Monthly Archives: May 2021

Bitcoin SV: The Original Bitcoin

By Makkie Maclang, CoinGeek

Bitcoin will forever be remembered throughout history as the pioneer in digital currencies. Before Ethereum, Litecoin, Binance Coin, Cardano and Tether came into existence, there was Bitcoin. It has been more than a decade since the Bitcoin white paper, entitled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, was published on Oct. 31, 2008 under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. However, it only reached mass consciousness in 2017 when its value skyrocketed to $20,000.

Bitcoin is a triadic term that denotes a digital coin, a set-in-stone protocol and a public blockchain network. While Bitcoin has since become a household name and blockchain has been gaining ground in the past few years as a viable technology for businesses in various industries, such as healthcare, gaming, social media, marketing, supply chain and real estate, not many people know about their true history and real value.

Bitcoin History

The first ever person-to-person Bitcoin transaction was completed on Jan. 12, 2009 when Nakamoto successfully sent 10 bitcoins to cryptographer and developer Hal Finney. It was a year after, on May 22, 2010, that the first documented Bitcoin transaction was created when early bitcoin mining aficionado Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizza pies for 10,000 bitcoins - worth about $25 total at that time. Now, 10,000 bitcoins would amount to almost $600 million.

From its humble beginnings, Bitcoins value and popularity steadily started to rise; and people became increasingly curious as to who Nakamoto was as his identity remained a mystery. Public interest was so high that on Mar. 6, 2014, Newsweek published the lengthy investigative article The Face Behind Bitcoin that identified Dorian Nakamoto, a Japanese-American engineer living in California, as the creator of the global phenomenon.

The next day, Satoshi Nakamotos account, which had been dormant since 2009, on the P2P Foundation website suddenly became active. Nakamoto simply replied, I am not Dorian Nakamoto, in one of his old posts dated Feb. 11, 2009. In 2015, a year full of upheaval in bitcoin, Wired and Gizmodo published leaked documents and headline stories claiming the largely unknown Dr. Craig S. Wright was Satoshi Nakamoto - effectively doxing him and threatening the well-being of his business, friends and family. This prompted a media frenzy which culminated in the removal of Gavin Andresen from the helm of Bitcoin Core, and caused a fury of problems for Wright who very clearly did not want to be a public figure at the time.

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On May 2, 2016, the confusion came to an end when Wright, Chief Scientist of UK-based Bitcoin research company nChain, addressed the world and admitted on BBC News that he was indeed Satoshi Nakamoto.

Over the years, there has been an underlying dispute within the Bitcoin community over the scalability of its blockchain. The conflict reached its peak in 2017. Termed as the Bitcoin scaling war, Bitcoin split into Bitcoin Core (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH), with advocates of the former labeled as small blockers and the latter big blockers. These labels denote those who did not believe in scaling and opted to keep Bitcoins 1MB block size cap, and those who believed that increasing it is the only answer for Bitcoin to move forward.

For Bitcoin beginners, a blockchain is a distributed ledger that records validated transactions on data blocks, which are then linked together to form a chain. A master copy of the data, updated in near real time, is stored on all nodes (or miners) on the network. All miners also need to agree if ever a change is going to be made, making data practically impossible to be manipulated. Hence, data is distributed and the network is decentralized. In order to scale, the block size limit needs to be raised, enabling each block to contain more data and transactions.

At the height of the scaling war in 2017, Wright could not take what was happening to his creation anymore. With Bitcoin nurturing a reputation for being a network focused exclusively on large, slow and expensive (but presumably unstoppable) transactions, the only viable use cases for the network were becoming evasive savings and large-scale criminal commerce. Against this backdrop, Wright made a fiery, surprise speech at the Arnhem conference in July 2017.

Satoshi Nakamoto didnt like the crime culture of Bitcoin; however, it was the predominant cultural narrative. Hey, we need a lot of distributed nodes, we need to make sure bitcoin cant be censored, and to make sure we cant censor it, we need to make it slow and small enough for people to run their own nodes and create their notion of perfect security, CoinGeek Chief Historian Kurt Wuckert Jr. said.From the moment Wright made his surprise appearance in Arnhem, he steadily returned to the Bitcoin community and became active in order to fix Bitcoin and get it back on track - focusing on the technology, the economics and the culture that makes Bitcoin valuable. In 2018, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was again embroiled in conflict over the scaling issue. While BCH had scaled its block size limit set to 32MB, many believed that that was enough. Again, some bitcoiners fought against the need for continuing to scale, while others wanted to pursue Wrights vision of infinite scalability. In late 2018, BCH again split and Bitcoin SV (BSV) emerged from the battle.

What is Bitcoin SV (BSV)?

With SV standing for Satoshi Vision, it is clear that BSV is all about restoring Bitcoin to what Wright originally intended it to be. Since its inception, BSV has been dubbed as the original Bitcoin. About a year after the split, the Genesis Upgrade was released on Feb. 4, 2020, which successfully restored Bitcoins original, set-in-stone protocol, as close as possible to how it was designed in the white paper. Aside from scalability, Bitcoins changing protocol and the nature of its governance has been a major issue during the scaling wars. A protocol that is often changed means applications built upon it need to be adjusted as well. Applications would need to stop running and developers would require time and money in order to fully adapt to the new rules. Furthermore, time-locked contracts or escrowed bitcoins were impossible to implement with the shifting sands of the protocol wars - breaking many commercial use cases. With a fixed protocol, developers can now build a variety of applications and platforms on the Bitcoin SV blockchain without having to worry about changes, just like how the Internet protocol created a trustworthy online economy.

What sets BSV apart from other digital currencies?

Unlike other digital currencies where the coin is the product and communities focus on absorbing value for holders of the coin during frothy bull market cycles, BSV is built to allow the external creation of value based on four pillars: a stable protocol, a massively scalable blockchain, security beyond sufficiency and safe instant transactions.

With the original Bitcoin protocol set in stone, BSV provides a rock-solid foundation upon which developers can build whatever application or software that suits their needs. The Genesis Upgrade also unlocked the capability of BSV for unbounded scalability and use of the BSV for monetized, general-purpose computation (like Ethereum but without limits!)

Since then, the BSV network has continued to scale massively; and this is evidenced by its test network recording 16,415,525 transactions in a single block the size of 3.15GB at an average transaction fee of 0.00000197 BSV on Feb. 3, 2021. This proves that micropayments and financial services can be rendered at a very low cost compared to Western Union or PayPal.

Aside from implementing the first ever, fully security-audited Bitcoin node software, BSVs security is also the only variant of bitcoin that can benefit from the economic security inherent to bitcoin as a complete system without arbitrary limits and compounding dependencies. BSV is public by nature and abides by the rule of law.

Per the Bitcoin White Paper, all transactions and changes thereof are broadcasted to all nodes on the network. Their active participation in mining and governance make it impossible for an attacker to successfully conduct a 51% attack, which is the name of an act whereby malicious actors gain control of the blockchain; disrupting and reversing transactions for the sake of theft or vandalism of the blockchain ledger. The public blockchain also prevents criminal activities as evidence of any illegal dealing is publicly accessible. All of these attributes, which other blockchain networks seek to remove from their competing protocols, make instant transactions on BSV uniquely safe and reliable.

Enterprise Blockchain Solutions

The Genesis Upgrade is just the first step towards BSVs grand vision of making it an enterprise blockchain that can be globally adopted by businesses. At present, there are more than 400 projects and ventures being built on the BSV blockchain.

US-based EHR Data, Veridat and VXpass are each developing their own healthcare data management platforms; Norway-based UNISOTs Seafoodchain is already providing solutions to the seafood supply chain; Scotland-based Recycle SV has created an app that streamlines and incentivizes the recycling process; and Australian-based firm LAYER2 Technologies has already successfully tested out voting platform B-Vote to accommodate the countrys entire population.

These are just a small number of projects on the BSV blockchain that spans many countries and industries, and blockchain conferences are continuously being held to foster global awareness.

The Original Bitcoin

Bitcoin has been misused throughout the years and has deviated from its creators original vision. And although more than a decade late, Wright has finally stepped up to rightfully claim what was his and steer the project back toward the creation of more economic and personal freedom. He is doing this by giving the world the tools to do business more efficiently and by giving people ownership of their data with increased privacy and utility - only possible with the power of Bitcoin SV.

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2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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Bitcoin SV: The Original Bitcoin - Yahoo Finance

Bitcoin may be struggling to break back above $60,000, but Morgan Creek Capital Management's Mark Yusko is aiming even higher.

The investment management firm's founder and chief investment officer predicts the cryptocurrency could reach $250,000 within five years. He says the key is it's so much more than just a token of value something he believes many investors overlook and underestimate.

"It's just about network adoption and increased usage," Yusko told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Friday. "This is a network and networks grow in an exponential way. This is the fastest network in history to a trillion dollars of value, right on the heels of the FAANGS that took, you know, 15 to 20 years depending on which one you look at."

Yusko bases his $250k target on a gold equivalence. If gold's monetary value is $4 trillion, then digital gold should move up to that total a sum that puts the price at a quarter of a $1 million per coin.

"What people miss is this is a technological evolution of computing power that isn't going away," he said. "It is a powerful computing network that is going to become the base layer protocol for the Internet of value."

It's not just bitcoin that has rallied this year. Litecoin and Ethereum are both up triple digits, while 'meme' crypto Dogecoin has gained more than 13,000%.

Bitcoin is still the gold standard in the crypto world, though, says Yusko. He likens it to the way in which the internet functions. Bitcoin is the base layer protocol like TCP/IP, the foundation that allows computers to connect and communicate, while a crypto like Ethereum is akin to 'www dot', the "toolkit" to build upon that foundation.

"So, yes, there's room for a couple of protocols to survive, but there are 1000s of coins and Doge is in that category that really are useless, they're just utility tokens that have no underlying value or use case and they'll eventually disappear," said Yusko.

Bitcoin is up 98% in 2021. It has struggled in the past month, though, rising little more than 2%.

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This bitcoin misconception could be what takes it to $250,000, according to Morgan Creeks Yusko - CNBC

Is there a bitcoin supply shortage on exchanges?

Yes and no.

The bitcoin balance on exchanges has received a lot of attention during this bull run because the change in these balances sticks out. In previous bull runs, what can be observed is that, often, with bitcoins price increasing, the bitcoin balance on exchanges has increased. This can be seen in Figure 1 where Glassnode has compiled the addresses of spot exchanges holding bitcoin and aggregated them.

Even with bitcoins price going sideways or down, historically, the trend has been upward. This trend has reversed during this bull run, and since March 2020, the bitcoin balance on exchanges has been in a declining trend. This trend has been going on for over a year now. Compared to that in, or right before, the last bull run, the fall in exchange balance from July to December 2016 lasted only six months, before taking off in 2017 with bitcoins price taking off as well. If the underlying dynamics have not changed, and the exchange balance drop in 2016 and what followed in 2017 is an indication, the prolonged decline in exchange balances this time might be a set up for a major bull run. This is not the topic of this article, but that trend is majorly driven by outflows from Coinbase and thus highly likely by institutional and large investors. This indicates that bitcoins might not flow back to exchanges in bigger amounts any time soon before hitting this cycles top. So the patterns might not repeat as in 2016/2017, and bitcoin could hit a new all-time high with the bitcoin balance on exchanges declining.

Figure 1. Bitcoin: Balance on Exchanges (Stacked) August 17, 2011April 19, 2021

Opposed to Coinbase, for example, Binance has seen strong inflows of bitcoin more recently. This is most likely retail depositing bitcoin on Binance to trade altcoins.

The general bitcoin supply drop on exchanges has led many people in the community (myself included) to talk about a supply shortage or even supply squeeze of bitcoin that will lead bitcoins price to inevitably shoot up at some point, when supply dries up. While it is true that bitcoins supply is dropping, once you look at the supply held on exchanges in USD terms the picture looks a bit different. In Figure 2, both the bitcoin balance on exchanges and the bitcoin balance on exchanges in terms of USD is shown from 2017 onward. From the first glance at the graph, it appears that, in USD terms, we cant really talk about a supply shortage, let alone supply squeeze on exchanges. With bitoins price taking off in 2020, the supply on exchanges in USD has also been shooting up.

Figure 2. Bitcoin balance on exchanges in BTC and in USD January 1, 2017April 19, 2021. BTC Balance on exchanges (Source: Glassnode), BTC price in USD (Source: Investing.com)

Though the supply increase in USD terms this halving cycle looks impressive, particularly compared to that in 2017, it is also interesting to look at the changes in relative terms. In Table 1, you can see the minimum and maximum exchange balance during halving cycle 1 (November 28, 2012July 8, 2016), halving cycle 2 (July 9, 2016May 10, 2020) and the present halving cycle that started on May 11, 2020.

I have calculated how much the supply has increased from the minimum to the maximum 344 days into each halving cycle; as of the time of this writing, we are now 344 days into the third halving (April 19, 2020). You will notice that, in cycle 1, the increase has been quite massive compared to the other ones. As I show in my article, Halving Cycles and the Bitcoin Price, cycle 1 has been rather exceptional in terms of price performance, so that number does not seem that relevant as a guide.

The changes in cycle 2 are more relevant, however. In the present cycle (up until the current date, April 19, 2020), the supply in USD went up roughly six times, while in cycle 2, it increased by nearly eight times. This seems to be a substantial gap, as the gap not only is influenced by the bitcoin balance on exchanges but also by the increase in prices. While the drop in bitcoin balances on exchanges is increasing that gap, an increase in bitcoins price is narrowing it. In the present cycle, bitcoin is outperforming cycle 2 price-wise. Now 344 days into this cycle, bitcoins price increased by nearly 550%, while in cycle 2 it only increased by roughly 307% over the same time span. This means that the gap would have been much bigger with a similar price performance as in cycle 2.

Table 1. Exchange Supply Calculations in USD terms for the halving cycles 344 days into the cycle. BTC Balance on exchanges (Source: Glassnode), BTC price in USD (Source: Investing.com)

To account for that, I have calculated the exchange balance gap for this cycle by adjusting for cycle 2 prices in Table 2. The minimum balance in USD terms on exchanges coincides with day one of this halving cycle. At that time, there were roughly 2,888,135 bitcoin on spot exchanges. This amount of bitcoin is then multiplied by the price of bitcoin at day one during cycle 2. This gives us an idea of how much the minimum balance on exchanges would have been in terms of USD at cycle 2 prices. I have done the same for the maximum balance on exchanges. The maximum balance on exchanges in terms of USD this cycle has been on day 338 with roughly 2,395,780 bitcoin, which is substantially lower than on day one. I have now multiplied this amount of bitcoin with the price of bitcoin 338 days into cycle 2. With that, I have minimum and maximum numbers that are adjusted for cycle 2s prices. These allow me to calculate a hypothetical supply change and to calculate the supply gap between both cycles. Adjusted for cycle 2s prices, the supply on exchanges in USD terms has only increased roughly 3.8 times versus 6.1 times without adjustments. This is a large difference. Compared to the nearly eight times increase in cycle 2 from Table 1, we can really begin to speak about a bitcoin exchange balance supply shortage here.

Table 2. Present Cycle Statistics Adjusted for Cycle 2 Prices. BTC Balance on exchanges (Source: Glassnode), BTC price in USD (Source: Investing.com)

While other factors at play could explain the difference in price performance of the two cycles, the drop in bitcoin supply on spot exchanges is majorly driven by large-scale investors and Coinbase seems to play a key factor.

To conclude, purely looking at the bitcoin balance on exchanges, we can observe a clear trend in this cycle where the supply keeps falling. On the other hand, looking at bitcoins supply in USD terms, the trend is upward, driven by bitcoins price performance. This price performance is, of course, not externally driven and influenced by the supply on exchanges. As I have shown, the gap in USD terms is already substantial without adjusting for prices and, after adjusting for cycle 2 prices, the supply gap in USD terms becomes very large (an increase of nearly eight times in cycle 2 versus an increase of less than four times this cycle). So, once we look at relative terms between the present cycle and cycle 2, there also seems to be a supply shortage in USD terms and not only in terms of bitcoin. Following this, the bitcoin balance on exchanges is an essential metric during this cycle, which warrants a closer look to see where bitcoin is headed next and, as explained earlier, could be a potential setup for a major bull run.

This is a guest post by Jan Wuestenfeld. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Is There A Bitcoin Supply Shortage? - Bitcoin Magazine

LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin hit a record high just shy of $65,000 last month, the latest landmark on its march to wider acceptance. A growing embrace by major companies and financial firms, particularly in the United States, have fuelled its gains.

FILE PHOTO: The logo of the Bitcoin digital currency is seen in a shop in Marseille, France, February 7, 2021. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

Here are some of the steps that have pushed the worlds largest cryptocurrency closer to the mainstream this year:

May 2021:

* Auction house Sothebys says it would accept bitcoin and second-largest cryptocurrency ethereum as payment for a work by street artist Banksy, a first for a physical art auction.

April 2021:

* Swiss arm of French insurer AXA allows its customers to pay for non-life insurance products with bitcoin here.

March 2021:

* PayPal Holdings Inc allows U.S. consumers to use their cryptocurrency holdings to pay at millions of its online merchants globally.

* Tesla Inc customers can now buy its electric vehicles with bitcoin, its boss Elon Musk says.

Feb. 2021:

* Mastercard Inc unveils plans to support cryptocurrency payments across its network.

* Bank of NY Mellon Corp announces a new unit aimed at helping clients trade and own cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.

* Canadas main securities regulator clears the launch of the Purpose Bitcoin ETF, the worlds first bitcoin exchange traded fund.

May 2021:

* The S&P Dow Jones Indices launches a series of cryptocurrency indices, tracking bitcoin and other major tokens, with plans to add other coins later this year.

April 2021:

* U.S. digital wealth manager Wealthfront says it will start allowing clients to invest in cryptocurrencies later this year, a shift for the California startup whose investment strategy has traditionally been more conservative.

* Inflows into cryptocurrency funds and products hit a record $4.5 billion in the first quarter, digital asset manager CoinShares says.

* UK-based hedge fund Brevan Howard sets up a new fund to invest in digital assets, focusing on a long-only range of digital assets including bitcoin, according to a personal familiar with the matter.

* U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc COIN.O was valued at $86 billion at the end of its Nasdaq debut, the biggest listing yet by a crypto company.

* U.S. business software firm MicroStrategy Inc, a major investor in cryptocurrency since 2020, says it now holds 91,579 bitcoin.

March 2021:

* Morgan Stanley becomes the first big U.S. bank to offer its wealth management clients access to bitcoin funds, CNBC reported.

* Goldman Sachs Group Inc reopens its crypto trading desk and says it will offer investments in bitcoin and other digital assets to its wealth management clients from the second quarter.

* Daniel Loebs hedge fund Third Point uses as a custodian cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc, a regulatory filing shows.

Feb. 2021:

* Carmaker Tesla Inc announces it bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin and says it will soon accept the cryptocurrency as payment for its vehicles.

Compiled by Tom Wilson, Editing by William Maclean

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Factbox: Bitcoin's march towards the mainstream - Reuters

While financial institutions like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citi and nowUBSare leaping into the space,there is also a lot of less traditional news happening.

Dont miss out on how smart money is playing the crypto game. Subscribe to our premium newsletter - Crypto Investor.

Elon Musk wants to literally bring Dogecoin to the moon, Mark Zuckerberg has apparently named his goat Bitcoin, Tom Brady may be buying Bitcoin and Carole Baskin is starting her own cryptocurrency.

UBS recently said in a statement that it is considering offering cryptocurrency investment products for its clients.

We are monitoring the developments in the field of digital assets closely. Importantly, we are most interested in the technology which underpins digital assets, namely the distributed ledger technology."

According to Bloomberg, the company has concerns that it could lose clients should it not offer crypto products. In the last year, nearly every large financial institution has announced some level of crypto products for its investors either directly or indirectly through third parties.

UBS joins in on the trend of adoption among the largest financial institutions in the world.

Dogecoin has exploded in value over the last few months. At one point last week, the crypto was up well over 20,000% on the year. Now, some have had expressed concern over its massive increase.

These concerns range from its fundamentals when compared to other more popular cryptos like Bitcoin as well as the fact that 0.002% of Dogecoin wallets hold 2/3rds of the coin's total supply. With so much of the supply in so few people's hands, fears of centralization and whale pump and dumps are growing.

But Dogecoin's shaky fundamentals and meteoric rise aren't the only things getting the crypto in the headlines. Elon Musk has constantly been referencing the crypto, even using it as a topic in skits during his SNL appearance.

Recently, SpaceX announced that it would begin accepting Dogecoin as payment for its 'DOGE-1' mission. The Dogecoin-funded mission will launch a satellite with the company's Falcon 9 rocket to "obtain lunar-spatial intelligence from sensors and cameras on-board with integrated communications and computational systems.

SpaceX's vice president, Tom Ochinero, said that DOGE-1will demonstrate the application of cryptocurrency beyond Earth orbit and set the foundation for interplanetary commerce.

Musk even sent a tweet saying that SpaceX would literally put Dogecoin on the moon.

SpaceX is going to put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moon

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 1, 2021

The cryptocurrency community has always drooled over the news of the next billionaire or company to buy Bitcoin. Recently, people have been wondering if Facebook could be getting involved. There were lots of rumors that Facebook would reveal Bitcoin holdings in its latest earnings report, but those rumors turned out to be false.

Yesterday Mark Zuckerberg posted a picture to his Facebook of his goats who he has named Max and Bitcoin, which only fueled the speculative fire.

https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/1391887632322473984/photo/1

This post caused a Twitter storm from the crypto community. Popular crypto-Twitter influencer, Anothony Pompliano, thought that the combination of the names 'Max' and 'Bitcoin' could be a hint that Zuckerberg is a Bitcoin maximalist.

Is Mark Zuckerberg telling us he is a bitcoin maximalist with the names of his goats? ? pic.twitter.com/GKlMdqdeXJ

— Anthony Pompliano ? (@APompliano) May 10, 2021

Others feared that Zuckerberg could eat the goats after it was brought up that he had once butchered and served a goat for a meal with Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey. At the time, Zuckerberg was only eating meat that he himself had butchered as opposed to purchasing meat at the store.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Dorsey said,"We go in the dining room, He puts the goat down. It was cold. That was memorable. I don't know if it went back in the oven. I just ate my salad."

Tom Brady recently added the classic crypto-Twitter laser eyes to his profile picture. The trend started on Twitter when crypto influencers began saying #lasereyesuntil100. This meant that they would have laser eyes until Bitcoin reached $100,000. But why does Tom Brady have them?

#NewProfilePic pic.twitter.com/W1UQ4yoQHz

— Tom Brady (@TomBrady) May 10, 2021

Jason Yanowitz, the co-founder of Blockworks, sent a tweet out saying "Rumor has it @TomBrady is loading up on Bitcoin. Retweet if you think the GOAT should turn on laser eyes. Lets make it happen."

Attached to the post was an edited picture of Brady with laser eyes which Brady later made his profile picture. While Brady could very well own some Bitcoin, he could have chosen the new picture due to his new NFT platform called Autograph.

Autograph's CEO and co-founder, Dillon Rosenblatt, said that"Autograph will bring together some of the world's most iconic names and brands with best in class digital artists to ideate, create and launch NFTs and ground-breaking experiences to a community of fans and collectors."

During the Q&A section of Palantir's earnings call, an investor asked if the company would consider holding Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies on its balance sheet.

In response, Palantir's CFO, David Glazer said, "The short answer is yes. We're thinking about it and we've even discussed it internally."

Glazer also noted that the company accepts Bitcoin as payment already.

"On the other side of that, in terms of accepting Bitcoin from our customers, we do accept it as a form of payment. We're open for business there."

Glazer's comments solidify the company's name on a growing list of companies that accept and hold Bitcoin.

On Wednesday of last week, some strange news hit the crypto world. Carole Baskin, the reality star made famous from the hit show, Tiger King, which aired on Netflix early in the pandemic, announced that she is launching her own cryptocurrency.

Baskin said her new crypto, known as$CAT, "is not a currency for investment, but rather is a purr-ency of our fans to show their love for the cats. Future plans include a big cat metaverse for virtual visits with the cats and NFTs, which are launching in about two weeks."

Baskin's new coin is listed on Rally.io, a platform that lets creators and artists launch NFTs and cryptocurrencies using the Ethereum blockchain.

Im investigating cryptocurrencies because I am concerned about the volume of US dollars that are being printed and distributed with nothing to back them up. I like the idea of putting the power of money in the hands of the people, rather than banks and governments," said Baskin.

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Crypto This Week: Mark Zuckerberg Names His Goat Bitcoin and Dogecoin Goes to the Moon - TheStreet

A representation of virtual currency Bitcoin is seen in front of a stock graph in this illustration taken January 8, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

Exchange operator CME Group Inc (CME.O) said on Tuesday more than 100,000 micro bitcoin futures were traded in the first six days after the contract's launch.

The micro contract is aimed at smaller, sophisticated, active traders, and represents 1/10th of a bitcoin, versus the more pricey regular contract, which represents 5 bitcoins.

"Together with our existing, full-sized Bitcoin futures, this new, smaller contract further strengthens our ability to help a broad array of clients, from institutions to sophisticated, active traders, to manage their bitcoin price risk," said Tim McCourt, CME's Global Head of Equity Index and Alternative Investment Products.

Bitcoin , the largest cryptocurrency, was trading slightly above $55,000 early on Tuesday, well off its all-time high of nearly $65,000 hit on April 14.

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CME says more than 100000 micro bitcoin futures traded in first six days - Reuters

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Exciting, mysterious and highly volatile, Bitcoin is hard to ignore after the decade it just had. The cryptocurrency has demolished the stock market, the housing market, precious metals and other common investments since its emergence in 2009. But the 2010s were also a roller coaster of extraordinary highs and lows for Bitcoin, not to mention scandals in the crypto world, frauds, scams and increased heat from regulators. Is Bitcoin a good investment or a dangerous speculative bubble? GOBankingRates asked the experts for both sides of the digital coin.

Mark Cuban: Bitcoin Is Exactly like the Dot Com Bubble

Privacy is Bitcoins biggest advantage over traditional financial transactions. That, along with its loose regulations and exchange-rate perks, makes it a medium of exchange whose popularity shows no sign of waning.

Read: 4 Investing Lessons the Pandemic Has Taught Us

Bitcoin is definitely a good investment, said James Page, a cryptocurrency technical writer and executive for Cryptohead. First of all, bitcoin payments are not only cost-effective, but you dont lose money on exchange rates, like on a regular currency. Another benefit is that it isnt regulated by any central authority or bank, which gives all the power to bitcoin users and miners. Investors now are in dire need of privacy given how volatile security is, and Bitcoin being a secured market makes it a top choice for investment.

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, if you cant explain it to a 6-year-old, you dont understand it yourself. Do you know anyone who could explain cryptocurrency to a 6-year-old? The very concept of a currency not backed by a government or financial institution is completely alien to most, as is the technology used to develop it, the way its mined and the market forces that give it its value. Expect to put in some work in the research and education department if youre going to be a competent investor.

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Investing for Beginners: What First-Time Investors Need To Know

Its essential to understand how Bitcoin works before investing any money, said Linda Chavez, founder and CEO of Seniors Life Insurance Finder. Bitcoin is in its infancy and it can take a few months to understand the actual impact Bitcoin can have on the world. Take some time to understand Bitcoin, how it works, how to secure bitcoins and about how Bitcoin differs from fiat money.

After 10 years of results, one thing is certain its hard to argue with Bitcoins success.

Find Out: Ways Investing Will Change in the Next 25 Years

Without a doubt, Bitcoin has been the investment of the decade, outperforming the stock market, real estate and precious metals, said Rob Zel, founder of the crypto exchange bitni.com. It may even turn out to be the investment of the century. Whether Bitcoin continues to perform depends on continued mainstream adoptionit has to be used in order for it to have value. The recent adoption of Bitcoin by PayPal is a huge step forward, allowing millions of sellers to accept crypto, and this announcement was likely a factor in the recent price rally. If these trends continue, it is likely Bitcoins price will continue to rise.

For mainstream investors, cryptocurrency offers neither the stability nor the familiarity of traditional investments like stocks or gold.

Did You Know: The Most Fascinating Things You Never Knew You Could Invest In

Due to its volatility, lack of regulation across global markets, and the potential to be disrupted, it has its weak points that cannot be ignored, said Ian Khan, director of the documentary Blockchain City on Amazon Prime. High-risk tolerant investors may, however, find it an interesting asset class to look into.

Braden Weinstock is the former COO of Paxful, one of the worlds largest peer-to-peer crypto marketplaces, and a former employee of Bridgewater Associates, the worlds largest hedge fund. He sums it up neatly in describing Bitcoin as an entity in flux with both potential and pitfalls.

Find Out: Do You Invest Like These Millionaire Stars?

Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency built on blockchain technology, is a new way to operationalize how the financial system works that has proven itself as a viable store of wealth in our digital world, Weinstock said. Right now it behaves like a volatile, high-risk investment with a similar profile to alternative asset classesbut it can function like money to facilitate payments that can bring billions of unbanked dollars around the world into the financial system. In that respect, it is cheaper, faster and more secure than other forms of payment. Bitcoin itself is also protected against inflation since the supply is limited. I believe Bitcoin is a good investment that has a place as a minority positionless than 5%of a broader balanced portfolio strategy to be held for the long term.

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Last updated: May 11, 2021

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Why Some Money Experts Believe In Bitcoin and Others Dont

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Why Some Money Experts Believe In Bitcoin and Others Dont - Yahoo Finance

Bitcoin has a fungibility issue; it is transparent, which can be both good and bad. Transparency allows everyone to check how many bitcoin are in circulation and to ensure that nobody is cheating.

But it also allows bad actors (such as governments) to monitor the chain and compromise users' privacy.

When a new user buys bitcoin using a regulated, know your customer (KYC) exchange, his information (including Bitcoin address, government ID and other identifying information) is being provided to his local government. This information allows them to view the activity of his wallet, since his coins are linked to his identity. It also allows easier seizure in case of a government ban on bitcoin.

This is obviously dangerous, especially if you live under an authoritarian government. There are options available for buying bitcoin without revealing your identity and compromising your privacy, but those are less popular and are usually harder to follow.

This calls for a privacy standard in Bitcoin: Where a majority of wallets enable privacy features by default, making it much harder for chain analysis firms to link transactions and wallets to real-life identities and/or previous transactions. Users must make sure each and every one of our transactions are private. This can be achieved by utilizing tools like CoinJoins, PayJoins and other privacy enhancing techniques. While these tools are no silver bullet, using them in the right way can allow users to achieve a remarkable amount of privacy. Stealth addresses also have an important role in the privacy standard, as they allow users to share their addresses without needing to worry about them being linked to their digital or physical identity. Running your own node will also play an important part, dramatically reducing the possibility that a node will be used to link your transaction history to your real-life IP address, which can be used to deanonymize your transactions.

If we are able to do that, we will be able to disarm chain analysis companies. Chain analysis firms specialize in invading Bitcoin users' privacy. They do it using publicly available on-chain data and then cross reference it with other data, such as KYC records, in order to establish a deterministic link between a user's wallet activity and his real-life identity.

The worst thing about those companies is that they don't work exclusively for governments, they work with whoever is willing to pay them. Whether it's a government, advertising company or a creepy stalker, it doesn't matter to them. Those companies are pure poison for Bitcoin and are completely unnecessary in the Bitcoin ecosystem; they only bring harm and suffering to it.

There are plenty of users that are targeted by these companies simply because they stated they hate the idea of chain surveillance; a good example for this would be DarkDotFail's donation address being flagged in multiple exchanges that have a partnership with these companies. Chain surveillance is not about money laundering, crime or any other illegal activity, it's about creating an age where nobody has the right to keep their finances private. A Bitcoin privacy standard aims to kill these purely evil companies; but this requires the Bitcoin community to come together, put the ego aside and work together to create, use and promote tools that will enable this effort.

The hardest part of standardizing Bitcoin privacy would be making people acknowledge Bitcoin's faults when it comes to privacy. Many will just avoid talking about it, and some don't even know it exists! Creating such a standard would require large community consensus, not because we need to change the protocol, but because we need to make people acknowledge the fact that their privacy is being compromised. A privacy standard would also discourage discrimination against those who want to keep their bitcoin finances private (see this post).

They can censor a minority but not a majority.

We need more wallets like this, and more enthusiasm toward building and using Bitcoin privacy tools. Number-go-up is not all that matters in this peaceful revolution; privacy matters too.

This is a guest post by Yonatan. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

Read the original here:
A Privacy Standard In Bitcoin, And How It Will Protect Bitcoin Users - Bitcoin Magazine

Cryptocurrency traders awoke to an altcoin bonanza as a handful of meme tokens, along with some of the more established projects, staged double-digit rallies while Bitcoin (BTC) price slowly recovers to the $57,000 level.

The biggest event generating conversations across the crypto sector and social media is the rise of dog-themed tokens inspired by the recent mega rally from Dogecoin (DOGE). The more than 20,000% rally from DOGE has shocked value investors across the world and many Bitcoin maximalist and equities traders are scratching their heads in confusion, given that DOGE was originally created as a simple joke.

While DOGE has experienced a 40% pullback since reaching an all-time high at $0.74 on May 8, other canine-themed tokens have jumped out ahead of the pack to take the lead while Dogecoin takes a breather.

Demand for Shiba Inu (SHIB) has been so intense that buyers overwhelmed the Binance system with deposits, causing the top exchange to run out of deposit addresses, while the Binance Smart Chain-based Australian Safe Shepherd (ASS) token has gained more than 400% in 24-hours. The Elon Musk-inspired Dogelon Mars (ELON) has al rallied 170%.

While Ether (ETH) continues to hold the $4,000 level as bulls successfully defend against any significant move to the downside, EOS, the once touted Ethereum Killer,has seen its price spike more than 40% after Block.one announced that it had secured $10 billion in fundingforthe creation of an EOS-based cryptocurrency exchange called Bullish Global.

Other notable altcoin gains include a 35% rally in the price of Yearn.finance (YFI) to establish a new record high at $77,041 and a 20% spike in the price of Reef (REEF) to an intraday high of $0.508.

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $2.449 trillion and Bitcoins dominance rate is 42.8%.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

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Dogelon Mars, Shiba Inu and Dogecoin take the lead as Bitcoin consolidates - Cointelegraph

Q. My father is 78 and has about $1 million in his retirement accounts. Hes now talking about buying Bitcoin and chasing stocks he reads about on social media. How can I get him to stick with mutual funds?

Concerned

A. Cryptocurrency has been pretty hot lately, as have stocks pumped up by interest on social media boards.

But before investing in these or any investment, there are some basic fundamentals to consider.

First, said Jeanne Kane, a certified financial planner with JFL Total Wealth Management in Boonton, you need to understand where an investment gets its value.

Apple, for example, is a technology company that sells computers, phones and watches.

Next, understand how the investment may increase or decrease in value, she said. Apple, for example, had revenue of $89.6 billion in second quarter of 2021, up 54% year over year with earnings per share of $1.40

For stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, you can research and get the answers to these questions, she said.

Investments like Bitcoin should be held to the same standard, Kane said. Where does Bitcoin get its value and why does it increase? If your dad cant answer those questions for Bitcoin or any other investment, he shouldnt be investing in it.

In talking to your dad, Kane recommends you dont try to steer him in a totally different direction. She said that generally that does not work, especially when it sounds like hes getting emotionally caught up in the excitement created around certain investments.

Maybe suggest that he set up a separate account and put in $100,000 or less and play with that. Limit the exposure, she said. It is his money, and he will do what he wants which is his right. To tell him he cant will only make him want to do it more.

Thats why its probably your best option to give him an opportunity to do what he wants while limiting the downside.

Emotion runs high with investing, especially in an up market, really since 2008, with only one negative year 2018, she said. Logic generally does not work well with emotional responses so the best you can do is really to limit the downside.

Email your questions to Ask@NJMoneyHelp.com.

Karin Price Mueller writes the Bamboozled column for NJ Advance Media and is the founder of NJMoneyHelp.com. Follow NJMoneyHelp on Twitter @NJMoneyHelp. Find NJMoneyHelp on Facebook. Sign up for NJMoneyHelp.coms weekly e-newsletter.

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My dad wants to invest in Bitcoin. Should he? - NJ.com