Monthly Archives: July 2022

From Starbucks to Lamborghinis, consumers are using cryptocurrency to pay for a variety of goods and retailers are taking notice.

Nearly 75% of retailers plan to accept either cryptocurrency or stablecoin payments within the next two years, according to a June survey conducted by Deloitte titled "Merchants getting ready for crypto."

Deloitte polled a sample of 2,000 senior executives from the retail industry who represent a range of subsectors including cosmetics, electronics, fashion, transportation, food and beverage.

While digital currencies like Bitcoin are typically only as valuable as users believe them to be, a stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency that derives its value from an underlying asset. Stablecoins are often pegged to currencies such as the U.S. dollar or a commodity such as gold.

Although paying with cryptocurrency is fairly novel now, 83% of retailers expect consumer interest in digital currencies to increase over the next year and a little over half of them have invested over $1 million into enabling digital payments, according to the survey.

For consumers, that means you could soon buy clothes, drinks, beauty products and more with crypto.

Although retailers are planning to accept digital currency as payments, that doesn't mean they're necessarily planning to hold on to the virtual assets.

Just over 50% of respondents plan to have third-party payment processors convert digital currency into fiat, which is money that is established as legal tender by a government, like the U.S. dollar, the British pound and the euro. This means the retailers aren't planning to actually own the cryptocurrency that's used for payment.

Given the unpredictability of the crypto market, using this strategy is considered to be less risky for retailers than holding the crypto themselves. This approach also makes it faster and easier for retailers to enable payments with digital currencies, Deloitte reports.

Crypto-curious retailers recognize that there are a number of challenges to overcome in order to enable payments with digital currencies. Nearly 90% cited the complexity of making their existing financial infrastructure compatible with various digital currencies as their greatest challenge.

Additionally, security of the payment platforms topped the list of barriers to adoption, the survey revealed, followed by concerns about the changing regulatory landscape and the instability of the digital currency market.

More than half of retailers agreed that certain regulations regarding cryptocurrency need to be enacted, including national guidance around holding digital assets, clarity about the tax implications of using digital currencies and the ability to hold digital currencies in a bank account.

Despite their worries, retailers remain optimistic about the benefits of enabling payments with cryptocurrencies. Nearly half of retailers believe this move will improve customer experience and increase their customer base.

"We anticipate that further partnerships with regulated and established institutions in the industry will help deliver the benefits of digital currencies (e.g., convenience and support) and will continue to build the necessary foundation of trust," the report concludes.

While the ability to pay with crypto may be good news for some crypto users, it's still important to remember that these assets can be highly volatile, and experts typically recommend only investing as much money as you are prepared to lose.

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Don't miss: Fake crypto apps have stolen over $42 million from investors in under a year, warns FBIhow to stay safe

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Nearly 75% of retailers plan to accept cryptocurrency payments within the next 2 years - CNBC

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Things are on the up for cryptocurrencies, at least for the time being.

Bitcoin, the largest crypto, reached $24,000 on Friday hitting a fresh new high in July as it continues to follow the rising stock market. Ethereum, the second-largest crypto, climbed above $1,700 and other cryptocurrencies were also trading higher on Friday.

The two largest cryptocurrencies are on track for their best month of the year. Bitcoin is up more than 20% in July and ethereum is up 50%, according to NextAdvisors crypto price data.

But after a dismal first half of the year, is the crypto market poised for a bull run in the second half? Experts say not quite, warning investors to remain cautious. The market could easily come crashing down again given the current macro environment, so it may not be wise take on risky bets right now.

Many are warning we are not yet out of the woods from a macro perspective, says Adrian Kenny, a senior sales trader at digital asset broker GlobalBlock. A cautious thesis is a more logical stance to take in the current conditions.

A lot happened this week that led to a rally in the crypto and wider markets in general.

Many big retail and tech companies including Google, Apple, and Meta revealed their second-quarter earnings, a factor that influences stock prices. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 75 basis points, but signaled it may slow down the pace of such rises. And an economic report revealed that U.S. GDP fell for a second consecutive quarter in a row. Though that follows a commonly understood technical definition of a recession, President Joe Biden and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell both said this week that the U.S. is not in a recession.

Experts say all eyes have recently been looking to how the Fed would respond to the threat of soaring inflation and a potential recession. Experts say the upward movement in the markets suggest that investors were already expecting those outcomes this week, and will likely continue moving higher in the short-term because investors have already priced in the bad news.

The reaction has been very positive this week and the cryptocurrency markets once again tipped over the $1 trillion market cap once again, Kenny says.

While this week has for the first time in over a month seen some market recovery, there is still an undoubtedly considerable mountain to climb in terms of normality or the hopes of a return to the highs of 2021 anytime soon, says Kenny.

If youre investing crypto for the long-term, the recent developments this week shouldnt drastically alter your investment strategy. Its simply a reminder that crypto assets are highly volatility and risky, particularly during times of economic uncertainty.

While there has been positive momentum in the crypto market this week, bitcoin and ethereum are still down more than 50% from when they reached their all-time highs last November. Given cryptos history of volatility, prices will continue to drastically swing up and down and its extremely difficult to predict with certainty where theyll go next.

One thing is certain: theres a gloomy list of long-term potential worries for the U.S. economy, so experts recommend playing it safe. Allocate no more than 5% of crypto to your investment portfolio and only put in what youre OK with losing. Before putting any extra cash into the crypto market, always make sure your financial bases are covered from your retirement accounts to emergency savings.

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Bitcoin and Ethereum Prices Are As High As Theyve Been Since June Crypto Crash, But Experts Still Urge Caution for Investors - NextAdvisor

Market capitalization as a term has also entered conversations about crypto investing over time. Its definition and applications in crypto arent quite the same as in the traditional stock market. Cryptocurrency market cap is broadly defined as a metric that measures a particular cryptocurrencys total value in the current market.

The market cap of a cryptocurrency is determined by dividing the total coins ever mined by the price of a single coin at any particular moment. Market capitalization can be used as a valid measure of how stable an asset is likely to be.

This feature provides a brief introduction to the cryptocurrency market cap, why its important to understand it, and what it means for investors.

Since the inception of Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, more and more cryptocurrency projects have steadily entered the scene, each promising different perks or uses to investors. Some altcoins boast unparalleled transaction speeds, while others claim to offer the lowest fees.

Other coins, like the privacy-focused altcoin Monero (XMR), offer airtight security and total privacy. XMR transactions made through a specially encrypted Monero wallet are allegedly completely anonymous and untraceable, making Monero an ideal coin for users with outstanding cybersecurity concerns.

At present, there are thousands of active cryptocurrency projects available for traders to invest in. Naturally, every single one of these coins will be valued differently in the market, and this value is what market capitalization in crypto aims to measure.

A particular coins market cap is meant to give investors a sense of how big the project currently is and how well its performing.

A cryptocurrencys market cap is calculated by multiplying the coins current market price by the total circulating supply. For example, if a certain coin is being traded at $5 per unit and around 10,000,000 coins are in circulation, its market cap would be $50,000,000.

Many crypto experts regard the market cap as the most important factor for determining a cryptocurrencys viability as an asset. There are now a number of websites and online indexes that calculate and track market capitalization for different cryptocurrencies, as well as other important financial metrics. These sites enable crypto investors to monitor the dominance and popularity of their chosen coins.

Also Read: 10 Tips to Survive Crypto Bear Market

A crypto projects market cap can provide valuable insight on that projects relevancy, particularly for investors that aim to assess a specific coins popularity in the long term.

Most crypto experts will agree, for instance, that coins with large caps of over $10 billion are relatively safe investments. Investing primarily in such coins is usually considered a conservative strategy, as these cryptocurrencies are likely to be less unpredictable investments than other coins.

Its worth noting, however, that even the most supposedly stable cryptos out there will still be more volatile in terms of their value than traditional investing products like stocks or bonds.

Mid-cap cryptocurrencies are those with market caps between $1 billion and $10 billion. In contrast to large-cap cryptos, these cryptos are usually much more volatile, but they may have more potential to grow. Meanwhile, small-cap cryptocurrencies are those with market caps under $1 billion. Theyre often subject to extreme price volatility, often rising or falling in value significantly in a matter of just a few hours.

Small-cap cryptos are thus, considered the highest-risk investments its possible to make in crypto, even if their growth potential is projected to be good in the short term.

One viable way investors can apply their knowledge of the market cap is by pursuing a weighted market cap investing strategy. Following this strategy, the amounts that traders invest in their chosen cryptocurrencies are proportional to those coins current market cap.

To illustrate, this means that an investor aiming to put down $100 in total crypto investments should allocate the greatest portion of this amount to the coin with the largest market cap and smaller portions to other less popular cryptos.

Its important for novice crypto investors to bear in mind, however, that the market is prone to dramatic price fluctuations even for large-cap coins. Hence, market capitalization is constantly changing even for the largest and most popular coins out there. Because cryptocurrency is a relatively new asset in comparison to traditional assets like stocks, there are currently few ways to predict how a particular coins value or growth trajectory is likely to change over time.

Cryptocurrencys unpredictability is the primary reason financial experts encourage new traders to invest cautiously even in large crypto projects. Its always a good idea for the novice investors to do thorough research before committing to any investments and only put down as much money as they can afford to lose.

Also Read: A Guide to do your own Research (DYOR) for Crypto Trading

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Cryptocurrency Market Cap And Its Importance - Crypto Times

Cryptocurrency might change the world, but, until then, it's a horse race. Mainly, coins are fighting to get to third place.

Why it matters: Coins that get a lock in their position at the top are likely to have found what tech people call "product-market fit." That is, some set of people has found them decisively useful in some way.

Details: This chart looks backward from the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap today, and where they have stood in the CoinMarketCap rankings every summer going back to 2017.

Of note: Bitcoin has always led this chart. Ethereum is solid but if you go back a little farther, it traded places with xrp a few times.

Stablecoins jump out. Note the rapid ascents of tether, usd coin and binance usd.

Also, note the white space to the left. Empty rankings on the chart are where once buzzy but now mostly forgotten cryptocurrencies sat when they still looked interesting.

What we're watching: DOGE, crypto's comeback coin, keeps on hanging on in the rankings. Much wow!

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Looking back on the cryptocurrency horse race - Axios

Clyde Barrow first struck at age 16. He borrowed a used car from a dealership outside of Dallas and forgot to return it. Alphonse Al Capone participated in the robbery of a Brooklyn store at 19, his first crime, which secured him the meager amount of just over 10 dollars. Precocious criminals? Perhaps, but wait until you read this. At just 15 years old, Ellis Pinsky, a teenager of Russian descent who was raised in a middle-class home in Irvington, New York, stole the equivalent of 24 million dollars in cryptocurrency. It was not his first cybercrime, but it was his largest and most profitable one.

He did it on the afternoon of January 7, 2018. It was a bloodless coup, a treacherous and youthfully audacious crime. The technological equivalent of tunneling through a vault and breaking into a maximum-security safe. Pinsky thinks it was easy and a lot of fun. But he adds that he wishes he hadnt done it because it has made life for him and his family hell.

Two years after his crime, in May 2020, the young New Yorker almost died. In the wee hours of the morning, four intruders broke into the home he shared with his mother, stepfather and three younger siblings. They wore ski masks and thick overcoats and wielded brass knuckles, butchers knives and a fake 9mm pistol. Their presence was caught on security cameras and a broken window set off the burglar alarm.

Pinsky had taken precautions. For months, hed assumed that something like this would happen, so he bought a shotgun on the black market. With the help of his mother, he confronted the two assailants who remained upstairs. When they fled, he cornered the two who had gone into the basement and he called the police.

Pinsky tells the story as if it were a Tarantino movie, but he also acknowledges that he knew that he was risking his life. Although he had taken target practice, when push came to shove, he found that he lacked the skill and cold-bloodedness needed to handle a shotgun. Luckily, the intruders turned out not to be true professionals. The two burglars who were arrested were Dominic Pineda and Shon Morgan, 21-year-old petty thieves who had recently arrived from Virginia. Pinsky thinks he knows who sent them, although he is careful not to say, and he has no doubt what they were looking for: the remaining loot, money that by then, he says, he no longer had.

Alex Morris, the editor of Rolling Stone magazine, was the first to get an in-depth interview with Ellis Pinsky, the cyber thief whom the New York press has nicknamed Baby Al Capone. The interview was published on July 8, and it attests to how much more sophisticated and unusual cybercrime has become in recent years.

Morris says that it took him several weeks to gain Pinskys trust. He describes Ellis as a child who has just grown into a young adult whose angst eats away at him. The reporter and the precocious criminal had several meetings on the terrace of the university campus where he goes to school. Ultimately, Pinsky agreed to tell him the whole truth on the condition that the journalist not leave out any important details in his article: I want the world to know my side of the story, and it is not simple. You have to tell it well.

Pinskys story is that of a perfectly normal child. Hes the son of migrants from the former Soviet Union. The family lived in New York City until they moved to Irvington, a sleepy commuter town on the Hudson River, when Ellis was 11 years old. In his new suburban residence, the chubby and somewhat shybut by no means socially awkwardboy, grew fond of online video games such as Counter Strike and Call of Duty. He then started spending time with a young community of would-be hackers that hang out in gamer environments. Veteran hackers who had noticed his progress began to share what they knew with him in exchange for him performing modest, and not always legal, tasks for them. Pinsky engaged in acts of what is referred to as social engineering, that is, extracting passwords or professional credentials from workers at social networks or from key computer services in order to access other peoples computers. It is a coarse and effective espionage technique. For instance: Someone boasts in an online chat that he works as a trainee programmer at Twitter or Microsoft and can access a series of user accounts or cell phones; you show interest, gain his trust and get him to tell you what he can actually do or how it is done.

Pinsky proved to be a natural at this task, but he was interested in true knowledge and true power. At 15, this brilliant self-taught man believed he was able to hack any account and any device. He had taken social engineering to a new level, creating a network of collaborators and accomplices whom he paid small amounts to help him with his increasingly complex misdeeds. Why do we climb mountains? asked the British mountaineer George Mallory. Because they are there. Pinsky was hacking into other peoples devices for very similar reasons: simply because he could.

Then Baby Al Capone entered the cybercrime big leagues. One day, a guy named Harry contacted Ellis to tell him that someone he knew from the OGusers online community, which is very popular among hackers, had offered to sell access to users passwords for a service that buys and sells cryptocurrency.

Harry and Ellis identified a potential victim from the client database: Michael Terpin, a businessman in his 60s who was on the verge of becoming a billionaire. With the help of an anonymous informer, they gained control of Terpins SIM card. As soon as they began to explore, they saw that they had landed a whale. They could even check his crypto asset portfolio balances; doing so confirmed that the billionaire had 900 million dollars in Ethereum cryptocurrency (Terpin denies that claim), but they could not access the money.

Looking for access to less-secure asset portfolios, they found a company called Counterparty where Terpin had more than three million Triggers, an emerging cryptocurrency that Pinsky had never even heard of. They thought the Triggers would be worth just a few thousand dollars, but simply looking at the virtual currency price showed that they were actually worth 24 million dollars.

After hacking Terpins twelve-word password, they took control of his portfolio. At that point, Pinsky made the rookie mistake that would later allow Terpin to track him down: he transferred some of the cryptocurrency to his own account to make sure it was real money.

As soon as Pinsky confirmed that his balance reflected the new deposit, he and Harry mobilized their network of accomplices. They began to make dozens of transactions to help them launder the money by exchanging it for bitcoins and transferring it through different servers before depositing it into a new account. Pinsky says that several million dollars were lost in this transaction. Because Terpin had accumulated ten percent of all existing Triggers, selling so many of them at once caused the currencys price to plummet in real time; Pinskys accomplices had held up their end of the bargain. Except for a certain @erupts, who received a transfer of a million dollars and decided to keep it.

After splitting the spoils with Harry, Ellis ended up with several million dollars in the checking account his parents had opened for him to start saving for college. He went to bed early because he had gym class the next day. What followed is an even more unlikely and twisted story. It took Pinsky several weeks to realize that he had just become the richest teenager in New York state and that the FBI could bust through his front door at any moment.

He was not aware that he had stolen a fortune, only that he had pulled a childish prank, the real dimensions of which he did not fully appreciate. Pinsky says that he barely touched the money, but he does concede that he bought a Patek Philippe watch for $50,000, which he paid for in bitcoin, and spent another $900 on flights from Chicago to New York for his entire family.

SoMagNews journalist Daniel Kucher has compiled evidence that Ellis was not as discreet as he claims, that the teenager indulged in nouveau-riche whims like driving around Irvington behind the wheel of an Audi R8. His schoolmates also say that he started wearing Louis Vuitton clothes; traveled to Miami and Las Vegas using JetSmarter, a private airplane rental service; and once ended an argument at a school football game by telling his rival: I could buy and sell you and your whole family. I have 100 million dollars.

The fact is that theres no material evidence of any of this. Perhaps the only sure sign that Ellis lived the high life during the last years of his life as a minor is a social media photo of him surrounded by three blonde models with whom hes sharing a huge bottle of champagne. It is a sad photo. Pinsky has the expression of a frightened child. Hes holding the bottle as if it were a dangerous animal while the young women smile and stick their tongues out at the camera.

But even that photo has an unexpected subtext. Pinsky says that @erupts in real life, Nick Truglia, the 20-year-old hacker who had stolen a million dollars from himhad invited Ellis to a private party at a New York club, hired the models, and paid for the champagne. As he tells it, Ellis went to the meeting with a friend, convinced that he was heading into the lions den and expecting that Truglia was going to break his legs. But it turned out that Truglia just wanted to get to know him a little better, tell him that he was a legend, and talk " business. Pinsky also says that he returned to Irvington at dawn in an Uber feeling like the protagonist of a delirious movie farce, a kind of juvenile version of The Wolf of Wall Street.

Ultimately, Terpin filed a lawsuit in 2020 against the teenager who had stolen from him two years earlier. Ellis found himself a good lawyer, pleaded guilty to embezzlement and, as a show of good faith, returned 562 bitcoins, the Patek watch, and just under $100,000 in cash, which he had been keeping in a piggy bank under his bed. The authorities went easy on him. After all, at the time of the events he was only 15 years old, and a cybercriminal is not an armed robber.

His mother has supported him steadfastly throughout the ordeal. Pinsky asserts that she never suspected anything, that she has always been oblivious to her little Al Capones shady dealings (despite the Audi R8, the rental of private jets, and the Louis Vuitton shirts). In chronicling his conversations with Pinsky, Morris makes it clear that he believes the boy has become a pathological liar, that he is hiding too sordid a story and has too much to lose by telling the whole truth. Currently, Pinsky is studying computer science and economics at a college near his mothers house; in 2021, he spent a semester studying abroad in Florence. Morris has no doubt that Pinsky will do very well in life. Ellis is talented and driven. Moreover, his past is not an obstacle in the interconnected fields where he intends to make his living, technology and business; its actually quite the opposite.

Morris sees Pinsky as consumed by the premature melancholy of someone who has gone through too much too soon. That May night, as he went down to the basement clutching the shotgun with which he planned to protect his family from a gang of hired thieves, Pinsky believed he was about to die before he turned 18. Cryptocurrencies, and their rampant and wild volatility, have not only brought us a generation of new-fangled speculators, but also criminals as unlikely as Ellis Pinsky.

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The 15-year-old boy who stole 24 million dollars in cryptocurrency - EL PAS USA