Author: Ibiam Wayas

Ibiam is an optimistic crypto journalist. He loves to associate with like-minded individuals and collaborate with them on similar projects. He spends much of his time honing his writing and critical thinking skills.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Ethereum TRON

Tron Founder Justin Sun “Buys The Dip” for $285 Million Worth of BTC and ETH

Following the market crash on Wednesday, the founder of the TRON network, Justin Sun, announced he bought a sizable amount of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) in the dip. The total purchases he disclosed were worth over $285 million USD, and he plans to HODL them. 

TRON CEO Stockpiles Bitcoin and Ethereum

Justin shared on Twitter that he purchased a total of 4145 BTC during the market dip on Wednesday. He bought the coins at an average price of $36,868 USD per BTC, spending a total of $152.8 million USD on Bitcoin. He also spent as much as $135.8 million USD for 54,153 ETH, at an average price of $2,509 USD. 

In a separate tweet, Justin also confirmed that he’s maintaining a strong hand and won’t sell.  

The cryptocurrency market got extremely volatile yesterday, with lots of buying and panic selling to the extent that major exchanges suffered system downtime and technical issues at some point. Although many cryptocurrencies significantly dropped in value leading to massive liquidations and more panic selling, some people like the founder of TRON seized the opportunity to buy major coins in the dip.

Tron Users Unhappy

Meanwhile, some people in the TRON community didn’t welcome the idea that Justin bought Bitcoin. They said he should have invested in the Tron (TRX) instead.  

Bitcoin is Back to $40,000 USD 

The cryptocurrency market is gradually regaining its shape, as some coins are recouping from the loss on Wednesday. 

Bitcoin was trading at over $40,000 USD, with a market capitalization of over $730 billion USD, during the time of writing. The entire crypto market is worth over $1.7 trillion USD. 

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News Markets

Open Interest in Bitcoin Drops to $12.9 Billion as BTC Plunged to Almost $30,000 USD

Bitcoins on ladder chart cryptocurrency background concept
Bitcoins on ladder chart cryptocurrency background concept https://www.dreamstime.com/bitcoins-ladder-chart-cryptocurrency-background-concept-image112362966

Open interest in Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped significantly following the massive decline in the price of the leading cryptocurrency within the past 24 hours.

Open Interest in BTC Drops Below $13 Billion USD

On Wednesday, the price of Bitcoin dropped to about $32,000 USD as more people sold off their holdings. This drop brought the market capitalisation of the cryptocurrency below $640 billion USD, according to data on CoinMarketCap. BTC’s drop to $32,000 USD also affected many investment products tied to it, including the futures markets.

Open interest in Bitcoin futures has dropped to about $12.9 billion USD (about 386k BTC) at the time of writing, amid the declining value of the underlying crypto asset. This represents a -25.89 percent change over the last 24 hours. Binance accounts for $2.93 billion USD of the open interest in BTC, followed by CME ($1.58 billion), and Deribit ($1.46 billion), according to the market data from ByBt.

BTC Futures Open Interest Chart [ByBt]

Over $3 Billion USD in BTC Liquidated

Many Bitcoin traders got over-leveraged as the cryptocurrency dropped to almost $30,000 USD. As per ByBt, about $3.57 billion USD worth of Bitcoin has been liquidated over the past 24 hours. This affected traders on derivatives exchanges with a long position.

Total BTC Liquidations by ByBt

While there could have been multiple reasons for BTC price crash, it’s also worth noting that Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency affected in this bear market. In fact, the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies dropped further to about $1.5 trillion USD, as Bitcoin tanked, followed by other major altcoins, including Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), Dogecoin (DOGE) and many more.

Open interest in Ethereum also dropped by 30 percent to $6.67 billion USD, during the time of writing.

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Bitcoin Crypto Exchange Crypto News

Major Crypto Exchanges Suffer System Outages Amid Massive User Activity

Out of service computer
Out of service computer https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-out-service-sign-graphic-concept-image76832992

A number of major cryptocurrency exchanges reported technical issues and system outage on Wednesday, following a massive increase in users activity. Top crypto trading platforms like Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini were all affected today.

Crypto Exchanges Report Technical Issues

The publicly traded US exchange Coinbase reported an “intermittent downtime” on its status webpage on Wednesday.

Gemini had to undergo emergency maintenance, citing issues of stale market data. According to Gemini’s status webpage however, “a fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results”.

Kraken suffered connectivity issues. The users also complained that their crypto wallet balances weren’t updating after completing transactions. The exchange also confirmed issues with funding via Debit / Credit Cards, all of which are being solved and monitored.

Binance had reported issues with withdrawals on Ethereum-based digital currencies. At some point, the exchange had to pause the service.

Crypto Market Faces Extreme Correction

The system outages and technical issues with these exchanges aren’t surprising, given that many crypto investors and traders have been scrambling to close their positions due to the bearish state of the market. Major cryptos like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin and Litecoin, all dropped by more than 15 percent in price.

At the time of writing, the entire crypto market capitalization was $1.77 trillion USD, with a 16 percent decrease over the past 24 hours.

Global Crypto Capitalization Charts. [CoinMarketCap]
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Bitcoin Bitcoin Cash Crypto News Dogecoin Ethereum Payments

Leading Car Auction Company Mecum Now Accepts Bitcoin Payments

Mecum Auctions
Mecum Auctions https://twitter.com/mecum/status/1394669692124532740/photo/1

One of the world’s largest collector car auction company, Mecum Auctions, has announced that it now accepts payments in Bitcoin and other major digital currencies from bidders during online auction events.

You Can Bid on Collector Cars With Cryptocurrency

Per the announcement, the company will accept bids in about ten cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), and stablecoins such as USD Coin (USDC), Binance USD, and others.

This is made possible following Mecum Auctions’ partnership with one of the industry-leading crypto payment processors, BitPay. The development today will enable bidders to experience the “convenience of an end-to-end digital experience”, according to Mecum.

Additionally, the company believes its crypto payment service will enable them to attract new customers and sales, as it opens doors to new massive crypto marketplace.

We recognize the growing acceptance of cryptocurrency for commerce and are confident that by accepting crypto for collector cars, it will widen our scope of influence and introduce the Mecum Experience to an entirely new audience.

Sam Murtaugh, Chief Operating Officer at Mecum Auctions [source]

Aussies Can Buy Cars With Bitcoin

Mecum is not the first company to accept Bitcoin payments for purchasing cars. Only a few weeks ago, Crypto News Australia reported that CarBuyers.com.au is allowing Australians to buy and sell their vehicles using Bitcoin.

Tesla also previously allowed people Bitcoin payments for its products. Not until May 12, when the founder Elon Musk tweeted that the company will no longer accept payments in Bitcoin due to environmental concerns. The announcement preceded the massive drop in the price of the cryptocurrency, as people began to panic-sell their coins.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Institutions

MicroStrategy Buys Additional Bitcoin For $10 Million USD

https://twitter.com/MicroStrategy/status/1394734551432323076

While Bitcoin (BTC) price struggles below $45,000 USD, MicroStrategy is stacking up more coins in the dip. On Tuesday, the publicly traded business intelligence company announced it purchased additional Bitcoin, worth about $10 million USD.

MicroStrategy Now Holds Over 92k Bitcoin in Reserve

On Tuesday, MicroStrategy purchased an additional 229 Bitcoin at an average value of $43,663 USD per coin, according to the tweet by the CEO, Michael Saylor.

Following this recent purchase, MicroStrategy currently holds 92,078 BTC in its reserve, remaining one of the largest corporate Bitcoin investors. Just last week, the company acquired 271 BTC for $15 million USD, at an average of $55,387 per Bitcoin. This follows Tesla’s announcement that it has suspended accepting Bitcoin payments for its vehicles over environmental concerns.

The massive correction in the price of Bitcoin, however, didn’t deter MicroStrategy from buying the dip. This goes to show how confident the company is regarding Bitcoin.

BTC Dominance Drops to 40%

For the past few days, Bitcoin has been struggling below $50,000 USD, as people panic-sold their holding. The cryptocurrency was trading at $43,644 USD on CoinMarketCap, during the time of writing. Its market capitalization has dropped down below $1 trillion amid the massive price decline. BTC shaded about 22.61 percent in value over the past seven days.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s dominance has also dropped to 40 percent. On the other hand, there has been a rise of altcoins.

Crypto dominance chart. Source: Coinmarketcap

Categories
Crypto News DeFi Hackers

FinNexus Token (FNX) Tanks 90% After Contract Was Allegedly Hacked

FNX, the native token of FinNexus protocol, suffered a massive hit on Monday, plummeting over 90 percent after the contract was supposedly hacked.

FinNexus Team Says Crypto Contract Was Hacked

FinNexus is an application layer DeFi protocol that allows developers, service providers, and project participants to easily interact with blockchains. FinNexus has its own utility token called FNX, which plays an important role in the functioning of the ecosystem and it relies on an ERC-20 smart contract.

The development team confirmed the incident in a tweet, saying that the ERC-20 contract was hacked. They instructed FNX investors and traders to withdraw their funds from the pool for safety reasons.

Although the FinNexus team claimed that the token’s contract was compromised, DeFi researcher Chris Blec suggests otherwise.

According to Blec, someone stole the admin key, which enabled them to change ownership of the contract to a new address. They were able to create more FNX tokens, only to sell them a few minutes later. This resulted in a massive decrease in the token’s value.

FNX Price Update

At the time of writing, the FNX token was trading at around $0.06 USD on CoinMarketCap. After dropping over 90% in price, it has recovered a little but it’s still more than 80 percent decrease in the token’s value over the past 24 hours. The market capitalization is also down to around $2.2 million USD.

FinNexus (FNX) price chart [CoinMarketCap]
Categories
Betting Bitcoin Crypto News Gaming Sports

Sony Publishes Patent For Bitcoin-Supported Esports Betting Platform

Sony Interactive Entertainment, the video game and digital entertainment company of Sony Group, has published its patent application for an eSports betting platform that will support Bitcoin payments.

Sony to Support Bitcoin in New Betting Platform

The patent was published this month, although it was initially filed by the entertainment firm in 2019, according to the report by IGN. The information on the patent states that the company is considering developing a betting service for livestream eSports events. The platform will basically enable viewers to bet on live streaming events like fighting game tournaments. 

In the patent, the company mentioned Bitcoin (BTC) as one of the options (wager) through which viewers can place or earn from a bet. 

Wagers may be pecuniary, e.g., money or bitcoin, or maybe non-pecuniary, e.g., game assets, digital rights, and virtual currency. 

US20210142624 E-Sports Betting Platform patent

The platform will be powered by a machine learning algorithm that can be used to learn correct odds based on a training set from past proposition bets. This algorithm will equally help identify essential events in the simulation for better proposition bets. 

Once the proposition bets are defined, the odds for those bets are established either by a human or by an algorithm accessing the game analytic data of some or all of the simulation participants.

US20210142624 E-Sports Betting Platform patent

Gaming Companies Are Embracing Crypto

It remains unknown when the proposed eSports betting service will be launched. However, it looks like a company’s effort to onboard more fans into the esports community.

The world of cryptocurrency and gaming is getting closer and stronger as more firms continue to support and integrate digital currency in their services.

Having a broader look at the sports industry, some clubs started rewarding players in crypto and issuing their own tokens, some of which have recently scored tremendous growth in price.

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Coinbase Crypto News Dogecoin

Coinbase is Finally Going to List Dogecoin (DOGE) As Price Surges Again

Coinbase is Finally Going to List Dogecoin (DOGE)

Coinbase, one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges in the United States, has finally announced its intention to list the famous dog-themed cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) in the coming weeks.

This is a much anticipated and important announcement for many Dogecoin holders as they are hoping the coin can reach the $1 USD price. This does seem crazy as the coin was only $0.000233 USD back in 2016.

DOGE is Coming to Coinbase

During the exchange’s earnings call on Thursday, the Chief Executive Officer, Brian Armstrong, revealed that they are planning to add Dogecoin in the “next six to eight weeks” for trading. Bloomberg cited the CEO’s comment, which reads that “the proliferation of alternative coins, including Dogecoin and Binance Coin, is a challenge because competitors support them and Coinbase doesn’t.”

Coinbase supports a number of cryptocurrencies for trading, including Mirror Protocol (MIR), Internet Computer (ICP), Tether (USDT), etc. However, it’s yet to add Dogecoin on its platform, despite the fact that the meme cryptocurrency has made headlines across several crypto media amid its massive increase in value. The exchange seems to support coins only when they’ve reached scale. 

However, Armstrong noted the exchange would lower the barrier and accelerate the time it takes to list new coins.

DOGE is up Over 5,500% YTD

Interest in Dogecoin rose significantly over the recent months amid the massive growth. The price of DOGE has increased by over 5,500 percent since the beginning of 2021.

Dogecoin price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

This is quite surprising given that the cryptocurrency was only considered a joke during its early years. In fact, Dogecoin was even abandoned by its creator, Billy Markus, back in 2015. Doge’s Little Brother Shiba Ino (SHIB) Meme Coin Surges 700%.

DOGE was trading at $0.5641 USD on CoinMarketCap, during the time of writing. It’s rated the fourth-largest digital currency, with a market capitalization of $73.5 billion USD.  

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News Payments

Tesla Stops Accepting Bitcoin As Payment For Cars

Tesla Stops Accepting Bitcoin As Payment For Cars

The world’s renowned electric automobile company Tesla has stopped accepting Bitcoin (BTC) as a payment option for its vehicles, citing the environmental impact of the energy used in maintaining the network.

Tesla is Concerned About Bitcoin’s Intensive Energy Usage

The founder of Tesla, Elon Musk, recently shared the notice, wherein the company asserted that more fossil fuels are being burned as energy for mining Bitcoin. Hence, they decided to discontinue the Bitcoin payment option, as Tesla is keener on the improvement of the planetary condition. 

Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels, and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at a great cost to the environment.

the company noted.

At the moment, Tesla said it’s looking at accepting other cryptocurrencies that use less than one percent of Bitcoin’s energy. As for its Bitcoin reserve, the company noted that it wouldn’t sell off its holdings. Tesla might resume Bitcoin payments if/when sustainable energy is used for BTC mining activities, according to the notice.

Crypto Twitter Reaction to Tesla’s Decision

Tesla’s announcement to stop accepting Bitcoin sparked mixed feelings for crypto users. Some argued that the decision was only to impress/support their application to enter into the United States’ renewable fuel credit market. 

Whatever be the reason, some people believe it’s for a good cause and that it can influence more usage of renewable energy for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining. 

Meanwhile, Bitcoin took a hit after the announcement. About $2 billion USD in BTC futures were liquidated as the cryptocurrency declined below $50,000 USD. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $48,066 on CoinMarketCap.

Related: Two Australians Lose $130,000 To Tesla Scam While Buying The Electric Car Online

Categories
Crypto News Tether

Tether Finally Reveals Its Breakdown of USDT Reserve Backing

Tether Inc., the company behind the largest USD-backed stablecoin (USDT), has published a breakdown of asset categories that make up the stablecoin reserve. This is actually the first time the company reveals its reserve assets since the inception in 2014. 

Only 3.87% of USDT Reserve is Held in Cash

In the publication, Tether broke down its reserve assets into four categories. The majority of USDT reserves (75.85 percent) are held under the “Cash & Cash Equivalents & Other Short-Term Deposits  &  Commercial Paper” category. Further breakdown of this particular category shows that the company holds less cash reserve for the stablecoin. 

The allocation in this category is as follows:

  • Commercial Paper (65.39%) 
  • Fiduciary Deposits (24.20%) 
  • Cash (3.87%) 
  • Reverse Repo Notes (3.60%) 
  • Treasury Bills (2.94%)

The remaining 24 percent are held in Secured  Loans (12.55%), Corporate Bonds, Funds & Precious Metals (9.96%), and 1.64 percent in other investments that include cryptocurrencies.

Tether Commits to Ensuring Transparency of USDT

Having suffered several criticisms of market manipulation and shady reserve, Tether has since committed to ensuring transparency of its stablecoin. 

Today’s publication reflects our continued dedication to making this information public as part of our ongoing commitment to transparency and setting the standard in our industry. We embrace that commitment to our community.

Tether wrote. 

In March, Tether also released a transparency report which claimed that all USDT in circulation is fully backed by the reserve, as audited by Moore Cayman.

According to CoinMarketCap, there are currently 57,755,893,177 USDT in circulation, meaning that Tether holds over $57 billion USD in reserve for the coins.