Category: Bitcoin

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Bitcoin Crypto News Crypto Wallets Lightning Network

US Employees Can Now Get Paid in Bitcoin Using Strike App

Lightning Network payment platform Strike is allowing its users in the US to instantly convert all or a portion of their paycheques into bitcoin. The company, well known for its work in El Salvador, is following the lead of Coinbase, which recently started allowing its users to convert their salaries to crypto and be paid in bitcoin (BTC).

‘Pay Me In Bitcoin’ Now Active

From October 15, Strike’s “Pay Me In Bitcoin” feature allows users to enable direct deposits and configure any amount of money coming into their accounts to be converted into bitcoin with no fees attached.

Strike began experimenting with the feature last year when National Football League player Russell Okung used the payment platform to split his salary between bitcoin and fiat. Several other athletes and content creators have since followed in Okung’s footsteps.

“Pay Me In Bitcoin” gives anyone in the US easy access to sound money for anybody eligible for a Strike account, regardless of who they work for. In the words of company founder and CEO Jack Mallers, “Today, anyone with a Strike account, no matter who their employer, can get paid in bitcoin.”

Seeking to Give Financial Freedom

The new feature seeks to give financial freedom to those who cannot get paid directly in BTC. Almost anybody in the US or El Salvador can sign up for Strike and start saving a portion of their income in BTC automatically. It will also enable users to shield themselves from high inflation rates and have more control over their money.

If you are not getting a 25 percent raise every year and you are saving in dollars, you are not out-earning or out-saving the rate of inflation or the increase in cost of living, and your quality of life will degrade as time goes on.

Jack Mallers, founder and CEO, Strike

Mallers has been vocal as to the benefits of BTC:

Strike Involved in El Salvador and Twitter Tips 

Twitter has recently rolled out Bitcoin Tips, which allows users to tip each other using Bitcoin’s Lightning network. One of the two payment options Twitter has made available is through Strike, which can connect to the Lightning Network.  

Since the Central American republic made bitcoin legal tender last month, Strike has been integral in helping El Salvador build its national bitcoin-based payments system.

This latest announcement from Strike comes at a particularly good time for Lightning Network, which has seen 122 percent growth in the past few months.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Markets

Whales and HODLers Dominate as 70% of Bitcoin Hasn’t Moved in Five Months

Since Bitcoin’s correction from April’s all-time high, most investors have turned strong hands. According to Glassnode, about 70 percent of Bitcoin’s total supply hasn’t moved in the past 155 days (or five months), meaning the majority of BTC supply is held by long-term holders. 

On this note, there should be less selling pressure on bitcoin, given most inventors are positive about the future price. 

HODLers Are Accumulating 12.7x More BTC Than Mined

What’s more interesting is the rate at which long-term holders have been accumulating BTC in recent months. HODLers’ supply reportedly grew from 10.91 million BTC to about 13.3 million BTC within a space of seven months. That is a differential of 2.37 million BTC, which is greater than the 186,000 new Bitcoin mined within that period. 

This signifies that, on average, long-term holders are accumulating 13x BTC than the total amount of BTC mined in a day, hence the drop in BTC balance on all exchanges. Recent data from Glassnode shows all Bitcoin exchange balances at 2,450,952.419 BTC, the lowest level in three years.

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What’s Next for Bitcoin?

On-chain metrics are painting a bullish picture for Bitcoin. At the time of writing, BTC was trading at US$57,001 with a market capitalisation of US$1.19 trillion. Judging by the metrics, it’s easy to forecast BTC could break out anytime to US$60,000 and higher as the accumulation wave gets stronger.

Already, there are traces of whales in the market. In two weeks, BTC addresses with 100 to 1,000 BTC accumulated over 85.7k bitcoin, equivalent to US$4.8 billion at today’s price. The appetite for bitcoin is getting stronger, and it’s creating a supply squeeze that is bullish in the long term. 

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Bitcoin Crypto News Lightning Network

Lightning Network Growth Goes Parabolic, Up 122% in Past Month

A recent report by Arcane Research suggests that Bitcoin’s layer two micropayments rail, the Lightning Network, is hitting an inflection point and is at the cusp of bringing Bitcoin to billions by solving real world problems. Between August and September, personal transfers and merchant payments went up 122 percent.

Lightning payments and personal transfers from wallet users. Source: Arcane Research

Instantaneous P2P Bitcoin Payments

The Lightning Network is a layer-2 solution built on top of Bitcoin designed to overcome the intentional design limitations of the Bitcoin mainnet. Bitcoin prioritises decentralisation and security over speed, and Lightning is the solution that enables bitcoin micropayments at near-instantaneous speed. In some ways, it can be likened to Visa, which is the centralised, high-speed payment rail sitting on top of the traditional banking sector.

Visa Transactions per Second vs Bitcoin on-chain Transactions per Second vs Lightning Network. Source: Visa and Arcane Research

Lightning Soars in 2021

Public statistics such as total channel capacity and the number of nodes show that the Lightning Network is growing rapidly.

Lightning Network: Public BTC Capacity 2018 – 2021. Source: Arcane Research

In particular, growth in 2021 has been exceptional.

According to Arcane Research, much of the recent network growth can be attributed to bitcoin being rolled out as legal tender in El Salvador, in addition to Twitter launching its bitcoin tips functionality.

Future Possibilities

Looking forward, Arcane Research highlighted how Lightning could be used to “stream money” and revolutionise three main sectors – gaming, video and audio.

The possibility of streaming money can disrupt the business models we know today. Why shouldn’t you be able to pay per minute when you listen to songs on Spotify or per second when you watch a movie on Netflix? Why should you give away your credit card details to a content service if you could pay directly from your Lightning wallet without giving away any information about yourself?

Arcane Research

Aside from the benefits of being cheaper, offering greater privacy and less reliance on third parties, the market potential is enormous, as illustrated in the image below:

Source: Arcane Research

Conservative modelling based on the figures above suggests there could be upwards of 700 million users on the Lightning Network by 2030.

Source: Arcane Research

 

We now use the conservative estimate of one hour used per day on these services and that, on average, 25 percent of this time is spent on services with Lightning payments. With streaming of Lightning payments through these services, we assume one microtransaction per second. Our estimate then equals no less than 364 trillion Lightning transactions per year.

Arcane Research

If these figures prove to be correct, by 2030 there may be as many as one trillion micropayments a day on the Lightning Network. No doubt, unexpected use cases are likely to arise between now and then, suggesting that one shouldn’t overly rely on these projections. Still, the technology and possibilities are exciting enough to warrant speculation.

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Bitcoin Gold Institutions Investing

JPMorgan Says Institutional Investors Are Replacing Gold With Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s market cap hit the US$1 trillion dollar mark last week as BTC’s price surged to US$55,000. Analysts at American investment bank JPMorgan put forward three main reasons behind the recent BTC price surge, and one of them is institutional interest. 

Institutions Are Fuelling Bitcoin

It seems institutions are taking the lead again and driving the price this quarter, when it was retail investors that had out-bought institutions in the first quarter of 2021.

According to a Bloomberg report, JPMorgan said that institutional investors were the main driving force behind bitcoin’s recent price surge, mainly because they see it as a “better inflation hedge than gold”.

The re-emergence of inflation concerns among investors has renewed interest in the usage of bitcoin as an inflation hedge. Institutional investors appear to be returning to bitcoin, perhaps seeing it as a better inflation hedge than gold.

JPMorgan statement

The two other key factors were “recent assurances by US policymakers that there is no intention to follow China’s steps towards banning the usage or mining of cryptocurrencies”, and “the recent rise of the Lightning Network and 2nd layer payments solutions helped by El Salvador’s bitcoin adoption”.

JPMorgan Believes Bitcoin Could Go 10x – But Still Doesn’t Like It

JPMorgan has been one of the most hesitant traditional financial institutions when it comes to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. But as cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology demonstrate their usefulness especially in times of financial crises, most institutional investors have decided to engage with cryptocurrencies one way or another.

While JPMorgan still doesn’t like Bitcoin – or any crypto, really – its CEO, Jamie Dimon, recently conceded bitcoin could grow by up to 10 times within the next five years, which could be his most positive comment yet about BTC.

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Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News

Wasted Natural Gas Flares: An Opportunity for Bitcoin?

Bitcoin miners are incentivised to find cheap and reliable sources of energy. The energy mix varies, but often it is “stranded” or intermittent. Either way, critics tend to draw the conclusion that Bitcoin is “not eco-friendly”.

But what if there was a way to mine bitcoin using energy that would otherwise be wasted? It’s already happening.

Natural gas flare. Source: Greenbiz

Texas Leading the Way

In a discussion panel held on October 8 at the Texas Blockchain Summit, US Senator Ted Cruz displayed a surprising level of understanding of Bitcoin mining energy dynamics and how flared natural gas could be used to mine bitcoin.

The idea is simple enough. Rather than burning it, natural gas flares can (and are) being used to mine bitcoin. In addition to offering a new revenue stream for natural gas energy providers, it also serves to reduce the company’s overall environmental impact.

It’s [the natural gas] being wasted because there is no transmission equipment to get that natural gas where it could be used the way natural gas would ordinarily be employed … Part of the beauty of that [mining bitcoin] is the instant you’re doing it you’re helping the environment enormously, because rather than flaring the natural gas you’re putting it to productive use.

Senator Ted Cruz

Speaking in relation to wasted flared gas, Cruz noted that over half was being burned in the western part of his home state, Texas. This, he suggested, was a boon to the energy industry, rather than a burden:

A lot of the discussion around Bitcoin views Bitcoin as a consumer of energy … The perspective I’m suggesting is very much the reverse, which is as a way to strengthen our energy infrastructure.

Senator Ted Cruz

Nic Carter provided a concise summary of the former Republican presidential candidate’s perspective:

Cruz expressed his belief that the US, but especially Texas, ought to be using natural gas to mine bitcoin, rather than flaring it into the atmosphere.

On the back of persistent and often loud ESG (environment and social governance) concerns, the bitcoin mining industry is gradually shifting towards a more eco-friendly energy mix.

Beyond natural gas flaring, we’ve seen countries like El Salvador invest in mining bitcoin using geothermal energy and, just last month, Australian bank Macquarie announced a deal to partner with Blockstream to establish solar-powered bitcoin mining facilities.

Chinese domination of Bitcoin’s hashrate was long regarded as an existential threat to the network. But with China’s most recent and perhaps most serious ban, that threat has dissipated. ESG remains the primary concern for mainstream institutional adoption. Those arguments are, however, gradually becoming weaker.

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Bitcoin Crypto News

Bitcoin Up 10% in a Week, Smashes 5-Month High and Soars Past A$75k

Bitcoin (BTC) is encroaching on its all-time high, with some calling this month “Uptober”. The digital asset has moved nearly 12 percent in just over a week and has around 9 percent to go before reaching its previous ATH of A$83,000.

With a host of driving factors coming together, the fourth quarter looks promising for the crypto industry, but mostly Bitcoin (BTC), which analysts are now confidently comparing to the bull runs of 2013 and 2017.

During the past week, Bitcoin has been on a run, making some of the most noteworthy gains in months. At the time of writing it was floating around A$77,000, leaving many of the altcoins behind as BTC dominance increases.

The bitcoin supply squeeze is also contributing to the gain in momentum, pushing BTC back to a US$1 trillion asset.

Welcome to Bitcoin Season

Bitcoin’s market capitalisation is well above US$1.050 trillion. Dominance over the altcoins reached 44 percent on October 13 as most of them have stalled.

On-chain analyst William Clemente says Bitcoin’s outlook for the final quarter of this year remains “highly bullish”.

Macro: highly bullish. Supply dynamics (HODLing behaviour) remain strong, hash coming back on the network, retail still out of the market. Still standing on my thesis for a strong Q4.

William Clemente

However, on-chain analysis shows there are multiple factors that could lead to short-term BTC volatility, such as whales taking profits and highly liquid entities taking possession of BTC.

Underperforming altcoins led to predictions of a “Bitcoin season” before some form of alt season re-emerges later. In the meantime altcoins have been bleeding out, with most down around 10-20 percent versus the BTC pair since October 10.

The situation is particularly visible in Ether (ETH), the largest altcoin by market capitalisation, now at its lowest against BTC since the start of August. According to Michaël van de Poppe, CEO and founder of crypto consultancy and education platform Eight, “ETH/BTC [is] breaking down, while Bitcoin is consolidating”.

Binance Coin, Solana, Polkadot, Cardano, Ripple and Avalanche have marked minor losses against the US dollar, while DOGE, LUNA and UNI have dropped even more.

Cryptocurrency Market Overview. Source: coin360.com

Bitcoin Fundamentals Hitting New Records

With the hash rate and difficulty all but recovered and nearing all-time highs, fresh data shows that other aspects of Bitcoin are setting records of their own.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Crypto Wallets Investing

El Salvador to Use Bitcoin Profits to Build $4 Million Pet Hospital

El Salvador President Nakib Bukele has a new pet project – using the country’s bitcoin profits to help build an animal hospital.

Bukele, who proclaimed bitcoin as legal tender on September 7, tweeted last weekend that the country had earned a surplus of US$4 million on its bitcoin reserve thanks to the surging price of the dominant cryptocurrency, up 17 percent in the past week alone.

El Salvador has accumulated 500 BTC over the past month, Bukele having bought the dip three times to bring its total reserve to 700 BTC.

Bukele says he will sink the US$4 million profit into a “pet hospital”, posting a computer-generated video of the project:

Bukele boasted that the pet hospital would be able to attend 384 consultations and 128 emergencies. He also tweeted: “By the way, we’re not selling any #BTC, we are using the USD part of the trust since the #BTC part is now worth more than when the trust was established.”

The government of El Salvador, a Central American republic beset by poverty and hyperinflation, has a bitcoin trust to facilitate transactions between US dollars and the crypto asset. Chivo is the name of both the trust and the commission-free wallet Salvadoreans can use to send remittances and make digital payments to businesses, either in dollars or bitcoin. 

According to Bukele, the trust now has a US$4 million surplus. Chivo can dispose of those millions without affecting the total amount in the trust, which retains the same quantity of bitcoin even when the US dollar amount goes down. 

Bitcoin Law Continues to Divide the Country

El Salvador uses the US dollar but businesses are also required to accept bitcoin as payment – if they have the technology to do so – as part of the country’s Bitcoin Law. The law was Bukele’s idea and has been nothing if not divisive – last month, thousands of Salvadoreans took to the streets to protest against it. Parts of the crypto community have endorsed the law, though institutions such as the World Bank say it will be problematic to enact.

Last month, Bukele announced that El Salvador would exempt foreign investors from taxes on their bitcoin profits to stimulate and hopefully increase foreign investment.

In July, the president foreshadowed that the nation’s abundant geothermal energy would be harnessed to mine Bitcoin, which according to conservative estimates could produce approximately 20,000 BTC per year and generate a profit of more than A$1 billion.

Now Bukele has his pet hospital plan in train, perhaps he might use some of these future bitcoin profits to alleviate living conditions for El Salvador’s long-suffering populace.

Maybe even build a human hospital or two?

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Banking Bitcoin Crypto News

Vitalik Buterin Says El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law is ‘Opposed to Crypto’s Idea of Freedom’

Vitalik Buterin has responded to a post regarding the Salvadorean Bitcoin rollout, calling it “contrary to the ideals of freedom” that the crypto space embodies as well as highlighting some of his own issues on the rollout.

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Buterin commented on a post in r/CryptoCurrency Reddit titled “Unpopular opinion: El Salvador President Mr Nayab [sic] Bukele should not be praised by Crypto community”. Buterin said there was “nothing unpopular about this opinion”, adding that by “making it mandatory for businesses to accept a specific cryptocurrency”, [El Salvador is] going “contrary to the ideals of freedom that are supposed to be so important to the crypto space”.

According to article 7 of El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law, “Every economic agent must accept bitcoin as payment when offered to him by whoever acquires a good or service […] Those who, by evident and notorious fact, do not have access to the technologies that allow them to carry out transactions in bitcoin are excluded from the obligation.”

As it stands there seems to be some mismatch between the text of the law and what Salvadorean president Bukele wrote in a Twitter thread about the use of bitcoin as legal tender, which was intended to be “totally optional” and that the government would not force any of the nation’s residents to receive bitcoin as a form of payment.

Buterin may also be referring to the fact that only BTC is accepted as legal tender and not a more expansive list of cryptocurrencies. As one Reddit user asked, would he say the same about Ethereum if El Salvador had selected ether (ETH) as its sole digital legal tender?

Bitcoin Maximalists Support President Bukele’s Decisions

Buterin’s post added that: “This tactic of pushing BTC to millions of people in El Salvador at the same time with almost no attempt at prior education is reckless, and risks a large number of innocent people getting hacked or scammed. Shame on everyone (OK, fine, I’ll call out the main people responsible: shame on Bitcoin maximalists) who are uncritically praising him.”

The decision to make bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador was received very well by bitcoin maximalists, individuals who believe bitcoin is the be-all and end-all of the crypto world.

He’s [Bukele] a human being like the rest of us, he just loves being praised by people he considers powerful (ie, Americans). Bitcoin maximalists are a very easy community to get to praise you: you just have to be in a position of power and do or say nice things about them and their coin.

Vitalik Buterin

One Salvadorean business owner, requesting anonymity, told Decrypt: “It crushes my soul to see Bitcoin maximalists around the world cheering this when, if they actually sat down and read the law and regulations, it is completely opposite to everything they preach.”

An Adjustment to Start Using Bitcoin

At this month’s TOKEN2049 conference in London, Blockchain.com co-founder Nicolas Cary said during a panel discussion: “I think there’s some valid criticisms of how the program [has been] rolled out in El Salvador in terms of being top down. [A] main ethos of crypto is that there’s really grassroots adoption, and people are doing it voluntarily.”

Multiple surveys in the country have found that the majority of Salvadoreans are not in favour of bitcoin as legal tender.

Other countries may yet follow El Salvador’s example. Earlier this month, Lord Fusitu’a, a member of the Tongan parliament, made a case for the Pacific island nation to accept bitcoin as legal tender in order to cut down on remittances costs.

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Bitcoin Blockchain NFTs Tokens

Bitcoin NFTs Are Growing Fast, STX Token Up 57% in 24 Hours

The native cryptocurrency of Bitcoin-based smart contract blockchain Stacks (STX) exploded in market value this past week, following the growth in demand amid a booming NFT ecosystem. 

Giving the growing traction on the network, more from its NFTs marketplace, STX soared over 57 percent to $2.30 on October 10. At the time of writing, however, STX was down trading at $1.91 on CoinMarketCap, as Bitcoin (BTC) maintained its domination over major altcoins. Currently, the Stacks token is ranked the 58th-largest digital currency with a market capitalisation of around US$2.3 billion. 

LunarCRUSH had also confirmed STX as the top cryptocurrency with the highest social and market activity. 

Bitcoin NFTs Ecosystem is Booming 

The Bitcoin blockchain is mainly for facilitating transactions and doesn’t inherently support NFTs or smart contracts like Ethereum. While it is often criticised and downplayed for this, Stacks is looking to change the narrative. 

Based on Bitcoin, Stacks is poised to enable smart contracts on the BTC network, more like a “Layer 1.5” according to founder Muneeb Ali. More NFTs are now launching on the Bitcoin network through Stacks, which contributed to the demand in STX and overall traction on the network.

Bitcoin Birds was the latest Bitcoin NFT collection launched last week by 12-year-old Abraham Finley. The collection sold out within one hour, netting about US$8,000. Prior to the Bitcoin Birds, other NFTs have been released on the Stack marketplace, including Stacks Pops, Punks, Monks, and many others. Satoshibles NFTs are also planning on debuting on Bitcoin “where they truly belong”.

The NFT market has had a wide rally in the past few months and is starting to look lulled. SynFutures, a Singaporean decentralised derivatives exchange, is set to launch an NFT platform that will enable investors to short or bet against the price movements of NFTs. As the NFT world continues to advance, Twitter plans to integrate a verification tool for NFTs used as profile pictures.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Investing Markets

Legendary Billionaire Investor Finally Buys BTC, Admitting It Has ‘Crossed the Chasm to Mainstream’

“It’s more than an inflation hedge” – this is how Soros Fund CEO Dawn Fitzpatrick recently referred to bitcoin, adding that the cryptocurrency market has “crossed the chasm to mainstream”.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Fitzpatrick – who’s also the chief investment officer of Soros Fund, a private US investment firm with over US$6 billion in assets under management – discussed the current state of the stock market, Chinese companies in the US, and bitcoin, stating that her company is exploring crypto beyond the inflation hedge narrative.

Bitcoin Has Surpassed the ‘Inflation Hedge’ Narrative

While other institutional investors and billionaires have satanised bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general – among them Warren Buffet’s right hand man, Charlie Munger – Fitzpatrick points to how the crypto market now has over US$2.3 trillion in market cap and 220 million users globally. To reinforce her point, the number of active crypto addresses reached the 50 million mark two weeks ago.

A ‘Market Crash’ is Getting Closer

During the Bloomberg interview, Fitzpatrick was asked what her fund’s current market strategy was against hyperinflation. She said that a market crash was nearing, and that high inflation combined with low interest rates have pushed the fund to stockpile cash by borrowing against various securities.

I think we’ve all been surprised at how long [high inflation] feels like it’s going to last now.

Dawn Fitzpatrick, CEO and CIO, Soros Fund

Fitzpatrick’s statements echo the words of billionaire Marc Lasry when in June he lamented not buying enough bitcoin. “As more and more people start using bitcoin, it’s going to keep going up. It’s happened a lot quicker than I thought it would. I should have bought a lot more. That was my mistake,” Lasry said.

Other billionaire investors such as the outspoken Chamath Palihapitiya consider that bitcoin has “effectively replaced gold”, as he said earlier this month, and would continue to do so as the cryptocurrency market cap grows.