2019 was an interesting year for darknet markets (DNMs) and a number of marketplaces closed for a variety of reasons. Despite the closures, crypto payments on DNMs doubled for the first time in five years. Moreover, statistics from the blockchain analytics provider 1000x Group show digital currencies like bitcoin cash (BCH) have joined BTCs dominant role within the deep web.

Also Read: BCH Merchant Directories Now List 4,300 Bitcoin Cash-Accepting Businesses

Theres been a number of reports on DNM usage last year and action on the invisible web continues to be interesting in 2020 as well. Just recently, the blockchain surveillance firm Chainalysis published a report that showed DNM payments doubled for the first time since 2015. Not only did the value of BTC sent to DNMs increased by 70%, but Chainalysis also noted that DNMs will likely accept cryptos with a focus on privacy like monero (XMR).

News.Bitcoin.com looked further into darknet payment statistics by leveraging analytics from the provider 1000x Group between January 7, and February 4, 2020. The organization 1000x Group monitors crypto adoption to look for early signals of long term value creation. 1000x Groups dashboard shows data from 15 different markets and ten of them accept BTC only. This includes markets like Silk Road 3.1, Hydra, Wannabuy RDP, Sipulimarket, Escobay, and Jokers Stash. The DNM Monopoly accepts monero (XMR) only and during the four-week time span, there were four DNMs that accepted coins like BCH, LTC, and XMR in addition to BTC. The four DNMs included Cannazon, Empire, Darkbay, and Apollon. However, the darknet market Apollon allegedly exit scammed five days ago.

The four-week time span measured on 1000x Groups dashboard shows XMR, LTC, and BCH were used on Monopoly, Cannazon, Empire, Darkbay, and Apollon. Monero represented 56% of vendor acceptance on DNMs between that time. LTC captured 29% and BCH saw 12% of vendor acceptance during the time frame ending on February 4. While Monopoly, Darkbay, Empire, and Cannazon all accepted XMR, Darkbay and Empire processed payments in litecoin (LTC) as well. Monopoly is a monero (XMR) only marketplace on the deep web.

The marketplace Apollon accepted BTC, XMR, LTC, and BCH during the four-week time span and grew popular due to its multi-coin acceptance. In fact, before Apollons alleged departure, the DNM was probably one of the most active markets on the invisible web. Data scrapes from four researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) indicate that Apollon started small, but had since exponentially grown in size. Apollon grew larger after Dream Markets soft exit in the summer of 2019. The multi-currency DNM showed 4,500 listings and Apollon admins claimed it had more than 30,000 registered users.

One interesting fact about 1000x Groups payment data shows the increase of bitcoin cash (BCH) vendor acceptance between January 7, and February 4. BCH development during the last year has seen a significant increase in privacy methods applied to the coin. Proponents of BCH believe that the peer-to-peer cryptocurrency has even better privacy enhancements than most coins that exist today. During the last year, the BCH ecosystem has seen the basics of Schnorr Signatures added to the chain and the Schnorr protocol was enhanced again during the last upgrade.

In March 2019, Electron Cash developers unleashed the official iteration of the Cashshuffle protocol and so far BCH users have shuffled 209,490 BCH to-date ($94 million). BCH users also saw privacy push in June, when Bitcoin.com launched its peer-to-peer BCH marketplace. Users from all around the world can trade bitcoin cash in a private manner and leverage encrypted chat and a secure blind escrow system.

Beyond all that, BCH has also seen the introduction of Cashfusion, which has given the decentralized asset a much higher set of anonymity. Not only are BCH proponents using Cashfusion, but the privacy-enhancing software is making waves with BTC proponents as well. The creator of Wasabi Wallet complimented Cashfusion after he listened to Mark Lundebergs recent interview with Naomi Brockwell and he made some positive remarks about the protocol in another tweet as well.

Typically, the publication Bitcoin Magazine doesnt cover Bitcoin Cash topics, but the news outlets Aaron van Wirdum wrote an objective article on the new privacy protocol for BCH. Not too long after that article, data analyst James Waugh also commended Cashfusions privacy advances in a recent Medium post. Waugh disclosed he queried a number of transaction inputs and outputs and realized that its not possible to establish a concrete link between them. Essentially, Cashfusion in Waughs opinion is far more practical than other Coinjoin protocols.

Its quite possible that the increased use of BCH on prevalent DNMs is attributed to the added privacy benefits BCH offers to everyday users. With 44,737 shuffles using Cashshuffle to-date and close to $100 million transactions shuffled, the protocol has gathered a lot of traction. Additionally, at 94,574 accounts on Local.Bitcoin.com since the peer-to-peer platforms launch, data indicates theres significant interest in trading privately. There have also been 2,250 fusions so far using the Cashfusion protocol since November 28, 2019, and theres been 10,103 BCH fused to-date ($4.5 million).

Its a shame that a DNM like Apollon is likely out of the picture, as it was the one marketplace that was popular for offering multi-currency support. As time progresses, its still quite probable that other DNMs will support BCH going forward, due to all the privacy-enhancing benefits that stem from recent BCH development.

What do you think about the data from DNMs from 1000x Groups blockchain analytics data between January 7, and February 4, 2020? Do you think the addition of things like Local.Bitcoin.com, Cashshuffle, Schnorr Signatures, and Cashfusion is the reason why BCH use on DNMs saw increased exposure? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any products, darknet markets, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, accounting or any advice. It has also been noted in the report above that the DNM Apollon is accused of exit scamming and readers should be aware of that situation. The data determined in this article reflects payments on February 4, 2020 and the four weeks prior. 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.

Image credits: Shutterstock, 1000x Group, stats.devzero.be/#/, Fair Use, and Pixabay.

Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here.

Jamie Redman is a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source code, and decentralized applications. Redman has written thousands of articles for news.Bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

More:

Bitcoin Cash Captured More Than 10% of Darknet Vendors Last Month - Bitcoin News

Bitcoin fell by 4.2% on Saturday. Reversing a 1.1% gain from Friday, Bitcoin ended the day at $9,900.9.

Bearish throughout the day, Bitcoin fell from an early morning intraday high $10,373.0 to a late afternoon intraday low $9,800.0.

Bitcoin fell through the first major support level at $10,166.33 and the second major support level at $9,997.67.

Steering clear of sub-$9,800 levels, Bitcoin bounced back to an afternoon high $10,087.0 before sliding back into the deep red.

The reversal saw Bitcoin fall back through the second major support level at $9,997.67.

The near-term bearish trend, formed at late Junes swing hi $13,764.0, remained firmly intact, however, in spite of the current upward trend.

For the bulls, Bitcoin would need to break out from $11,000 levels to form a near-term bullish trend.

Across the rest of the top 10 cryptos, it was a bearish day for the crypto majors.

Bitcoin Cash SV (-13.96%), Bitcoin Cash ABC (-11.63%), EOS (-11.38%), and Trons TRX (-10.56%) saw double digit percentage losses.

Binance Coin (-8.32%), Cardanos ADA (-9.23%), Ethereum (-7.35%), Litecoin (-7.92%), Ripples XRP (-8.42%), and Stellars Lumen (-9.50%) also saw heavy losses.

Moneros XMR fell by 6.65%, faring better than the pack on the day.

Through the current week, the crypto total market cap fell to a Tuesday low $279.65bn before rising to a Thursday high $308.04bn. At the time of writing, the total market cap stood at $295.21bn.

Bitcoins dominance slipped back through the week from 63.7% to 61.6% at the time of writing.

Trading volumes were on the rise, however, jumping to $195bn levels on Thursday before easing back. Volumes had stood at sub-$130bn levels in the early part of the week. At the time of writing, 24-hr volumes stood at $172.87bn.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin was up by 0.88% to $9,988.1. A bullish start to the day saw Bitcoin rise from an early morning low $9,860.00 to a high $10,037.0.

Bitcoin left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

Elsewhere, it was also a bullish start to the day.

Bitcoin Cash ABC (+3.21%), Cardanos ADA (+3.23%), Litecoin (+4.00%), and Trons TRX (+3.38%) led the way early on.

Binance Coin (+2.26%), Bitcoin Cash SV (+2.25%), Ethereum (+2.50%), Ripples XRP (+2.42%), Stellars Lumen (+2.17%), and Tezos (+3.00%) also found strong support.

EOS trailed the pack, up by just 1.17% at the time of writing.

Bitcoin would need to move back through to $10,025 levels to bring the first major resistance level at $10,249.27 into play.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Bitcoin to break out from the morning nigh $10,037.0.

Barring an extended crypto rally, resistance at $10,000 would likely leave Bitcoin short of the first major resistance level.

In the event of another breakout, Bitcoin the first major resistance level would likely pin Bitcoin back from a return to $10,400 levels.

Failure to move back through to $10,025.00 levels could see Bitcoin hit reverse.

A fall back through the morning low $9,960.00 would bring the first major support level at $9,676.27 into play.

Barring an extended crypto sell-off, however, Bitcoin should steer clear of the sub-$9,800 levels on the day.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

Continue reading here:

The Crypto Daily Movers and Shakers 16/02/20 - Yahoo Finance

The charity sector is notoriously slow to react to transformative technologiesin the Charity Digital Skills Report 2019, only 12% of UK charities are considering how technological innovations like AI could change their charity. And in the 2019 Global NGO Technology Report, only 34% of NGOs worldwide admitted to understanding blockchainthe lowest stat relating to emerging technologies like the Internet of Things and augmented reality.

Among small charities, though, a revolution is brewing. Spurred on by challenges around infrastructure and dealing with authoritarian states, some forward-thinking organisations are already using cryptocurrency to receive donations. Theyre hoping that big charities will catch on, too.

With the highest rate of inflation in the world, soaring crime and a shortage of basic goods, Venezuela is an extremely difficult country to live in. Its also extremely difficult to get money into.

In February 2018, Venezuelan brothers Jose and Gabrielboth longtime users of cryptodiscovered Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a fork of Bitcoin. After Jose was quizzed online by friends about the situation in Venezuela, the brothers decided to set up EatBCH, a nonprofit food drive using Bitcoin Cash.

EatBCH in Venezuela (Image: EatBCH)

Jose, who doesnt like to reveal his identity due to a fear of reprisals in the increasingly authoritarian state, told Decrypt that, We were receiving questions from people on Reddit about Venezuela, such as: Is it really that bad?, Are people really starving or How do you manage?

One person told me to send him a [Bitcoin Cash] address so he could send $5 that I could either keep, or use to buy food for kids on the streets.

Jose and Gabriel used that $5 to buy a meal for a family and then some 40 more people.

They then started asking for charitable donations on Twitter and provided a BCH address to receive the money. The BCH was then sold, used to buy food from local food vendors. The two then posted photos mainly of children theyd given food to as proof the cash was being used to feed starving Venezuelans.

In a country where it is thought a generation of young people will never meet their full physical or mental potential due to malnutrition, the result of a crippling economic crisis, the donations continued to come flooding in.

To date, EatBCH has received thousands of donations and bought hundreds of meals. They operate in 23 locations around Venezuela and have just launched in South Sudan. Last year they were invited to Washington DC to talk about their strategy with a think tank.

The initiative is also being noticed by businesses who wish to donate to charity. US-based food startup Crazy Calm, which sells CBD instant coffee, has been donating $5 per order to EatBCH. It is transparent, efficient charity, said co-founder Matt Aaron. We love that EatBCH is using the power of cryptocurrency, borderless cash to feed people in need.Our customers love the fact that they can see via the block explorer a link to the donation made on their behalf.

Jose added: When we started this project we said maybe we can accept regular donations in fiat with bank accounts as an alternative. But we simply couldnt, and cryptocurrency was the only solution.

Because of international sanctions, Venezuealans are locked out of traditional payment methods and providers like Western Union and PayPal, he explained. There is no chance of opening a US bank account so I can receive payments from outside, Jose told Decrypt. We are simply locked out of the international world. So our only solution is cryptocurrency.

He added: I think cryptocurrencies are a better choice than regular financial methods for donating to charity.

And Jose is not the only one who thinks that.

Other projects looking to shake up the charity sector by using cryptocurrency are starting to pick up momentum.

One such project is Giveth, which aims to re-engineer charitable giving, by creating an entirely free, open-source platform built on the Ethereum blockchain. Giveth claims that their system cuts out bureaucracy and provides donors with a high level of transparency and accountability.

Unlike most things, with crypto you can get financial privacy, but you also get transparencyand you get that by default, said Giveth founder Griff Green.

There is no real use for crypto in just transferring money around

Griff Green

Just being able to transfer money around is not the be all and end all, he added. There is no real use for crypto in just transferring money around. Whats more interesting, he said, is the ability to create economies.

Still, there is one challenge for crypto projects looking to overhaul the charity sector, Green said: The biggest problem that people run into is that no one in the charity space uses crypto; only nerds use crypto.

One organisation busily engaged in creating economies with crypto is Grassroots Economics, a non-profit foundation based in Kenya. Grassroots Economics works to provide vulnerable communities with alternative currencies, via the blockchain and mobile payments, so that they can take an active role in their own economies.

Grassroots Economics founder, physicist and economist Will Ruddick, moved to Kenya over a decade ago from California. He told Decrypt that the charity sector in Africa currently wastes a lot of money with little effect. The charity sector has a huge impact problem, which has led toward cash transfer or Cash and Voucher Assistance as an emerging modalityessentially dumping cash on vulnerable communities, he said. This has opened up the charity sector to faster and more efficient forms of digital vouchers using crypto.

Grassroots Economics has most recently partnered with the Red Cross and digital wallet provider Sempo to create Community Inclusion Currencies (CICs). CICs enable communities to develop their own media of exchange that can connect to other communities in regional markets and provide a gateway to national currencies via a push button feature phone. As many as 1,000 businesses adopted them in a single week in Kenya.

Blockchain gives communities the ability to define and manage a shared financial commons which fundamentally strikes at the heart of poverty, said Ruddick.

Though it seems big charity may take a while to fully latch onto using crypto be it for donations or for creating informal economies things are moving in the right direction.

For me, for the nonprofit sector and for public goods funding in general, cryptocurrency is the bees knees, said Green.

Link:

How charities are using crypto to feed the world - Decrypt

Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology were meant to liberate the oppressed, bank the unbanked and democratize countries with opaque authoritarian governments. Whether or not the crypto sector has actually achieved these goals remains a topic of debate, but it is fair to say that a surprising number of crypto startups, initial coin offerings and blockchain companies have either missed the mark or proven to be outright scams.

But Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has been unassailable in his mission to build the World Computer. Since piecing together a revolutionary white paper in 2013, the soft-spoken genius behind the Ethereum project and Ether (ETH) cryptocurrency has been a steady advocate for the democratizing capacity of decentralized networks.

Born on Jan. 31, 1991, Buterin lived the first six years of his life in the Russian city of Kolomna roughly 62 miles away from Moscow before he and his parents relocated to Canada in search of better employment opportunities. Buterin performed well in school, attending The Abelard School in Toronto and displaying an uncanny aptitude for mathematics and science. Buterin finished one year at the University of Waterloo before dropping out in 2013, as his passion for blockchain technology could not wait for finishing his studies.

Although Buterin had been an active participant in the Bitcoin community since 2011, as a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine, he is better known as the man responsible for the seminal Ethereum white paper.

As an active participant and contributor to numerous Bitcoin communities, Buterin frequently proposed building a more fluid version of the Bitcoin core network that would support the swift creation of decentralized apps without functionality-layering procedures. Eventually, after a succession of failed proposals, Buterin decided to develop a new blockchain with built-in support for smart contracts; and the rest is history.

Initial coin offerings, made possible in large part by the ERC-20 token standard, came to the end of their era after the 2017 hype. The Ethereum project at times seemed to have lost its way, and both average observers and Ether advocates will likely agree that the development team is more focused on network upgrades and hard forks than stabilizing the value of the altcoin. For some speculators, that could be a negative, but most of Ethereums true believers would say the explicit desire to focus on the networks functionality instead of Ethers price is a net positive in the long term.

Recently, the network successfully implemented the Istanbul hard fork the eighth to date and the developers still intend for the network to shift to ETH 2.0, dubbed Serenity, in 2020.

What sets Vitalik Buterin apart from some of his peers is his approach to decentralization and his desire to preserve democratic principles in the crypto space. According to Buterin, the future of cryptocurrency is diverse and pluralist, and during times when the networks decentralization has come under question, Buterin has stepped in to espouse the value of ensuring that all perspectives are heard and the collective desire is acted upon.

In August 2018, Buterin told Forbes:

Recently, I am spending a lot of time working on the proof-of-stake and sharding protocols. This is what the Ethereum research community is focusing on more than anything else at this point. We think that proof-of-stake and scaling are both really important and there has been a lot of progress on improving the algorithms and the development of multiple limitations over the last couple of months. Ive also been looking at the economic analysis of transaction fees and how transaction fee algorithms can be improved to basically cut fees down and make the protocol alignment centers better and more efficient.

Buterin further explained that cryptocurrency needs to be easy enough to use that one could walk into a convenience store, get a card, pay $5 and get $5, minus some small fee of like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ether, etc and start using it.

Now that 2020 is underway, the general focus within the crypto space has shifted to the upcoming Bitcoin reward halving as well as the maneuvering of large institutional investors into cryptocurrencies. Rather than obsessing over Etheruems valuation in its Bitcoin and USD pairings, Buterin is deeply focused on pushing the network toward its transition to Ethereum 2.0.

If implemented successfully, many in the sector believe the network upgrade will have a significant impact on the entire sector, including other networks like Tron, Cardano, EOS and Ontology all of which claim to be superior to Ethereum.

Ethereums status as the most popular smart contract platform underlies the significance of the upcoming Ethereum 2.0 upgrade. Proof of the networks popularity is shown by the frequent overloads, where transaction times slow to a snails crawl and transaction fees rise to the point of rendering the networks use less than sensible.

This congestion shows that demand for the network is steady, and if Ethereum 2.0 successfully launches, the network would be in even higher demand. According to Buterin, Ethereum 2.0 would stand as a serious competitor to other networks, and once fully implemented, transaction times could drop from minutes to approximately three seconds.

As Buterin said during the first sharding workshop in Taipei in 2018:

Ethereum 1.0 is a couple of peoples scrappy attempt to build the world computer; Ethereum 2.0 will actually be the world computer.

Vitalik Buterin is ranked #5 in the first-ever Cointelegraph Top 100 in crypto and blockchain.

The rest is here:

The Mind Behind the World Computer: Ethereums Vitalik Buterin - Cointelegraph

Research has shown that government paper money is a hotbed for bacteria and that, at least in the U.S., most bank notes in circulation are tainted by cocaine. Now you can also worry about a new threat possibly sticking to your fingers when you handle a bill a deadly virus coming out of China.

Also Read: China Stocks Plummet Despite 1.2 Trillion Yuan Injection to Mitigate Effects of Epidemic

The Peoples Bank of China, the Chinese central bank, has announced that it has taken a number of actions to fight the spread of COVID19 the novel coronavirus infecting the country. In a press conference on Saturday, February 15, it was revealed that commercial banks have been ordered they must take out of circulation used notes and disinfect them.

The disinfected fiat cash will also need to be kept in quarantine for a period of 7 to 14 days before it can be reintroduced to the public, with the length of time bills are kept in isolation varying from region to region according to its level of infection with the virus. Moreover, the Guangzhou branch of the Peoples Bank of China claimed on Saturday that all used cash notes coming from hospitals, wet markets, and public transportation buses will simply be annihilated as soon as possible. And according to reports from the area, stacks of cash are now being stockpiled in warehouses waiting until they can be eliminated.

Additionally, Fan Yifei, deputy governor of the Chinese central bank, said Saturday that commercial banks have been instructed to give out new banknotes to clients instead of used ones if they can. For this purpose the Peoples Bank of China made an emergency issuance of four billion RMB in new notes to the most severely effected region, Hubei province, right before the recent Lunar New Year holiday. These steps are meant to secure the publics safety and health when using cash, Fan said.

Over 1,660 people have died from the COVID19 outbreak so far and almost 70,000 cases have been confirmed. Besides the heavy human cost, the spread of the virus has also had a strong impact on the Chinese economy. With cities under lockdown and civilians discouraged from leaving their homes, many businesses have taken a massive hit as both employees and customers have stayed away. The local stock markets have also taken a pounding and GDP growth numbers will probably need to be revised downward.

The recent moves to disinfect used fiat bills point to the need to consider this outbreak might have long lasting consequences for the usage of government paper money in the giant Asian country too. China was already a world leader in the use of mobile payments apps, with Alipay and Wechatpay allowing users to shop almost anywhere in the country and pay directly to anyone using QR codes. If many people in China will associate cash with the risk of catching deadly viruses they might dump it altogether.

Beyond China, this crisis might also be used by governments in different parts of the world that want to transition to a cashless society to justify their actions. They might introduce a ban on fiat paper cash as a public safety measure instead of just a way to ensure total surveillance on citizens economic lives. However, it is important to remember that fiat money was always dirty, not just as a concept, and research has shown that a random bill in New York can be home to hundreds of bacteria and up to 80% of USD notes in circulation contain traces of cocaine. Bitcoin Cash solves all this.

What do you think about China scrubbing paper money to stop the spread of the virus? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Bitcoin.com Markets, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.

Avi Mizrahi is an economist and entrepreneur who has been covering Bitcoin as a journalist since 2013. He has spoken about the promise of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology at numerous financial conferences around the world, from London to Hong-Kong.

Follow this link:

China Is Scrubbing Cash Notes to Stop Virus Spreading so Its Government Paper Money Won't Kill You - Bitcoin News

Roger Ver is known as an early investor in Bitcoin, BitPay, and blockchain-related startup. He claims to be not only the earliest but the worlds first and currently interested in Voluntaryism.

He recently twitted by his own twitter handle @Rogerkver about three major cryptocurrency technology.

The tweet was a screenshot of the Lightning network transaction failed because the amount might be too large. To those who are unaware of the Lightning network, it is a decentralized network that uses smart contract functionality in the blockchain to provide instant payments across a network of participants.

Lightning Network refers to as the transaction for the future and will be providing instant payment with Scalability on Low cost in cross blockchains. It works by Bitcoin transactions and using its native smart-contract scripting language. Apparently, it also claims that it can create transact at high volume and high speed.

Roger Ver is projecting transaction failure to promote his own cryptocurrency, Bitcoin cash. The tweet says how Bitcoin is very expensive to buy, and only riches can afford which is accurate, and Due to this transaction failure, he accuses that lightning network is not for riches not for him, and we are still guessing how much he tried to transact using this and ended the Tweet by saying Bitcoin cash is for everyone.

A Cryptocurrencywhich is performing below average in the bullish market and Twitteraties thrashed Roger Ver for complaining about the Lightning Network which happened because the security feature doesnt let Roger Ver money to be lost in the abyss.

Some Twitteraties are, please, for mention Bitcoin as Bitcoin, not Bitcoin core, which is in and itself a victory for the supporters of Bitcoiners.

Some tweet replies suggest that the attached screenshot is from Dropbitapp a custodial wallet service for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies that got recently closed and ceased by US authorities and suggested him to use a different wallet service

The happening is very noticeable in the crypto ecosphere, and people are quick to notice the same happening with them but all good for those who used Approved Custodial wallet service, which is having good reputations.

Read more from the original source:

Roger Ver Teased Bitcoin For Its Lightning Network Transaction Failure - The Coin Republic

Key highlights:

When we think about Bitcoin, what comes in mind first is the fact that Bitcoin is the oldest and largest public cryptocurrencyout there.At the same time, one could argue that for analogous reasons it is also outdated, as it doesn't support a lot of the 'fancy stuff' modern blockchain platforms such as Ethereum haveto offer.

As a matter of fact, cryptocurrency investors are often faced with the choice ofeither investing in Bitcoin because it's the most established crypto asset, or invest in other blockchains that boastbetter scalability, cheaper and faster transactions, autonomous smart-contracts, web3 decentralized apps, and other features.

So how isthe Bitcoin community, and more specifically, the core Bitcoin development team, addressing this?

Being around for more than a decade already, this is not the first time Bitcoin's source-code was considered as 'outdated' and many implementations such as the popular SegWit were introduced to align the Bitcoin blockchain with modern needs.

These implementations are considered as soft-forks as the network is changedwithout splitting into two conflicting chains as happens in hard fork scenarios.

A soft fork in a live blockchain is a protocol upgrade, while a hard fork results in two separate chains - that's why there are so many Bitcoin forks like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin GoldandBitcoin Diamond.

Most hard forks end-up developing their own standalone chain to cut any relation to its genetic origin, while again in soft forks, the new chain is considered to be the continuation of the original chain.

One of the most important Bitcoin upgrades that's currently in development is called Taproot, initially proposed by Bitcoin core developer Gregory Maxwell back in 2018.

Taproot, which is set to be implemented as a protocol upgrade, will be accompanied by a couple other feature: the Schnorr Signature, and the Tapscript Language, and it is considered by many experts in the field to be the most important upgrade since SegWit.

While the three mentioned upgrades are labeled as independent soft-forks, they are interconnected and complementary to each other, and it is expected that they will land in the same period.

Basically, the whole concept of the next major protocol upgrade is not only to introduce native smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain.This was not impossible before, but it required a series of third-party service providers and was not an official thing Bitcoin would typically do.

More specifically, Maxwell proposed that a Schnorr Signature would act as a masking mechanism for smart-contract transactions essentially offering extra security measures to participants.

The idea is that in the end, a Bitcoin smart contract would be indistinguishable from regular transactions, and even if you tried to track the transaction, the keys involved are cryptographically enhanced on a second layer thanks to Schnorr protocol.

Tapscript should naturally be the newly introduced programming language for Bitcoin smart contracts. Taproot is essentially the binding force that will allow smart-contract participants to easily sign, contribute, promote, or reject activity no matter how complex the underlying mechanism is.

The key point here is that Taproot will act similar to traditional Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST), with the difference that even the most complex smart-contract with multiple participants, different roles and values, and a series of long mathematical conditions would appear like a regular Bitcoin transaction between two participants when observed on the public ledger.

Continue reading here:

Bitcoin's Upcoming Soft-forks Plan To Upscale It To Its Modest Form - CoinCodex

A comprehensive study analyzed 2 years worth of Bitcoin buying and selling data. The findings were pretty surprising. The research took a look at the average weekly market cycle to find the best day of the week to buy, and also to sell.

Longhashs study took a look at the Bitcoin hourly price data over a two year period and noticed some very interesting patterns regarding price action and trading volume. The data for their study was provided by CryptoDataDownload.

The methodology behind the study was to find an average price for open, close, high, and low for every hour of every week. So, for example, they took the high price on every Monday at 6 am and found the average to come to a mean price. They did this for every hour of every day of the week for a two-year span. It must have been a lot of work!

The researchers found that the average lowest price for Bitcoin was at 6 am UTC time on Fridays. This means that this is on average, is the best time to take a position, in a long trade.

Obviously, the BTC market is very volatile and may not always conform to an overall average, so dont take these findings as gospel. It isnt investment advice, its simply market analysis.

The researchers also found that on average, on Mondays & Tuesdays around midnight UTC, the Bitcoin price averaged 170 dollars higher than on Fridays.

This means that Monday or Tuesday statistically is the best time to cash out your Friday long or take a short position to cash out on the subsequent Friday when the price is statistically lower.

To be frank, nobody really knows, although the researchers in the study above speculated that due to Monday/Tuesday midnight UTC time, it may be that because of timezone overlap, more active traders are online at this time. Asian, European and American traders are all active at this time.

The researchers did note, that the trading volume isnt especially higher during this time, that it doesnt exactly correlate. Researchers did note a correlation with the lower prices on Fridays, with lower trading volume, however, lending credence to their findings for lower prices.

Mondays could be reflecting higher price points due to institutional investors taking positions at the beginning of the week. Many OTC desks do their best to make large buy orders and sell orders invisible to the retail trading market to prevent front-running.

That would also support the lower prices on Friday evenings as traders cash out for the week on the positions they took on Monday/Tuesday. This is purely speculation, of course. Either way, kudos to the researchers who conducted the study and revealed the interesting results.

What do you think of this bitcoin price study? Let us know in the comments below!

Image via Shutterstock

See more here:

Should you Buy Bitcoin on Fridays and Sell on Mondays? - Bitcoinist

On February 13, the IOTA network came to a screeching halt and the IOTA Foundation reports that $1.6 million worth of the native currency was stolen. The following day, the IOTA network status page still shows the mainnet is not operational and the development team has found an exploit related to the Trinity Wallet.

Also Read: IOTA, EOS, XLM, ADA 4 Bitcoin Contenders With Zero Use Cases and Barely Any Infrastructure

The IOTA network is a hot topic within the cryptocurrency community right now, with people discussing the networks recent outage. At the time of publication, IOTAs network status page says Mainnet (1341599), Not operational, TPS: 0.6500. Alongside this message are multiple status updates from the core development team. At first, the team heard several reports of theft and decided to warn people using Discord and Twitter.

The developers also said: As a precaution, we ask you to keep your Trinity wallet closed for now. Following the initial investigation, IOTA programmers decided to turn off the coordinator to make sure no further theft can occur until we find out the root cause of these thefts. Since the initial announcements, the topic has been trending among the crypto community across social media. The team also warned the community on Twitter and explained that law enforcement were involved. The official IOTA Twitter account stated:

Currently, IOTA is working with law enforcement and cybersecurity experts to investigate a coordinated attack, resulting in stolen funds. To protect users, we have paused the coordinator and advise users not to open Trinity until further notice.

Despite this message, the Twitter account still has a pinned Twitter post that explains the Trinity wallet is secure. After the warning tweet and update message that disclosed the team shut off the IOTA Coordinator, many people on Twitter asked what they meant by the phrase paused the Coordinator? Commentator Eric Wall discussed the IOTA fiasco on Twitter where hes well known for calling out the vulnerabilities tied to the IOTA network. Wall stated:

A question that keeps me up at night: Is it possible to create a rubbish coin based on advanced bullshit, build a community of misguided fans nevertheless, run it centralized for 5 yrs, hard fork-copy the design of a real working project, keep the community and become a success?

IOTA developers noted in another update that the IOTA Foundation has been working around the clock to investigate the matter. Most evidence is pointing towards seed theft, cause still unknown and under investigation, the IOTA status page noted. Victims (around 10 that identified with the IOTA Foundation so far) all seem to have recently used Trinity, the developers added.

On February 14, the IOTA team gave the public another update which said they had found the exploit and are now working on resolving the issue. IOTA engineers insisted that the exploit was definitely related to the Trinity wallet and stressed the IOTA core protocol is as already communicated before not breached. IOTA team members further disclosed:

We know that you would like to understand more details, but ask you to refrain from questions towards the community moderators due to the parallel ongoing coaction with law enforcement. The teams are currently developing a mitigation strategy. We will share all details about the exploit in due time and (of course) publish a complete incident analysis as well.

The discussion regarding IOTAs lack of decentralization is at the heart of the conversations on social media. The leadership at IOTA seems to be extremely fragile according to a recent blog post and the chain stopped working for 15 hours during the last week of December 2019 as well. Despite all the craziness surrounding the IOTA project, the market has remained the 21st largest blockchain by market capitalization. IOTA has gained 1% this week despite the paused Coordinator.

What do you think about the issues with IOTA during the last 24 hours? Let us know in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship 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.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Twitter, Fair Use, and the IOTA Status Page.

Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here.

Jamie Redman is a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source code, and decentralized applications. Redman has written thousands of articles for news.Bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

Read the original here:

IOTA Network Still Down: How the Next Bitcoin Killer Screeched to a Halt - Bitcoin News

A Bitcoin whale on Bitfinex who identifies as Joe007 has been consistent in calling for a steep correction in the market since the $9,000s. The individual explained the current bull market has been highly manipulated by other whales, and a pullback is unavoidable.

According to cryptocurrency trader Jacob Canfield, Joe007 has been profitable for six straight months from August 2019 to January 2020.

On average, the trader recorded $6.52 million in profit on a monthly basis for the past half-year.

Throughout February, Joe007 has been consistent in describing the Bitcoin rally from the $9,000s to $10,500 as a case of manipulation in the form of spoof orders.

In margin trading, spoof orders refer to fake buy orders placed to encourage other investors to place long contracts to bump up the price of Bitcoin. With the recent upsurge being driven primarily by highly leveraged longs, the whale said that the move is irresponsible, and an inevitable pullback will arrive.

Joe007 said:

You can push the price only so long with fantom money. At some point, people would want to cash out their mad gainz only to find no one on the other side of the market. That would be the show.

Whales tend to trade on Bitfinex over other platforms because the exchange offers only up to 3.3x leverage. Compared to BitMEX or Binances 100 to 125x, the low leverage of 3.3x does not appeal to most individual investors with low capital.

As such, traders on Bitfinex tend to trade with a longer-term strategy, as the low leverage significantly reduces the likelihood of any liquidation.

So far, 16 days into February, Joe007 is up to $6.7 million in a short position. If the Bitcoin price stays below $10,000 for the rest of the month, it would result in seven consecutive profitable months for the investor.

With the market sentiment becoming increasingly optimistic day by day, the question is whether the rally, which was initially kickstarted with manipulation through spoof orders, can evolve into an organic upsurge in the short to medium-term.

In response to a question from the community on the possibility of the rally becoming organic as the price increases, Joe007 simply said: Lets wait and see.

Some pieces of data such as on-chain investor activity from Adaptive Funds Willy Woo show that the demand and interest from retail investors have increased in the past month. The upcoming Bitcoin reward halving in late April has been considered as a major variable for the price trend of the dominant cryptocurrency by traders.

One trader known as Satoshi Flipper said:

BTC halving is in 2.5 months. Dont be ignorant and pretend it doesnt matter and/or should be ignored when youre analyzing.

Bitcoin, currently ranked #1 by market cap, is down 2.28% over the past 24 hours. BTC has a market cap of $182.13B with a 24 hour volume of $47.33B.

Chart by CryptoCompare

Bitcoin is down 2.28% over the past 24 hours.

Read the original:

A big Bitfinex Bitcoin whale is anticipating a severe correction, will he be right? - CryptoSlate

Surging crypto rallies and the coronavirus scare the two phenomena seem to be closely related, according to many. But this particular correlation is not necessarily translating to causation, at least according to some experts.

Mati Greenspan, the founder of Quantum Economics, offered his insights regarding the apparent connections between the two events. So far, I dont see any direct correlation between the coronavirus and crypto prices. Instead, Greenspan pointed to the current altcoin rally as an indicator of a growing appetite for higher-risk investments:

In my estimation at the moment, were in an alt season and that generally tells us that people are looking to take risk if they have a bit of extra cash. This is exactly whats happening in the stock markets as well. Its most likely that whatever is driving crypto at the moment is a risk-on sentiment and not flight to safety.

While some consider the coronavirus scare as a possible catalyst for a store-of-value narrative, Greenspan dismissed the notion: I dont think anybody inside of China, for example, would be going OK, people are dying here, let me go buy Bitcoin.

Stories of Chinese crypto mining facilities being shuttered appear to have had little impact on Bitcoin (BTC) network hash rates. The network is chugging along stronger than ever with hash rates continuing to compete, surpassing all-time highs, according to Blockchain.com.

If such shutdowns were of any significant scale, a network slowdown would be one of the clearest indicators of such a relationship, especially considering the high percentage of mining pools that are centered in China. As of now, it is estimated that somewhere between 65% and 70% of all BTC mining pools are concentrated in China, according to CoinShares Research.

By observing mining pool activity on Coindance, one can see that the usual mining pools are up and running with little indication of weakness. A number of the worlds most prominent mining pools are based in China, including Poolin, F2Pool, BTC.com, Antpool and ViaBTC. They appear to be performing as usual.

In an attempt to find further details regarding the mining situation in China, Cointelegraph reached out to Bitmain, whose spokesperson explained that the health scare had not affected the mining industry much, if at all. However, Bitmain declined to comment further on the situation.

Greenspan explained that other narratives are playing a much greater role in current conditions: As far as narratives go, the halving is huge. Thats one of the main drivers of the market. Bitcoin's mining block reward is set to be reduced by half in May, resulting in increased scarcity, causing a theoretical increase in the market price of the asset.

Additionally, increased instability in the Middle East might have sparked the current crypto rally, beginning in January. The whole thing was set off with the U.S. missile drone strike in Iraq... For the first time in [its] short history, we saw Bitcoin reacting to a major geopolitical event as a safe haven. That gave Bitcoin a lot of legitimacy.

Greenspan then dove into details surrounding what he feels is the strongest cause of the rapid rise in high-risk asset investment: central bank monetary policy.

The more we see action from the central banks, the more we see cash injections from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Peoples Bank of China. Theyre just pushing money into the system and that money has to find a home.

Regarding the potential for hyperinflation, Greenspan pointed to recent economic fiascos of Venezuela and Zimbabwe, adding that at some point, the phenomenon will most likely have to kick in, but not everywhere:

That isnt happening in the major economies like the United States, Japan and China at the moment... Even economists dont really understand why there isnt any significant inflation after all the money thats been pumped in there. Its the biggest economic puzzle of our generation.

When asked to consider the hypothetical possibility that the coronavirus might indeed cause a global turn for the worse, Greenspan turned his attention instead to the very real possibilities approaching in the near future, saying: The real concern here is the fact that mainland China is on a self-imposed lockdown. The streets of Shanghai, he explained, are pretty much empty. This may potentially have significant implications for the global supply chain of durable goods, adding:

"Even Tesla, for all their stocks zooming and zooming and zooming, they have a huge giga factory in China, which is shut at the moment. It's not even operating. I dont know how theyre going to make their production quotas with their factory offline.

The analyst expects Q1 quarterly earnings to be disappointing. The stocks arent really reacting. Theres this feeling a feeling thats been beaten into the market over the last few years that no matter what happens, the central banks are going to come in and will be able to pave over any production caps with free money injected into the markets.

At some point, this money-pumping phenomenon may reach a crucial turning point, and the coronavirus shutdown could be the kicker that gets the ball rolling downhill. Even if a cure is discovered tomorrow, itll make China look like its been standing still for around a month. Greenspan believes this will have repercussions:

Its like the butterfly effect, where a butterfly flapping its wings in Chicago could cause a typhoon in Tokyo. We have an entire country the largest country in the world is offline at the moment. Everything will be affected by this.

In regards to the effect of such economic woes might exert on crypto markets, Greenspan was non-committal: How it will affect Bitcoins price, I really couldnt tell you. At the moment, I dont feel like it is, but in the future, it could.

View original post here:

Coronavirus Spreads and Crypto Rallies, but Not Everything Is Related - Cointelegraph

The American governments long-running war on privacy escalated this week following the arrest of Coin Ninjas Larry Harmon on money laundering charges. A Department of Justice statement that seeking to obscure virtual currency transactions in this way [using mixers] is a crime means that bitcoiners risk prosecution simply for exercising their right to privacy.

Also read: Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Gives Testimony on Cryptocurrency, New Regulations Rolling Out Soon

The cryptosphere was rocked on Thursday by the news that Coin Ninja and Dropbit CEO Larry Harmon had been arrested on charges of laundering $311 million from darknet marketplace (DNM) Alphabay. Despite having no direct connection with Alphabay, the Helix mixer Harmon had developed was recommended by the DNM. Coin mixers, or tumblers, are legally used by bitcoin owners to merge their transactions with those of other users, providing a degree of onchain privacy that Bitcoin does not provide by default. Mixers can also be used by criminals for the same purpose.

The grand jury indictment served in Washington, D.C. is a nightmare for Harmon and his family (his wife has since faced telephone threats from blackmailers demanding bitcoin), as well as for Coin Ninjas employees and customers. Dropbit, described as Venmo for bitcoin, sponsored the What Bitcoin Did podcast hosted by Peter McCormack and had a high industry profile. Both of Hamons companies have had their assets frozen, including those of customers which were in Dropbits custodial Lightning wallet. But the repercussions of Harmons arrest threaten to extend much further, affecting anyone whos ever taken measures to enhance their privacy through deploying onchain obfuscation techniques.

This indictment underscores that seeking to obscure virtual currency transactions in this way [using a mixer] is a crime, said Justice Department Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski in a statement on Thursday. The day before, in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said We want to make sure that these [cryptocurrencies] are not used as the equivalent of secret bank accounts We are working with FinCEN and we will be rolling out new regulations to be very clear on greater transparency so that law enforcement can see where the money is going and that this isnt used for money laundering.

Commenting on the indictment against Larry Harmon, Bitcoin developer Matt Corallo tweeted Setting precedent that tumblers (aka still-worse-privacy-than-cash-machines) are illegal to own/operate would be the beginning of the end. Prominent bitcoiners have long warned that U.S. regulators will seek to cripple the currency however they can, attacking it indirectly through asymmetric warfare against exchanges and centralized mixers whose operators can be cowed into compliance, under threat of imprisonment; Harmon faces up to 30 years if convicted. Centralized bitcoin tumbler Bestmixer.io was shut down last year in similar circumstance.

It remains to be determined whether Harmons Helix mixer was knowingly complicit in laundering darknet drug money; the service shut down in 2017, the same year that Alphabay bit the dust. Whatever the case, it appears that a chilling precedent is being made in criminalizing the innate human desire for privacy. If seeking to obscure virtual currency transactions is a crime, as the DoJ claims, what other privacy practices could be outlawed? Is using noncustodial mixers such as Samourais Whirlpool or Wasabi Wallets Coinjoin implementation illegal? Does generating a new bitcoin address for each new transaction count as a crime?

In a world where citizens were forced to hold their dollar bills in see-through plastic wallets, no one would feel safe stepping outside. The DoJ is effectively trying to enforce the digital equivalent on bitcoiners, conflating all attempts at concealment with criminality.

What are your thoughts on the latest DoJ statement? Do you think the U.S. is trying to outlaw onchain privacy? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Did you know you can verify any unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction with our Bitcoin Block Explorer tool? Simply complete a Bitcoin address search to view it on the blockchain. Plus, visit our Bitcoin Charts to see whats happening in the industry.

Kai's been manipulating words for a living since 2009 and bought his first bitcoin at $12. It's long gone. He's previously written whitepapers for blockchain startups and is especially interested in P2P exchanges and DNMs.

Go here to read the rest:

US Department of Justice Is Criminalizing Onchain Privacy, Starting With Mixers - Bitcoin News