Category Archives: Bitcoin
Should you invest in Bitcoin and how to do it – Telegraph.co.uk
Bitcoin has become headline news again as it approached a record valuation this week, surpassing $19,000 (14,230), before subsequently falling back down towards the $16,500 mark.
A growing number of professional investors argue that Bitcoin, the oldest cryptocurrency and the largest by market value, deserves a place in a diversified portfolio.
Sceptics counter that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value as few people use it to buy things, it is unproven as a safe haven asset and faces the threat of legal clampdowns that could make it worthless.
So should you buy some? And is it ever safe to do so?
Investors should steer clear, according to Felix Milton of Philip J Milton, a financial planning firm, because governments could intervene at any moment and outlaw it as a currency, making it illegal to own. At the moment its allowed to operate but that may not last forever, he said. I would strongly advise against investing unless it becomes regulated by the Government.
If this happened, it would reduce price volatility and legitimise it as an investment. But right now it is too risky to own as a serious investment and is more of a gamble.
Simon King of Vermeer Partners, a wealth manager, said Bitcoin faced two main hurdles before it could be considered investible. He said it needed to be used as a means of exchange, like other currencies, but this was currently not the case. Secondly, it needed to be accepted as a store of value, like gold, but as it was launched only in 2009 it was too early to conclude this.
All this, along with issues around fraud and theft, drastically limit its merits for a serious investor. For those who want to take a small gamble on volatility, fine. But it should not be an investment choice as part of a considered strategy and portfolio, he said.
But not all professional investors are put off by Bitcoins volatility and newcomer status. Tancredi Cordero of Kuros Associates, a wealth manager, said the most important reason to own Bitcoin was that it acted as a hedge as its price moved in different directions from other investments, including gold.
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Should you invest in Bitcoin and how to do it - Telegraph.co.uk
Russian Hospitalized After Bitcoin Mining Farm Sets Apartment on Fire – CoinDesk – CoinDesk
A poorly organized cryptocurrency mining farm has caused a fire in an apartment in St. Petersburg, Russia, and injured the operator, according to a 78.ru report citing the Ministry of Emergencies.
The resident of the seven-bedroom apartment had apparently failed to set up sufficient cooling for his equipment, and was hospitalized due to severe burns to his hands, neck and back.
The blaze took four fire engines, 16 firefighters and 40 minutes of work to put out, the report indicates.
This is not the first incident of its kind in Russia. In December of 2019, a mining farm set up in a private car garage in the city of Vologda also caught fire, destroying all the equipment, Cnews reported at the time.
And, in February 2019, a larger fire destroyed seven apartments in a residential building in the town of Artem, in the east of Russia.
Illicit mining is a problem across the country. The federal power grid company Rosseti reported losing about $6.6 million last year because of the mining farms plugged into the electric grid illegally.
In 2018, scientists in a nuclear research institute were arrested and later sentenced for using the institutions computers to mine bitcoin.
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Russian Hospitalized After Bitcoin Mining Farm Sets Apartment on Fire - CoinDesk - CoinDesk
Researcher Publishes Never Before Seen Emails Between Satoshi Nakamoto and Hal Finney – Bitcoin News
Just recently three previously unpublished emails from Bitcoins inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, have been made public. The emails reveal the correspondence between Satoshi and the early Bitcoin developer Hal Finney. The communications between Nakamoto and Finney stem from November 2008 and January 2009, the very month Bitcoin was launched.
On November 27, three emails that have never been seen before were made public in an editorial written by Michael Kaplikov, a professor at Pace University. According to Kaplikov, the emails derived from the New York Times contributor Nathaniel Popper. The NYT journalist also wrote the book Digital Gold and Hal Finneys wife Fran Finney gave Popper the emails at this time. Kaplikov published the emails alongside his editorial after confirming that the emails were indeed legitimate, and stemmed from the now-deceased Hal Finneys old computer.
The first email is dated November 19, 2008, which was nineteen days after Bitcoins mysterious creator published the white paper. Kaplikov, who has been studying the Bitcoin origin story, said that before the email, Nakamoto shared an early version of the Bitcoin codebase with a few people including Hal Finney. The early release origin story is well known, as Ray Dillinger and James A. Donald also received pre-release copies. In the email, Finney asked Satoshi about the number of nodes and scaling the Bitcoin network.
Some of the discussion and concern over performance may relate to the eventual size of the P2P network, Finney wrote to Nakamoto. How large do you envision it becoming? Tens of nodes. Thousands? Millions? And for clients, do you think this could scale to be usable for close to 100% of the worlds financial transactions? Or would you see it as mostly being used for some core subset of transactions that have special requirements, with other transactions using a different payment system that perhaps is based on Bitcoin?
The researcher from Pace University also highlighted that soon after this particular email, Bitcoins creator allowed Finney commit access to the Sourceforge repository. Then another email dated January 8, 2009, shortly after the network was launched, Satoshi wrote to Hal. Thought youd like to know, the Bitcoin v0.1 release with EXE and full sourcecode is up on Sourceforge, Nakamoto wrote. The creator also detailed that release notes and screenshots were also uploaded to the web portal bitcoin.org. The very next day, Finney replied to Nakamotos release email.
Hi, Satoshi, thanks very much for that information, Finney said on January 9. I should have a chance to look at that this weekend. I am looking forward to learning more about the code.
The very next day, Hal Finney took to Twitter and told his followers he was running bitcoin. It seems Finney did get a chance to look at the code after his recent correspondence with Nakamoto. In addition to the three unpublished emails, Kaplikov also discussed the email correspondence between Finney and Nakamoto that was given to the Wall Street Journal back in 2014.
The reason for this is because Kaplikov discusses discrepancies with the emails timestamps. Kaplikov stresses that the January 2009 emails appear to be roughly eight hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Just recently, new research from The Chain Bulletin contributor Doncho Karaivanov tried to pinpoint Satoshis home location by leveraging all his activity and scatter charts of all the timestamps.
Karaivanovs study assumes that Satoshi Nakamoto lived in London (GMT) when he/she or they created the Bitcoin project. However, studies from the past show that Nakamoto could have also resided in California on the west coast and some have asserted he lived on the eastern side of the United States. Moreover, it is also assumed in a few of the studies that Satoshi Nakamoto pulled a lot of all-nighters and crammed his work before he left the project.
Finney passed away on August 28, 2014, after suffering from complications from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Bitcoiners and crypto proponents everywhere think of Finney in the highest regard, as he once said that the computer could help liberate people.
It seemed so obvious to me, Finney explained before his death. Here we are faced with the problems of loss of privacy, creeping computerization, massive databases, more centralization and [David] Chaum offers a completely different direction to go in, one which puts power into the hands of individuals rather than governments and corporations. The computer can be used as a tool to liberate and protect people, rather than to control them.
The recently published emails are interesting and give some new insight into the early relationship between Nakamoto and Finney. The emails and Finneys post on Twitter on January 10, clearly show he was very excited about this project and specifically made time available to look at Bitcoin right away. The email timestamps simply add more to the Satoshi Nakamoto identity mystery, and the uncertainty of the inventors whereabouts during the cryptocurrencys creation period.
What do you think about the email correspondence between Nakamoto and Finney? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.
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Researcher Publishes Never Before Seen Emails Between Satoshi Nakamoto and Hal Finney - Bitcoin News
OKExs Withdrawal Suspension Isnt Behind Bitcoins Rally: Analysts – CoinDesk – CoinDesk
Bitcoins price has been up dramatically since the very day popular exchange OKEx announced the suspension of all crypto withdrawal service on its platform. However, while some tie the two together, many market observers do not see a reason to associate the latest price rally with OKExs issues.
Bitcoin's latest rally came after OKEx's suspension on all crypto withdrawal.
While the price of bitcoin gained significantly since the market sell-off in March, the most recent bullish run began just as OKEx said it suspended all crypto withdrawals because one of its key holders has been out of touch.
However, the suspension of withdrawals on OKEx had little impact on bitcoins price over the past month, said Ki Young Ju, chief executive officer of CryptoQuant.
BTCs price on OKEx is not that different from other exchanges, he said. [P]eople can trade their BTC on OKEx despite the withdrawal suspension.
The Malta-based crypto exchange still remains the No. 1 position for bitcoin futures open interest, currently worth $1.22 billion, according to data source Skew.
OKEx said Thursday it will resume withdrawal service as soon as this week, after founder Mingxing Star Xu was said to have been released from police custody in China. Jay Hao, chief executive officer of OKEx, told CoinDesk its high open interest is a positive indicator for his company.
These are encouraging signs that confidence in the exchange remains high and I believe that even if some users decide to withdraw their funds [as soon as withdrawals are open], which is their total and absolute right, they will soon come back to OKEx, Hao said through a spokesperson on Telegram.
Bitcoins volume from miners to OKEx has also dropped to almost zero since the news came out, as data from Glassnode show.
The muted bitcoin transfer volume from miners to OKEx, whose users are largely Chinese, is in line with the argument that the price surge is partly due to drying up in supply. Miners in China are struggling to turn their bitcoin into cash because of a government crackdown on Chinese exchanges.
Darius Sit, founder of Singapore-based trading firm QCP, connects the situation for miners in China with the market, telling CoinDesk that instead of going to other platforms, miners may have been holding on to their bitcoins as prices continue to climb, causing a tightened bitcoin supply.
Yet, others have largely disagreed with such contentions, saying the supply of bitcoin affected by OKExs withdrawal suspension is relatively small.
As a class, miners arent that large a group of sellers, Ryan Watkins, bitcoin analyst at Messari, told CoinDesk in a Telegram message. [They are] definitely not enough to drive the price up as high as it is.
Instead, Watkins pointed out the recent bitcoin rally is mostly driven by the demand side, as institutional investors in North America have been buying bitcoin in large amounts.
The perfect timing of OKExs suspension and the price rally could be purely coincidental, Watkins added.
Data from Chainalysis also indicate that after mining pools stopped sending bitcoin to OKEx, their newly minted cryptocurrency instead flowed to Binance and Huobi, both of which are also widely used in China.
Binance, Huobi and OKEx in total received 46% of bitcoin sent to exchanges from mining pools in the past 12 months, according to a Nov. 12 report from Chainalysis.
Colin Wu, a journalist based in China who first reported the Chinese miners selling problem in his blog, told CoinDesk in a WeChat message that Western media outlets have largely exaggerated what he wrote, saying the difficulties Chinese miners have had selling bitcoin should have had a minor impact on the recent price rally.
The misunderstanding is that Chinese miners stopped selling coins and caused bitcoin to rise, which is illogical, Wu wrote in a tweet thread. They did not stop selling coins. It was just a little troublesome and the number of miners in China has been decreasing. Miners are moving to the United States and Kazakhstan.
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OKExs Withdrawal Suspension Isnt Behind Bitcoins Rally: Analysts - CoinDesk - CoinDesk
Bitcoin now has a 7% chance of beating $20K highs in the next 2 months – Cointelegraph
Bitcoin (BTC) has a 7% probability of beating its $20,000 all-time highs by the end of this year, data shows.
According to data from on-chain analytics resource Skew, as of Oct. 22, Bitcoin options were moving in favor of higher prices continuing in 2020.
At press time, the likelihood of BTC/USD being $20,000 or higher by Dec. 31, 2020 was 7%, with 11% for $18,000.
By March 2021, more bets said that Bitcoin would have reclaimed $20,000 (14%), while the figure for June 2021 was 18%.
On social media, Skew said that the probability data was repricing quickly in the aftermath of Bitcoin hitting $13,200.
Bitcoin options price probability chart. Source: Skew
As Cointelegraph reported, the mood among institutional investors remains skewed to the upside despite the higher price levels. The latest commitments of traders (COT) report from CME Group, for example, showed that institutions were overwhelmingly long rather than short BTC.
On Wednesday, statistician Willy Woo noted that huge amounts of liquidity had been removed from speculative arenas by investors keen to store coins for the long term. Woo described the event, which involved 250,000 BTC ($3.24 billion), as the mother of all scoop-ups.
Where did the supply come from? 250k coins ($2b+ USD) have been scooped off the speculative stock on spot exchanges into HODL, he tweeted.
The organic nature of the behavior which led to the price rise has not gone unnoticed. For Charles Edwards, founder of digital asset manager Capriole, this was a unique phenomenon in Bitcoins twelve-year lifespan.
This pump is organically spot driven. There is almost no order book resistance, he tweeted on Thursday.
Nevertheless, Bitcoin futures trading volume has also nearly tripled in the past two days compared to levels seen earlier this month as the price of Bitcoin overcame $12,000.
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Bitcoin now has a 7% chance of beating $20K highs in the next 2 months - Cointelegraph
For the first time since 2018 Bitcoin balances on exchanges fell below 2.5M – Cointelegraph
On October 20, 2020, the amount of Bitcoin (BTC) held at major exchanges fell below 2.5 million BTC for the first time in two years.
Nexo co-founder Antoni Trenchev opined to Cointelegraph that this trend is driven by the world finally realizing that only Bitcoin offers sound monetary policy:
He also noted that the community is resorting more to self-custody solutions, including platforms like Nexo, where they can tax-efficiently borrow against their assets rather than selling them." Cointelegraph noted yesterday thatthe Bitcoin supply is currently diffused more than ever.
Alex Mashinsky, co-founder of the Celsius crypto lending platform, told Cointelegraph that the exodus will likely continue unless exchanges begin offering better terms to their customers:
From the chart above, we can see that this swing has not impacted all exchanges equally. While balances at BitMEX and Bitfinex were decimated, decreasing by more than half, Binance has continued to accumulate additional funds. Coinbases coffers have remained mostly unchanged as well.
The growth of DeFi may have also contributed to this trend. The amount of Bitcoin locked on Ethereum through wBTC and renBTC presently exceeds 130,000. Just a few months ago, these numbers were negligible. Another likely culprit is institutional adoption. Aside from the continuous growth of Grayscales Bitcoin Trust Fund, publicly-traded companies like MicroStrategy and Square began adding crypto assets to their treasuries.
It seems that there is either a general trend towards users withdrawing Bitcoin from custodial exchanges, or perhaps a few major exchanges are simply losing the trust of their customers. The latter may be a reasonable conclusion, as a mere three platforms (BitMEX, Huobi, and Bitfinex) were responsible for the bulk of the trend their balances decreased by 390,000 BTC, making them accountable for almost 80% of the total decline.
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For the first time since 2018 Bitcoin balances on exchanges fell below 2.5M - Cointelegraph
Bitcoin top signal from 2017 reappears, but heres why it may not matter this time – Cointelegraph
In 2017, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) reached as high as $20,000 before crashing rapidly. Now, the same on-chain top signal has reemerged, according to researchers at Glassnode. But besides much stronger fundamentals this time around, the ongoing rally feels significantly different for other reasons.
Bitcoin typically pulls back when whales take profit, causing a ripple effect throughout the cryptocurrency market. As such, when the overwhelming majority of the market is in profit, the chances of correction rises.
Since the March 2020 crash, when the price of Bitcoin dropped below $3,600 on BitMEX, BTC has rallied 260%. After such a large rally, a consolidation phase or a pullback could cause a healthier rally in the medium term.
Glassnode researchers found that the last time 98% of all Bitcoin UTXOs were profitable was in December 2017. After Bitcoin peaked at $19,798 on Dec. 16, 2017, it dropped 45% within six days to $10,961.
At the time, many whales and retail investors took profit, causing massive volatility. Glassnode said:
However, there are various fundamental and technical differences between the ongoing rally and the 2017 top.
First, the current rally of Bitcoin has been far more stable than the parabolic 2017 upsurge, which happened so suddenly that no clear resistance and support levels were established.
This time, Bitcoin has been climbing steadily, confirming $10,500, $11,300, $12,000 and $12,500 as key support levels.
Second, the overall institutional and spot demand is high, relative to the volume coming from the derivatives market.
Following Square, MicroStrategy and Stone Ridges high-profile allocations into Bitcoin, the volume of institution-focused platforms surged. LMAX Digital, CME and Bakkt specifically saw trading activity surge significantly since August.
When miners, whales and high-net-worth individuals buy and sell Bitcoin, they usually rely on the over-the-counter market.
The OTC market allows large trades to be matched with minimum slippage, which otherwise could trigger massive price fluctuations on exchanges.
The consistent increase in over-the-counter deals suggests that the appetite for BTC from large investors and institutions is likely rising. Analysts at on-chain data provider CryptoQuantsaid:
The confluence of high volume, a stable uptrend and growing OTC volumes makes new inflows into the Bitcoin market more likely. If the trend is sustained, it may offset potential profit-taking pullbacks in the cryptocurrency market.
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Bitcoin top signal from 2017 reappears, but heres why it may not matter this time - Cointelegraph
First Mover: PayPal Rushes In and Bitcoin Breaches $12K, While USDC Gains on Tether – CoinDesk – CoinDesk
Bitcoin blew past $12,000 to its highest price in two months, bringing into view the prospect of a fresh 2020 high.
The largest cryptocurrency was changing hands Wednesday around $12,200, within striking distance of the years high around $12,500. And that was even before the news emerged that electronic consumer payments giant PayPal had been granted aconditional New York state licensefor a partnership to buy and sell cryptocurrencies.
Coupled with a seemingly constant flow of reports of traditional funds and companies investing or allocating some of their balance sheet toBitcoin, we were due for a move up, Matt Blom, head of sales and trading for the publicly traded digital-asset firm Diginex, told subscribers in his daily newsletter.
Intraditional markets, European equity indexes were lower, U.S. stock futures fluctuated and 10-year Treasury yields rose on renewed speculation that lawmakers in Washington might still be moving toward a stimulus package. Gold rose 0.6% to $1,919 an ounce.
Market moves
While tether (USDT), with a market cap surpassing $16 billion, continues to hold the lions share of stablecoins in circulation, two smaller rivals are trouncing it in cryptos hottest market this year,decentralized finance(DeFi).
Measured by the total value locked in six of the most popular DeFi protocols Compound, Maker, Uniswap, Curve, Aave and Balancer USD coin (USDC) is in the lead among stablecoins followed by dai(DAI), the native stablecoin to MakerDAO. Thats according to data compiled by Flipside Crypto as of Oct. 19.
USDC and DAI have market caps of $2.74 billion and $608 million, respectively. Yet, unlike on centralized exchanges, where tether is the go-to stablecoin in dollar-based crypto trades, USDC and DAI seem to have found their niche as the preferred stablecoins in decentralized trades.
In an interview with CoinDesk, Jeremy Allaire, peer-to-peer payments company Circles co-founder, attributed USDCs success in DeFi to his companys early efforts in building relationships with the DeFi communities. The fact the two companies that co-founded USDCs governing Centre consortium, Circle and crypto exchange Coinbase, are both registered financial entities in the United States may also have something to do with USDCs recent upturn. According to Allaire, USDC is preferred by institutional investors for being safe, trusted and regulated.
Authorities around the globe are giving more direction on how cryptocurrencies should be used and regulated.In late September, for instance, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published its first regulatory guidance for stablecoins, clarifying that national banks can provide services to stablecoin issuers in the U.S.
Having guidelines creates more certainty, which makes mainstream market participants ready and willing to engage in it, Allaire told CoinDesk.
Total value locked by day aggregated across Compound, Maker, Uniswap, Curve, Aave and Balancer for DAI, PAX, USDC and USDT.
Bitcoin watch
Bitcoin daily price chart.
Bitcoins price has jumped to two-month highs, and data from the options market shows traders are positioning for a continued rally.
The top cryptocurrency by market value rose to $12,303 early today the highest level since Aug. 18 and was last seen trading near $12,250, representing a 2% gain on the day.
The market sentiment has turned quite bullish, with firms like Square, Microstrategy and Stone Ridge disclosing their bitcoin holdings and bolstering the digital assets popularity as a store of value.
The momentum is certainly picking up with support from large corporations buying into the market, Wayne Chen, CEO, and director of Interlapse Technologies, told CoinDesk in a LinkedIn chat.
The move above $12,000 has exposed the August high of $12,476, above which significant resistance is seen directly at $13,880 (June 2019 high).
Options market data shows investors are expecting a continued price rally. Bitcoin is breaking out, and the options market is preparing for a bigger rally, Skews CEO Emmanuel Goh told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat.
The bullish mood is evident from the negative one-, three-, and six-month put-call skews, which measure the cost of puts relative to calls.
In other words, calls or bullish bets are drawing higher prices than puts or bearish bets a sign of investors positioning for a price rally.
Token watch
Ether (ETH):Validators of Ethereum blockchainsdrop off of test networkas more developers say theyre ready for first phase of 2.0 upgrade.
Compound (COMP):DeFi lenders governance token falls below $100 in sign thatsector might be cooling.
Bitcoin (BTC):In a case of the new economics, largestcryptocurrencys demand should increase as price goes up, while supply stays fixed,Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone writes:
Bitcoin's price and supply curve, charted versus total assets on central bank balance sheets.
What's hot
PayPal granted New Yorks first conditional BitLicense to offer crypto services. (CoinDesk)
Bahamas officially launches sand dollar central bank digital currency, first of its kind in the world to have been fully deployed. (CoinDesk)
BitMEX exchange accelerates mandatory ID verification after charges of lax anti-money-laundering controls. (CoinDesk)
Funding rates for bitcoin perpetual futures have stayed flat or turned negative as spot prices shot past $12K, suggesting futures traders arent as bullish in latest rally. (CoinDesk)
U.S. demurral on digital dollar deprives officials of crucial ability to rapidly and precisely disseminate stimulus funds directly to citizens during a recurring pandemic or lingering depression, attorneys argue. (CoinDesk)
Digital assets could become the next realm of shadow banking. (Roll Call)
In Q3, Binances spot trading hit an all time high a sign retail traders are prefering the exchange to its competitors. (The Block)
MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor says bitcoinmarkets data are garbage and that liquidity is far more limited than reported, based on his own experience; he says its tough to buy more than $35M of bitcoin without people knowing. (CoinDesk)
Mode Global, a London Stock Exchange-listed fintech company, plans to convert 10% of cash reserves into bitcoin to protect investors assets from currency debasement. (CoinDesk)
Crypto-friendly Signature Bank raked In $4B in deposits in Q3 2020. (CoinDesk)
Peer-to-peer bitcoin trading in North America now exceeds volumes during bull run of 2017. (Arcane Research)
North American weekly peer-to-peer trading volumes in bitcoin.
Analogs
The latest on the economy and traditional finance
As European Central Bank floods zone with stimulus, yields on 10-year government bonds from Greece, Italy are now under 1%, just like Germanys. (WSJ)
Commodities traders increasing bets that U.S. dollar will weaken versus euro. (WSJ)
China initial stock offerings booming as economy recovers, markets surge. (WSJ)
Global trade recovered somewhat in third quarter but remains about 4.5% lower than a year earlier, United Nations report shows. (Reuters)
Japanese equities rise on U.S. stimulus deal being reached before Presidential elections. (Reuters)
U.S. economy has lost 3.9M jobs since President Donald Trump took office. (Yahoo Finance)
Chart comparing U.S. presidents on jobs growth.
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Macro Investor Dan Tapiero on Crypto Adoption: Emerging Economies Ahead of Developed States | News – Bitcoin News
Bitcoin and gold holder Dan Tapiero, says it is still early to talk of widespread crypto adoption as the proportion of users relative to the rest of the population remains low. Tapiero makes the remarks while referring to a study, which places Nigeria at top of the list of countries with the highest number of respondents that say they own or are using cryptocurrency.
According to the study, 32% of surveyed Nigerians say they used or owned cryptocurrencies in 2020 while in Japan, which is last on the list, only 4% say they owned cryptos in 2020. The survey, which was conducted by Statista, shows that countries with emerging economies like Vietnam (21%) and South Africa (17%) have more respondents who say they used or owned cryptos in 2020. Spain (10%) is the only developed country where the percentage of respondents that own or used cryptocurrencies get to double-digit figures.
In the United States, which appeared to be the focus of Tapieros tweet, the percentage of respondents that confirm owning or using crypto is only 7%. In his tweet, Tapiero who is the Co-founder at 10T Holdings infers that the world is currently seeing the crypto which is still at the birth of a new global asset class. Some Twitter users were quick to query the methodology of the study and Tapeiro admits that there are countries that belong on this list that are not listed.
Still, another Twitter, Alexander Burgei insists that the data is really clear and that adoption is already happening but only in dysfunctional countries, as a backup to devaluating currencies. While adoption is already happening in some countries, the Twitter user says it will not be real until its taken by the Western powers and China.
Meanwhile, in an earlier tweet, Tapiero claims that it is the beginning of the end for banks and urges them to either adapt or perish.
He adds:
Time to pivot towards the digital asset ecosystem. Bitcoin is the pristine collateral at its centre. The whole new world now growing up alongside the legacy system.
Tapieros remarks come as fintech and payment firms continue to eat into the banks share of market capitalization. According to data shared by Tapiero on Twitter, fintech, and payment firms only accounted for less than 10% in 2010. This figure has grown to nearly 30% share of the market capitalization.
There are expectations that this trend is set to continue and banks that fail to embrace emerging technologies will lose influence.
Do you think cryptocurrency adoption is happening faster in some regions than in others? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.
Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons
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Hotel Bitcoin ATMs on the Rise With Addition of Swiss Hotel Dolder Grand | News – Bitcoin News
The number of hotels with a bitcoin ATM on-site is growing in Switzerland. The latest announcement came from The Dolder Grand, a luxury hotel and spa in Zurich, which recently installed a crypto ATM supporting four cryptocurrencies.
The Dolder Grand announced Monday that a cryptocurrency ATM has been installed at the hotel for guests to buy and sell cryptocurrencies on-site. The announcement states:
As of now, guests of the Zurich Hotel Dolder Grand can buy and sell cryptocurrencies on site conveniently at the crypto ATM. This is made possible by a device from the Swiss cryptocurrency financial specialist Vrdex Suisse.
Hotel guests can use the machine to buy four cryptocurrencies bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin, and ethereum with Swiss francs and euros. They can also sell BTC for Swiss francs.
The Dolder Grand started accepting bitcoin for overnight stays, food, drinks, and spa treatments last year. According to the announcement:
The demand for cryptocurrencies has increased significantly since the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis. Many use the Vrdex machines to gain initial experience with cryptocurrencies.
The crypto ATM installed at The Dolder Grand is operated by Vrdex Suisse, which has the largest network of cryptocurrency ATMs in Switzerland. Founded in 2017, Vrdex is a spin-off from Bitcoin Suisse AG. Based in Zugs crypto valley, the company is a regulated Swiss financial intermediary.
Vrdex Suisse has installed crypto ATMs at about 70 locations in Switzerland. According to the cryptocurrency ATM tracking website Coinatmradar, there are currently 102 crypto ATMs in Switzerland, making it the country with the sixth-highest number of cryptocurrency ATMs.
Besides The Dolder Grand, other hotels that have a Vrdex Suisse cryptocurrency ATM installed include Hotel 46a, Parkhotel, Htel Rgina, Hilton Zurich Airport, and Hotel Hecht Gottlieben. The company says that hotel guests actively take advantage of the opportunity to easily buy and sell cryptocurrencies at ATMs.
Do you think all hotels should have a bitcoin ATM? Let us know in the comments section below.
Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, The Dolder Grand
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.
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