Quick take:

The month of September has been a turbulent one for Bitcoin in the crypto markets. The month started off with BTC breaking the $12k ceiling only to drop below $10k on numerous occasions before leveling off at current levels above $10,200.

However, the constant volatility of Bitcoin has not swayed investors from owning more BTC. According to the team at Glassnode, the number of Bitcoin addresses holding at least 1 BTC has grown continuously over the years. Known as wholecoiners, their numbers recently hit a new all-time high value of 823,000. The team at Glassnode shared their observation via the following tweet.

Connecting the dots, an increment of bitcoin addresses holding at least one Bitcoin is proof that investors are continually confident that BTC is a store of value. The concept of Bitcoin as a store of value, or digital gold, has been explored numerous times by crypto enthusiasts and analysts with the most recent being Tyler Winklevoss who explained why this was so.

Bitcoin is not just a scarce commodity, its the only known commodity in the universe that has a deterministic andfixedsupply. As a result, bitcoin is not subject to any of the potential positive supply shocks that gold (or any commodity for that matter) may face in the future.

Bitcoin is the first commodity in the universe where supplydoes notfollow demand. Demand for bitcoin does not, and cannot, expand its supply.

Beyond superior supply attributes, bitcoin possesses all of the other characteristics that make gold valuable and actually performsbetteron a side-by-side comparison.

The concept of owning at least one Bitcoin was also discussed in a recent episode of the Joe Rogan experience featuring Adam Curry. This episode of the famous podcast has been shared widely in the crypto-verse and can be found on youtube. The particular section of the podcast talking about owning at least one Bitcoin can be found in the following tweet.

Link:
Number of Bitcoin Addresses Holding at Least 1 BTC Hits New ATH - Ethereum World News

Cryptocurrency is sizing up traditional finance on its legacy turf of lending and borrowing with competitive interest rates (currently as low as 0.44% for ethereum and 4.50% per year for bitcoin) as well as less cumbersome verification procedures. Crypto holders present their virtual assets as collateral to get loans paid out in fiat or stablecoin. The option allows one to keep an immediate financial need separate from long-term crypto investment as well as evade a taxable sale of their crypto funds.

Investors are also able to lend their digital assets and pick up significantly higher passive income of as much as 12% on their deposits than generally offered by conventional institutions. Whereas bank customers may currently be recording negative interest for their money due to the Covid-19-induced global economic recession, crypto lenders put their money to work for them.

Risks in the growing market include the theoretic vulnerability of smart contracts to hackers and a lower level of regulation for the exchanges, including decentralized ones, and wallets offering the service.

News.Bitcoin.com briefly profiled platforms that offer the best virtual assets borrowing rates. Services are ranked for BTC and ETH, according to data provided by Coinmarketcap. The ethereum space is dominated by decentralized finance (Defi) protocols while bitcoin borrowing is dominated by centralized wallets and exchanges. All featured services also allow the lending function.

Dydx offers the best borrowing rate for ether at 0.44% per annum. The decentralized exchanges interest rates fluctuate based on the supply and demand of loans and deposits of the particular crypto-asset. Dydx allows users to leverage positions up to 4x. Users can borrow directly to a wallet. The minimum starting account collateralization is 125% and must be maintained above 115% to avoid liquidation of the account.

Nuo offers a rate of 2.33%. Like Dydx, the decentralized platform allows users to margin trade cryptocurrency in addition to lending and borrowing. Rates similarly fluctuate depending on supply and demand. Users can leverage trade up to 3x and borrow up to 0.7x of the collateral amount.

Compound Finance is also a decentralized exchange. It currently offers a borrowing rate of 3.06%. Users can also deposit one crypto-asset and request for a loan of other digital tokens. Rates fluctuate based on supply and demand. The collateral factor for ETH is 75. For example, a user with assets worth $100 can borrow up to $75.

Sitting atop the BTC list for best borrowing rates with 4.50%, Celsius is a wallet that allows customers to deposit and loan virtual currencies. The centralized service fixes all interest rates for its users. Celsius incentivizes use of its CEL token with better rates for deposits. Celsius started in 2018 with a minimum loan of $10,000 which has gone down a few times to the current minimum of $1,000.

Coinloan is tied with Celsius on the top spot with a 4.50% loan. Depositors can monitor interest for their crypto, stablecoin, or fiat investments in real time and get back funds any time on demand. To get 100,000 euros ($118,000) with a loan-to-value ratio of 60, a user needs to deposit 26 BTC.

Bitrue offers an interest rate of 5.85%. The centralized exchange sets the asset-type, capacity, and yield for each deposit product. It also offers loans of crypto-assets, backed by the users deposits.

Nexo has a remarkable minimum loan of $10, at interest rates of 5.9% per year. Like most wallets and exchanges in the business, no credit checks are involved. The credit line limit is calculated according to the value of assets. Nexo fixes interest rates for its users and offers a variety of currencies including stablecoins, U.S. dollar, British pound, and euro.

What do you think of the prevailing interest rates for borrowing cryptocurrency? Let us know 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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Crypto Borrowing: Here Are Seven of the Best Interest Rates on the Market | Finance - Bitcoin News

The government of Argentina has reportedly refused to pay a $4 million bitcoin ransom demanded by hackers who hijacked the countrys immigration systems, temporarily crippling cross-border movements.

On Aug. 27, the cybercriminals now identified as a group calling itself Netwalker hacked Argentinas immigration agency, Direccin Nacional de Migraciones, in an attack that halted border crossing in and out of the Latin American country for up to four hours.

The thieves allegedly stole sensitive information and are demanding millions of dollars in bitcoin (BTC) before they can decrypt the files, according to a Sept. 6 report by Bleeping Computers. Initially, Netwalker wanted $2 million worth of bitcoin but later doubled the ransom to about 356 BTC (or $4 million at the time).

However, the Argentinian government is refusing to negotiate with the hackers and will not pay the demanded ransom. As reported by Infobae, a local publication, officials say that the cybercriminals did not attack the critical infrastructure of the immigration agency and did not steal anything sensitive, whether personal or corporate.

Authorities are adamant that they will not negotiate with hackers and neither are they too concerned with getting that data back, Infobae reported, quoting Mara Eugenia Lachalde, a lawyer who represents the agency. Lachalde detailed that the attack affected the normal operation that attends to the public, both in administrative offices and in immigration control posts.

In response, the government shut down the entire computer system of the immigration department to prevent the malware from spreading to other networks. The action resultantly stopped all border crossing throughout Argentina for four hours. When immigration officials first noticed the attack on Aug. 27, they made an SOS call to higher offices:

(The team) realized that it was not an ordinary situation, and evaluated the Central Data and Distributed Servers infrastructure, noting the activity of a virus that had affected the systems MS Windows-based files (mainly Adad Sysvol and System Center DPM) and Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel, etc.) in users jobs and shared folders.

What do you think about the Argentina ransomware attack? Let us know 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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Argentina Government Refuses to Pay $4M Bitcoin Ransom to Hackers Who Paralyzed Its Borders | News - Bitcoin News

Four months ago, Abolaji Odunjo made a fundamental change to his business selling mobile phones in a bustling street market in Lagos: He started paying his suppliers in bitcoin.

Odunjo sources handsets and accessories from China and the United Arab Emirates. His Chinese suppliers asked to be paid in the cryptocurrency, he said, for speed and convenience.

The shift has boosted his profits, as he no longer has to buy dollars using the Nigerian naira or shell out fees to money-transfer firms. It is also one example of how, in Africa, bitcoin - the original and biggest cryptocurrency - is finding the practical use that it has largely failed to elsewhere.

Bitcoin helped to protect my business against the currency devaluation, and enabled me to grow at the same time, Odunjo told Reuters from his two-by-eight meter shop.

You dont have to pay charges, you dont have to buy dollars, the 30-year-old said, raising his voice above the sound of loud haggling and the honking horns of scooters.

Odunjo is one of many people at the heart of a quiet bitcoin boom in Africa, driven by payments from small businesses as well as remittances sent home from migrant workers, according to data shared exclusively with Reuters and interviews with around 20 bitcoin users and five cryptocurrency exchanges.

Monthly cryptocurrency transfers to and from Africa of under $10,000 - typically made by individuals and small businesses - jumped more than 55 percent in a year to reach $316 million in June, the data from U.S. blockchain research firm Chainalysis shows.

The number of monthly transfers also rose by almost half, surpassing 600,700, according to Chainalysis, which says the research is the most comprehensive effort yet to map out global crypto use. Much of the activity took place in Nigeria, the continents biggest economy, along with South Africa and Kenya.

This represents a reversal for bitcoin which, despite its birth as a payments tool over a decade ago, has mainly been used for speculation by financial traders rather than for commerce.

Why a boom in Africa? Young, tech-savvy populations that have adapted quickly to bitcoin; weaker local currencies that make it harder to get dollars, the de facto currency of global trade; and complex bureaucracy that complicates money transfers.

The bitcoin users interviewed by Reuters, based in five countries from Nigeria to Botswana, said the cryptocurrency was helping people make their businesses nimbler and more profitable, and helping those working in places like Europe and North America hang on to more of the earnings they send home.

Yet risks abound.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are unregulated in many countries and their legal status is unclear, meaning there is no safety net and little recourse if you lose funds.

For many, converting local currencies to and from bitcoin relies on informal brokers. Prices are volatile, and buying and selling is a complex process that demands technical knowledge.

In 2018, the Nigerian central bank warned cryptocurrencies were not legal tender, and investors were unprotected.

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A steady stream of customers comes and goes from Odunjos shop, one of a dozen units along a dark corridor in an indoor section of the market known as Computer Village.

Odunjo makes two or three transfers a month of around 0.5-0.7 bitcoin ($5,900-$8,300) each, to suppliers in Shanghai and Zhangzhou. East Asia, Chainalysis found, is one of the top partners for bitcoin trading with Africa.

Odunjos trades offer a microcosm of the wider trends at play in both Nigeria and across the continent.

In Nigeria, small cryptocurrency transfers totalled nearly $56 million in June, nearly 50 percent more than a year before. The number of transactions jumped over 55 percent to 120,000.

Gauging how cryptocurrencies are used in particular locations is tough, though. Digital coins offer a high degree of anonymity, and though the value of transactions can be tracked on the blockchain, the identity or whereabouts of a user cannot.

Chainalysis, which tracks crypto flows for financial firms and U.S. law enforcement, gathered the data by analysing web traffic and trading patterns, though locations can be obscured by virtual private networks. It separated transfers of under $10,000 from larger sums common among professional traders.

With Nigerias oil-dependent economy rocked by low crude prices and COVID-19, the central bank has twice devalued the naira this year. As a result, Odunjo and other importers must pay more to buy increasingly scarce dollars.

The nairas fall has pushed many Nigerians towards bitcoin, the interviews showed, as they seek methods of purchasing goods from overseas without having to buy dollars.

Sylvester Kalu, who runs a clothing starch maker in Uyo, eastern Nigeria, uses bitcoin to buy supplies from Istanbul and Shenzhen.

Everything is oil. When the price of oil dropped, forex became scare, he said. That became a very big problem.

The 30-year-old said his transactions totalled around 2 bitcoin ($20,000) a time, adding: I dont need anyone in the banks, I dont need a person to use the back door to get dollars.

Timi Ajiboye, who runs Lagos exchange BuyCoins, said its monthly cryptocurrency volumes jumped over three-fold to $21 million in June after the naira was devalued in March.

Exchanges across Africa spoke of a similar boom.

Yellow Card, which operates in five countries, said its monthly crypto volumes had jumped five-fold in 2020 to $25 million in August. A big driver was workers using bitcoin for remittances, it added.

Luno said the combined monthly bitcoin trading volumes of all market participants in South Africa and Nigeria had jumped by half this year to more than $536 million in August.

For some people working abroad, in other continents or other African countries, sending money home via bitcoin can be quicker and cheaper.

A Nigerian worker in London sending 100 pounds ($132) in cash to Lagos via a big traditional money-transfer firm, for example, would pay fees of around 5 percent. Costs are lower when sending larger amounts or using a debit card, but the exchange rates on offer are typically several percentage points less favorable than the market rate.

Bitcoin fees vary depending on the exchange or broker, but would typically total about 2-2.5 percent for sending 100 pounds.

However both exchanges and over-the-counter (OTC) brokers carry risks, from hacks to scams.

And bitcoin, while handy for transfers, isnt much use on the ground - shops and landlords rarely accept it, for instance. This means friends or family sent funds by workers must convert it back to traditional currency, often via a broker at their end, introducing additional risk.

Yet the bitcoin users interviewed said many OTC brokers, who rely on word-of-mouth reviews, functioned reliably in an increasingly competitive market and were loath to imperil the reputations they needed to stay in business.

And for a growing number of people, the potential rewards outweigh the pitfalls.

People are very adoptive of any technology that will make their life easier, said Frankline Kihiu, a crypto broker in Kenyas capital, Nairobi.

In most African countries, there are lots of government restrictions that bitcoin takes away.

Excerpt from:
How bitcoin met the real world in Africa - NBC News