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Flavor 1st has Georgia on its mind | Produce News – TheProduceNews.com

May 1, 2021 | Author: admin

Flavor 1st Growers & Packers, which supplies customers up and down the East Coast and east of the Mississippi, has deep roots in the produce industry.

Mountain Bean Growers Inc., one of the largest production operations in Western North Carolina, heads up the companys farming operations in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia.

Were growing tomatoes and vegetables in Georgia and North Florida, which bridges the gap, said Mike Porter, sales representative for the Mills River, NC-based company. Were doing all the dry-veg items beans, squash, Bell peppers, cucumbers in Georgia, and also doing grape tomatoes and round tomatoes.

The companys Georgia deal is with Dan King Farms, and Flavor 1st has two guys on site that do the actual sales out of the building Wayne Mertens and Donnie Dulevich.

Were one of the few that can say we have Georgia Grown produce from May 15 until Oct. 15, Porter said. In addition to Dan King Farms, we have another grower in Osage Farms, in Dillard GA, that farms all summer with beans squash, cabbage and tomatoes. This helps us for a longer season.

Flavor 1st has a great local deal with retailers in the state throughout the summer months. For the upcoming season, on cucumbers and peppers, it was wet early and there was a hard time getting plastic laid, so both are a little bit behind schedule. Porter expects them to be a little tight during the first week of the Georgia deal.

I think squash and beans will also be a little tight, but not because of rainy weather at the beginning, but more from the recent cooler weather, he said. We had a little bit of a frost, so we had some burns on the top of the bush, with the beans and squash plants getting a little frostbite on the top, so that will slow them down.

That will most likely mean both commodities will be tight at the beginning, but then should be really good the rest of the season.

With things opening back up, Flavor 1st expects chain stores will not need as much product as people start eating out again, but Porter doesnt anticipate doing much different in 2021. One difference is returning to a former crop.

Last year we did not grow grape tomatoes or round tomatoes at Dan Kings place, but we did it a couple of years ago and took a couple of years off, but now were back so thats kind of our reboot in Georgia, Porter said.

Porter recently returned from the Southeast Produce Councils Southern Exposure show, which he described as good but different but he was just happy to be face-to-face with people for the first time in a long time.

Things have been a little tough with all the Zoom meetings and you cant go visit customers, and they cant come to the farm level like they used to, so its been somewhat difficult to have those personal connections that we used to have, Porter said. With SEPC, it was kind of great to get back out and maybe start moving in the direction of maybe visiting key customers and other growers.

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Young attorney digs deep to make a genuine mark in the profession – Loop News Jamaica

May 1, 2021 | Author: admin

Attorney-at-Law, Cecile Black, through her Northeastern Legal Aid Society (NELAS), is busy seeking to ensure that poor and vulnerable persons in her native parish of Portland and surrounding areas can access justice, by providing them with quality legal representation.

The entity, established in 2020, offers subsidised legal services for criminal cases, family court matters, especially those related to children and custody issues; and contracts.

Our clients are assigned through the Kingston Legal Aid Clinic or directly through our office where we conduct a means and needs assessment to determine the fees to be paid, Black told JIS News in an interview.

Targeted are persons involved in criminal or civil matters who are in danger of having their civil rights infringed upon, or their claims go unheard, because of their inability to pay.

The establishment of the society was the fulfilment of a promise Black made to herself, to dedicate part of her lifes work to providing legal aid services to those who cannot afford to pay regular fees for a lawyer.

The idea took flight when she worked on cases coming out of the Kington Legal Aid Clinic at a time when she could not find employment as a practising attorney.

She said the society is committed to ensuring that every individual in the parish is able to access proper and affordable legal representation.

She further said it is her desire to help all her clients feel like they have a million-dollar lawyer despite the financial hardships.

The symbols used for the logo are the commonly known legal scales of justice with the inclusion of a sword to signify that the NELAS team members are legal warriors fighting for justice, she pointed out.

The young attorney, in outlining her journey in the legal profession, told JIS News that she knew that she wanted to be a lawyer from she was six years old.

I was inspired by the judge on the television show, Matlock, but my mom told me that I would have to become a lawyer before becoming a judge. That is where I made up my mind to practise law and I have never swayed from that desire. My eyes have always been on the prize, despite setbacks, she said.

She had her first case back in primary school, where she helped to settle an incident involving stolen money.

An indigent student was wrongly accused of stealing another students lunch money. I advocated and asked the relevant questions to the point where the actual perpetrator confessed, she recalled.

Over the years, she worked diligently in school in pursuit of her dream, attending Titchfield High School in Portland and graduating in 2006, them moving on to Browns Town Community College in St Ann, where she completed her Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE) in 2008.

She then applied and was accepted to study law at the University of the West Indies (UWI), but could not take up the offer at the time, as her parents had dedicated all their finances to rebuilding the family home, which had been destroyed by fire in 2005.

Without the funds to study law, Black decided to pursue a bachelors degree in history, which she did from 2008 to 2011, after which she entered the Faculty of Law, completing the Bachelor of Laws degree in 2014.

Shortly after, I began my journey at the Norman Manley Law School, and stayed for two years, where I eventually passed the Bar to become an attorney-at-law, said Black.

She elaborated that the journey into the real world of practising law and being an adult outside of school was a rude awakening for me. I expected to be gainfully employed shortly after being called to the Bar, but my story was destined to be riddled with some amount of trials.

She shared that she struggled to find a job, noting that she was without an income for over a year.

However, she used the period as an opportunity to sit in some court sessions and learn by observing. She eventually crossed paths with attorney-at-law Jacqueline Asher, who took her on as an unpaid intern.

Their working relationship blossomed, and Black sat as second chair on criminal cases and handled legal aid matters that came to Ashers firm.

While she was gaining real-world law experience, Black was still without a salary.

It got to the point where I had no food in my cupboard and walked to and from work. There was a time period in which I had to choose which utilities to keep afloat, and which to cut off, she shared.

But the lessons learnt at that time led her to establish NELAS, as she saw first-hand the impact of persons not being able to afford legal representation.

In preparing for cases and understanding my clients, it dawned on me that some people are heavily impacted by their circumstance and, unfortunately, that may mean coming face to-face with the law without help from friends or family. I wanted to help and I promised myself to dedicate part of my time to offering legal aid assistance when I branched out on my own, said Black.

Regardless of her personal struggles, she said she did her best on every matter she handled, and for every client whom she represented, and before long, she had her first paying client.

Black was assigned a case that was transferred to Ashers firm from another company, and the young lawyer managed to settle the matter within a week. The client was so pleased that he hired her on retainer basis.

That was the moment my life and career took a turn for the better. I was able to pay my bills, stock my cupboards, and be comfortable again. I even began to invest in stocks and sought life insurance, she said.

As her career took flight, Black said she never forgot her pledge to help the less fortunate, and soon began to formulate the plan to develop NELAS.

I wrote out the entire structure of my office, the services to be offered, the dcor, and where it would be located. I had the plan in my head, and I put it all on paper.

With no clue how to properly finance it, I went ahead and took steps to formalise my idea. Before I knew it, NELAS was formed, she said.

Blacks vision for NELAS, where she is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder, is to open an office in all northeastern parishes of Jamaica to better enable the entitys ability to serve clients in general in that region of the island. For now, she is the only lawyer there, but she has a strong support staff.

Unfortunately, not everyone can afford to pay for proper (legal) representation, and their inability to pay should not dictate what type of representation they have, she contended, noting that innocent persons can end up in jail without proper legal representation.

Black urged more lawyers to take legal aid cases.

Consider it as giving back to your community and the nation at large, she said.

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Figures of Speech: 40 Ways to Improve your Writing – Visual Capitalist

May 1, 2021 | Author: admin

View the high resolution of this infographic by clicking here.

Figurative speech plays an important role in our ability to communicate with one another. It helps create compelling narratives, and evoke emotion in readers.

With this in mind, this periodic table graphic by Visual Communication Guy groups the 40 different figures of speech into two distinct categoriesschemes and tropes.

Whats the difference between the two, and how can they help improve your writing?

In linguistics, a scheme is language that plays with sentence structure to make a sentence smoother, or even more persuasive, using syntax, word order, or sounds.

Here are four different ways that schemes fiddle with sentence structure.

This is especially important when trying to make a sentence smoother. A good example of balance is parallelism, which is when you use the same grammatical form in at least two parts of a sentence.

Changing the position of words can have an impact on the way a sentence is understood. For instance, anastrophe is the deliberate reordering of words in a sentence to either emphasize a certain point, or distinguish a character as different.

Omissions and inclusions are useful in order to build suspense or add emotional expression to text. For example, an ellipsis is a form of punctuation that uses three dots () to either replace a word in a sentence or indicate a break in speech or an incomplete thought.

Similar to the other types of schemes, repetition allows you to emphasize a certain point you want the reader to pay attention to, but its also used to create rhymes and poetry.

A well-known literary device, alliteration uses the same consonant sound at the start of each word in a sentence. It doesnt necessarily have to be the same letter, so long as the sound is the same.

While schemes play around with the mechanics of a sentence, tropes stray from the literal or typical meanings to evoke emotion, and keep a reader engaged and interested.

Tropes help create an alternative sense of reality, using these five strategies.

These are literary devices that help paint a deeper picture of a concept, using a reference to something related, but different.

Metaphors and similes are common examples of references, but a lesser-known type of reference is a synecdoche, which is when a small part of something is used in reference to the thing as a whole.

This type of literary device plays with sounds or meaning to add depth to a sentence. For instance, a syllepsis uses one word to create parallels between two separate thoughts, while an onomatopoeia is a figure of speech that uses words (either real or made-up) or even letters to describe a sound.

This is when someone replaces a word or thought with something else. For instance, anthimeria is the use of a word in a grammatical form its not generally used in, while periphrasis is when someone intentionally elaborates on a point, instead of expressing it succinctly.

These are intentionally exaggerated, or downplayed situations that arent meant to be taken literally. A hyperbole is an example of an overstatement, while litotes are the oppositedeliberate understatements.

This type of literary technique uses contradictory ideas and indirect questions for dramatic effect, or to emphasize a point. For instance, an oxymoron is when two contradictory words are used back-to-back.

First, lets just address itYes, I did use alliteration in the above header, and yes, now Im using an ellipsis in this sentence.

Because lets face itin the age of information overload, writing articles that are interesting and compelling to readers is a top priority for online content creators. And using figurative language is a good way to keep readers attention.

So, if youre a content creator yourself (or simply looking to beef up your knowledge on linguistics), hopefully this graphic has helped you on that journey.

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Tony Bailie’s Take on Nature: Bear in mind the simple principles of Leave No Trace – The Irish News

May 1, 2021 | Author: admin

A PIECE of orange peel lying at the foot of a tree in a forest, or a banana skin on the side of a mountain sure they'll just rot and fertilise the landscape. It's recycling.

But these will not decay at the same rate as a leaf from an indigenous tree or fruit such as a blackberry or bilberry.

Bananas and oranges are non-native to Ireland and the microbes in our soil and air do not act on them as efficiently and so they biodegrade much more slowly, taking up to two years to be fully absorbed.

And rather than fertilising, banana skins have a lot of potassium which will actually change the composition of Irish soil. There is also a danger that the scraps of foods that may be nourishing or enjoyed by humans when left in wild places will be eaten by birds and mammals and even insects which cannot digest them properly and which could harm them.

We have all seen the monster gulls which swoop around the streets of towns and cities, scavenging on the great tasting' or finger licking good' scraps lying around the place.

And in more rural areas, scavengers such as magpies and crows will be attracted to edible rubbish, scaring off and displacing smaller and more endangered birds.

It can also attract invasive species which threaten our indigenous flora and fauna, presenting even further challenges to our already fragile ecosystems.

Plastics, polystyrene, tin cans, cardboard cartons, batteries and, more recently, surgical masks, are being strewn throughout our countryside and, as well as the eyesore factor, present dangers to wildlife and our biodiversity.

The outdoors has become a much more appreciated asset in the past year and the numbers of people enjoying outdoor activities has increased significantly. Unfortunately, this has also brought more litter.

An island-wide initiative, with international links, has been developed to promote outdoor ethics and encourage responsible recreation through education, research and partnership. Leave No Trace has been adopted by key players north and south and has been founded on seven key principles. Some of them are so obvious that it is a wonder that they have to be even included.

Minimise the effects of fire'. Surely no-one would think of lighting a fire in a fragile outdoor environment after a period of dry weather when the vegetation had dried out and had become hugely flammable?

While the principles are aimed primarily at walkers, they could be usefully shared with other key stakeholders in our countryside, including farmers, commercial premises and industries working in or close to environmentally sensitive areas.

Another of the Leave No Trace principles addresses one of the great unspokens of outdoor enthusiasts where to go when you need to go and there is nowhere to go.

For the record, the advice is to use proper facilities when you can, but if that is not possible, find a bush or a tree at least 70 steps from water, campsites and trails. And if it involves solids, dig a hole 10-12cm deep and cover it over, making sure any used toilet paper or hygiene products are removed in an impermeable bag and disposed of appropriately.

I think I can now justifiably be accused of talking crap in this column.

Another principle is to leave what you find avoid picking wildflowers or disturbing natural habitats and historic sites. Look but don't touch.

The other principles are to plan ahead and prepare, be considerate of others, respect farm animals and wildlife (always keep dogs on leads and if an animal moves in response to your presence you are too close). And stick to paths when you can and only camp on durable ground.

More details on the principles and the initiative can be found at leavenotraceireland.org

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Food & Wine names 10 best pizza states in America and New York isnt in the top spot – KXAN.com

May 1, 2021 | Author: admin

(NEXSTAR) New Yorkers might not be thrilled with Food & Wines opinion of its pizza.

The editors at Food & Wine recently published their own list of the best pizza states in America, and New York while still earning a favorable review didnt finish in first place. Instead, the top honors went to New Yorks neighbors in the Tri-State Area, with New Jersey and Connecticut coming in first and second, respectively.

Long before the pandemic, New Yorks aggressive self-belief in its own pizza had started to seem a little dated, wrote Food & Wine senior editor David Landsel in his lengthy ranking, published Tuesday.

Thats not to say that Landsel a native New Yorker who compiled the list with only a certain amount of collaboration from Food & Wines other editors doesnt still enjoy New York pizza. New Yorks overwhelming availability of a decent-to-exceptional slices set the state well apart from the rest, he says. But, specifically in New York City, he argues that some of the most recognizable names in New York pizza have become undependable.

New Jersey, meanwhile, is currently the best pizza state in the country, according to the Food & Wine editor, who made special note of Jersey Citys Razza and Bread & Salt restaurants, for their glorious showcase of pizza.

The state is one in an elite group remaining true to their heritage, through long periods of time when others were too busy crashing ahead into the future to care about theirs.

Also ahead of New York on Food & Wines list is Connecticut, with Landsel giving a nod to the concentrated pool of pizza-making talent in New Haven, demonstrated at mainstays such as Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana and Sallys Apizza.

Illinois followed New York in fourth place, earning its ranking not only for deep-dish pizza but also its thin-crust varieties, and Michigan, the home of thick, square Detroit-style pies, ranked fifth.

California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ohio and Missouri rounded out Food & Wines top ten list of best pizza states.

The rest of the county, however, wasnt completely left out of the fun. As somewhat of a consolation prize, Food & Wine included its editors assessment of the best pizza options in every other state, for folks who dont mind eating 11th-rate (or lower) pizza.

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Bitcoin Crash vs. Correction: Do You Know the Difference? – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

May 1, 2021 | Author: admin

When the price of bitcoin declines, its common to see the terms crash and correction used more or less interchangeably. However, the two words actually mean different things.

Bitcoin crash

A crash is widely regarded in traditional finance as an over-10% drop in price over the course of a single day.

These are often fueled by impactful, sudden changes in the crypto market that cause panicked investors to exit en masse.

While technical factors can have dramatic effects on bitcoins price, large crashes seem to be catalyzed more by fundamental circumstances such as macroeconomic events, major company announcements and sudden changes to international regulations and policies.

The largest crash ever recorded on bitcoins chart took place on April 10, 2013, shortly after the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) shut down crypto exchange Bitfloor and announced bitcoin exchanges needed to register as money transmitters. Bitcoin prices collapsed over 73.1% in 24 hours, according to Bistamp data, from a height of $259.34 to a low of $70.

During more recent times, the infamous Black Thursday crash of March 12, 2020, takes the top spot as the biggest crash after prices fell 40%, from $7,969.90 to $4,776.59, following the World Health Organizations declaring of the coronavirus a global pandemic.

Correction

A correction is characterized by a gradual decline where prices drop more than 10% over the course of several days.

These usually indicate bullish traders have become exhausted and need time to consolidate and recover. Exhaustion occurs when a majority of buyers has bought the underlying asset and there are no more new buyers appearing to support the uptrend. If sell orders continue to pile in without anyone on the other side of the order book buying them, prices start to fall.

Corrections can be influenced by minor events but tend to be initiated by technical factors such as buyers running into strong resistance levels, depleting trading volume and negative discrepancies between bitcoins price and indicators that measure its momentum like the Relative Strength Index (RSI).

High volatility

Bitcoin is known for being a highly volatile asset. This means its price tends to fluctuate significantly over a relatively short period of time compared to other assets. Its also why many traditional financial investors, including Warren Buffett and Carl Icahn, consider it a highly risky investment.

According to recent data, bitcoins one-year volatility stands at 32.7% significantly higher than the next most volatile assets and asset classes, which are oil, U.S. stocks and U.S. real estate (18.8%, 8.41% and 7.15%, respectively.)

While this high volatility has its upsides, particularly during bull cycles where prices can rise dramatically, it also means prices crash and correct on a frequent basis.

Since Jan. 1, 2021, there have been seven notable price moves on bitcoins daily chart trading against the U.S. dollar. Four of these movements have been to the downside (red boxes) with a mean average loss of 25.94%, while the other three have been to the upside (blue boxes) with a mean average gain of 58.36%.

BTC/USD chart

Knowing which downtrends are corrections and which ones are crashes can help you to better understand the market and how bitcoin traders react to certain fundamental and technical factors. In some events, crashes can foreshadow the arrival of a bear market and a prolonged period of cascading prices, whereas corrections can often be a sign of a healthy uptrend recovering to a support level before retesting a former high.

So the next time you see bitcoin prices dip into the red you should be able to tell if theres a correction taking place or a crash, and whether or not the market is going through a healthy recovery or likely reacting to a sudden announcement.

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There’s more to cryptocurrency than Bitcoin: 5 other digital coins to consider – TechRepublic

May 1, 2021 | Author: admin

Dogecoin has a superfan in Elon Musk, Ripple premined 1 billion XRP coins and Tether is a bridge between traditional money and digital currencies.

Image: GettyImages/Yuriko Nakao

If you've put off learning about digital currencies, now is the time to get up to speed because the cryptocurrency bubble keeps getting bigger. Bitcoin is almost a household name now, as it has been around for more than 10 years. The cryptocurrency was created in 2009 via a white paper written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. It is open source and decentralized. There are no transaction fees associated with Bitcoins, but there is also no government guarantee behind the currency.

You can't hold a Bitcoin in your hand, but the currency can add value to your bank account. On April 29, 2021, one Bitcoin was worth $52,855.20.

There's a finite number of Bitcoins--21 million--so it's worth taking a look at the other cryptocurrencies on the market today. Here's a brief look at five of the most popular.

If you can name only two types of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin is one, Etherium is probably the other. Ethereum is the most commonly used blockchain with the second largest market cap, right after Bitcoin. Ether is the native coin of this decentralized open-source blockchain. The company describes the platform as a digital economy that includes global payment processes and applications as well as a coin. Ethereum blockchain is a transaction-based state machine.

SEE: Crypto Dictionary: 500 Cryptographic Tidbits for the Curious (TechRepublic)

Ethereum has a partnership with Microsoft and ConsenSys to offer Ethereum Blockchain as a Service on Azure. This means enterprise clients and developers can have a single click cloud-based blockchain developer environment, according to Investopedia.

Ethereum started in 2015. In 2016, Ethereum was split into two blockchains--Ethereum and Ethereum Classic--after a bad actor stole millions of funds. The new Ethereum was a hard fork from the original source code to prevent future theft.

This coin has recently joined the ranks of the most well-known cryptocurrencies. Two software engineers built the coin to establish a payment system that doesn't require traditional banking fees. The coin features the face of the Shiba Inu dog from the "Doge" meme. This coin spiked in popularity and value at the end of April 2021, thanks to tweets from Elon Musk and Mark Cuban. The coin that was started as a joke is now the sixth-largest coin with a total market value of close to $42 billion, according to CoinGecko..

The coin is open source and operates on a decentralized peer-to-peer network that utilizes a proof-of-work consensus algorithm. Dogecoin is a fork of the luckycoin blockchain, which is a fork of litecoin, which is a fork of Bitcoin. The coin was written in C++. According to CoinDesk, the coin is often used to tip internet users who create or share content online.

This is the native cryptocurrency for products built by Ripple Labs. The company makes products for payment settlement, asset exchange and remittance systems, which means that the company owns the currency and platform that manages it. XRP is pre-mined, meaning that there is a finite amount that the company releases onto the market gradually. According to Investopedia, Ripple mined about 1 billion XRP before the cryptocurrency's launch. That is significantly more than the Bitcoin cap of 21 million coins, which is written into its source code.

There are two other important differences between Bitcoin and XRP. The first is that Bitcoin transactions take minutes and have high transaction costs; XRP transactions are generally confirmed within seconds and at lower costs, according to Investopedia. The second is that Bitcoin is a publicly owned system, while the Ripple network is owned by a private company.

If you don't have the stomach for wide swings in value, this is the cryptocurrency for you. Tether is a stablecoin and is meant to keep valuations stable, as opposed to the more volatile coins. This coin is backed by an equivalent amount of traditional currencies, such as the dollar, the euro or the yen.

Tether coins are designed to be a bridge between traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies. Its value is connected to the U.S. dollar, although, as Investopedia warns, there is no guarantee for any exchange of Tether coins for real money.

Other stablecoins include True, Pazos Standard and USD Coin. Most stablecoin trading is done with Tether coins, as it represented 57.1% of all stablecoin trading as of February 2021.

Tether committed to an audit of its financial records to verify that it was holding an equivalent amount of traditional currency. The company fired the first auditor that was going to do this check. A second accounting firm verified in March 2021 that the company's consolidated assets exceeded its consolidated liabilities, according to The Block.

The protocol for this coin was created by Gavin Wood, who is the cofounder of Ethereum, and it allows arbitrary data to be transferred across blockchains. Polkadot is a multi-chain interchange and translation architecture, which allows customized side-chains to connect with public blockchains. This makes it possible to build applications that get permissioned data from a private blockchain and use it on a public blockchain, according to the company. An example of this kind of transaction is data from private records being sent to a public chain to verify credentials or status. That means personal data can be shared publicly while still preserving privacy.

Another distinction is that Polkadot doesn't use Proof of Stake or Proof of Work; instead the platform lets "blockchains pool their security, which means that the blockchains' security is aggregated and applied to all."

Polkadot's relay chain is built with Substrate. Its diverse blockchains are "parachains" and "parathreads." The Polkadot relay chain connects these chains to each other and to external networks via bridges. The cryptocurrency's runtime environment is built in Rust, C++ and Golang.

Our editors highlight the TechRepublic articles, downloads, and galleries that you cannot miss to stay current on the latest IT news, innovations, and tips. Fridays

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Digital currency ether hits a record high, stealing bitcoin’s limelight – CNBC

May 1, 2021 | Author: admin

Jack Taylor | Getty Images

LONDON Ether hit an all-time high Thursday as bitcoin's dominance of the cryptocurrency market declined.

The world's second-largest digital currency by market value surged to a fresh record of $2,800 on Thursday morning, according to data from Coin Metrics. Bitcoin, the top digital coin, was slightly lower at a price of $54,471.

The move comes after the European Investment Bank announced Wednesday that it had issued its first ever digital bond on the Ethereum blockchain, ether's underlying network. This led to speculation that the currency is gaining traction among mainstream financial institutions.

Most major cryptocurrencies were trading higher Thursday, boosted by ether's rise. Bitcoin, the most valuable digital coin, is down about 16% from its all-time high of almost $65,000 earlier this month. It has still had a stunning rally, though, climbing almost 90% so far this year, on the back of increased interest from institutional investors and corporate buyers like Tesla.

At the same time, some investors have warned of froth in the crypto market. Dogecoin, a meme-inspired digital token, rallied Wednesday after supportive tweets from celebrities like Elon Musk and Mark Cuban.

And plenty of other "altcoins," or alternative currencies, have also rallied this year. This led to bitcoin's dominance of the crypto market falling below 50% last week for the first time since August 2018, according to CoinMarketCap.

The first time bitcoin's share of the market sank below that level was in 2017, before a huge slump in crypto prices now referred to as a "crypto winter." But bitcoin bulls contend things are different this time, as the rally is being driven by institutional demand rather than retail investors.

"There's just so much hype from the institutions coming in," Carol Alexander, professor at the University of Sussex Business School, told CNBC last week. "Bitcoin is almost like a sort reference point, the numeraire of crypto. I think there's going to be sustained demand as institutional investors become more confident about the market."

"Having said that, on the more retail side that used to be in bitcoin, it's not cool anymore," Alexander added. "Everyone knows about bitcoin and we want things to talk about. We don't want to talk about Covid all the time. So much of this is about market psychology. We've been shut inside and haven't had any news to talk about."

Skeptics of cryptocurrencies say that bitcoin and other digital coins are a speculative bubble. Stephen Isaacs, chairman of the investment committee at financial consultants Alvine Capital, told CNBC earlier this month that he thinks bitcoin is in a "bubble" that will burst, citing risks around regulation and climate change.

Ethereum may be coming afterbitcoin, but there are some key differences between the two.For one, Ethereum has several software developers building apps on its network. Ether is the native token of the Ethereum blockchain.

One popular trend in the so-called decentralized app space is NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, digital assets meant to represent ownership of rare virtual items like art and sports memorabilia.Many NFTs are based on Ethereum.

Ethereum is also going through a major upgrade that will push it further from bitcoin, in theory allowing for faster transaction times and reducing the amount of power required to process transactions. Both bitcoin's and ether's networks have attracted criticism from environmentalists over the impact of crypto mining on the climate.

"Post the network upgrade, Ethereum in particular is proving its use-case, and with developers piling on to the platform, it is little wonder it is gaining so much traction with investors," said Simon Peters, cryptoasset analyst for online trading platform eToro.

"Underlying this is demand from institutional investors. While they may now have some exposure to bitcoin, institutions are now diversifying their exposure and Ethereum is the natural next pick, and that leaves the second biggest cryptoasset by market cap well placed to benefit further."

Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to "Shark Tank," which features Mark Cuban as a panelist.

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With Bitcoin ‘Bear Markets’ Like These, Who Needs the Bulls? – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

May 1, 2021 | Author: admin

The first half of 2021 has so far offered some significant opportunities for bitcoin bears to be wrong. The most salient of them came this past Sunday, when the bitcoin price suddenly dropped to $47,073.37, down from a freshly set all-time high (just 11 days old), of $64,888.99.

That drop of 27.5% in less than two weeks put bitcoin into bear market territory, at least as far as the normal definition of a bear market is concerned. In equities, the term bear market usually applies when prices drop by 20% or more. But bitcoins price recovered quickly from the dip, and it seems clear that cryptos market regime is unchanged, at least for now. Bitcoin seems to demand a different standard to define bull and bear markets: The 20% dips come too frequently, and are often just part of a broader run-up.

Last weekends dip wasnt the first time in 2021 that a price drop of 20% or more prompted headlines proclaiming a bear market. Bitcoin is now in a bear market, get used to it, one headline proclaimed on Jan. 25. On that day, bitcoin hit a daily low of $30,480.27, per the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (XBX). In the next two days, it would plumb weekly lows just below $30,000 before rallying to a new all-time high of $58,353.78 three weeks later.

The chart above illustrates how wrong that was, with call-outs showing the price rally following Jan. 25. Similarly, it may take some time to tell what the April 25 dip means. Its possible the $64,889 all-time high, set on April 13, was the top ahead of a bear market. Or, bitcoin could continue to repeat its 2021 pattern of setting a new all-time high, then falling back below recent averages only to set a fresh all-time high weeks later.

To be defined as a bull- or bear-market regime, a market condition has to last more than a few weeks. With that in mind, we developed the following criteria to define bull and bear markets in bitcoins history. Understanding bitcoins cycles can be helpful for understanding the crypto market because bitcoin is the bellwether for all crypto assets. Bitcoin moves from bull to bear market, or vice versa, when:

As you can see from the chart above, based on our definition the duration of bull and bear cycles contracted between 2018 and 2020. However, the current bull market, which began after the COVID-19 price crash in March 2020, has lasted 407 days and counting, as of Tuesday when this chart was created.

In the absence of a consensus on fundamentals or macro correlations for crypto, cyclical analyses like this one can be helpful to investors seeking to interpret market dynamics. (For weekly insights like this one, subscribe to CoinDesk Indexes Monday newsletter, The Hard Fork.)

Besides price, realized volatility is another metric worth considering from a cyclical viewpoint. In the chart below, we divided bitcoins 30-day volatility of daily log returns into three categories: low volatility (< 0.5), middle ( 0.5 and < 1.0) and high ( 1.0). A cycle is defined as a period during which the 30-day moving average of the 30-day volatility does not move from one category to another.

Chart showing the length of the average bitcoin volatility cycle by year.

The chart above shows the average length of a volatility cycle by year. (The year in which a cycle falls is determined by its end date.) After mostly getting longer from 2014 to 2018, these cycles became a lot shorter in 2019 and have stayed relatively short. The current volatility cycle was at 45 days, when this chart was made on Tuesday. It hasnt changed since then.

Bitcoin has been trading in or near a band between $50,000 and $60,000 since mid-February. In these COVID-stretched days, it feels like a long time. But the current volatility regime is still below recent averages. Bitcoin could be in for a long, cool spring of modest new all-time highs followed by sudden dips.

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With Bitcoin 'Bear Markets' Like These, Who Needs the Bulls? - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

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Feds arrest founder of bitcoin mixer they say laundered $335 million over ten years – The Verge

May 1, 2021 | Author: admin

The Department of Justice said it has arrested a Russian-Swedish national who allegedly operated a long-running cryptocurrency laundering site. According to a news release from the DOJ, Roman Sterlingov ran Bitcoin Fog, a cryptocurrency tumbler or mixer which hides a cryptocurrencys source by mixing it with other funds.

Bitcoin Fog gained notoriety as a go-to money laundering service for criminals seeking to hide their illicit proceeds from law enforcement, according to the DOJ. The department says over the course of 10 years, Bitcoin Fog moved more than 1.2 million bitcoin, valued at the time of the transactions at around $335 million.

Bitcoin Fog has received a fair amount of coverage from cryptocurrency blogs and news sites since its inception, with some recommending it as the best option for hiding the origin of bitcoin. The blockchain keeps track of bitcoin transactions, making services like Bitcoin Fog key for those looking to do business on the black market.

The bulk of this cryptocurrency came from darknet marketplaces and was tied to illegal narcotics, computer fraud and abuse activities, and identity theft, the DOJ said.

According to the IRS, the largest senders of bitcoin through Bitcoin Fog were darknet markets, such as Agora, Silk Road 2.0, Silk Road, Evolution, and AlphaBay, that primarily trafficked in illegal narcotics and other illegal goods.

The IRS said it appeared from Bitcoin Fog transaction activity that Sterlingov took commissions of as much as $8 million on the bitcoin he helped clients launder. The current value of the Bitcoin Fog cluster the large database of transactions is about $70 million, the IRS said.

Sterlingov is charged with money laundering, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, and money transmission without a license in the District of Columbia.

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Feds arrest founder of bitcoin mixer they say laundered $335 million over ten years - The Verge

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