footprint.
There you have it. After having this conversation with Alex, reviewing Nic Carters research (the link is above, I highly recommend you read it) and other papers on the topic, it seems that many of the issues concerning bitcoins carbon footprint may have been overblown or simply misrepresented.
Determining bitcoins effect on the environment requires a lot of big-picture thinking. It is easy to miss the forest for the trees, and easier still to rely on information that has been since debunked, simply because it favors ones cognitive bias.
The way I see it, cryptocurrencies arent going away, and by the looks of it, neither is bitcoin. Current market action looks like nothing out of the ordinary yet more volatile crypto action, the likes of which weve seen in the past. This slump is likely just a pause.
What do you think? Do you support the use of bitcoin or would you rather invest in one of the green cryptocurrencies? Which one?
Let me know in the comment section below.
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Bitcoin is greener than many --- including Elon Musk --- think it is - MarketWatch
Bitcoin hits $38K as BTC price breaks above ‘line in the sand’ resistance – Cointelegraph
Bitcoin (BTC) hit $38,000 on June 2 as a long-awaited bout of volatility saw a critical bull level return.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingViewshowed BTC/USD finally beating resistance at $37,500 on June 2, going on to hit local highs of $38,090.
Questions were even being asked as to whether $30,000 would stay as support, with a potential further price dip set to take BTC to$20,000 or worse.
With the latest gains, however, the mood noticeably lifted.
"Important update: past week I showed the bearish pennant and what are the possible scenarios... We just made a new high, meaning BTC is doing 5 legs up in this current move and opening the gates for more upside," popular trader Crypto Ed tweeted in his latest update.
Crypto Ed was one of a number of traders calling for a bullish continuation for Bitcoin rather than a breakdown should $37,500 resistance be firmly quashed.
That level represents a "line in the sand" for bulls, Cointelegraph reported, and flipping it to support would open up the path to higher crux levels at $40,000 and $42,000.
Fellow trader Rekt Capital was cautious, arguing that the recovery needed "sustained" bullish activity to avoid defeat.
He highlighted a so-called "death cross" pattern looming on the weekly chart, which signals downside in the form of two moving averages the 50-week and the 200-week crossing over one another.
"A BTC Death Cross may or may not happen in the coming weeks. But that doesn't mean BTCcan't rebound from current levels before then," he told Twitter followers.
The move was significant for hodlers, who had watched as momentum failed to take Bitcoin higher than the lower end of its broad trading range with $30,000 as support.
At the time of writing, BTC/USD traded at around $37,800, up 3.5% in the past 24 hours.
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Bitcoin hits $38K as BTC price breaks above 'line in the sand' resistance - Cointelegraph
Bitcoin Price Volatility Reached Its Highest In A Year During May – Forbes
Bitcoin volatility hit a 13-month high in May amid sharp fluctuations. (Photo illustration by Edward ... [+] Smith/Getty Images)
Bitcoin prices had a wild May, experiencing sharp gyrations while they lost close to half their value in a matter of weeks.
The digital currencys annualized 30-day volatility reached 116.62% on May 24, its highest since April 10, 2020, data provided by asset manager Blockforce Capital reveals.
This particular measure climbed to its loftiest reading in more than 13 months shortly after bitcoin made two separate attempts to break through the $30,000 level, CoinDesk data shows.
The digital asset fell to roughly $30,000 on May 19, and then after recovering to nearly $42,000 a few days later, it declined once again, dropping below $31,200, additional CoinDesk figures reveal.
[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.]
Bitcoin experienced some strength earlier in the month, approaching $60,000 on May 8 and trading near that price level for a few days.
However, the worlds most prominent digital currency encountered some inevitable volatility, breaking through the $50,000 and $40,000 levels, before making attempts on $30,000.
By the time it reached its intra-month low of approximately $30,200, it had declined more than 47% from its May high of more than $59,500.
Bull Market
While bitcoin did suffer some notable price declines last month, which helped fuel the digital assets volatility, these developments took place after the cryptocurrency experienced some very impressive gains.
The digital asset rose to nearly $65,000 in April, setting a fresh, all-time high more than triple the size of the prior high of nearly $20,000 reached during the 2017-2018 bull run.
Further, bitcoin rose to this latest high after bottoming out near $3,000 in late 2018, languishing during the so-called Crypto Winter, where digital asset prices suffered and industry projects struggled to get the funding they needed.
As for where the digital currency will go next, its anyones guess, but many market observers have been pointing out that this bull run is different from the last one, driven by separate set of circumstances.
Whereas the sharp price gains that bitcoin enjoyed in 2017 and early 2018 were attributed to variables like retail interest and particularly strong sentiment, institutional investors have been credited with playing a key role in the digital currencys upward movement during the current bull market.
Disclosure: I own some bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin, ether and EOS.
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Bitcoin Price Volatility Reached Its Highest In A Year During May - Forbes
Bitcoin is headed toward its worst month since 2011; ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ author says that’s ‘great news’ – MarketWatch
Bitcoin prices are headed for their worst month since 2011 and one prominent investor says thats great news.
Bitcoin crashing. Great news, tweeted Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki on Sunday, saying it provides a good buying opportunity. When price hits $27,000 I may start buying again. Lot will depend upon global-macro environment. Remember the problem is not gold, silver, or Bitcoin. Problem are the incompetents in government, Fed & Wall Street. Remember gold was $300 in 2000.
In April, Kiyosaki predicted in an interview that bitcoins price would top $1 million in the next five years. Still, he said he prefers gold and silver as an investment, calling it Gods money.
Gold futures GC00, +0.03% are currently trading above $1,900, up 8% this month, while silver SI00, +0.36% is above $28, also up about 8% in May.
Kiyosaki is an outspoken critic of the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Biden administration, calling them losers and socialists, and predicting the demise of the dollar.
Crypto prices seesawed moderately over the Memorial Day weekend, avoiding the worst fears of some investors who predicted a bloody weekend of bearishness.
While bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.86% fell about 5% on Saturday, it rebounded Sunday and was up about 4% over the previous 24 hours, as of Sunday evening, trading in a range between $33,000 and $37,000. Ethereum ETHUSD, -0.93% prices similarly slid about 6% Saturday and recovered Sunday, up more than 5% over the previous 24 hours. Dogecoin DOGEUSD, +2.07% also bounced around Saturday and Sunday, and prices were last about even with Fridays end of session.
Cryptocurrencies trade 24 hours a day including Memorial Day on Monday and each days session ends at 5 p.m. Eastern.
But bitcoin is down more than 37% so far in May, the digital currencys worst monthly performance since September 2011. Bitcoin prices later bottomed out around $2 in October 2011.
Since its mid-April peak near $65,000, bitcoin has tumbled about 45%.
Despite a rough couple of months, bitcoin is still up 24% year to date, and up about 270% over the past year.
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Bitcoin is headed toward its worst month since 2011; 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' author says that's 'great news' - MarketWatch