Category: Bitcoin

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Australia Bitcoin Crypto.com Payments South Australia

South Aussie Service Station Partners with Crypto.com to Accept Crypto

Australia’s On the Run (OTR) petrol stations and convenience stores will be accepting crypto payments as soon as July 2022. The move comes as Peregrine Corporation, a South Australian group of companies, teams up with global exchange giant Crypto.com to introduce cryptocurrency payments in all its OTR stores:

Move Makes Peregrine the Largest Australian Business to Accept Crypto Payments

Peregrine is the largest privately owned company in South Australia and is best known for its OTR convenience store/petrol station outlets, of which it has more than 170 across South Australia and Victoria. This move will allow customers to pay for fuel, snacks, and even Subway in more than 30 different cryptocurrencies. Once the system is finalised in July, Peregrine will become the largest business in the country to accept in-store crypto payments.

Peregrine is working with Singapore-based exchange Crypto.com to implement its Pay Merchant service as its payment settlement layer. Datamesh, a Sydney-based payments systems provider, will roll out point-of-sale terminals allowing shoppers to pay via the Crypto.com application with their crypto holdings.

Yasser Shahin, executive chairman of Peregrine Corporation, said:

The growth and mainstream acceptance of cryptocurrency adoption in Australia and the rest of the world have been phenomenal and has offered us a clear opportunity to tap into the momentum of this fast-growing space for the benefit of our customers.

Yasser Shahin, executive chairman, Peregrine Corporation

Karl Mohan, Crypto.com general manager Asia and Pacific, describes the deal as a “landmark partnership”, adding that it enables the crypto company to “walk the talk on what we set out to do when we first launched in Australia – support our customers to pay with cryptocurrencies at real-time market prices and avoid the cost and hassle of fiat conversions”.

Australia’s Foray into Crypto Retail Payments

Last year, Crypto News Australia reported that Australian companies were starting to accept Bitcoin as a payment option for their services. Companies from various industries are getting in on crypto payments; they include NBN Internet RSP Luantel, Queensland Solar and Lighting, Broadwater Build Perth Building Company, Dream PC Australia, and Pet Parlour Australian Online Pet Shop. However, in a new report published this year, it was found that Bitcoin payments have declined while other cryptos surged in payment usage.

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Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News

BTC Milestone: 90% of Supply Issued and Mining Difficulty Hits All-Time High

This past weekend marked a momentous occasion in Bitcoin’s history as supply issuance crossed the 90 percent mark. As the 19 millionth block was mined, Bitcoin Takeover founder Vlad Costea commented: “There are only 2 million BTC left to mine in the next 118 years!”

How is the 21 Million Bitcoin Cap Defined and Enforced?
Bitcoin supply issuance schedule. Source: Cypherpunk Cogitations

‘Scarcity Intensifying’

In and among celebrations on Twitter, many users took the opportunity to comment on Bitcoin’s remarkably well-designed inflation model. As illustrated above, the bulk of Bitcoin’s 21 million hard cap issuance is front-loaded in the early years.

With the block reward halving every four years, and the next being scheduled in 2024, Bitcoin’s scarcity is becoming increasingly self-evident:

Mining Difficulty Soars

To recap, mining difficulty is a relative measure of how difficult it is to find a new block. This is adjusted on a periodic basis correlated to the hash power being deployed by the network. The greater Bitcoin’s hash power, the more difficult it becomes to find blocks.

Amid the excitement of Bitcoin reaching the historic 90 percent issuance rate, the network also recorded its highest mining difficulty to date, rising 4.31 percent to 28.59 trillion. Notably, mining difficulty is up 100.6 percent from its 2021 low of 13.68 trillion.

BTC mining difficulty all time. Source: BTC.com

A recent illustration was in 2021, when China banned Bitcoin mining (again), resulting in the network difficulty reducing by 16 percent as significant hash power was taken offline.

The long and short of it is that an all-time high for mining difficulty makes it more difficult than ever for Bitcoin miners to “find” blocks, making the network even more robust and secure than before. Remarkably, this is the second time in three weeks it has reached such a milestone.

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Bitcoin Blockchain Crypto News

MIT Review Says Quantum Computing Not a Threat to Bitcoin

Quantum phenomena are strange things to wrap your head around, with the applications thereof even more so. Some believe that quantum computers will become advanced enough to break current cryptography, endangering trillions of dollars and the blockchains that secure it.

Quantum computing is said to be the next iteration of advanced computation that will completely blow conventional computers out of the water. Due to the nature of the technology, problems can be solved orders of magnitude faster than on a regular computer.

A Looming Quantum Threat?

Theoretically, a quantum computer can ‘easily’ solve the problem of finding the prime factors of large numbers exponentially faster than any classical scheme. This would make these computers exceptionally good at prime factorisation, which is at the heart of breaking the commonly used RSA-based cryptography.

However, building a quantum computer that could crack RSA codes would require many millions, if not billions, of qubits. This means that cracking cryptography is currently way beyond the scope of current computing power.

Quantum Computers Still a Long Way Off

In an article written for Technology Review, Sankar Das Sarma – a condensed matter theory physicist and quantum information expert – states that some of the hype and speculation around this revolutionary technology has “disturbed ” him.

When fully realised, quantum computers stand to change the world in ways we can barely even imagine, but at this stage we are “no closer to having a quantum computer that can solve a problem that anybody cares about. It is akin to trying to make today’s best smartphones using vacuum tubes from the early 1900s,” Das Sarma writes.

Currently, the most advanced quantum computers have dozens of decohering qubits, nothing remotely close to the possible billions required to crack RSA cryptography:

I am all for hope and am a big believer in quantum computing as a potentially disruptive technology, but to claim that it would start producing millions of dollars of profit for real companies selling services or products in the near future is very perplexing to me.

Sankar Das Sarma

Even though the problem lies in the distant future, some projects have already started preparing for the threat quantum computers might pose. In 2020, for example, Australia’s CSIRO and Monash University started working on a “quantum-proof” blockchain protocol.

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Australia Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News

Bengal Energy is Mining BTC in the Australian Outback Using Gas Wells

Canadian oil and gas miner Bengal Energy has commenced a trial to assess the profitability of mining bitcoin from its stranded gas assets in the Australian Outback.

According to a report in The Australian, Bengal Energy has commenced its program to install approximately 70 Bitcoin mining rigs within a “donga”, a term that left some confused from the outset:

‘Stranded Energy’ Problem

The initial project entailed assembling a series of previously out-of-operation gas wells in South Australia’s Cooper Basin, all of which were purchased from Santos Energy and Bridgeport Energy.

Bengel Energy’s chief operating officer, Kai Eberspacher, commented that the newly acquired wells however posed a significant problem given that they were “stranded” – able to produce power but unable to be distributed as current pipelines are out of reach.

While a pipeline is under construction, efforts have been delayed due to Covid-19 induced supply chain bottlenecks. In Eberspacher’s words:

We were basically looking at six months of having wells ready but without an outlet. We were dealing with stranded assets.

Kai Eberspaecher, chief operating officer, Bengal Energy

Bitcoin Mining Plugs Gap

After having outlaid the initial capital without a return on investment, Bengal Energy turned to portable Bitcoin mining rigs in dongas. A trial donga is being fitted with 66 mining rigs, able to generate approximately 0.005 BTC, or A$315, per day.

Kai Eberspacher, Bengal Energy’s chief operating officer. Source: The Australian

If the trial is successful, the company has indicated that it intends increasing its mining efforts by a factor of 10 to 20.

Energy Companies and Bitcoin – Match Made in Heaven

Despite recent efforts by some to discredit bitcoin mining, we’re seeing growing evidence of energy companies leveraging stranded assets and flared gas to power bitcoin mining operations.

While this has been happening in West Texas for some time, last week US energy giant ExxonMobil joined ConocoPhillips in disclosing that it was mining bitcoin with flared gas and looking to expand.  

A recent report found that bitcoin mining consumed as little as 0.05 percent of global energy with emissions at “inconsequential levels”. It’s also been suggested that up to 58 percent of Bitcoin’s energy composition is renewable, making it one of the greenest industries in the world.

Irrespective, those who believe bitcoin has no value will necessarily also believe that its appropriate energy use is zero:

“Imaginary money”… #NGMI.

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Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News

Ripple Co-Founder Launches $5 Million Campaign to Change Bitcoin’s Code

Billionaire and Ripple (XRP) co-founder Chris Larsen has joined forces with Greenpeace in a US$5 million campaign dubbed “Cleanup Bitcoin” to persuade the protocol to shift from proof-of-work (POW) to a “greener” consensus mechanism such as proof-of-stake (POS):

‘Change the Code, Not the Climate’

In partnership with Greenpeace and other organisations, Larsen is funding a series of ads over the next month calling on Bitcoiners to transition away from power-intensive POW mining to a POS system that uses much less energy:

Excerpt from Cleanup Bitcoin manifesto. Source: Cleanupbitcoin.com

Needless to say, the reaction among the community was swift and brutal:

A common criticism emerging from the community was that Larsen’s efforts smacked of duplicity and were instead an opportunistic attempt to leverage the emotive topic of the environment to undermine a Ripple competitor. This appeared to be the sentiment of Bitcoin-friendly US Senator Cynthia Lummis, who described the move as a play for regulatory capture:

Matt Walsh, a partner at Castle Island Ventures, was seemingly in a state of disbelief, given Ripple’s ongoing battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC):

Walsh’s partner at Castle Island Ventures, Nic Carter, the de facto Bitcoin energy-FUD-buster-in-chief, took a more humorous angle mocking Larsen’s website:

Meme based on Cleanupbitcoin website. Source: Nic Carter

Go Ahead, Fork It

Aside from being misguided about how the protocol works, it was Noelle Acheson, head of Insights at Genesis Trading, who said it best:

Jerry Brito, executive director at Coin Center, challenged the notion that 50 miners could force the code to change and encouraged those who believed otherwise to read The Blocksize War – an episode in history that proved it was the nodes and users who controlled the protocol, not the miners:

The result of the ‘Blocksize War’ was a hard fork of Bitcoin and led to the creation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (BSV). With BTC’s market capitalisation at over US$900 billion, compared to BCH’s US$6.9 billion and BSV’s US$1.8 billion, the market has clearly spoken.

Having already dealt with a hard fork in the past, Bitcoiners such as Preston Pysh egged Larson on:

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Bitcoin Crypto News Ethereum Investing Markets Solana

Crypto Sees Biggest Institutional Inflows This Year Driven By BTC, ETH and SOL

A report released by crypto asset management firm CoinShares shows that institutional crypto funds have seen their biggest capital inflows since December 2021, with over US$193 million pouring into the funds during the week ending March 25.

This new wave of interest in crypto investment products follows two weeks of outflows from crypto funds and coincides with a 15 percent increase in Bitcoin’s price over the past week.

European Funds, Bitcoin Lead the Way

Of the total inflows, European-based funds saw US$147 million, or around 76 percent, while a relatively paltry US$45 million went into US-based funds.

Bitcoin-focused funds were by far the most popular investment product, seeing US$97.8 in inflows, bringing total inflows since the start of 2022 to US$162 million.

Solana Funds Had Their Best Week, Most Altcoins Did Well

This was the single best week ever for Solana funds, with over US$87 million pouring in – representing 36 percent of assets under management, which now stand at a total of US$241 million. This makes Solana the fifth-largest investment product and the second-largest altcoin behind Ethereum.

Ethereum-focused funds were the second most popular altcoin, with US$10.2 million in inflows; Cardano-focused funds saw US$1.8 million; Polkadot-focused US$1.2 million, and ATOM-focused funds saw around US$800,000.

Flows by asset. Source: CoinShare

Multi-asset funds bucked the trend and recorded US$5.5 million in outflows, which was a surprise since they’ve been relatively popular recently – this being only the second week this year they’ve seen net outflows.

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Bitcoin Cardano Dogecoin Ethereum Markets Polkadot Terra

Crypto Market Holds Firm Over $2 Trillion as BTC Reclaims $47,000 USD

Despite the digital asset market first reaching a US$2 trillion market capitalisation in April 2021, significant economic and geopolitical uncertainty has stifled the sector’s forward momentum in 2022.

However, a confluence of factors have turned things around, resulting in the market lifting above US$2 trillion for the first time in over six weeks:

Global crypto market capitalisation. Source: Coinmarketcap.com

After investors’ frustration at what felt like endless sideways price action, the sentiment across crypto Twitter was distinctly upbeat by the positive moves:

Green Candles for All

Digital assets across the board saw material gains, with the crypto economy’s total value holding above US$2 trillion for five consecutive days.

According to Coinglass data, around US$142 million in short liquidations contributed to bitcoin breaching US$47,000 for the first time since January. No doubt, Terra’s decision to buy US$10 billion in BTC is also at least partially responsible for the surge.

At the time of publication, bitcoin is trading at US$47,664, effectively erasing its losses and pushing past break-even for the year.

BTC price action over past seven days. Source: CoinMarketCap.com

Outside of BTC, altcoins similarly enjoyed a strong comeback, with a veritable feast of green candles on display. Analysts have suggested that the positive returns over the past week may be indicative of an impending bull market:

  • BTC – 12.7 percent
  • ETH – 14.5 percent
  • ADA – 30.4 percent
  • SOL – 22.7 percent
  • BNB – 7.8 percent
  • XRP – 4.8 percent
  • LUNA – 11.8 percent
  • AVAX – 6.7 percent
  • POL -15.2 percent
  • DOGE – 19.6 percent

Market Gets Greedy

It’s been said that fear and greed drive financial markets, and nowhere is that more apparent than in crypto.

Last week, the multifactorial Cryptocurrency Fear and Greed index was at 26 out of a possible 100 (a state of “fear”, one level up from “extreme fear”). Within a week, things have turned around and optimism is in the air.

The index is now tracking at 60, suggesting that investors are getting greedy, but nowhere near the extreme levels above 90 last seen in April 2021.

Despite his equating Bitcoin to rat poison, Warren Buffett’s cautionary words are perhaps worth noting, especially when the market is seemingly on the up:

Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.

Warren Buffett, investor and philanthropist
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Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News

Expert Explains Why Bitcoin Won’t Have More Than 21 Million Coins

Bitcoin’s supply has long been a topic of discussion, with many wondering why a limit has been imposed and what will happen when it is eventually reached.

According to Andreas Antonopoulos – a teaching fellow for the M.Sc. Digital Currencies at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus – Bitcoin will never change its fixed supply of 21 million.

Firstly, if Bitcoin core developers and community ever decide to change the supply, it would require a hard fork. Simply put, implementing a hard fork would change the protocol permanently and it would no longer be Bitcoin.

By adding to the supply limit, bitcoins will not endlessly inflate like fiat currency. This ensures the scarcity of bitcoin and helps define it as a store of value. There are also those who believe the Bitcoin model will break down when the supply is reached and that miners will leave if only processing transactions for a few satoshis. Yet that scenario relies on a lot of assumptions about price, hash rate, and its consensus mechanism.

There is No Code Preventing 21 Million Hard Cap

Antonopoulos has also stated that when he went through the Bitcoin source code, he never found a defined limit of 21 million coins, adding that the main reason for implementing the cap was “as a safeguard to prevent bugs”. There’s no mechanism that actually stops the issuance of bitcoin after 21 million is reached.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s supply sits at 18.996 million. This means that in a few more blocks, Bitcoin will only be 2 million away from its maximum supply. At this stage institutional investors hold over 30 percent of BTC, with famed Bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor stating that investing in bitcoin is the best property one can buy.

BTC current supply. Source: blockchain.com

The Evolution of Bitcoin

In December 2021 BTC reached 90 per cent of its total supply mined, though this doesn’t mean the cap has almost been reached. Every four years there is a “halving”, where the mining reward is cut in half. This also cuts in half Bitcoin’s inflation rate and the rate at which new bitcoins enter circulation.

The first 90 per cent took 12 years and it is estimated that the following five per cent will take another four years. By the last halving, Bitcoin could take more than 100 years to be completely issued, with some estimates pointing toward the year 2140.

The progressive reduction in the issuance of bitcoin is how the limit is ultimately reached. No one really knows what will happen to Bitcoin in 2140 when the last bitcoin is mined, however some believe that the consensus mechanism could change to something more advanced.

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Bitcoin Crypto News ETFs Institutions

Canadian Bitcoin ETF Up 23% YTD And Now Holds Over 36,000 BTC

Since becoming the first spot bitcoin exchange traded fund in Canada in February 2021, the Purpose Bitcoin ETF has surpassed CAD$1.7 billion assets under management and, according to Glassnode, holds over 36,000 BTC.

Purpose Bitcoin ETF holdings. Source: Glassnode

One Bitcoin analyst noted the dramatic increase in holdings over the past week in particular:

The Canadian Purpose #Bitcoin ETF has just hit another ATH yesterday of 36.27k $BTC. Last week the ETF ended with an AUM of 34.07k bitcoin. That’s more than 2k bitcoin added this week so far …

Jan Wüstenfeld, Bitcoin analyst for @QE4Everyone

ETFs Not Welcomed by All

A spot-based Bitcoin ETF – that is, one exposed to the price of bitcoin, as opposed to something like a futures contract – is a somewhat divisive topic within the Bitcoin community.

Some regard ETFs as an easily-understood and accessible vehicle for everyday investors to gain exposure to bitcoin. In doing so, it broadens the tent so to speak, and opens up the sector to a whole new range of retail and institutional participants.

An opposing view highlights the risks of manipulation within paper markets linked to physical assets such as gold and silver. Within the context of Bitcoin, this could undermine the protocol’s most fundamental principle, namely a fixed and verifiable supply.

Unfortunately, one needn’t go back too far in history to find evidence of manipulation in financial markets. In 2020, investment bank giant JPMorgan paid US$920 million in fines and restitution for its role in manipulating the paper silver market.

Canada Leads the ETF Way

Whatever one’s view of spot-based Bitcoin ETFs, Canada has undoubtedly been at the forefront of bringing crypto ETFs to market. Not only was it the first country in the world to approve a Bitcoin ETF, it has since successfully launched another four.

By comparison, across the border in the US regulatory authorities are yet to approve a spot-based Bitcoin ETF, citing “manipulation concerns”. As reported by Crypto News Australia, as of November last year there were 34 ETF applications pending approval. Many have since been refused and, at the time of writing, more than a dozen applications remain outstanding.

Tellingly, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) did approve a futures-based Bitcoin ETF in October. This was met with mixed reactions, with the consensus view emerging that it provided little benefit to retail investors relative to the intermediaries involved:

This vehicle means that the arbitrager takes their slice, the ETF provider takes their slice, the lawyer who set up the fund takes their slice, the administrator, the auditor … I mean, everybody is taking a slice out of your pie.

Real Vision founder/CEO Raoul Pal, on the futures-based Bitcoin ETF

While it remains unclear what the holdup is at the SEC, as one on-chain analyst noted, if the Purpose Bitcoin can double in 10 months, imagine what would happen if a spot-based ETF launched in the US:

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Bitcoin Markets Stablecoins Terra

Terra’s Stablecoin UST Market Cap Rises 700% in Past 6 Months

The market capitalisation of the algorithmic stablecoin Terra (UST) has soared in comparison to its longer-running counterpart DAI. Year-to-date, UST’s market cap has increased 700 percent, while DAI’s is up 5.7 percent.

Market capitalisation of UT vs DAI. Source: Galaxy Digital Research

What is Terra?

Terra is a blockchain protocol underpinned by a suite of decentralised stablecoins, the most popular being TerraUSD, or UST, an algorithmic stablecoin that runs on its own Tendermint blockchain. The stablecoins maintain their peg via a coin called LUNA, a volatile cryptocurrency whose elasticity of supply keeps the price of the stablecoin in check.

Voted to Burn

UST trended upwards sharply over the November-December period, starting at under US$3 billion in November. The reason for the major uptake in gains came in mid-November after the Terra community voted to burn 89 million LUNA that had been accumulated in the Terra treasury in exchange for UST. According to the founder of Terra Do Kwon, US$2.7 billion had been minted in this way.

UST Now Interacts With BTC Directly

To understand how Bitcoin links with UST, the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) announced last week that it would be buying US$10 billion worth of Bitcoin, stating that:

As an algorithmic stablecoin, UST’s peg is maintained by a series of open market operations, arbitrage incentives, and countercyclical levers within the Terra protocol to offset market forces pushing the UST peg above or below one USD. LUNA, Terra’s reserve, staking and governance asset, retains an elastic supply to help neutralise directional market pressures impacting the peg.

LFG announcement

Simply put, Bitcoin is used to restore the UST’s peg parity to the US dollar at times when there are market sell-offs.