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

Growth in Addresses with +1000 BTC Suggests Institutions are Near

Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index Clicks 94: Is Bitcoin due for Correction?

There is a serious growth in the number of Bitcoin addresses containing at least 1,000 Bitcoin (BTC). This is evident as the number of these BTC addresses are already higher this year when compared to the record throughout the past year, according to the information shared by Arcane Research. Such massive growth highlights the increasing level of interest in the leading cryptocurrency among deep-pocketed and institutional investors.

Bitcoin Whales Addresses are Increasing

From January 2020 to December, Bitcoin addresses with at least 1,000 Bitcoin increased by only over 6.7 percent, Arcane Research shared, citing data from Glassnode. However, as the price of Bitcoin began rising notably in December, the number of these whale addresses began increasing as well. From December to January 2021, the addresses increased by 7.2 percent, surpassing the whole record in 2020.

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This indicates that there was a strong BTC buying momentum among deep-pocketed investors in the cryptocurrency market, more precisely, in December. For more insight, the Bitcoin distribution list from Bitinfocharts shows that 2,318 addresses are holding between 1,000 – 10,000 BTC. There are only 99 addresses holding at least 10,000 – 100,000 Bitcoin, while only one address holds more than 100,000 BTC (over US$5 billion), which belong to the Huobi exchange. 

The Number of Ethereum Addresses are Declining

While Bitcoin whale addresses have skyrocketed lately, the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH), is seeing a drop in small-sized addresses. Per Glassnode, the addresses with +10 ETH has decreased to a five-month low of 282,063, while the +100 ETH addresses decreased to a six-month low of 50,483. Also, addresses with +1,000 ETH declined to a three-year low of 6,975. 

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The Ethereum 2.0 staking and DeFi could be two possible reasons behind the decreasing number of Ethereum addresses.

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Crypto News Markets

10 Altcoins with Recent All-time High in Price

10 Altcoins with Recent All-time High in Price

Many cryptocurrencies are starting the new year with great price movement. The leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), more than doubled its previous years-long all-time high (ATH) in January, reaching over US$40,000. Although BTC is down from that price range, many other cryptocurrencies are peaking at price. Some already made a high ATH recently. This is causing many traders to believe the long-awaited altcoin season is almost here.

Major Altcoin with Recent ATH

The top ten altcoins with new price ATH includes:

  • Binance Coin (BNB)
  • Uniswap (UNI)
  • Kusama (KSM)
  • Oasis Network (ROSE)
  • Aave (AAVE)
  • Chainlink (LINK)
  • Avalanche (AVAX)
  • Polkadot (DOT)
  • Near Protocol (NEAR)
  • Synthetix (SNX)
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BNB, the native cryptocurrency of the leading exchange, Binance, made a new all-time high in value at US$46.8 on January 18. However, the price of BNB slightly dropped to US$44.33 on Coingecko during the time of writing. UNI, the governance token of the largest decentralized exchange, Uniswap, also reached a new peak of US$7.8 on January 18 but has dropped to the current price of US$9.04.

Kusama is designed to be Polkadot’s canary network. Its cryptocurrency KSM climbed to a new high of US$120, but the current price sits at US$112 on Coingecko. The native cryptocurrency of Oasis Network, ROSE, also increased to an ATH of US$0.074300 but dropped to US$0.068124.

AAVE, LINK, and DOT reached a new high of US$202, US$25.53, and US$19.10, respectively. AVAX, NEAR, and SNX also increased to US$14.37, US$2.76, and US$17.06. However, all these cryptocurrencies are trading below the ATH during press time. 

Noteworthily, Bitcoin has been losing its dominance lately from about 70 percent to 66 percent, which somewhat suggests that altcoin season is almost here.

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Crypto News DeFi

DEXs on Track to Break US$55 Billion in Monthly Trading Volume

DeFi Tokens Generated $252 Million In Revenue For April 2021

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are on track to reaching another massive monthly trading volume, according to the latest market report by Messari, a cryptocurrency analytics platform. DEXs are one part of the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry that has gained immense growth in participation and market valuation since the past year, especially during the rush in DeFi.

Judging by the trading volume, the exchanges had an awakening moment in July where the volume began spiking consecutively to the all-time monthly high in September.

With 15 days left to conclude the month, DEXs could see a new ATH.

DEXs are Seeing High Trades in 2021

DEXs are seeing high market participation in January, as the monthly trading volume is already up to US$22 billion, which is about six percent below the $23.4 billion recorded in December. Recent reports had indicated that more coins, especially Ethereum (ETH), have been leaving centralized exchanges (CEXs) to other places that include DEXs. Notionally, this somewhat explains the increasing trading volume posted on these DeFi exchanges. 

Meanwhile, DEXs are likely to surpass the September ATH of US$26.7 billion, following the current trading volume so far. Potentially, the crypto analytics platform noted that the trading volume could hit a milestone record of US$55 billion in January. Among all the available decentralized exchanges, Uniswap dominates the market with a current monthly trading volume of $9.7 billion. Other leading DEXs by trading volume include SushiSwap, Curve, Synthetix, Kyber, Balancer, and dYdX.

Total Assets Valuation in DEXs

A glance at DeFi Pulse showed that DEXs are the second-largest set of DeFi protocols with about US$7.67 billion in assets locked – second to the Lending market, which has a total assets valuation of US$10.68 billion. The leading decentralized exchange, Uniswap, has more than US$2.7 billion assets locked, followed by Curve (US$1.9 billion), SushiSwap (US$1.83 billion), etc.

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Bitcoin Crypto News

Grayscale Resumes Massive Bitcoin Buys, Adds +10K BTC Within a Week

Grayscale Resumes Massive Bitcoin Buys, Adds +10K BTC Within a Week

The leading digital assets investment company, Grayscale has resumed its massive Bitcoin (BTC) purchases just a few days after it reopened the Bitcoin Trust product for new investments. Oftentimes, the company buys more than BTC miners could mine in a single day. This somewhat indicates that there is still a growing interest in Bitcoin among institutional investors.

Massive purchases like this create scarcity for the leading cryptocurrency, which should be a good sign in the long term.

Grayscale Stacks +10K Bitcoin 

Since December 21, the digital asset investment company stopped accepting new investment to its Bitcoin Trust, and five other large-cap funds like the Ethereum Trust, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, etc. This is no longer an unusual move from the company, as it’s now understood to be a periodic tradition, where Grayscale reportedly closes the crypto products to “private placement” rounds.

Despite suspending new investments in the crypto products, especially the Bitcoin Trust fund, the company bought more Bitcoin a few days after the announcement. 

A day after the Bitcoin Trust was resumed for new investments on January 13, the company bought over 2,000 Bitcoin, which is worth more than US$74 million, following the current price of the cryptocurrency at US$37,215. Presently, Grayscale’s Bitcoin holding is sitting at 618.56K, according to the information on ByBt. This means that the company added 8,000 Bitcoin in two days after the first purchase of the week. Thus, Grayscale stacked over 10,000 BTC within three days. 

Following the current BTC holding, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust fund has a valuation of US$23 billion.

Why it Matters

At first, these massive BTC purchases from Grayscale shows there is a steadily growing interest by institutions to hold Bitcoin. As the demand continues to grow on the platform, we are likely to see bigger buys by Grayscale, which creates scarcity for Bitcoin in the crypto market. Basically, the price of an asset is expected to increase when demand is greater than the asset’s supply rate.

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Bitcoin Crypto News

Bitcoin Miners Keep Selling as Hashrate Surges

Bitcoin Miners Keep Selling as Hashrate Surges

Since the past month, Bitcoin (BTC) has seen posting an exponential increase in price, and especially on December 27, the network’s hashrate began spiking. A growing hashrate means more mining machines are going online on the BTC network. Probably, miners became active amid the growing price of Bitcoin and have presently turned to take profits from their BTC holding, as the cryptocurrency seems to be due for a larger correction.

Bitcoin Hashrate at ATH

Looking at the Bitcoin blockchain explorer, Blockchain.com, the hashing power on the BTC network has been growing since the past weeks. Currently, the hashrate is sitting at a new record level of 150.776 million terahashes per second or TH/s. As recently as January 8, Crypto News Australia reported the previous all-time high at 148.727 million TH/s, which happened when the Bitcoin’s price was pushing for the US$40,000.

Judging by this, one might say that the current trend in the Bitcoin hashrate is somewhat influenced by the growth of the crypto. However, on-chain metrics suggest that some miners have turned to take profits, than hodling the cryptocurrency for the long term. This was probably caused by Bitcoin’s correction from January 10, as Miner Position Index (MPI) was seen spiking notably at the same time. 

Miners are Selling

A recent chart shared by Ki-Young Ju, the founder of CryptoQuant, showed that the ratio of Bitcoin leaving miners’ wallets to exchanges in the 1-year moving average has been growing steadily. As of January 12, the MPI reached 5.26 points, which is more than double the standard (2 points), which shows miners are beginning to sell their coins. Massive inflows from miners to exchanges can disrupt Bitcoin’s volatility, and Ki-Young thinks, “we might have second dumping.”

However, more BTC buys from institutions can alter the effect of these deposits from miners, as was seen in December. 

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Australia Crypto News TimeX Exchange

Australian Shping Coin now Supported for Trading on TimeX Exchange

Binance Australia to List Polkadot, Cardano, and PancakeSwap

One of the leading Australian cryptocurrency exchange, TimeX, announced on Wednesday it has added support for users to trade the native digital currency of Shping, a Melbourne-based innovative shopper marketing and brand protection platform.

This is perhaps, a milestone for the company and its millions of users, as more exchange listing would make the cryptocurrency more accessible, and also create room for adoption. 

Shping Coin now Listed on TimeX

According to the update from TimeX, the cryptocurrency is available for trading on the platform with two crypto-to-crypto trading pairs. These include SHPING/.ETHEREUM and SHPING/ AUDT. At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency was trading at the price of US$0.00003193 on Coinmarketcap. The Shping coin still has a low trading volume and market capitalization of $47,357 from a circulating supply of 1,483,041,697 coins.

This cryptocurrency was launched in the market in 2018 through the process of initial coin offering or ICO. According to the information provided by ICO Bench, the company behind the cryptocurrency bagged more than US$6.6 million from the offering.

When Coinmarketcap began tracking the Shping coin on October 11, 2018, it was trading at US$0.000313, which is lesser than the ICO price at US$0.0100. Meanwhile, the coin later reached an all-time high of US$0.0009726 on Coinmarketcap on May 12, 2019.

After reaching that peak, the crypto has been sliding, as seen in the chart below. 

Shping Coin Use Case

Shping runs a reward program for its users, which is powered using the cryptocurrency. With over 20 million supported products, the company basically allows customers to learn more about any product they wish to buy. By doing so, as well as performing other activities, they are rewarded with the Shping cryptocurrency, which can be converted to cash on exchanges.

Aside from TimeX exchange, the digital currency is also supported by exchanges like Coinbinhood, IDEX, and Livecoin.

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Australia Crypto News Payments

Australian Wristwatch Brand, Jacopo Dondi now Accepts Crypto Payments

Australian Wristwatch Brand, Jacopo Dondi now Accepts Crypto Payments

It’s no longer news that cryptocurrency adoption in Australia is increasing significantly, especially since the past year. Many investors in the country have allocated a reasonable percentage of their portfolio in one or more popular cryptos like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), etc. 

Additionally, Crypto News Australia recently reported that the crypto and blockchain industry in Australia had a massive growth in the number of new companies over the past year. Perhaps, it’s quite easy to forecast that Australia is likely to see more adoption this year, as local companies are also starting to integrate support for digital currency payments.

This will allow crypto users in Australia to purchase items with digital currencies in addition to fiat currency. 

Aussie Watchmaker Embraces Cryptocurrency

Jacopo Dondi, a young watch brand based in Australia, has integrated a payment function that will enable customers in the country and beyond, to order wristwatches using cryptocurrencies. According to the information on Monday, the company is open to accepting payments with Bitcoin, Ether, and Litecoin at the moment. Thus, customers can purchase items online using these cryptos or other traditional payment mediums.

The founders of the company noted in the report that they have been investing in cryptocurrencies recently; hence the idea to start accepting them was an easy and logical step for their business.

“We understand that many people still find the volatility of cryptocurrencies a huge risk, and they certainly can be in the short term, but there is a growing number of people that have realized that this is where the world is likely heading anyway and that over a longer period of time, they’re not as risky as they appear.”

The Aussie wristwatch brand was launched through a crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter, in 2016. Following the development today, Jacopo Dondi is probably the latest company in the country to accept payments in digital currency. As cryptocurrency continues to go mainstream and price rallying, more companies in Australia are likely to follow suit.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Market Analysis

Blood Bath: Global Crypto Market Capitalization Drops to US$886 Billion Within 24hrs

Blood Bath: Global Crypto Market Capitalization Drops to US$886 Billion Within 24hrs

The new week barely started, and most coins in the cryptocurrency market find it difficult to maintain a positive price change since the past day. This has also caused a massive drop in the global valuation of the cryptocurrencies from the highly-celebrated US$1 trillion market capitalization. The drop was mostly caused by the declining value of Bitcoin (BTC), which holds a larger percentage of the market.

Bitcoin, Ether, Ripple, and Litecoin are Bleeding

From as high as US$40,000 early Sunday, the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin dropped by more than 15 percent to US$33,000. The price of Bitcoin has declined even further to US$31,648 on Coinmarketcap at the time of writing. At that price, the cryptocurrency had a 24 hours price change of -18.40 percent. Also, the market capitalization of BTC has dropped from over US$700 billion to US$603 billion. 

Likewise, the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, has dropped from a four-digit priced digital currency to US$972, making a negative price change of 24.70 percent. The market capitalization of ETH also dropped to US$110 billion. Other popularly-traded coins like Ripple and Litecoin are trading at a dipping price of US$0.2677 and US$$122, respectively. Ripple currently has a market cap of $12 billion, and Litecoin has $8 billion.

Global Crypto Market Dips

The general cryptocurrency market valuation is down by 17.9 percent over the past day. From the previous valuation of around US$1 trillion, the entire crypto market is now worth lesser for US$886.75 billion, according to Coinmarketcap.

Many people see the current dips in the market as another buying opportunity to get Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies cheaper. 

However, this might also be the start of a larger correction in the market. “It’s to be determined whether this is the start of a larger correction, but we have now seen this parabola break, so it might just be,” said Luno exchange official Vijay Ayyar.

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Crypto News

ElectroRAT: New Malware Targets Crypto Users on Windows, Linux, and Mac Devices

ElectroRAT: New Malware Targets Crypto Users on Windows, Linux, and Mac Devices

Over the past year, the cryptocurrency industry has gained a massive amount of growth in adoption, development, and awareness. This, on the other hand, has called the attention of malicious people, who are targeting cryptocurrency users with lots of fake and trojanized applications.

In a recent report, the cybersecurity researchers at Intezer informed about a so-called ElectroRAT malware, which has been developed to steal cryptocurrencies from popular operating systems. 

ElectroRAT targets multiple operating systems

According to the cybersecurity researchers, the malware is estimated to have been active since January 2020, although they only learned about it in December.

So, over the estimated time, the wide-ranging malicious operation with malware has been to steal private keys to cryptocurrency from affected users. “This extensive operation is composed of a full-fledged marketing campaign, custom cryptocurrency-related applications, and a new Remote Access Tool (RAT) written from scratch,” they wrote. 

ElectroRAT is designed to run with three different malicious applications for several operating systems, precisely Windows, Linux, and Mac.

For this reason, the malware is able to target cryptocurrency users on these popular operating systems. However, crypto users can only be affected if they download the malicious applications, which the attackers promote as a very successful trading instrument or a medium for processing several crypto transactions from a single interface.

Thousands Already Affected by ElectroRAT

By estimation, the researchers said in the report that thousands of cryptocurrency users have been infected with the ElectroRAT malware. This is “based on the number of unique visitors to the pastebin pages used to locate the command and control servers.”

One safety rule for keeping crypto is to not download any related, and unknown application pitched on any platform without thorough research. As reported, these trojanized applications were promoted on social media platforms and online forums. Secondly, it’s also advisable not to store your private keys online.

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Bitcoin Ethereum

Bitcoin, Ether Trends to Look out for in 2021

Bitcoin, Ether Trends to Look out for in 2021

It’s safe to mention that 2020 was the biggest year for Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and some other digital currencies in the market. Despite the March crash caused by the coronavirus pandemic, these two leading cryptocurrencies came out so strong, with Bitcoin posting more than 200 percent price growth since the year. So, 2021 is already here with lots of uncertainties. Considering some factors – to be discussed below – the crypto market might post another substantial record this year.

Watch out for This Trends

More Institutional Players:

To many prominent industry players, it’s indisputable that more corporate and institutional investors will enter the cryptocurrency market this year. Last year, MicroStrategy, a publicly-traded business intelligence company, stepped in the market, buying a substantial amount of Bitcoin that currently cost around US$1 billion. Such a bold move – which is paying off well – was followed by more companies such as Square Inc., and others.

These companies see Bitcoin as a good hedge asset against inflation. Thus, following the uncertainties in the world’s economy, more big-name companies are likely to allocate some of their reserve to Bitcoin, which is a good factor for the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin Surpassing US$50,000

Seeing how far the leading cryptocurrency has come since the past, one can easily predict that Bitcoin might exceed US$50,000 this year. For the record, BTC made another all-time high (ATH) today above US$41,000. This is coming after the crypto’s previous ATH at US$35,000 on January 6. The demand is getting stronger, as active addresses have been on the rise. 

As we expect more corporate and institutional buys, there could be a US$50,000 priced BTC, later in 2021. 

Ether Making new ATH

The second-largest crypto is only about ten percent away from its all-time high, many many industry players are optimistically waiting for another ATH. Just like Bitcoin, Ether has gained a lot since the past, rising from below US$200 during the COVID-19-led market crash to over US$1,200 at the time of writing. 

Recently, Crypto News Australia reported that ETH supply on exchanges has been decreasing for months to Ethereum 2.0 staking, custody, and DeFi. An analyst had mentioned that such development is healthy for the cryptocurrency. Possibly, the crypto will make a new ATH if the momentum is maintained. 

Disclaimer: While this report sounds bullish for Bitcoin and Ether, it’s certainly not financial advice. Do your own research and trade cautiously.