228 mln XRP was sent over the past several hours. The blockchain giant Ripple, which owns over half of the total XRP supply, has sent 74 mln XRP from this sumto an anonymous digital wallet.

The rest of the 228 mln XRP also went to unknown destinations.Meanwhile, a major SCB bankapp in Thailand now sends money viaRippleNet.

The Twitter bot XRPL Monitor has detected a mammoth-sized amount of XRP transferred over the last four hours totaling$38,167,200.

Around one thirdof it 74 mln XRP was sent from Ripples OTC Distribution wallet, as pointed out by Whale Alert, to an unknown destination.

The data from the Bithomp analytical website says that the money went to a BitGo wallet - a major service working with institutional customers andofferingcustodial services to them. Among its clients is the Bitstamp crypto exchange.

As of late, the XRP price has surged to the $0.17 level (as perdata from CoinMarketCap) where it has been holding so far. Investors interest in the third-largest currency hasrecently been growing along with its price.

Must Read

A while ago, Ripple wrote on its website that a major partner ofRippleNet in Thailand Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) hadlaunched Ripple-based transactions for his customers. Now, the bank is spreadingthe word about having launchedXRP-based transferson its SCB Easy app.

The banks website states that Ripple-based payments via SCB Easy willtake from a few seconds to a maximum of three days to arrivedirectly to a customer's bank account (depending on the destination country).

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Bitcoin (BTC) Price Pumpers Compared to COVID-19 Opportunists by Roger Ver - U.Today

How to predict the Bitcoin price movement like a 80 lvl guru? You dont have to buy an expensive course. In this piece, we will dig deep into the major causes of Bitcoin price rise and fall.

Basic secrets behind Bitcoin price are known, but those complex ones are buried. Some exchange indicators are free, some available for a boatload of money. Most market analysts are usually unaware of whale sell-offs and unexpected market conditions. While the self-proclaimed analysts dig in tiny details from controversial data parsers, the rapid spread of fiat inflation, and stock bloodbaths, lets take a look at the much easier to read a bigger picture.

Key developers announce major code improvements

Influence rate: Medium

When the key developers announce or release substantial improvements, price gains. All thanks to the new code. The project fans buy more and this results in a price increase. Partially, the cash starts flowing from the U.S. and Europes big investors. News bring in tech-savvy youth. Venture investors and hardware companies enroll in business models.

Investors are sure that other people will use the coin. Or, they already have some rare prediction or information about a big deal. Beware of the actors who play against the markets. Those are the most skillful, otherwise, they would fail.

Bitcoin gets many remarks on Twitter

Influence rate: Low

Persome eToro, researchers, Bitcoin rate coincides with the number of Twitter mentions. The more people name Bitcoin, the bigger the price and vice versa. This metric doesnt have the full logic behind itself. However, it is worth trying out as an indicator. So far it was acting well.

Regulators approve cryptocurrency use

Influence rate: Medium

On July 17-19, 2017, India was shifting its focus from ban to taxation. This has caused one of the largest instant price increases in the early history of Bitcoin. On 28 October 2019, Bitcoin price gets a boost after Chinese President Xi Jingpins speech with a positive mention of blockchain technology. There were many such occasions.

Bitcoins security and scalability rises

Influence rate: High-Very High

Per the American Institute for Economic Research, major news about cryptocurrency scalability match with Bitcoins price movements. Signed by various scientists, the work outlines seven largest cases of such behavior. Per the study, the news on 20 July 2017 produced the hugest instant spike of the Bitcoin index ever (at the time of writing the work). Then, miners showed early support for the scalability improvement called SegWit.

Just three days after SegWit receives a preliminary agreement, the price gets another sharp 25% increase. SegWit is implemented, Lightning Network will be ready in several years, via the development efforts of Chaincode Labs and Blockstream. Also, SegWit opens support for Lightning Network. Other crypto software companies can create their Lightning nodes and experiment with SegWit.

Probably, the next big scalability or privacy news could give Bitcoin a significant price bump. In depends on the power behind the announcement.

Hardfork with new coins making

Influence rate: Low

This is not always a good scenario. Because after chain splits, the communities divide. However, back in August 2017, the currency receives a boost of almost 15%, right after Bitcoin split into Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

The hidden hand of the market

Influence rate: Very High

Per some researchers, Bitcoin price rose to almost $19,000 back in 2017 because of a single bot pumping the market was flooded by Tether. This study did lie the foundation for several lawsuits against Bitfinex.

Bitcoin guru Andreas Antonopoulos (who is famous for avoiding huge bribe offers) says that the allegations have substantial grounds. Per Antonopoulos, regarding how the Bitcoin economy works, the prosecution is moving in the right direction. More than that, Kyle Roche, an interim lead counsel, showed Antonopoulos his deep knowledge of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin and blockchain. Per his letter to the court:

Kyle Roche, of Roche Cyrulnik Freedman (RCF), has demonstrated proficiency in these areas, unlike most other lawyers in the industry.

Considering that Antonopoulos possess substantial knowledge on cryptocurrency, the path set for Bitfinex becomes more clear over time.

Cold news about stablecoins

Influence rate: Low

Each time news bashing Bitfinex and Tether hit the market, Bitcoin reacts in two ways. If the news negative for Bitfinex, the price of Bitcoin is rising: Tether related news causes investors to dump USDT, which triggers the crypto market to go green, thanks to the price peg breakage of USDT.

This means that the more negative news about Tether you see, the more investors are dumping their USDT. It makes the rest of the crypto market to gain sharply. All thanks to the balance laws of nature. Because, some exchanges allow valuing Bitcoin against Tether, not to actual USD.

The more some widespread asset (like the dollar) is depreciated the more other currencies worth. The same goes for dollar-backed stablecoins. The traders see the price per Bitcoin valuated in USDT. When price peg breaks, they see the delusional higher/lower price per BTC.

Also, they gain the possibility to sell a stablecoin at a higher price than usual, if stablecoins gain and cryptocurrencies fall. Thats up to 5% easy gain per one such episode.

Government-backed takeover against crypto firms

Influence rate: Medium-High

China announced its crypto firms takeover back in January 2017. Police attended the offices in Beijing and Shanghai. Bitcoins price (which was at $775 by that moment) did fall by 14%. The investors were in fears that China will ban Bitcoin completely.

Later, during September 2017, Jamie Dimon was criticizing Bitcoin in the U.S. At the same time, China enrolled a final crypto takeover plan, which aimed to shut down all crypto exchanges. Bitcoin reacted immediately, with a 17% price decrease.

Centralization of the network

Influence rate: Very High

This is a very unrealistic scenario. Keep in mind that Bitcoin has nearly 7,000 to 9,500 publicnodes. Plus more than 50,000 of the nodes hidden in Tor. In case the nodes will decrease in number, the network may start losing the price.

Also, the price falls whenminersleave the network. In March 2020, theBitcoin network lost 40% of all the miners. This has led to the networks difficulty recalculation, making mining a bit easier to allow weak miners to rejoin. The price experienced a fall of 40% on March 13, mirroring the miner power decrease (before positive correction).

Key Developer leaves the project

Influence rate: Low

This is the first news in the history of Bitcoin that had a clear negative price impact.

When Mike Hearn was quitting Bitcoin in January 2016, he said that Bitcoin will not scale. He claimed that Bitcoin is revolving around China, Core developers are in some gang. And Bitcoin failed, so he sells all his stash. This caused a month of red candles.

The price lostapproximately 16.5% during a month after his famous Medium post. But then, Bitcoin slowly returned to the price before the angry quit.

And the bear trend was gone, accumulating even more powerful bulls around Bitcoin. A fiery of rich trading cycles began.

Insane Whale trading against the market

Influence rate: Medium

A bright recent example of whale trading happened during February-March, 2020. The U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler dumped a ton of stocks on the market. She has been the CEO of crypto derivatives exchange Bakkt for some time. Then, Kelly went to serve at the U.S. Senate at the end of 2019.

Kelly visited a closed meeting of Congress members on 24 January. The topic of discussion was coronavirus. On the same day when Senator Loeffler visited a secretive Congress meeting. Per the pubic disclosure, Kelly sold Exxon Mobil, Euronet Worldwide and other companies shares. At the end of March 2020, Kelly was accused of insider trading.

She did not disclose whether she sold any amounts of cryptocurrency. However, we presume that she had substantial personal crypto stash available.

As you can see, the whales never announce the true intentions. Cryptocurrencies lost a significant part of their price thanks to the classic stock market panic. The total number of U.S. based insider whales is unknown.

Coronavirus-alike contamination

Influence rate: High

On January 3, 2020, famous Bitcoin Guru Andreas Antonopoulosclaimed during What Bitcoin Did Podcastthat people will sell any kind of assets to cover their need for the masks. He said that food and other necessary things will become important.

He predicted the grand sell-off of cryptocurrency and the stocks:

And the reason it will crash hard is that a lot of the venture capital, corporate investments and private investment from individuals that is based on cheap money and disposable income and excess cash in portfolios, etc., like in any other part of the economy, will dry up.

All of those things are a symptom of the fact that we have a small lifeboat and a very, very large number of people who need saving.

Despite Andreas made a prediction 21 days before the closed Congress meeting, many of the holdersdidnt pay much attention to his words months after that.

Many of the market participants continued claiming that cryptocurrency will go up to the halving event in May 2020. Per Tom Lee,it could make it to $40,000without troubles. As per markets in March 2020, it seems like the holders are in fear of coronavirus in a much bigger scale than of anything else. Even despite the world economy mongers take extra measures to ensure stability.

Many of the novice traders, as well as crypto-related enthusiasts, think that Bitcoin can perform magical stuff.

Bitcoin never gains permanent price it will fall someday

Back in 2017, Bitcoin made a one-year rally from $1,700 per bitcoin at the years beginning to $17,500 at the years end. The lack of technical knowledge made people believe Bitcoin will moon after New Year.

The more bright rise cryptocurrency receives, the more epic it falls later. Bitcoin is no exception, falling sharply from $13,860 on 17 December (on some exchanges $15,000-17,000 per BTC) to $6,900 on 17 March, 2018.

If you take any other coin, you can spot similar dynamics. If the coins keep falling for three, five or even seven days or weeks, be sure that it will bounce back. Such times fit well for short trading on local volatility.

All processes on Bitcoin markets obey cycles

If you see that the cycle is broken, then something went wrong. Like, if the network is not producing blocks in more than 2,5 hours, then its bad, as Bitcoin must process 1 block every 10 minutes. The same goes to the price, it must bounce.

Cycles are everywhere. For instance, look at the Decred PoS cryptocurrencys market price for the whole period. You can see that Bearish and Bullish periods are going one after another. They even have close to similar time size.

Source: Decred

Also, they appear to decrease in size as the trading balance establish. As if it was some cycle ruling everything, not the market demand and code improvements.

As the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin was developing through wave-shaped price dynamics too. Before reaching the next price high, the price will likely reach the previous cycles peak, forming a Fibonacci curve.

Bitcoin price never mirrors public opinions

If you see that the majority of traders predict similar price increase, it may result in the opposite. The price will fall, and people following the unprofessional trader lose money. There are famous traders saying lies on purpose. Define who they are and avoid their forecasts.

If you see that somebody predicts Bitcoin at $100,000 in a year, think about their ability to predict the next Avatar movie storyline, which will see lights after 2021. Its zero chance, the same goes for Bitcoins price in a year. Only trust the short and mid-term analysis.

Influence of retail traders

Influence rate: Low

Small traders do not cause large movements of the price. They can even unite into groups for organized pumping of coins. But such groups cause no effect without the support from a few whales. Any trend by retail investors could be easily disrupted in case a trouble occurs.

Its simply because the influence of such groups is not big, as Bitcoins market is too substantial to strike it down with small sums. However, a domino effect is still possible. One Whale sells a large chunk of coins. Thus, triggering other bearish whales to emotionally do the same. Then, the market goes wild.

Influence of OTC traders

Influence rate: Medium

Over-the-Counter trading has no obvious ways of measure. Crypto traders use various platforms and exchange phone numbers, and Telegram/Viber handles, or even the locations to meet in person. More trades also flow in end-to-end secret chats. The official number is always smaller than the real state of things.

Such deals never get to any statistics. And the exact amount of the OTC market is unknown.

Some experts measure the volumeper region, though, by counting the LB statsas the OTC trading. If the OTC traders (both online and offline) engage in significant volumes, it will move the price per asset. Keep in mind that the OTC market may have its Bitcoin price significantly differ from the centralized exchange prices. Traders can take from 1% to 15% in fees be extremely careful. You wont be able to dispute the deal after you signed up for it.

Influence of exchanges, manipulators and artificial price pumps

Influence rate: High

Some of the cryptocurrency exchanges operate via third party bank accounts, use shady schemes, and commit bribery. Thanks to the soft regulation in certain economic zones, those exchanges can operate for years.

They transmit money and collect KYC, while the Internet is full of negative feedback from traders. Such exchanges can freeze transactions and steal untraceable currencies. People complain that Monero, Beam or Zcash is the usual target.

Exchanges also use trading bots to create artificial incoming volumes with their own money. This scheme described in full by The Tie, Librehash, and others. Per The Tie report,about 86% of all the cryptocurrency exchange trading activitymight be wash trading.

The manipulation factor is one of the most significant among others in terms of Bitcoin price analysis. Also, the most unpredictable one. Usually, by the time an honest investigator finds out whats going on, criminals get away with the money.

The influence of the market insiders

Influence rate: High

Market insiders are the closed circle of traders. Their influence over the market can reach an unbelievable level. Some of them enjoy fame, some of them not. Insiders are mostly the early miners and investors. They were working around Bitcoin to extract huge profits in the longterm. They were mostly producing content to bring Bitcoin to substantial hash power.

Be extremely aware of what large exchanges and firms do on the market. They could either disappear in a small European country like OneCoin creator Ruja Ignatova orimitate their deathlikeQuadrigaCX former admin, Gerald Cotten, presumably did.

Influence of darknet markets

Influence rate: Low-Medium

The darknet traffic: people wash dirty money, buy illegal stuff, collecting a ton of coins. Cryptocurrency prices gain at least some part of their price from restricted activities. The anonymous nature of Bitcoin transactions and lack of technological knowledge among police officers (in many countries) are two key factors behind Bitcoins popularity in the criminal world.

Influence of Whales

Influence rate: High

The whales are the traders with deep pockets. When whales enter the market, they typically cause a sharp increase or decrease in price. Whales move large capital in a short series of transactions.

Sometimes, they use stablecoins for that purpose. Whales dont divide their capital into pieces or diversify the portfolio. Other traders dont like whales they disrupt the natural price move. High-level whales prefer top currencies, not the ICO tokens and such.

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How To Use Big News to Predict Bitcoin... - Coinspeaker

The mother of all weeks has seen Bitcoin in freefall. The biggest price drop since 2013 followed a WHO announcement of a global pandemic, and President Trumps ban on flights between the US and Europe. Uncertainty gripped the financial markets, and sent cryptocurrencies plummeting along with other assets, stocks and bonds.

On Thursday, Bitcoin had its worst day in history. Its price dropped from $7,900 to $4,600 over 40%. It then continued to drop, reaching a low of $3,850.

While its bounced back to over $5,000 since then, the Fear & Greed Index is still at extremeshowing the market is still fearful.

But weve been here before right? Bitcoin has died approximately 380 times. And its still here. So is Bitcoin really dead this time?

Erik Voorhees, CEO of Shapeshift crypto exchange, thinks the idea is ridiculous.

No, Bitcoin as a store of value isnt dead just because it had a super shitty day, he tweeted. In the coming months the world will see what anti-fragile means.

Voorhees has lived through plenty of super shitty days, since he got into crypto more than eight years ago. Hes also seen how quickly things can bounce back.

But many of the respondents to his assertion on Twitter disagreed. So did libertarian and Bitcoin Cash proponent, Roger Ver. He believes that its precisely this idea which has to be knocked on the head.

"Obviously it isnt the end of Bitcoin, but it should be the end of the nonsense idea put forth by BTC maximalists that Bitcoin is a store of value because Bitcoin is useful as a store of value, he told Decrypt. The reality is that the only way anything can become a store of value is by having some other use case.

No doubt about it, the market making industrythe institutional investors who provide essentially liquidity to the crypto industrytook a gigantic hit, pseudonymous Bitcoin maximalist Loomer told Decrypt. But he remains optimistic. I think the bottom just got printed, we will probably consolidate in this range for a while as people finally get back to grips and normality, he said. As long as people in the world have money, Bitcoin will be around.

Adam Back, cofounder of Bitcoin developer Blockstream also brushed off the recent tumult in the markets. Bitcoin has been lower last year with a bottom around $3400, and is known for being volatile, he said.

He pointed out that as well as the biggest loss, the cryptocurrency also saw its biggest gain.

Yesterday we saw price appreciate rapidly by the biggest intraday gain in Bitcoins history from its bottom just below $4000 to over $5500 within 30 minutes. So I think it's safe to say Bitcoin isn't going anywhere, he said.

Investor Dan Tapiero agreed, tweeting that Bitcoin was the only asset that could go down 50% in one day that didnt need government intervention to stabilize its price. It will be fine, he said.

But not everybody is convinced.

On the other side of the equation, skeptics argue that this might be it for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin bear Peter Schiff tweeted, With Bitcoin crashing below $4,000 I don't feel so bad about having lost all my Bitcoin. At the rate my lost Bitcoin are losing value soon the difference between having Bitcoin and not having any Bitcoin will be too small to matter.

Bitcoin skeptic David Gerard told Decryptthat it's crunch time. "Everything bitcoin's ever done has been under the best possible circumstances. Coiners forget that literally the entire price history of Bitcoinsince it could first be said to have a price, in late 2010 or early 2011has been in a conventional asset bull market."

The falling price poses further questions for the viability of Bitcoins economic model. It costs miners a lot of money in electricity bills to mine Bitcoin, and if it drops too far in valuethen they might not be able to afford to keep supporting the network.

Bitcoin miners help to keep the network running. Image: Shutterstock.

Charles Edwards founder of digital asset management startup Capriole tweeted that, Bitcoin miners are now unprofitable.

As a result, he argued that Bitcoin miners will leave the networkwhich would make it weaker, and more vulnerable to attack. The hash rate is the amount of processing power being used to mine new Bitcoin. Expect we hold (mostly) above $5,000, and then start to see [the] Hash Rate drop, he tweeted.

But perhaps price isnt everything. Charlie Shrem, host of Untold Stories, tweeted, Has Bitcoin changed from last week to this? Is the network broken? Has someone hacked it? No, Bitcoin is working, chugging along and growing!

Meanwhile, Peter McCormack, host of the What Bitcoin Did Next podcast, told Decrypt: "My only thought right now is I never really care about price much anymore, all I care about is its existence, just by existing it is a win for freedom."

Thats maximalism and existentialism for you.

Continue reading here:

Bitcoin is dead, long live Bitcoin - Decrypt

The heat of the COVID-19 pandemic has now reached each and every country on the planet. With stock markets seeing a whopping dip, many argue that the cryptocurrency market has failed to stand by its motto of being uncorrelated to the traditional markets during global uncertainties.

While everyones undivided attention over the course of 12-13th March was on the king coins massive price drop, the fortunes of Bitcoins fork coin, Bitcoin Cash [BCH] as well.

Bitcoin Cash saw a price drop of 44% in one day, falling to $254 from $142 between March 12-13. The coin, at press time, was trading at $171.47, with a 24-hour trading volume of $5.32 billion.

Bitcoin engineer and CTO of Casa, Jameson Lopp, in a recent tweet, had highlighted the extreme drop off in transactions since 8 March on Bitcoin Cashs network. While the number of daily Bitcoin Cash transactions was in the 40-50k range prior to this date, it has not seen more than 20k transactions since then.

Well, it is quite natural to assume that the price fall might be a result of the drop in markets and the panic over coronavirus, but that isnt the case. Although BCH faced the aforementioned fate, Bitcoin and Ether remained steady, within their usual volatility realms.

That said, the year 2020 hasnt been all roses for Bitcoin Cash. The community is split over plans to implement a tax on miners and the network had also stopped producing blocks for five and a half hours in January.

Interestingly, during a recent podcast, Roger Ver, CEO of Bitcoin.com and a major proponent of BCH, spoke about the recent developments in the BCH ecosystem, his goals for BCH in 2020, and the upcoming updates around the privacy features of Bitcoin Cash and more.

Ver said that though he liked all cryptocurrencies, he is currently rooting for Bitcoin Cash as it is one of the biggest network effects with the best user experience, while bringing more economic freedom to the present-day world.

Expanding further on the subject, he said,

And more economic freedom leads to more economic growth and more economic growth leads to a higher standard of living for everybody, rich and poor alike. And what could be more exciting to work on than something like that. So, so thats the only reason why Im, beating the drum for Bitcoin cash today.

Ver further shared his thoughts on the developments coming about in the BCH ecosystem in 2020. He noted that his personal goal for BCH is to make the coin a complete head to head with the US Dollar, the Euro, the Yen and every other currency out there. He noted,

And I want to do that by making it so incredibly useful to, people would rather use Bitcoin cash than their bank of America account or HSBC account or you know, whatever bank account.

Reinstating his idea, Ver asserted that his main goal is to make it so easy that everybody could just live completely off a cryptocurrency and not have to depend on banks or other centralized institutions.

Further talking about censorship resistance, Ver noted that de-centralization is indeed the tool to achieve complete censorship resistance. While on that, Ver also spoke about the privacy features that are going to be introduced in Bitcoin Cash in the near future, focusing primarily on the cash fusion associated with Bitcoin Cash, scheduled for later next year.

Roger Ver was also full of praises for Monero, calling it one of the best privacy coins out there. However, the CEO of Bitcoin.com noted that it is disappointing to see how their technical team and their software developers are so incredibly hostile to people using the coin in business. Further adding that introducing the privacy feature could be a huge step for the BCH, he said,

Im really excited to bring strong privacy to every Bitcoin cash user with the bitcoin.com wallet. And I think thatll be a big turning point for the ecosystem as well.

Continue reading here:

Bitcoin Cashs embrace of privacy features could be the next big step - AMBCrypto

The Bitcoin Association is bringing Alex Spiers onboard as its latest head of communications.

Spiers joins the company after serving as the editor-in-chief to the Legal 500s GC Magazine for more than three years. In addition, he has also served as the editor-in-chief for 2on4 Sports and has worked as a business journalist in New Zealand.

In a statement, Spiers expressed his joy over becoming the latest member of the Bitcoin Association:

Its certainly an exciting time to be joining the Bitcoin Association. The bitcoin SV ecosystem has reached an inflection point and the opportunities for businesses and enterprises alike only stand to grow. I look forward to working with Jimmy and the team as we work to significantly increase content and communications outreach, in multiple languages, to educate business, developer, consumer, investment and government audiences about BSVs potential.

The Bitcoin Association predominantly provides support for bitcoin SV (BSV), which emerged in late 2018 following a bitcoin cash (BCH) hard fork. The move proved very controversial, and the emergence of BSV is widely blamed for the massive bitcoin crash that occurred soon after.

Bitcoin had spent much of the summer of 2018 trading in the mid-$6,000 range, but later fell to about $3,500 following the completion of the fork. Some, like Craig Wright, claim that BSV is the true version of bitcoin that crypto creator Satoshi Nakamoto initially envisioned when he developed the bitcoin whitepaper in 2009.

Others, however, such as Bitcoin Jesus Roger Ver, claim otherwise, and choose to instead pledge their loyalty to BSVs father BCH.

Nevertheless, the Bitcoin Association continues to grow despite the wary environment that has continued to form around BSVs continued presence. Jimmy Nguyen the founding president of the venture explained in a statement:

As bitcoin SV rapidly rises as the blockchain for business, the Bitcoin Association continues to expand our team of experienced professionals in order to support our ever-growing membership and ecosystem. One of the bitcoin SV ecosystems advantages is strength of message. Hiring Alex as our head of communications is another big addition to that strength as we build a truly global organization that will help bitcoins original design living now as bitcoin SV to finally fulfill its potential.

This is the second major hire made by the Bitcoin Association within two weeks. The first occurred in early March and involved bringing Ella Qiang to the BSV table as the Associations new manager in Asia.

Last year, the organization made headlines when it announced it was partnering with Cambridge University in the United Kingdom to develop a new study program that would allow pupils of the college to learn more about cryptocurrencies, specifically BSV.

The Bitcoin Association is headquartered in London.

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Bitcoin Association Announces Its Second Big Hire This Month - Live Bitcoin News

Recently, Live Bitcoin News reported that while crypto wasnt doing so well as of late, stocks, bonds and oil had also taken turns for the worse.

Weve reached something of a conundrum in that crypto enthusiasts have dealt with hardcore volatility and price swings in the past and are less likely to freak out when something big happens. Wall Street, however, still shows signs of concern whenever the markets dont do well.

Today, bitcoin and crypto enthusiasts are practically laughing at Wall Street and stock traders, claiming they dont know what volatility is and that they should take a chill pill.

Bitcoin has gone up and down since it first emerged on the financial scene. There doesnt seem to be a way of avoiding price swings, as they always permeate the industrys walls even when theyre totally unexpected. One such example occurred at the end of 2018 when the bitcoin price having spent much of the summer that year traveling through the low to mid-$6,000 range suddenly dropped to around $3,500.

Many analysts blame the bitcoin cash hard fork that occurred in November of that year. The event brought about a new cryptocurrency called bitcoin SV (BSV), which has been at the center of controversy ever since. The asset has pitted several industry leaders particularly Roger Ver and Craig Wright against each other.

Still, however, the crypto world is not at the bottom of its proverbial barrel, with BTC still trading for nearly $1,000 higher than when it began 2020. On January 2, the worlds number one cryptocurrency by market cap slid down to approximately $6,900 per unit. At the time of writing, however, that number has expanded to just shy of $7,900, suggesting that bitcoin and its altcoin cousins are still in a solid place.

While stocks are once again beginning to show signs of life, Wall Street is still in an uproar. Several crypto analysts say that its time to calm down, as during moments like these when a global crisis (the coronavirus) is hitting all assets are widely speculative, and many people are simply turning to cold, hard cash to ensure their survival.

This is the sentiment of individuals like Connor Abendschein, a research analyst for Digital Assets Data. In a statement, he explains:

Few assets are safe when a black swan event such as the coronavirus takes hold of the markets on a global scale. Bitcoin may find its footing and shine further down the road during this financial crisis.

Konstantin Plavnik COO of Russian crypto derivatives platform Xena agrees, stating that while bitcoin has become far more effective over the past few years, it is still very much a speculative asset, and that most individuals are likely to turn to cash over anything else during times of trouble.

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Bitcoin Analysts to Wall Street Players: Chill Out! - Live Bitcoin News

The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) client upgrade scheduled for May, 2020 has raised heated arguments on some of its aspects. However, one BTC developer on Github by the name ftrader is creating an alternative for the disputed Bitcoin ABC v0.21.0 client.

According to ftraders post on reddit, the proposed version is unfit for upholding blockchain integrity. The developer defended this position by noting a chain split possibility in the near future due to lack of an activation method and consensus.

In a bid to prevent the underlying risks, a group of BCH developers have come up with BCH Node as a substitute to Bitcoin ABC v0.21.0. Basically, the former is a minimally altered version of the latter. The BCH Node as a modified client version will exclude a diversion code, signal and activation prompts for Coinbase rewards.

Current Bitcoin Cash ABC users will receive the proposed alternative as a drop in replacing their old ecosystem. Notably, Roger Ver supports this version; the strong BCH advocate commented under ftraders post;Looks like we now have the right software to run for the May 15th upgrade

In addition, significant players in past BTC forks are set to contribute in the development of BCH Node. Some of the participating developers have featured in Bitcoin Cash ABC, Bitcoin Unlimited and Bitcoin XT forks.

Bitcoin Cash in its proposal has suggested a developer tax in the new client upgrade; this is meant to contribute towards growing the platforms infrastructure. The proposal was however met with a resistance forcing BCH to review the tax from an initial 12.5% to 5%.

BCH came out to clear the air highlighting that they need to keep innovating within the Bitcoin Cash platform or face the risk of going down. It is still unclear what will be of the new BCH client version but some skeptics are of the opinion that this is an avenue to mint more coins.

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Bitcoin Cash Dev Proposes BCH Node To Avoid An Unwanted Chain Split, Roger Ver On Board - Bitcoin Exchange Guide

Court grants leave for UnitedCorp to submit an amended complaint

Miami, Florida--(Newsfile Corp. - January 31, 2020) - Miami-based United American Corp ("UnitedCorp") (OTC Pink: UAMA) announced today that in a ruling issued by Magistrate Judge Chris McAliley of the US District Court, Southern District of Florida on January 28, 2020, the Judge allowed UnitedCorp to continue its antitrust lawsuit originally filed against Bitmain Group, Bitcoin.com, Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, Kraken, Jesse Powell, Amaury Sechet, Shammah Chancellor and Jason Cox (the "Defendants"). UnitedCorp will have 30 days to submit an amended complaint to address certain issues brought up by the Court after it granted without prejudice the motion to dismiss.

The Court also rejected a motion from counsel of the Bitmain Group and Jihan Wu to have them excluded from the complaint due a one-week delay in service in China. In a related ruling on January 21, 2020 the Court denied a motion by UnitedCorp without prejudice for a 90-day extension to serve foreign defendants Saint Bitts LLC and Amaury Sechet.

The two rulings mean that the complaints can be amended but will not include the two defendants that could not be served in foreign jurisdictions. This ruling comes as the result of a motion presented by the Defendants one year ago on February 1, 2019 to dismiss the complaint in its entirety with prejudice.

While the Judge recognized that there were some deficiencies in the initial UnitedCorp complaint which needed further definition in terms of the Defendants' actions and the injuries to the company, UnitedCorp believes the Court recognized that prima facie, there were key questions of law that needed to be addressed and defined in the emerging cryptocurrency industry.

During the hearing, the Judge questioned defense counsel on the role of Kraken as an exchange had in defining the cryptocurrency market and subsequently did not accept, for now, Kraken's assertion that it had no role in the market and therefore could not be part of the antitrust complaint.

Judge McAliley also did not accept for the time being, assertions made by counsels for Ver, Cox and Chancellor that the Defendants' actions by implementing Checkpoints in the software code, amongst other things, resulted in two competitive chains, therefore there were no antitrust issues to be evaluated since the action would have resulted in increased competition. The Court questioned furthermore, whether those actions are now preventing future changes in consensus rules and if the Bitcoin ABC software patch on November 15, 2018 was applied to both network nodes and exchanges.

The Court raised questions about the market value in the Bitcoin Cash ticker (BCH) at the time of the hard fork and questioned if Kraken would have benefited from its delisting of the resulting coin (Bitcoin SV - "BSV") thereby discouraging trading of BSV just after the hard fork.

The Judge continued to questioned counsel for Kraken on the economic basis for the decision to delist Bitcoin SV as well as its arguments to the effect that BSV would have been unstable with lack of liquidity since this seemed to be the case for many other cryptocurrencies traded on Kraken - not just BSV.

In its defense Kraken counsel argued that it was obliged to disclose to their clients that it believed there was a lack of liquidity in the BSV market which required the immediate delisting of BSV, an argument which was not accepted by the Court at this stage in the proceedings.

One of the more interesting points raised by the Judge in the hearing was whether the US Federal Court could rule on whether or not the Satoshi Nakamoto White Paper of October 31, 2008 (the "White Paper") which initially defined Bitcoin, could be considered as a binding contract or rules among the users in the Bitcoin industry. The Court left open the possibility that this question might have to be addressed at some point.

"We are very pleased with the outcome of the January 28th hearing and that the Court has given us the opportunity to provide additional information and resubmit an amended complaint," stated Benoit Laliberte, President and CEO of UnitedCorp. "We believe the Court has recognized the importance of establishing law in what has been to date, a fairly undefined environment. Bitcoin was developed as a decentralized and distributed peer-to-peer electronic cash system operating under democratic principles created within the network. Any move to centralize or control the network is against its very philosophy and foundation. We are very encouraged by the interest this has generated from antitrust professionals, most of whom agree that this suit is very timely given that antitrust laws are now almost 100 years old, and furthermore that it is time to assess the limits and legality of actions within the cryptocurrency industry."

Story continues

Background to the Suit

The suit, which was launched on December 6, 2018, is the first antitrust action brought in the United States involving the cryptocurrency industry and is being closely watched by antitrust professionals and the cryptocurrency world.

It alleges that the Defendants collectively engaged in unfair methods of competition, and through a series of deceptive and unfair practices, manipulated the Bitcoin Cash network for their benefit and to the detriment of UnitedCorp and other Bitcoin Cash stakeholders. It further alleges that these actions resulted in the network losing more than US $4 billion in unrecoverable value to network participants at the time as a direct result of the alleged hijacking of the network. This, in addition to a forced network fork with the implementation of their specific new rules set in the Bitcoin ABC 0.18.5 version under the control of the Defendants. UnitedCorp alleges that these new rules set have irreparably harmed the Bitcoin Cash blockchain network and Bitmain, along with the co-Defendants, should be held liable.

UnitedCorp alleges that the Defendants colluded to effectively hijack the Bitcoin Cash network after the November 15, 2018 scheduled software update with the express intent of centralizing the network. This includes allegations that Roger Ver, along with Kraken and developers of Bitcoin ABC, colluded with Chinese-based and Chinese government-financed mining rig manufacturer Bitmain to unfairly redirect hashing power at the exact moment of the scheduled software update, forcing the implementation of Bitcoin ABC software centric checkpoints and thereby moving the network away from its native Bitcoin-based blockchain design.

UnitedCorp also believes that the attempt to dominate the network in favor of a particular Bitcoin ABC version was enhanced by Bitmain's use of firmware known as "Overt ASICBoost" which provides significantly increased operational mining efficiency. This firmware was made available in advance of the last Bitcoin Cash update by Bitmain only to Bitcoin ABC-supported pools, which are operated by Bitcoin.com which is owned by Roger Ver. Overt ASICBoost was not usable by other Bitcoin Cash pools in a time frame that would have allowed them to apply the efficiency during the software upgrade. This gave the Bitcoin ABC-Bitmain-Bitcoin.com group-supported pools a significant advantage and allowed them to accomplish the network control centralization plan.

UnitedCorp alleges that these activities are evidence of not only a violation of the accepted standards and protocols associated with Bitcoin since its inception, but a violation of US antitrust laws, including parts of the Sherman Act.

In their motion to dismiss, the Defendants had argued that the UnitedCorp action did not meet the standards to proceed.

In its opposition to dismiss, UnitedCorp provided a significant number of details to support the suit including evidence that the Defendants themselves made explicit statements declaring that they coordinated, conspired and agreed with each other. This included a YouTube video from an online forum where Andreas Brekken, a Kraken software engineer, acknowledges that Bitcoin ABC developers and crypto exchanges such as Kraken agreed to the entire scheme in advance. In the video, Brekken further admits that the scheme had been planned for a long time and included a software patch that could be applied by the exchanges at a strategic point during the software update which "prevents all future re-orgs" - in other words which allows control of the network.

UnitedCorp's filing also provides support for the allegation that the Defendants' collective actions were for unlawful purposes and in an attempt to manipulate the cryptocurrency market for Bitcoin Cash, violated consensus rules regarding voting and precluded any future changes to Bitcoin Cash functionality and changes to the consensus rules. The actions are compared to the illegal action of "bid rigging" in that Bitmain "mercenary" miners were temporarily redeployed to the Bitcoin Cash network during the software upgrade for the sole purpose of diluting the traditional voting process exercised by existing Bitcoin Cash nodes to dominate the process for a short period of time. This violated the established ground rules of the network that others had respected and relied on for years.

The Bitcoin White Paper clearly states that "Nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone. They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism." Therefore, the use of CPU power that was never part of the network prior to the network upgrade could not possibly have "rejoined" the network for the voting process. The transient spike in CPU power could only have been achieved at that time through deliberate and coordinated manipulation by the Defendants.

About United American Corp

Established in 1992, United American Corp is a Florida-based development and management company focusing on telecommunications and information technologies. The company currently holds the rights to manage a portfolio of patents and proprietary technology in telecommunications, social media and Blockchain technology, and owns and operates the Data Center Domes which are designed to provide heat for agricultural operations using computer equipment in naturally cooled data centers where efficiency and low-cost operations are a priority.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of numerous factors that may be beyond the Company's control. Forward-looking statements are based on the expectations and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made, and the Company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements should circumstances in management's expectations or opinions change.

Source:United American CorpContact:Investor Relationsinvestorrelations@unitedcorp.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/52000

See the original post here:

US Federal Court Judge Allows UnitedCorp to Continue its Antitrust Suit against Bitmain, Kraken, Roger Ver and the ABC Bitcoin Cash Development Team -...

Over the 11 years that the cryptocurrency industry has existed, Bitcoin has been at the top; BTC has always had dominance over altcoins, managing to outpace the growth of other digital assets, even with the introduction of what are called Bitcoin killers.

This seems to be for good reasons: altcoins, even those that have promising technology, have failed to gain the adoption they need to succeed, are subject to harsh regulation by the worlds authorities, do not have enough market liquidity to be a viable investment or even utility token, or have a skewed tokeconomics model unlike Bitcoins strict supply cap and set inflation schedule.

According to John McAfee, however, Bitcoin is quickly proving itself to be the Hotmail of crypto.

In a tweet published Tuesday, McAfee said that he believes Bitcoin is the Hotmail of Crypto, referencing the mailing services booming start buy rapid fall from grace after the introduction of competing services in Gmail, etc. that may have been deemed better than the incumbent technology.

This comes shortly after he said that Bitcoin is old, clunky, [has] no security, no smart contracts, no decentralized apps, and as a result is thus the true s**tcoin.

This comes shortly after McAfee revealed that his massive Bitcoin price bet was a ruse to onboard new users, presumably citing the mass media coverage this oddball price target created. He went on to write that he thinks while Bitcoin was the first of the cryptocurrencies, its an ancient technology, before likening the first blockchain to the Model T of automobiles.

McAfee isnt the only one to have made such statements about the future of BTC. Per previous reports from Ethereum World News, Roger Ver, former CEO of Bitcoin.com and one of the industrys earliest entrepreneurs, said in a CNBC interview that he expect for BTCs primacy to be phased out over the next few years by things like Bitcoin Cash (BCH):

The real interesting one is Bitcoin Cash. I think it has the ability to go up a thousand times where it is currently because its looking to become peer to peer electronic cash for the entire world. The smart money is going into Bitcoin Cash because it has the economic characteristics that made Bitcoin popular to begin with.

While McAfee and others are certain of this assertion, BTC still has the largest market share out of all cryptocurrencies and is one of the best and most consistent performers over the past few years, meaning that the market still sees the most crypto promise in Bitcoin, not in Ethereum, Monero, or anything else.

Here is the original post:

McAfee Continues Bitcoin Tirade: BTC is the Hotmail of Crypto - Ethereum World News

Let's get collectively Some influential users regarding the Bitcoin Cash community have actually suggested the organization of a voluntary participation of BCH miners: bookkeeping for 12.5per cent of their particular mining incentive, it must be made use of to invest in the introduction of the community. But not every person agrees, plus the the very least we are able to state is considering that the unrest prevailed.

We said about this at the conclusion of January: Jiang Zhuoer, CEO of this BTC.TOP mining pool, initiated energetically a debate regarding the introduction of an income tax of 12.5% of the mining reward in the Bitcoin Cash community. Following this statement, sympathizers and opponents joined a war by message interposed on social networking sites, debating the different things for this suggestion.

In front of this reaction at the least cautious of this neighborhood, Jiang Zhuoer posted a new pass on their private weblog so that you can react to the primary problems of this neighborhood and also to guard himself against critique. Its by continuing to keep exactly the same your oscillating between your conciliation as well as the barely veiled hazard allow Mr. Zhuoer explain hearing a number of the community's remarks.

In particular, the crystallization of an element of the critics all over management donations by a foundation based at Hong Kong reacted the daring CEO. Let the miners reassure by themselves, eventually, they might are able to select which jobs they desire distribute their particular share of reward. What if, on representation, no successful project happy the victorious miner? Don't stress, Mr. Zhuoer has clearly considered every little thing: all they should do is deliver the 12.5% of the mining incentive to an address for burn, where in actuality the tokens are damaged.

Obviously, in the extremely magnanimous impulse, Mr. Zhuoer additionally covers the actual quantity of the mining incentive that ought to be subtracted: he thinks that this figure might be decreased, specially just in case ofprice enhance from BCH. He also talked about a mining taxation that could slowly die out over time.

Finally, Jiang Zhuoer wishes this enhance becoming voted by minors through a 3-month vote, where the assistance of 2/3 regarding the processing energy of voters validate the suggestion. According to him, it is necessary that its minors just who choose their particular fate. But on the other hand, the Devil is within the details : in the eyes, voters really should not be simple miners just who switch their particular processing energy between BTC and BCH in line with the profitability of-the-moment, but fervent believers BCH usually, clearly, it doesn't count really.

Of course, The approach detailed doesnt call into concern ab muscles concept of the voluntary donation one good third of hashrate BCH would choose to enforce in the other countries in the minors. Leaving the choice between a forced donation and an destruction area of the coinbase reward will have the ability to laugh whenever confronted with the fact of "choice" leash.

Remember that considering that the community Bitcoin Cash reacted into the development, a few of the first support regarding the suggestion disengaged: Roger Ver for instance, withdrew through the team trying to enforce this share.

Bitcoin Cash is certainly not the actual only real community to explore these ways. Indeed, the Litecoin basis additionally recently debated the alternative of applying an equivalent taxation. So many altcoins trying to find their particular method whether or not this means slowly leaving the smallest amount of perfect of decentralization?

Read more from the original source:

Bitcoin Cash: debates tend to be raging all over mining tax - Sahiwal Tv

Roger Ver's mining pool Bitcoin.com has decided to not support a proposal that aims to redirect 12.5% of Bitcoin Cash block rewards to a development fund.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Bitcoin.com said it will "not go through with supporting any plan unless there is more agreement in the ecosystem such that the risk of a chain split is negligible."

"Bitcoin.com will not risk a chain split or a change to the underlying economics. In order to do this, any proposal will need to have as many people of economic weight on-board as possible, including businesses, exchanges, miners, and Bitcoin Cash implementations," the blog post stated.

Last week, mining pool BTC.TOP CEO Jiang Zhuoer announced the block reward cut petition in a blog post, stating that the move was to support the development of Bitcoin Cash infrastructure and threatening to orphan blocks that do not go with the proposal.

At the time, Bitcoin.com, Antpool, BTC.com, and ViaBTC all signed Jiang's petition, representing around 31.6% of the total Bitcoin Cash's hash rate. Bitcoin.com accounts for roughly 0.39% of the total Bitcoin Cash hash rate.

Read more:

Bitcoin.com withdraws from Bitcoin Cash proposal to divert part of block rewards to dev fund - Yahoo Finance

This week in crypto, experts at the WEF said that digital finance, crypto and blockchain-powered economics are sweeping through markets in the developing world unchallenged and that digital tokens could transform the world of business and art. While Binance aims to find more merchants for its P2P crypto trading platform, a resurfaced change in Binance whitepaper sparked transparency questions. We learned that Bitcoin's a step closer to Taproot; Bitcoin ETF are still far away; CME doubles Bitcoin options volume, dominating over Bakkt; Ripple discussed an IPO again and reduced sales of XRP from its escrow fund; developers believe that Ethereum real-world blockchain applications could come too late; BTC may have already entered the fourth bullish price cycle, and Block.one won't be launching Voice on EOS blockchain. Crypto derivatives market may be 'double the size of spot market in 2020, and 1.5 billion people might have CBDC in their wallets in 3 years.

Uzbekistan may see tax authorities waive taxes on crypto trading, Venezuela is in talks with Cuba about using the Petro, the South Korean government is reviewing a proposal that could see it introduce a tax on cryptos, and new Russian Prime Minister seems to want the government to adopt a crypto tax law by spring , but South Korean bankers are also concerned about Starbucks crypto threat. Lithuanian central bank says its limited edition digital LBcoin is ready for launch this spring, and Britains highest tax authority is cracking down on crypto tax evasion. Cryptoverse was stunned as a mining pool group signs a threat to Bitcoin Cash miners, Ethereum officially started the One Million Developer challenge, and Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff started another 'Proof of Keys' day, with the mystery of lost BTC solved soon after. Meanwhile, a Mexican firm offered crypto for the presidential plane, while Jihan Wu and Roger Ver stunned the Cryptoverse.

And now a carefully selected collection of jokes.

__________

Jus' sayin'.

__

Going in the opposite direction now.

__

Watch the latest reports by Block TV.

Because memes are both funny and simple. Here's an example.

__

This week demands an obligatory Schiff meme.

__

No. Two, at the very least.

__

Crypto hodlers after reading Schiff's tweets.

__

Is she trying to relate or out-tragic him?

__

You know it's true.

__

Yoouuu son of a bitcoin!

__

Veterans smelling an incoming scam shitcoin attack from a mile away.

__

And it flows into the ocean of my tears.

__

Living dangerously - short version.

__

Living dangerously - long version.

__

When you just want to explain.

__

Preparation 101.

__

Phase 1 of Bitcoin owning. Proceed to phase 2.

__

Phase 2 of Bitcoin owning. Return to phase 1.

__

Tough position.

__

Perfect and scientific.

__

"That is ridiculous!"

View post:

Transformation, Domination, Evasion, and 20 Crypto Jokes - Cryptonews

Source: iStock/Vitalij Sova

A pool of anonymous Bitcoin Cash (BCH) miners decided not to start the competing pool for the time being and will continue to support the BCH pools after supporters of the controversial proposal clarified their ideas.

The group believes that Bitcoin.com, an operator of a BCH mining pool, will convince other signatories to severely amend the proposal.

"We would also like to thank the community to be able to have such a civilized discussion over this issue," the European and North American miners added.

At pixel time (12:14 PM UTC), BCH trades at c. USD 368 and is down 0.5% in a day and up 7% in a week.

As reported, BTC.TOPs CEO Jiang Zhuoer offered to direct 12.5% of mining rewards to support the BCH infrastructure over a six-month period. Zhuoer's post included a threat to orphan the noncomplying BCH blocks (those blocks would no longer be included in the BCH blockchain, leaving a miner without the reward).

Meanwhile, Bitcoin.com, who also signed the proposal, later clarified that the proposal is not a tax, but "a service fee for the miners," as well as a temporary and reversible plan one still in development, with many questions waiting for the community to discuss them. The majority of the funds will not come through as an additional cost for existing BCH miners much of it will be paid for by Bitcoin miners and through the minor decrease in hash rate on BCH, it says.

It is a discussion at this point, so people should be free to discuss it however they would like, Roger Ver, CEO of Bitcoin.com, told Cryptonews.com, adding that "most of the BCH supporting miners mine BTC most of the time. As to how he came to be a signatory on this proposal, he said: I agreed to start the discussion for this proposal. Discussing and doing are two different things.

Meanwhile, the anonymous group of miners previously threatened that should the proposal go through as is, the group would launch a competing BCH pool, voluntarily donating 1% of income to development teams. We will continue to mine up to the hard fork, which will create our own chain after the fork due to the consensus rule change introduced by the signatories, said the miners before changing their minds.

Original post:

Competing Bitcoin Cash Mining Pool Averted 'For the Time Being' - Cryptonews

The 35th publication of CoinMetrics State Of The Network discusses the most massive hacks in the history of Bitcoin and the consequences they had on the worlds most popular cryptocurrency.

Some of the most significant disturbances in the Bitcoin ecosystem brought by the cyber-crimes discussed in this article, namely the Bitcoinica, Mt. Gox, Bitfinex, and Binance hack. These have had the largest fallouts within the Bitcoin community.

The Bitcoinica incident is the first one discussed in the article, and CoinMetrics sees it as the most influential violation of the Bitcoin market of all time. Bitcoinica was a trading platform that launched in 2011 and gained a large amount of support from the community during the early times.

But during 2012, the exchange ended up suffering several cascading compromises in its system that lead to a large amount of Bitcoin worth a near estimate of up to $650 million stolen.

The first failure that began the domino effect across a span fo just five months was the failure of the web host that Bitcoinica used: Linode. Bitcoinicas server targeted by an attacker who used a compromised Linode web portal and their wallet emptied draining 43,554 BTC ($213,886).

Then a few weeks later, the exchanges hot wallet was exploited, ending up with another 18,547 BTC ($92,061) stolen. Then, soon, Bitcoinicas source code was also leaked, and their old Mt. Gox API key unveiled.

Bitcoinica held some of their BTC on Mt. Gox, and their API key theft resulted in another 40,000 BTC ($305,236) stolen along with another $40,000 in cash. Luckily enough, Bitcoin prices continued rallying mostly ignorant to the hacks. Roger Ver, an early investor in Bitcoin, had about 24k BTC holdings in Bitcoinica and lost the most during the hacks.

Bitcoinicas source code leaks also brought forth many new exchanges that function successfully to this day that built using Bitcoinicas bases. The sudden death of a successful transaction also opened up space to plenty more competitors in the area.

The second major incident discussed in the report is the Mt. Gox hack. It was one of the most popular exchanges as Bitcoin began gaining traction in a global market and had a large trade volume for Bitcoin from 2010 to 2013.

Unlike most other transactions, Mt.Gox didnt go through a single devastating hack that ruined its industry presence. Throughout its life span, Mt. Gox suffered several hacks that eventually led to its demise in 2014.

The first hack saw 79,956 BTC ($70,000) taken out of Mt. Goxs wallet in 2011. Later during the same year, their hot wallet was hacked and gradually drained by the hacker without being noticed by the exchange.

By 2013, Mt. Gox had no more Bitcoin left to be stolen apart from that they held in cold storage. The exciting part is that the public became utterly aware of all the cascading hacks Mt. Gox had gone through, only in 2014, when the exchange stopped withdrawals. The prices of Bitcoin acted very volatile to these events and crashed by hundreds of dollars following awareness of what had happened.

The Mt. Gox hack crippled the price of Bitcoin severely during the period, and the cryptocurrency took more than three years to reach another high after the hack. But the entire incident and the number of failures that Mt. Gox endured brought full media attention and therefore introduced a large number of the population to Bitcoin.

The entire hack also affected the public outlook on Bitcoin severely as most people lost faith in what the cryptocurrency could be due to such vulnerabilities in the entities that were supposed to manage them.

The third major hack discussed in the CoinMetrics report is the Bitfinex exploit. Bitfinex is one of the exchanges that was built ground up using the leaked Bitcoinica source code and remains a viral and strong moving exchange to this date despite the hack.

In 2016, 119,756 Bitcoin stolen due to an API key compromised. The amount of BTC stolen was first unclear until on-chain analysis made to get more definite results. Bitcoin prices dropped by $200 right after the hack, but it got back up to pace in the coming months even though Bitfinex lost about 36% of its cash reserve.

The exchange did recover from the incident by cutting 36% of all balances from user accounts and offering them a BFX token for every dollar stolen or the option to convert their lost holdings into shares in their parent company iFinex Inc.

The final hack to be featured on the issue was the Binance hack last year in 2019 when 7,500 BTC withdrawn from their hot wallet. The hackers exploited various retail accounts to break through the withdrawal limit and fool Binances hot wallet processing system.

Although it posed a considerable loss for the exchange, they were well prepared to face such a situation with a Safe Asset Fund that they stored separately in cold storage from 10% of all their trading fees.

This allowed them to avoid insolvency during the epilogue of the theft. The hack also turned out to have little to no impact on the trading price of Bitcoin at the time as the cryptocurrency continued to rally into the $7,000 range after news of the hack.

The Binance hack was very complicated and well-orchestrated and yet so posed minimal risk to the market as the company managed to recover quickly from the hack.

This clearly shows that exchanges have come a long way since Bitoinica, which wholly dissolved and have engaged in bankruptcy proceedings to this date. Transactions have become more secure, and each hack has proven as a milestone in the growth of digital assets, although it has been a sufferable event for the victims.

See more here:

Issue 35 Of CoinMetrics State Of The Network Re-Examines Largest Bitcoin Hacks In Its History - The Coin Republic

Over the course of 2019, Bitcoin Cash had registered impressive adoption metrics in Australia. As reported previously, Roger Vers BCH was advancing its retail trade and outperforming the likes of even Bitcoin, ETH, and Litecoin by a huge margin in the land down under. According to the presented data, BCH had registered sales of $36,430 out of $39,405 worth of crypto-transactions in September 2019, equivalent to over 92 percent of the total retail sales.

However, according to a thread on Reddit, Bitcoin Cash may have altered some of these metrics to their own benefit.

The previously presented information had been compiled by an organization called BitcoinBCH.com, which aggregated its data from two sources, namely, TravelByBit and HULA. Here, it is important to note that HULA is controlled by BitcoinBCH.com as well.

The Redditor stated that the reports released by BitcoinBCH.com which indicated high BCH retail transactions had excluded non-BCH transactions, something the report failed to mention. He also found that BCHs TravelByBit analysis did not match the total number of transactions tallied on TravelByBits website.

The Redditor claimed that when he approached Hayden Otto, CEO of BitcoinBCH.com, about his recent findings, he was immediately banned from r/btc and r/bitcoincash, with all his posts on the thread deleted soon after.

According to him, Hayden Otto stated that the only data removed during the analysis were non-retail in nature. However, the Redditor argued,

The report does not mention any data being excluded at all and he still fails to explain why several businesses that are clearly retail (e.g. restaurants, cafes, markets) had tx excluded.

According to the Redditor, Otto also claimed that the report could not be wrong because it underwent an audit. However, in response, the Redditor explained that in order to justify their flawed methodology, BitcoinBCH.com hired an accountant from a Bitcoin BCH startup to conduct an audit of their October report. The Redditor added,

This is remarkable, because not only did their reported TBB totals still not match those from the TBB site their result was mathematically impossible. How so? No subset of TBB transaction in that month sums up to the total they reported. So even if they excluded retail transactions at will, they still must have messed up the sum.

AMBCrypto has reached out to Hayden Otto for his comments on the matter.

More:

Bitcoin Cashs adoption metrics for Australia accused of being fabricated - AMBCrypto

John McAfee has just backpedaled on one of the wildest wagers in the history of crypto. In his recent tweet, the cybersecurity tycoon makes it clear that his promise to eat his penis if the Bitcoin price doesn't go to $1 mln by Dec. 31, 2020, was simply a "ruse" that was meant to attract new users.

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Back in July 2017, less than six months before Bitcoin became the biggest topic worldwide, McAfee took to Twitter to make an unprecedented claim that he would eat his penis on national television if Bitcoin failed to reach $500,000. Five months later, he upped the ante with the now-famous $1 mln price target.

Throughout these years, McAfee continued to stand by his prediction. As reported by U.Today, he still insisted that BTC could end up in the seven-digit reality as of Dec. 13, 2019. At the time of writing, BTC is trading at$7,462, which means that its price would have to increase by13,286 percent in twelve monthsfor McAfee's body to remain safe.

His prediction became so popular that there is even the "Dickening" countdown till Dec. 31, 2020 (itis called afterthe reward "halvening" that will take place in May). However, now that McAfee claims that it was nothing but a ruse, this site might no longer be relevant.

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Moreover, the eccentric septuagenarianhas apparently had a change of heart about Bitcoin since he's now certain that the top cryptocurrency has "an ancient technology," and newer blockchains will effectively replace it. McAfee compared Bitcoin tothe FordModel T,which is generally considered to be the very first affordable car.

While McAfee himself did not mention any specific names in his tell-all tweet, the threadgot instantly swarmed with people who wanted to pitch their favorite cryptocurrencies from some top altcoins to obscure projects.

A bit later, he named privacy-focused coin Monero as the new clear winner.

See original here:

Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and Binance Leaders Asked To Help The Impacted by The Australian Fi - U.Today

Steve Anderrson Tuesday, 31 December 2019, 04:58 EST Modified date: Tuesday, 31 December 2019, 06:20 EST

As Craig Wright once said that, everyone would learn next year that there is a severe flaw in the BTC, and thus there will be no BTC next year.

Wright warned bitcoin miners that if they carried forward with their supporting for Roger Ver/Jihan Wu backed Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCH) over his own Bitcoin Satoshis Vision (BSV), then they would be ensuing hash war battle by selling off Bitcoins.

The warning by Wright is, however, to crash the price of Bitcoin. This is an addition to the fork war, which has taken place between two sides having different opinions.

If one goes by the reports, Rogers decision had outraged Craig Wright, and thus he sent a threatening mail to Ver. Roger Ver further presented the screenshot of the e-mail exposing the threats and insults, which Wright threw at him. He also asked him if he was Satoshi Nakamoto.

The e-mail filled with insults like saying that opting to shitcoins or ABC is welcoming bankruptcy.

Roger termed Craigs behavior as immature and uncivilized. He said that what Craig wrote was not something that a person in his forty is who is a mature businessperson would write.

Craigs step led various influencers to come up and speaking up about this issue either in support of him or against him.

Criticising what Wright said, McAfee also tweeted that the popularity of Bitcoin has been rising drastically since it released. Earlier, McAfee has predicted that by the end of 2020, the BTC price will hit $1 million. Additional to it, he also predicted that Altcoins like KTC and Apollo would witness a rise, which is going to be ten times more than what it is now.

Another leading analyst and influencer, Tom Lee, has also predicted that Bitcoin will see a rise in the coming years.

Mike Novogratz, the co-founder of cryptocurrency merchant bank Galaxy Digital, also predicts that bitcoin will hit 12k in 2020.

The maximum of the changes is affecting the trading in Bitcoin Cash in the hope that things would sort out themselves. They also need to avoid the double spend problems, which can cost them a few bucks during Ethereum/ Ethereum Classic split.

Well, a day left in ending 2019, it is yet to see, will he expose or all is just a hoax? However, Bitcoin is here to stay for long.

Read this article:

One Day Left For Craig Wright To Expose The Flaws Of Bitcoin - The Coin Republic

The global fast food giant Burger King now cooperates with the GoCrypto payment service and starts accepting Bitcoin Cash. A video retweeted by Roger Ver shows that now this is happening in Slovenia.

However, more locations are going to be added later on.

Cryptocurrency payments are becoming more and more popular as more merchants are collaborating with various payment services that allow paying with crypto using POS terminals. Those apps simply convert crypto coins to the local currency.

GoCrypto works in Slovenia, Croatia and Switzerland, helping various types of businesses to accept crypto Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin, Ether, GoC andEuro Token (SREUR).

So far, GoCrypto accepts crypto payments allowing customers to use Roger Vers Bitcoin.com wallet and Elly.

In summer 2018, the business world shivered as it heard that the largest fast food chain McDonald's announced the launch of the MacCoin. Their fears were in vain this was no crypto but the first global food-backed coin more like free burger vouchers to commemorate the anniversary of Big Mac in the form of electronic tokens. The world-famous Big Mac had been launched 50 years ago.

The tokens launched in 50 countries in nearly 14,000 restaurants. McDonalds has not yet expressed an intention of launching its own real blockchain-based crypto.

In September this year, the media announced that Burger King in Germany started accepting Bitcoin (with first experiments on that made as early as 2016 in the companys restaurants in the Netherlands), however,a company rep then said that Burger King no longer accepts BTC.

Follow this link:

Bitcoin Cash Accepted in Burger King as Crypto Adoption Spreads Wider - U.Today

BCH to Pass Bitcoins Market Cap?

Speaking with Forbes, Roger Ver, early Bitcoin adopter and long-time libertarian, said that he thinks that Bitcoin Cash (BCH) will eventually surpass BTC in terms of market capitalization, claiming that eventually, the latter cryptocurrency will only be seen as a speculative asset. Backing this point, he cited adoption.

Bitcoin.com is partnering with more household names to bring bitcoin cash usage to actual commerce for real people and real businesses. As that adoption of BCH-based commerce grows, so will its market cap

This comment comes shortly after he said he thinks Bitcoin Cash can appreciate by, uh, over 1,000 times in the coming years and decades:

The real interesting one is Bitcoin Cash. I think it has the ability to go up a thousand times where it is currently because its looking to become peer to peer electronic cash for the entire world. The smart money is going into Bitcoin Cash because it has the economic characteristics that made Bitcoin popular to begin with.

Ver isnt the only Bitcoin Cash optimist. Jihan Wu, the chief executive of Bitmain, has been quoted as saying that within the next few years, each BCH could be trading at $100,000, which would put it well past BTCs current market capitalization.

While Ver has belief in his statement, not everyone is convinced that Bitcoin Cash will outperform BTC by that much, if at all.

In the wake of his aforementioned interview on CNBC, the crypto community erupted, pledging not to take Vers rhetoric lying down. Dan Hedl, a long-time Bitcoiner and industry executive/entrepreneur, wrote on Twitter:

Hey @JoeSquawk whats up with this reporting on bcash by CNBC? Roger is saying factually incorrect information about adoption and identity.

Others touted this idea too, with industry commentator Vijay Boyapati drawing attention to a thread in which he stated that the argument that BCH should be used as a form of money rather than BTC is flawed:

[If you believed BCH could appreciate greatly,] there would be a massive opportunity cost to spending your tokens in exchange, and certainly much greater than any expected savings to be had by transacting in it rather than a traditional payment rail.

Theres also been an argument made that Bitcoin is simply superior to its estranged cousin because the chain has much more support from miners than BCH. Just look at the chart below, which shows that Bitcoins hash rate dwarfs that of Bitcoin Cash (and Bitcoin SV too).

More here:

Could Bitcoin Cash Surpass BTC? Roger Ver Thinks It Can Happen - Ethereum World News

Roger Ver, a co-founder of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and owner of Bitcoin.com, finally responded to criticism after listing the controversial altcoin, HEX. If you dont like HEX, dont trade it, he wrote on Reddit. The Bitcoin Cash community has since been up in arms that their projects founder has openly validated the highly controversial crypto project.

Crypto Twitter has been debating the nature of crypto influencer Richard Hearts latest project, HEX.

Pitched as a staking platform that starves scams of attention and referrers by using the same and better sales tactics they do, users send ETH to The Origin Address in exchange for the token. HEX holders are then promised 10,000x returns in under 2.5 years.

After digging through the documentation on the project, however, it becomes clear that Heart is in control of nearly half of the tokens sent to the address despite stating otherwise. It should also be noted that at the time of press, the ETH address attached to the project has recorded $5.7 million in incoming transactions.

Although the project features several other questionable components (i.e. a referral system, Adoption Amplifier, founders tax), the unknown owner of the Origin Address is an immediate red flag. Goldman Sats, a noted crypto commentator, put it best in an exhaustive Medium article on the project:

When Richard has been pressed on information about the Origin Address, he goes to lengths to stress that he doesnt own it, and he doesnt know who WILL own it. Listening to him describe it, you could wake up tomorrow to an unsolicited letter telling you YOU are the owner of the Hex Origin Address. This is a lie.

As seen in the Tweet above, Heart has also recruited the services of noted Bitconnect influencers Trevon James and Craig Grant. Bitconnect was an open-source crypto project released in 2016. In 2018, the platform shut down after it became clear that it was nothing more than an elaborate Ponzi scheme.

The inclusion of these two individuals has naturally led to even greater criticism from the crypto community.

In the latest HEX development, Roger Ver has now added the token to Bitcoin.coms exchange. Trading began on December 13, 2019, according to a press release. In that release, they remind users that if they are thinking about claiming HEX to be sure they use privacy tools to obfuscate your transaction history before taking any action that can possibly lead back to you. That could also be a general warning, however.

When visiting the r/BTC subreddit, a BCH-dominated community on Reddit, the criticism of the listing has been severe. One user writes that while they agree with [Roger Ver] and support [Ver] on the majority of [his] endeavors, this time [his] company is doing something inexcusable. Other comments describe worry that associating BCH with HEX will inevitably taint the credibility of the Bitcoin fork.

To this and other commentaries, Ver responded with a curt, if you dont like HEX, dont trade it.

Continue reading here:

Bitcoin.com Lists Ponzi-like Token HEX to the Dismay of BCH Fans - Crypto Briefing