Monthly Archives: March 2022

Putin’s Apocalypse: How Far Is the Russian President Willing To Go? – DER SPIEGEL International Edition

Posted: March 15, 2022 at 6:25 am

The Russian president had only been in office for a year and a half when he addressed the German parliament on Sept. 25, 2001.

That day, Vladimir Putin wore a dark suit and a silver-gray tie. His face was still thin at the time, and his audience included German President Johannes Rau, Chancellor Gerhard Schrder and Wolfgang Thierse, the president of the Bundestag. Putin delivered his speech in German, telling his "colleagues" in German parliament that he was speaking the language of Goethe, Schiller and Kant. He referred to Lessing and Humboldt, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and, of course, to Princess von Anhalt-Zerbst, who would later become known to the world as Catherine the Great.

The Russian leader invoked the "ideas of democracy and freedom" and said that, "Russia is a friendly country. We are making our joint contribution to the construction of the European house," adding that peace on the Continent is the goal.

His speech would be interrupted 16 times by applause, and in several instances, the protocol even notes "merriment." When he finished at 3:47 p.m., the German parliamentarians rose from their seats. From the Left Party to the center-right Christian Democrats, they applauded Putin for several minutes, this new hope bearer for Russia.

The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 11/2022 (March 12th, 2022) of DER SPIEGEL.

Today, few in Germany would applaud him. Putins contribution to the European house today is to bomb it. No one would associate his name with democracy or freedom anymore. Putin has done what no one in Europe has dared to do since Adolf Hitler: He has attacked another country in the middle of the continent with his troops and air force, sending in more than 100,000 men.

On closer inspection, the euphoria shown by German lawmakers was misplaced even then. They allowed themselves to be blinded. Perhaps because, for a moment at least, they saw in Putin a second Gorbachev. Perhaps because they hadnt noticed the hints hidden in the speech: That Europe should turn away from the United States, that loyalty to NATO is problematic and that the security system in Europe no longer suits Russias interests.

But they should have been wide awake for another reason because Putin, who carefully donned his sheep's clothing for his appearance in Berlin, had begun his term in office 20 months earlier in the most brutal of ways. Even in 2001, the Germans should have recognized that his Berlin peace speech and his actual actions back in Russia didnt correspond.

The war in Ukraine is a continuation of what began on New Years morning in 2000 in the Chechen city of Gudermes: the rebirth of Russia, at least as Putin sees it. That day, a brawny man dressed in a parka showed up in the city to speak to soldiers form the 42nd Russian Motorized Rifle Division. "You are not only defending the dignity and honor of Russia in Chechnya. This is also about ending our countrys disintegration," said the guest, a man from distant Moscow who most didnt know at the time: Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin and soldiers in 2000 in Gudermes, Chechnya: A war that was close to his heart.

Putin had been president for less than 24 hours at the time. In a surprise coup the previous day, Boris Yeltsin had resigned and handed over the office to his prime minister. The fact that Putin flew to the front lines of the Chechen war that same night was a deliberate gesture. For this war was close to his heart the Caucasian republic of Chechnya was threatening to break away from Russia. Putin saw this as a further reduction of Russian power - and one that had to be stopped.

Following an attack in the Caucuses republic of Dagestan and several bombing attacks on residential buildings in Moscow and southern Russia, Putin had already declared war on the "Chechen terrorists" in late summer 1999, but he really meant Chechnya as a whole. It hadnt been proven that Chechens were responsible for blowing up the buildings. Indeed, there was strong evidence that Russias domestic intelligence agency, the FSB, had been involved in the attacks. And Putin had been the head of that agency until only a short time before.

Had he and the people in his circle fabricated a pretext for the new war in Chechnya? Just as they now provided false pretexts for the invasion of Ukraine?

Daily air raids on the republic in the Caucasus began in September 1999, and the Russian army invaded Chechnya in early October of that year. Just as today in Ukraine, the war was not referred to as a war, but rather as an "anti-terrorist operation in the North Caucasus." Hundreds of thousands of people died or fled that war because the Russian military acted with such incredible brutality.

That early morning in Gudermes was also the moment when Russias resurgence as a world power began. And it marked the career launch of a man of whom his mentor, former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, once said: "He is tough as nails and follows through on decisions to the end."

Ukrainian emergency workers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital damaged by shelling in Mariupol: Putin is seeking to restore former Russian glory by whatever means necessary.

If you take the war in Chechnya as the starting point and then look at the most important political decisions taken in Moscow in subsequent years, it raises the question of why the West didnt see Putin as a serious threat far earlier. For what he was doing clearly served but a single goal: The restoration of former Russian glory, by whatever means necessary.

During his inaugural speech when he took office, Putin promised that Russia would "never copy the liberal model of the West," and pledged to take large-scale industry back under state control as well as to once again make Russians proud of their country.

But Putin also suffered defeats during his years in office defeats that are likely to have only further incited this man, who has perceived resistance as a personal slight since his childhood. One of these came in 2004, when Putins favored candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, a politician with a criminal record from Russian-influenced eastern Ukraine, won the Ukrainian presidential election with the help of 3 million fraudulent votes an event which triggered the Orange Revolution.

More than 100,000 people took to the streets in protest, forcing a third round of voting that opened the path for opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to become president. Putins defeat was clearly visible to all: Before the election, he had brought Yanukovych to Moscow twice, kissing him in front of the cameras, and even visiting him twice in Kyiv and praising him as a guarantor of "democratic transformation."

A repeat took place in March 2005, when the Tulip Revolution broke out in faraway Kyrgyzstan. Regime opponents seized the seat of government in Bishkek in a coup d'tat, and President Askar Akayev and his family fled to Russia by helicopter. It seemed only a matter of time before the germ of revolution would infect another former Soviet republics.

In Moscow, disappointment with the suddenly hapless Putin became widespread. Victor Cherkashin, a man who served the KGB for 40 years, said disparagingly that the former intelligence chief had changed nothing at the top in the Kremlin and that he was a mere "bureaucrat." One Kremlin adviser was quoted as saying that Putin had "lost his decisiveness." And that it was due to the rulers lack of will "to use force" if the opposition gained the upper hand everywhere.

It's not difficult to imagine the effect of such criticism on Putin. Indeed, this could have been the real turning point and it had little to do with NATO and the alleged encirclement of Russia from the outside.

"Post-Soviet humiliation is a thing of the past; Russian leaders like playing hardball."

Dmitry Trenin, political scientist

Only a year later, Putin proved that he had learned his lessons. Thats when he hosted the G-8 summit at Constantine Palace near St. Petersburg. A barrage of criticism of the West, which had now been defined as the main enemy, began during the run-up to that meeting. Putin proclaimed that Russia represented "a world power again in terms of economic growth, saying that it "was, is and always will be a major power." And the Russian economy was indeed booming at the time and the ruble had even been positioned as an additional global currency reserve.

The primary focus of the 2006 summit was global energy security. By then, Putin had largely renationalized the oil and gas sector, calling it his "holy of holies. Only a few months earlier, on New Years Day in 2006, the state-owned company Gazprom had cut off gas deliveries to Ukraine and its unpopular reformist president, Yushchenko. It was a clear indication to the world that Putin and his people knew the value of the cards they held and were more than willing to play them.

As such, the geostrategic showdown actually got started 16 years ago. But for most of those 16 years, it did nothing to change Western thinking. Despite the fact that even back then, Europe had already begun talking about diversifying its energy supply.

Putin also regained his footing in foreign policy. He regained lost influence in the post-Soviet states and forged alliances with China, India and Pakistan. Russian foreign policy managed to swap out a position of weakness for one of strength, Moscow political scientists Dmitry Trenin wrote at the time. "Post-Soviet humiliation is a thing of the past; Russian leaders like playing hardball.

In order to avoid violating the constitution, which limited each Russian president to only two successive terms, Putin temporarily agreed to a change of power in 2008 and handed over the presidency to Dmitry Medvedev, who was deputy prime minister at the time. Medvedev was considered at the time to have liberal tendencies, and just a few months after installing him, Putin had cause to regret it.

Then Prime Minister Putin and President Dimitry Medvedev in 2011: A political chess move

In early August of that year, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's attempt to bring the South Ossetian autonomous region back under his control triggered the Georgian War. Russia responded by invading Georgia. Moscow called the first real war between Russia and a Soviet successor state a "peace enforcement operation." It ultimately amounted to the punishment of a Georgia that had turned westward under Saakashvili. The Russians even dropped bombs on Gori, the town of Stalins birth.

The West showed itself to be impotent in the face of Russias neo-imperialism then, just as it is now in the face of the invasion of Ukraine. In the summer of 2008, DER SPIEGEL wrote, "The West has presumably misjudged Russia under Putin until now," - despite the fact, the article noted, that the signs had been rather difficult to overlook.

After swapping places with Medvedev and returning to the presidency, Putin abandoned all pretext. In late 2013, he persuaded his Ukrainian counterpart, Yanukovych, to overturn an Association Agreement with the European Union that had been years in the making, triggering unrest in Ukraine. This was followed by the war in eastern Ukraine and the occupation of Crimea. Putin had thus decoupled Russia from the world and declared his country a fortress. He openly paid homage to the violence. In the mind of the Russian people, suddenly "inhuman, demonic complexes of revenge, self-assertion and hate are being awakened within and put on display" Andrei Zvyagintsev, the Russian director of the Oscar-nominated film "Leviathan" said in horror a few years back.

All this should be remembered when people scratch their heads today over Putin's motives for invading Ukraine and express surprise at how dangerous he is. At the beginning of the third week of the war, the first question that arises is: Did Putin miscalculate this time? Has he strayed too far from reality?

Russian forces are making slow progress, it is believed that the number of fallen Russian soldiers is in the four digits, and several senior generals have already been killed. Economically, the damage will be greater than the Kremlin is admitting to the Russian public. This realization even flashed across the radar of Russian state news agency Ria Novosti when it examined the implications of the sanctions for Russian aviation: Of the 980 aircraft in the country, 777 are leased, the news agency noted. Only about 150 aircraft were manufactured in Russia, and even those fly with French engines and Western onboard electronics. They have to be maintained and need spare parts for wear and tear parts which will now be almost impossible to come by. The agency said the collapse of air traffic in Russia is only a matter of time.

Does all this mean that the intelligence service, especially the SWR foreign intelligence service, fail in the analysis of the situation? Or did Putin just ignore their assessments?

The televised meeting of his Security Council allows some conclusions to be drawn. Putin scolded Sergei Naryshkin, director of the foreign intelligence service, ike a schoolboy, something the president never would have done to a henchman who supported the war. Putin adviser Dmitry Kozak, his special envoy to Ukraine, also came in for some gruff treatment.

The other Security Council members, too, were essentially extras on the stage, with four exceptions: Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Domestic Intelligence Chief Alexander Bortnikov, his predecessor Nikolai Patrushev, and Viktor Zolotov, head of the National Guard. Their police forces are directly subordinate to Putin and are supposed to suppress resistance in the country. Neither officials in parliament nor in the presidential administration have the power to intervene on important questions. Russias oligarchs and business leaders also no longer have any direct influence over Putin. At this point, Putin likely only listens to his closest confidants, men like Shoigu or Patrushev. And they tell the president what he wants to hear, and none of them will question Putins judgement.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Governor Dyumin in 2016.

If Putin had won the war in two days, he probably would have secured the enthusiasm of the Russian elite and enjoyed the full support of the public at large. But the blitzkrieg failed. It stands to reason that Putin is frustrated as a result. And as the last two decades have shown, he generally deals with frustration by ramping up the brutality.

It is possible that the slow start was only a preliminary push with difficulties already factored in and that Putins military machine will strike in full force in the coming days. In Kyiv, for example. Given that the Russian leader has declared Ukraine to be a fascist-run state and the West its accomplice, further escalation is likely.

Bringing the army back to Russia without victory is out of the question. Doing so would force Putin to come up with a plausible explanation for how he had already "won" the fight against "Nazism" and "genocide" in Ukraine. A more likley eventuality would see him halting his troops on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River and not advancing any further west, but this wouldnt really provide him with any peace politically or militarily. At home, though, he could justify the move with the lie that he was only really ever concerned about protecting eastern Ukraine.

Occupying anti-Russian western Ukraine would inevitably lead to partisan warfare. Either way, as CIA chief William Burns said this week, it is unclear how Putin "could sustain a puppet regime or pro-Russian leadership that he tries to install in the face of what is massive opposition from the Ukrainian people."

One way out of the dilemma for Russia could be another propaganda ploy: He could surprisingly announce supposed progress in the negotiations with the Ukrainians and then generously announce a cease-fire - a cease-fire that could then be used to search for other options.

But these options do not take into account whether cracks are opening up inside the Russian power circle. The few remaining Russian opposition media on the internet this week recalled the "tobacco can scenario," a reference to the assassination of Russian Emperor Paul I, the son of Catherine the Great. Due to his difficult childhood, he was seen as being extremely suspicious of even his closest surroundings, unpredictable and erratic, and enamored of all things military. When he proposed to attack British India together with the French, the Russian aristocracy thought he had gone insane and prepared his assassination.

There dont appear to be any conspirators of that nature in Russia at the moment. But many Russians have begun wondering what will come after Putin. No one knows what Putin himself will do in the event of his departure, but he does have some favorites. The likely candidates, though, do not include the usual suspects, whose names are always dropped the prime minister, the head of parliament or the mayor of Moscow. Even Defense Minster Shoigu is unlikely to be considered for succession he isnt well known enough.

But there is one man who has been mentioned several times in Russian circles as a promising successor to Putin. He used to be very close to Putin, but he was transferred from Moscow to the provinces a few years back. The mans name is Alexi Dyumin and he is currently the governor of the Tula region, located just under 200 kilometers south of Moscow. Dyumin served in the Presidential Security Service from 1999, precisely from the time Putin became prime minister and shortly thereafter president.

When Putin took over the reins of government again in 2008, Dyumin rose to become his security chief and aid. He also returned to the Kremlin with Putin in 2012, becoming deputy head of the entire Presidential Security Service and deputy chief of the GRU military intelligence service. Dyumin was one of the leading men in the annexation of Crimea. He was later appointed to the position of deputy defense minister and now holds the military rank of lieutenant general.

The fact that Putin appointed him as governor of Tula in 2016, only a few months later, surprised many at the time, including Dyumin himself. But that could have its own logic, because in the Moscow political cosmos, as rich as it is with intrigues, up-and-comers are quickly burned out. Putin values Dyumin for his loyalty, his anchoring in the intelligence services and his experience in difficult operations. Moreover, Dyumin, who is 20 years younger, would be considered a fresh force if deployed in the highest circles of power, unconnected to the previous establishment. But even Putin himself probably doesnt know when he will leave the political stage. That is also likely to hinge on how the war in Ukraine ultimately plays out.

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Putin's Apocalypse: How Far Is the Russian President Willing To Go? - DER SPIEGEL International Edition

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Hubble telescope was at the perfect angle to capture this nearly impossible shot of two ‘dancing galaxies’ – Space.com

Posted: at 6:24 am

Deep within the Andromeda constellation, some 320 million light-years away, two galaxies are consumed by a gravitationally bound dance, and the Hubble Space Telescope has just photographed the action in extraordinary three-dimensional detail.

The two dancers are the smaller polar-ring galaxy IC 1559 (top) and the larger spiral galaxy NGC 169 (bottom). Collectively, they are known as Arp 282, as designated in Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.

It's not unusual for galaxies to interact gravitationally. "Astronomers now accept that an important aspect of how galaxies evolve is the way they interact with one another," NASA officials wrote in a statement. "Galaxies can merge, collide, or brush past one another each interaction significantly affecting their shapes and structures."

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

It is difficult, however, to photograph such an interaction in a way that clearly demonstrates its movement within three-dimensional space. In the case of Arp 282, Hubble was at the perfect angle to capture the strands of stars, dust and gas being pulled by tidal forces from one system to the other.

If Arp 282 were tilted at a different angle, the telescope might never have been able to image the dance so clearly. Imagine looking at this scene through the bottom of NGC 169, for example it'd be unlikely to see the distortion of the two galaxies as crisply.

It's also fortunate that the instrument took this image in visible light. Both IC 1559 and NGC 169 have active galactic nuclei (AGN), meaning their cores are "monumentally energetic," per NASA. In other words, they have supermassive black holes expelling vast quantities of energy in the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

"If the image revealed the full emission of both AGNs," NASA officials wrote, "their brilliance would obscure the beautifully detailed tidal interactions we see in this image."

Follow Stefanie Waldek on Twitter @StefanieWaldek. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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A poet’s ode to the Hubble Telescope and to her father, who helped to build it – Aeon

Posted: at 6:24 am

At the moment, astronomers and astrophiles across the globe are just beginning to receive some of the first highly anticipated images from the James Webb Space Telescope. The short film My God, Its Full of Stars invites viewers to celebrate its predecessor in peering deeper into the cosmos than humanity ever has before the Hubble Space Telescope as well as some of the human stories behind it. Created to accompany an essay by Maria Popova as part of the The Marginalians Universe in Verse series, the animation adapts a poem by the former US Poet Laureate Tracy K Smith, whose father worked on the Hubble as one of NASAs first Black engineers. Pairing Smiths words with meticulously crafted visuals from the Brazilian animation director Daniel Brunson, the piece is a wondrous ode to our desire to know the Universe. Reflecting on the project in her essay, Popova writes:

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A poet's ode to the Hubble Telescope and to her father, who helped to build it - Aeon

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Mysterious globular clusters could unlock the secrets of galaxy formation – Space.com

Posted: at 6:24 am

Paul M. Sutteris an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of "Ask a Spaceman" and "Space Radio," and author of "How to Die in Space."

Globular clusters are like astronomical coelacanths mysterious living fossils. These densely packed collections of ancient stars may hold the ultimate secrets to the formation of galaxies.

On a clear, dark night, you can see the globular cluster Omega Centauri with the naked eye. It looks like a midrange, typical star, so much so that it's been listed in star catalogs since antiquity. But once astronomers looked at the object through a telescope, they discovered that it wasn't a single star at all but rather one of the largest globular clusters a small, round, dense collection of millions of stars.

That roundness is what separates globular clusters from other kinds of star clusters (and gives them their name, from the Latin for "small sphere"). They are large enough and contain enough stars that there's enough gravity to pull them into spherical shapes.

And that's about the last thing that makes sense about globular clusters.

Related: Vibrant globular cluster sparkles in new Hubble telescope photo

Globular clusters are freakishly old. Of the approximately 150 of them within the Milky Way, the very youngest are no less than 8 billion years old, while the oldest are almost 12 billion years old. They haven't had new rounds of star formation in billions of years, so what remains within them are either remnants (white dwarfs, black holes, etc.) or small, dim, red stars. Whatever caused them to form happened a long, long time ago, and they simply haven't changed much in all those eons since.

In fact, Omega Centauri is one of the oldest things you can see with the naked eye. When the solar system formed, that globular cluster was already fantastically ancient.

The globular clusters are incredibly dense, too. In the deepest parts of their cores, stars cram together up to a thousand times more densely than in the solar neighborhood. They are so tightly packed that planets are almost impossible; there are just too many close calls and near misses for a planetary system to survive long.

In the past few decades, astronomers have noticed that there are very roughly two distinct kinds of globular clusters: young ones and old ones.

Of course, "young" here is a relative term. These younger ones tend to be 8 billion to 10 billion years old. They also tend to hang out closer to the central bulge of the Milky Way and have far more metals than the other globular clusters. In astronomy jargon, "metals" means any element other than hydrogen and helium. Those heavier elements are forged inside stars through nuclear fusion, and in a normal galaxy, continued rounds of star formation and star destruction continually enrich the galaxies. But because all of these globular clusters were born at roughly the same time, with no new star formation since then, the presence of metals means that the globular clusters had to form from an already-metal-rich environment.

The other, older globular clusters are more in the 10 billion to 12 billion-year-old range. These are far more common; about two-thirds of the globular clusters in the Milky Way are from this population. They tend to be farther from the galactic center, have all sorts of random orbits and be almost metal-free.

Astronomers suspect that the young globular clusters formed with the Milky Way itself 8 billion to 10 billion years ago, while the older ones formed before our galaxy even got going. Those globular clusters probably formed with small, dwarf galaxies that got demolished by the Milky Way. The dwarf galaxies were torn apart, but the small, dense globular clusters managed to survive to the present day (nevertheless forced to orbit the same galaxy that destroyed their parents).

OK, great; we have two kinds of globular clusters. But how did they form in the first place?

The biggest clue to the origins of globular clusters is that they have no dark matter. Measurements of their mass using different techniques (adding up all the sources of light, calculating the gravity needed to keep them round, and so on) all add up to the same number, with no need for a hidden, unseen component. This means that globular clusters in the present day are entirely unlike galaxies. It's a little challenging to come up with a definition of "galaxy," but since almost all galaxies are made of at least 80% dark matter, you must include that fact somehow.

Because globular clusters lack dark matter, it means we can't just treat them as minigalaxies at least, in the present day. It's possible that dark matter played a role in forming globular clusters, the same way it did for galaxy formation, just on a much smaller scale. But perhaps the dark matter in the globular clusters dispersed through interactions with parent galaxies, leaving behind the clump of dead and decaying stars.

Or maybe dark matter never played a role. Maybe instead of being failed galaxies, globular clusters are super-successful star clusters. Take the same process that forms any other cluster (a large cloud of gas and dust collapsing and splintering into a shower of stars) and ramp it up to 11, and you get hundreds of thousands or millions of stars in a single go. That intense flash of star formation shoved away all the remaining gas, leaving the globular cluster intact but functionally dead.

To date, astronomers aren't exactly sure which scenario is more likely. Either way, globular clusters are intriguing because they are so obviously linked to galaxy formation and astronomers aren't exactly sure how galaxies form and evolve. By studying these giant time capsules, we hope to peer into our own ancient past and unravel the ultimate mysteries of how our own galaxy came to be.

Learn more by listening to the "Ask a Spaceman" podcast, available oniTunesand askaspaceman.com. Ask your own question on Twitter using #AskASpaceman or by following Paul @PaulMattSutter and facebook.com/PaulMattSutter. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Two years since the COVID-19 crash: 5 things to know in Bitcoin this week – Cointelegraph

Posted: at 6:23 am

Bitcoin (BTC) starts a new week struggling to preserve support as key macro changes appear on the horizon.

In what could turn out to be a crucial week for Bitcoin and altcoins relationship with traditional assets, the United States Federal Reserve is set to be the main talking point for hodlers.

Amid an atmosphere of still rampant inflation, quantitative easing still ongoing and geopolitical turmoil focused on Europe, there is plenty of uncertainty in the air, no matter what the trade.

Add to that a failure by Bitcoin to benefit from the chaos and the result is some serious cold feet what would it take to instill confidence?

Just as it seems nothing could break the now months-old status quo on Bitcoin markets, which have been stuck in a trading range for all of 2022 so far, upcoming events could nonetheless provide that catalyst for a sea change in both sentiment and price action.

Cointelegraph takes a look at the factors set to help move the markets in the coming days.

Fight it or not, the Fed is the likely kingmaker when it comes crypto performance this week.

On March 16, policymakers will decide whether or not to proceed with a key interest rate hike which has been expected since last year.

The Fed has a problem inflation is running hot. But the desire to reduce its record balance sheet from two years of coronavirus excesses is too.

A rate hike is thus tipped to be only modest perhaps a quarter of a basis point but the implications could nonetheless be considerable for Bitcoiners.

BTC has already shown itself to be firmly attached to U.S. equities, and any knee-jerk reactions to the Fed will likely be copied.

Stocks are no friends of rate hikes, as the easy money period accompanied COVID-19 reactions was something of a golden era that only ended in late 2021. This comes as the reality of the Feds moves hit home. Bitcoin, likewise, saw an all-time high in November and then began a swift decline.

This week will be big for crypto and equities traders, as the Fed is expected to decide on a quarter-point rate hike this week. Bitcoin & Ethereum have been pegged to the SP500 in 2022, and these decisions should impact cryptocurrencies greatly, analytics firm Santiment summarized on March 14.

The Fed, however, is far from the only macro player for Bitcoiners to worry about.

In Europe, lawmakers are set to vote on cryptocurrency legislation, with some attempting to instigate a ban on proof-of-work (Poprotocols citing environmental concerns.

While critics have already dismissed the idea as ludicrous, the threat to sentiment from a potential victory remains.

A PoW ban would be a ban on guessing a number, Knut Svanholm, author of Bitcoin: Sovereignty Through Mathematics,warned.

Next door, the Russo-Ukrainian conflict continues to advance along with its economic fallout Russia risks default, and sanctions and trade blocks are adding to inflationary pressures.

In China, meanwhile, COVID-19 itself is back on the radar with an increasing number of residents locked down.

As such, things are at best precarious for short-term Bitcoin traders.

Given that any one of the above macro factors could spark a fresh rout in equities, for many, Bitcoin felt like a sitting duck as the week began.

We are yet to see the capitulation dip as per every other macro dip we have seen, popular Twitter account Crypto Tony argued.

Such a capitulatory move has already been voiced as a stark possibility, and the timing would be grim, coming almost exactly two years to the day that BTC/USD crashed to $3,600 in the first round of COVID-19 mayhem.

As Cointelegraph previously reported, support levels remain unclaimed as $40,000 refuses to hold for more than a few days or hours.

The weekly close saw a last-minute dip toward $37,000, BTC/USD, nonetheless managing to reclaim much of the lost ground to trade at around $38,600 at the time of writing.

Analyzing the near-term prospects, fellow Twitter account Plan C turned to his Confluence Floor Model to conclude that a macro price bottom could be due in the coming month.

Such a low could fall at around $27,000, however. This would take Bitcoin below its 2021 opening price and briefly out of the range it has consolidated since then.

I am not convinced we go to 27k, but if history repeats for a 4th straight time that could be the low of this accumulation phase, Plan C added on Twitter.

On the topic of accumulation, it appears that it is not all bad news when it comes to the demand for Bitcoin at current prices.

As Cointelegraph reported, whales have been active in recent dayswhile the proportion of the overall BTC supply controlled by smaller investors has reached a one-year high.

Now, those habits are being reflected in the continued fresh lows in exchanges supply.

The changes were noted by Philip Swift, creator of on-chain analytics resource LookIntoBitcoin, on March 1.

Separate data from on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant confirms the trend and shows that out of the 21 major exchanges it covers, BTC balances are at their combined lowest since early August 2018 2.32 million BTC.

The story with exchange balances is in fact fairly complex, as different exchanges exhibit different trends.

In the latest edition of its weekly newsletter, The Week On-Chain, released March 7, fellow on-chain analytics platform Glassnode devoted significant attention to the phenomenon, noting that sell-side supply overall remains fairly modest given macro circumstances.

During the highly volatile macro and geopolitical events of the last few weeks, exchange net-flow volumes are also reasonably stable, despite a slight bias towards inflows this week, researchers noted at the time.

The latest Glassnode data shows that exchanges have since lost another $1.9 billion in BTC in the past week.

Unsurprising, perhaps, but Bitcoin and wider crypto sentiment is pointing firmly downhill this week.

After two months of ranging and fakeouts, bulls are tired and the threat of a macro-induced capitulation hangs in the air.

Bitcoin sentiment feels worse now than July 21 imo and price is over $8k higher now vs. the July 21 low, Twitter analytics account On-Chain College summarized.

Examining the on-chain reality this week, research, insight and education resource Cane Island Digital Research highlighted volume as another telltale sign that momentum had fallen out of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin volume is a horrible indicator of price but it is a decent indicator of sentiment, it commented.

While this could be an indicator of an incoming capitulation and trend reversal, the fear was still palpable.

Mark Yusko, founder, CEO and chief investment officer of Morgan Creek Capital Management, described the Cane Island numbers as sentiment getting close to washed out.

Meanwhile, The Crypto Fear & Greed Indexremains in extreme fear territory, near the 20/100 mark, which has acted as a line in the sand since mid-February.

Looking for a counterpoint to the seemingly endless bad news from macro sources?

Related:Top 5 cryptocurrencies to watch this week: BTC, DOT, SAND, RUNE, ZEC

It could well come this week in the form of El Salvador and the issuance of its much-vaulted ten-year Bitcoin bonds, known informally as the volcano bonds.

The country which became the first to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender last year has since turned to geothermal energy from a volcano to mine BTC.

To that end, it is now seeking long-term investment partnerships by issuing bonds tied directly to mining a move which has commentators excited about serious money potentially flowing into the ecosystem.

While the exact date of the bonds issuance, expected to attract $1 billion, remains unknown, suspicions are mounting that it could come this week.

Aside from the benefits of using the cash to invest in BTC, the long-term consequences of El Salvadors plan, if successful, should be underestimated as a shift in the global economic paradigm, according to former Blockstream chief strategy officer Samson Mow.

In an interview with Saifedean Ammous on the Bitcoin Standard Podcast this weekend, Mow was as upbeat as anyone on the outlook.

So if El Salvador pulls off this bond, then it shows the world that you dont need to rely on the IMF or any central lending Institute that does not necessarily have your best interest at heart, but you can just fund everything with Bitcoin backed bonds, he said.

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Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum all down early Tuesday – Fox Business

Posted: at 6:23 am

Here are your FOX Business Flash top headlines for March 14.

Cryptocurrency prices were lower early Tuesday morning as the war in Ukraine has intensified and peace talks have stalled.

Bitcoin was trading at around $38,420, down 1.72%, while Ethereum and Dogecoin were also lower, trading at approximately $2,520 (-2.87%) and 11.13 cents (-3.12%), respectively, according to Coindesk.

AnAustin,Texas, city council member on Thursday announced a resolution that would explore possible uses ofBitcoinand othercryptocurrenciesin the city.

AUSTIN MAY BE NEXT MAJOR CITY TO EMBRACE CRYPTOCURRENCY

The resolution, from Austin City Council Member Mackenzie Kelly (District 6), came ahead ofSouth by Southwests return to the city after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Councilmember Kelly spoke alongside Austin Mayor Steve Adlerand other tech entrepreneurs at a Web3 andBlockchainEcosystem news conference.

Bitcoin prices were down early Tuesday morning. (iStock)

In other cryptocurrency news, the European Union's (EU) landmark regulatory framework for governing crypto assets has passed another threshold on its way to ratification, Coindesk reported.

On Monday, the EU parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee voted 31-4 in favor of a new draft of the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) framework, with 23 abstentions.

The framework broadly captures the issuance and trading of cryptocurrencies, and promises to make it easier for crypto firms to expand throughout the EU's 27 member states by facilitating a "passportable" license that would be valid between countries, the report said.

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"Finally, the agreed text includes measures against market manipulation and to prevent money laundering, terrorist financing and other criminal activities," said an official statement on Monday's vote.

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Unearthing the Bitcoin Tapes – VICE

Posted: at 6:23 am

Every so often, someone at Motherboard (or a few of my former colleagues who have since left Motherboard) will say something like We should do something with that old Bitcoin footage. I always agreed, and then started on some email adventure.

I heard about the Bitcoin tapes soon after I started at Motherboard in 2013, which, according to my calculations, was a long time ago. We sent a team of people to the Bitcoin 2013 conference in San Jose, which was one of the first major Bitcoin conferences. Bitcoin cost $118 at the time; its blown up so much since then that even the comedian who performed at the conference got rich. We also filmed in the basement of the organizer, Charlie Shrem. Shrem would later get arrested and go to jail because BitInstant, the company he founded, was found to be laundering money for users on the Silk Road drug market.

Anyway, we shot this footage and then it never turned into a documentary. People who worked on it left the company or moved on to other projects, we got busy, the footage went onto a server somewhere. Years passed. The legend of the lost Bitcoin tapes began.

My first email record of trying to actually unearth this footage is from late 2017I sent an email called Reviving bitcoin doc. Heres how I framed it: Sorry for the seemingly random assortment of people on this email list. Wanted to raise the spooky specter of possibly going deep into the vault to unearth some historical footage we shot in 2011 or 2012 (I think) for a documentary about bitcoin that we never ended up running. It should be like 10 hours of footage with some of the most important people in bitcoin, at an early conference in SF (right?). I'm not totally positive this footage is still even accessible? In any case, with people losing their goddamned minds over bitcoin at the moment I think it's worth at least seeing what we have if we can find it, and this idea has been bugging me for months so if we can't find it I'd like to be able to get some closure.

We did not find the footage. I tried again with some folks in VICEs post-production team. They were able to find existence of it but could not find the footage itself. More time passed. I sent an email in 2018 called Bitcoin doc white whale. No luck.

Anyways, more years passed, and the opportunity came up to do a documentary series about cryptocurrency with our colleagues at VICE News. This would be a current look at all things crypto. But to look to the future I thought we would need to look into the past. And so we tried again to find the Bitcoin tapes. And this time, we did, stored on a drive somewhere (many thanks to the archival team at VICE and, of course everyone who has worked on this over the years).

Over the last few months, producer Jesse Seidman and Motherboards Jordan Pearson went through the tapes like they were an archaeological find, identifying people in the crowd and seeing if the predictions made all those years ago came to pass. We also got back in touch with Charlie Shrem and Alec Liu, the original Motherboard host of the 2013 footage, to see what theyre up to now. Both of them are still in crypto.

The result is the first episode of CRYPTOLAND, a series were very excited about. Please check it out. This first episode is up, and over the next seven weeks well be rolling out new episodes, all of which were shot in the latter part of last year and which explore the environmental, political, and cultural implications of the crypto gold rush.

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Bill Gross, ‘King of Bonds’ and Prominent Crypto Critic, Invests in Bitcoin – TheStreet

Posted: at 6:23 am

Bitcoin prices are not in great shape.Many investors and observers are wondering whether the top cryptocurrency by market value will soon return to its highs posted last November or if has left for a period of decline known as crypto winter.

Well, if bitcoin is now prompting everyone to agree one of aspect of the cryptocurrency, it is its reputation.

For the past few weeks bitcoin has been scoring victories on this front. Crypto is no longer seen in a bad light by the Biden administration in view of the presidential executive order that advises federal agencies/regulators not to stifle innovation.

The White House has also revived the idea of a digital dollar.

And then there are theclassic finance superstars, who one after another are saying they were wrong about digital currencies, and more specifically bitcoin.

After the hedge-funder Ken Griffin, it is the turn of the king of bonds, Bill Gross, to pledge allegiance to bitcoin. In a recent interview with CNBC, Gross claimed to have invested in bitcoin.

I simply think that, you know, the crypto coins are a bubble. I do think there are survivors, Gross said. I do think we need an alternative to the dollar as weve seen in the last week or two and that you know, there will be several survivors and Im invested to a small extent in bitcoin.

Gross does not say how many bitcoins he holds or when he bought them.

He explained trying to choose among the winners of the new finance. And if he seems to believe in bitcoin, this is not the case for nonfungible tokens.

The phenomena of NFTs is the same way and reminds me of when my kids were collecting Beanie Babies, Gross said.

Gross, 77, co-founded California-based Pimco in 1971 and rose to the pinnacle of the financial world after building it into a fixed-income behemoth. In 2014, he left the firm following clashes with other executives

The financier has a complicated history with cryptocurrencies and especially with bitcoin.

The young retiree Gross was initially open to bitcoin.

In 2016, the king of bonds believed that bitcoin could be a safe-haven asset for investors fleeing volatility and falling interest rates.

"Bitcoin and privately agreed upon blockchain technologies amongst a small set of global banks are just a few examples of attempts to stabilize the value of their current assets in future purchasing power terms, he wrote on Bloomberg in October 2016.Gold would be another example -- historic relic that it is. In any case, the current system is beginning to be challenged.

But in the midst of cryptomania in December 2017, Gross completely changed tune. He felt that bitcoin was a poor substitute for both fiat and gold. He justified his decision by the fact that it was difficult to use bitcoin to make payments.

It is not really a currency alternative at the moment, Gross told Bloomberg Television. Buying a bag of groceries at the grocery store is going to be a little difficult.

Bitcoin would also not be an alternative investment in times of economic crisis, according to Gross. The famed financier also reiterated that bitcoin's high volatility was one of the reasons it would not serve as a viable store of value.

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Five years later, he has changed his tune again. But he is not alone.

By becoming a bitcoin investor, Gross joins a list of big names in traditional finance who are converting to digital currencies.

"Crypto has been one of the great stories in finance over the course of the last 15 years. And Ill be clear, Ive been in the naysayer camp over that period of time," billionaire Ken Griffin said recently."But the crypto market today has a market capitalization of about $2 trillion in round numbers, which tells you that I havent been right on this call."

"I have a tiny percentage on it on my portfolio to diversify," billionaire and hedge-funder Ray Dalio said in February.

In the same interview with CNBC, Gross also confirms that he continues to bet on the same stocks, which are also among the favorites of crypto fans, especially on the Reddit forums.

I am still trading GameStop (GME) - Get GameStop Corp. Class A Reportand AMC (AMC) - Get AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. Class A Report. These are lottery-ticket stocks, the investor said Thursday in a wide-ranging interview with Brian Sullivan.

The volatility on these options that Im dealing with is so high that if you sell the options out of the money, which take GameStop around $120. Now, Im selling four-month calls at $200 and capturing $12 or $13 per option of because the volatilitys like 120%, Gross added.

The frenzy in GameStopand AMCshook Wall Street in January 2021 as retail investors piled into those stocks and call options, causing massive short squeezes that burned many short-selling hedge funds.

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Bitcoin And Ethereum See $120M In Weekly Outflows What’s The Major Trigger? – Benzinga

Posted: at 6:23 am

After seven weeks of consecutive inflows, digital asset investment products saw $110 million worth of net outflows last week.

What Happened:In thelatest editionof its Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly Report,CoinSharesfound that $80 million worth of outflows were from North America alone. CoinShares believes these outflows may have been a response to the U.S.Presidential Executive Orderon digital assets.

Bitcoin(CRYPTO:BTC) investment products saw $69.6 million in outflows for the week, whileEthereum(CRYPTO:ETH) recorded a $50.6 million outflow. Overall, the two leading crypto assets recorded $120 million in outflows.

Bitcoin investment fundssaw $1 billion in volume last week, down from the average $1.24 billion, representing just 5% of total bitcoin trading volumes, stated CoinShares.

Regulatory concerns and geopolitics remain at the forefront of investors concerns for digital assets, said the firm.

While some large-cap altcoins, includingSolana(CRYPTO:SOL),Ripple(CRYPTO:XRP), andPolkadot(CRYPTO:DOT) saw minor inflows of $300,000, $700,000, and $900,000 respectively,Cardano(CRYPTO:ADA) andLitecoin(CRYPTO:LTC) recorded $200,000 worth of inflows over the week.

See Also: https://www.benzinga.com/money/how-to-buy-cardano-ada/

Last week, CoinShares noted another report that crypto trading volumes in Russia and Ukraine had risen sharply since the conflict between the nations escalated.

Combined, Russia, and Ukraine have seen daily trading volumes rise to $80m/day at times. This has predominantly been against the crypto pairs USDT and BUSD, commonly used US Dollar stable coins (crypto coins that are pegged to the US Dollar), but we have also seen significant amounts of Bitcoin and Ethereum used too, read the report.

Price Action: At press time, Bitcoin was trading at $38,812, up 0.56% in the last 24 hours. Ethereum was trading 0.88% lower at a price of $2,549.

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Bitcoin’s Hashrate Jumps 15% Higher in 10 Days, Mining Difficulty Expected to Rise Mining Bitcoin News – Bitcoin News

Posted: at 6:23 am

After bitcoin miners caught a break ten days ago when the difficulty dropped 1.49% lower, the networks hashrate increased more than 15% since then. Currently, the processing power has been coasting along above the 200 exahash per second (EH/s) zone but another difficulty increase is expected to occur in less than four days.

Bitcoins hashrate slipped two weeks ago on February 27, 2022, to 169 EH/s after touching an all-time high (249 EH/s) on February 15. Following the drop in processing power, bitcoin miners caught a break when the difficulty decreased for the first time in months.

On March 3, the difficulty dropped 1.49% lower after six consecutive difficulty increases prior. Currently, Bitcoins mining difficulty is 27.55 trillion and following the last adjustment, processing power has improved.

Bitcoins hashrate increased over 15% since the difficulty change and 29% since the hashrate hit 169 EH/s two weeks ago. Currently, the networks processing power is roughly 218.11 EH/s and over the last ten days its managed to stay above the 200 EH/s range.

However, the next epoch mining difficulty adjustment is slated to happen in less than four days and its expected to rise 1.03%. If the rise above 1% is takes place, the mining difficulty will change from 27.55 trillion to 27.83 trillion.

Three day hashrate distribution statistics show that Foundry USA has been the top miner over the last 72 hours. The American mining operation has 42.42 EH/s dedicated to the Bitcoin blockchain which equates to 21.19 % of todays hashrate.

The second-largest miner in terms of hashrate over the last three days is F2pool with 30.93 EH/s of processing power which represents 15.45% of the global hashrate. At the time of writing, there are 11 known mining pools dedicating SHA256 hashrate toward the BTC chain.

Theres 1.33 EH/s or 0.66% of the global hashrate operated by unknown or stealth miners. While the Bitcoin network is once again coasting along at near-record highs, a few other networks have been recorded record highs as well.

Monero is coasting along at near all-time highs (ATH) at 2.92 gigahash per second (GH/s) and Ethereum is around 1.04 petahash per second (PH/s). Like Bitcoin, both networks are just below the hashrate ATHs.

What do you think about the Bitcoin networks hashrate increase over the last 10 days and the upcoming difficulty increase? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Bitcoin's Hashrate Jumps 15% Higher in 10 Days, Mining Difficulty Expected to Rise Mining Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

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