Category: Bitcoin

Bitcoin and Crypto Car Number Plates Becoming Popular In Australia – How To Get One

Post author By Robert Drage
Post date May 5, 2021

Personalised crypto number plates are starting to appear around the world on social media as the Bitcoin craze goes mainstream.

You can use almost any phrase as your car registration number plate to make your vehicle stand out. You can create your own number and letter combinations, and restyle your existing number plates as long as you follow the rules for your state.

Let’s take a look at some popular ones and how you can get one in Australia.

Popular Crypto Number Plates In Australia

Crypto enthusiasts all over the world have been promoting Bitcoin and their favourite coins by getting custom car number plates. Here are some of the best one’s we’ve seen in Australia.

Car Spotted in Australia with BITCOIN number plate [reddit / reddit]

HODL number plate spotted in Melbourne Australia [reddit]

MR BTC Victoria state number plate [source]

B1TCOIN Queensland plate for sale $250k [mrplates.com.au]

BANKRPT Melbourne number plates bought with crypto profits [source]

How to Order a Custom Number Plate in Australia?

Let’s take a look at where you can check and order your custom rego plates in Australia.

Personalised Plates Queensland (PPQ)

You can check if the plates you want are available using the PPQ website.

Car plate preview HODL ETH on PPQ

Mr Plates

Mr Plates is also an online marketplace where people sell number plates that they have registered to sell or are no longer using. There can be various reasons for selling custom number plates. Buying the plates online are considerably more expensive than creating your own. However, if your desired one is already registered you might need to buy it off that person.

Some Bitcoin car plates on Mr Plates marketplace

Ebay AU

Some people got in early to register crypto plates and are now selling them on some marketplaces like Ebay. There are some interesting ones for sale in Australia, including HODLNG listed for $10,000 AUD.

A personalised car plate being sold on Ebay

Personalised car plate being sold on Ebay

Gumtree AU

You can also find custom number plates for local sale on Gumtree AU.

Bitcoin number plates for sale on Gumtree

HODLON Victoria state plate for sale [gumtree.com.au]

Trade Unique Cars AU

BUY BTC personalised car plate for sale [tradeuniquecars.com.au]

CafePress AU

One can also get a custom bitcoin frame for your numberplate to add that extra hint of personalisation.

Custom frame examples from CafePress.com.au

Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News

Bitcoin Transaction Fees Are Coming Back Down From $60 to $20

Post author By Robert Drage
Post date May 5, 2021

Bitcoin (BTC) network fees reached an all-time high on 21 April which was just under $60 USD average per transaction. These have now subsided close to the current average of around $20 USD.

During the week of 21 April the Bitcoin hashrate drop was one of the major reasons the transaction price shot up. Since then, transaction prices have been going back to the normal as backlogged transactions have been completed and the hashpower restored.

1 Month Bitcoin Average Transaction Fee: Ycharts

3 Year Bitcoin Average Transaction Fee: BitInfoCharts

Different Perspectives on Fees

There are some supporters of higher fees, they believe that an increase in fees will also increase the amount of individuals/companies that want to mine Bitcoin which is essentially a good thing for decentralisation.

Sustained high fees are expected and necessary to prevent denial of service (spam) attacks that can threaten decentralization and therefore censorship resistance. Sustained high fees will secure the Bitcoin network long term. Fees are designed to pump forever. Embrace them.
Matt Odell, Co-Founder of CoinPrices.io [source]

The opposition argues that higher fees can threaten centralisation by scaring people away because they can’t afford the fees. The fewer people adopt Bitcoin the less need there will be to run nodes to process many transactions. This could also push users toward alternative blockchains which cater more to everyday users.

#Bitcoin transaction fees are coming back down.

They're not quite @_k3tan level, but close!

Watch on https://t.co/frkiJwUf7B @mempool pic.twitter.com/zqwZqOdoXp
— Stephan Livera (@stephanlivera) May 3, 2021

But now that consumer hardware for mining is becoming more popular there is an opportunity for individuals and businesses to play a part in the network.

For reference, other coins have different network fees:

Read more about this in a recent test transferring $100 AUD using different cryptocurrencies to discover the actual fees.

Bitcoin Crypto News Payments

Bitcoin’s First Major Coding Upgrade in 4 Years “Taproot” Explained

Post author By Robert Drage
Post date May 4, 2021

The proposed Bitcoin protocol upgrade is the biggest in years and will include updates to Bitcoin smart contracts, scalability and privacy.

Why Is The Taproot Update Important?

Taproot is a Bitcoin softfork that will:

Upgrade Bitcoins core cryptography
Improve privacy and transaction fees
Reform Bitcoin’s scripting language

In order to complete a Bitcoin transaction, you need to prove that you know the private key connected to a public key. A digital signature is used to prove that you know the private key without revealing it. Some transactions could have multiple parties with specific conditions to pay out the Bitcoin.

A new signature system is going to be added, and simply put the introduction of Schnorr signatures allows for multiple signatures to be merged into a new one.

This makes the process more efficient and cheaper for transactions that require multiple signatures it. When the transaction processing capacity per second increases, it reduces the fees for each transaction. Another benefit is added privacy since you can’t see how many participants there were in the transaction.

This technique is called signature aggregation. Hopefully you can also see now why it helps with scalability, since less data needs to be confirmed in a block to achieve the same functionality.
— Mario Gibney 🥕🟩 (@Mario_Gibney) May 3, 2021

In order to implement these new transactions, the update adds new commands in the underlying programming language. These new scripts are used to verify Taproot spends and Schnorr signatures, and they are collectively known as Tapscript. This implementation adds smart contract flexibility which can lead to the development of smart contracts on the Bitcoin protocol.

Upgrades Are A Community Process

The Bitcoin community is hoping to activate Taproot in the near future, although its activation path is still unclear.

If you're new to Bitcoin and concerned about the Taproot activation debate, don't be. Decision making in Bitcoin is decentralized and consensus emerges naturally as the collective of individuals in the community weigh up the various competing proposals. It's messy, but it works.
— Cøbra (@CobraBitcoin) March 4, 2021

If 90% of the blocks mined during this period include the Taproot signal bit (or any of the other roughly two week difficulty periods that occur between now and the August 11 timeout), then the upgrade is “locked in” for activation in November of this year.

This version is compatible with Bitcoin Core up to a point. If all miners signal, Taproot activates network-wide with no problems, but if they don’t, then there is a “flag day” for mandatory activation set in October of 2022. You can see the nodes that have signaled that they are running the Taproot softfork on taproot.watch.

For a more detailed explanation here is a video of Pieter Wuille, Bitcoin Core developer and Blockstream co-founder, speaking about Taproot, Schnorr, and SIGHASH_NOINPUT.

Bitcoin Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Trading

Crypto Trader Lost $185k By “Overtrading Shitcoins”

Post author By Cristian Lipciuc
Post date May 3, 2021

Stock and Crypto Market Values https://unsplash.com/photos/fiXLQXAhCfk

Among many Twitter threads of investors showing their recent gains on the crypto market, a cautionary tale has recently stood out.

Although the growth of various cryptocurrencies since late 2020 has given many traders an unforeseen boost, a Twitter user has come forward to explain how unfortunate trades cost him no less than $185k.

A thread on how I went from $185K to $0 in exactly 3 weeks.

My address is https://t.co/Uixz6Fc1Cg if you want to check the history using @zerion_io pic.twitter.com/vHQS2AHZYd
— rgrpark (@rgr_park) April 29, 2021

Investments Gone Sour

For rgr_park (the Twitter user behind the tragic story), things seemed to go pretty well at the beginning of April 2020, “holding top projects with solid fundamentals” and reporting a crypto portfolio worth around $185k.

The desire for quick profits then led to different decisions.

Then $btc started dumping but I was too busy overtrading on @Uniswap, buying tops and selling bottoms. By April 20th, I had lost over 50% overtrading shitcoins. pic.twitter.com/14TTuVacug
— rgrpark (@rgr_park) April 29, 2021

Not taking profits and risking even more brought the story to its end.

I felt good about holding $micro and went into work. After a few hours, I decides to check @DEXToolsApp and saw the massive drop. Checked twitter and confirmed rug. Was able to salvage .8eth as liquidity was luckily locked. Moral of the story: Don't be a dumbass.
— rgrpark (@rgr_park) April 29, 2021

Stories like this are a reminder of the risks involved in trading cryptocurrencies and their volatility, like recently demonstrated by DOGE and SAFEMOON dropping by 50% or TurtleDex pulling a $2.5 million exit scam.

Australia Bitcoin Payments

Coinbase Offers Buying Bitcoin with PayPal Option

Post author By Cristian Lipciuc
Post date May 1, 2021

Not long after their listing on the NASDAQ exchange, Coinbase has announced that going forward, PayPal payments for cryptocurrencies will be added to their services.

In a press release on their blog the company succinctly laid out the reasons behind their decision to add PayPal as a payment method, and the main thing setting the new payment method apart from usual card purchases.

No Need To Add Extra Banking Info On Coinbase

Eddie Lo – Product Manager at Coinbase – stated in the blog post that although buying crypto should be quick and easy, long bank transfer times, 2 Factor Authentication and other issues can make the experience quite a hassle.

“Buying crypto should be simple and easy. However, moving money in the traditional world of finance can be anything but. We know you are expecting faster and more seamless ways to make crypto purchases.”

When buying Bitcoin off of Coinbase using PayPal, customers will no longer need to go through the motions of adding extra bank account information to their account and waiting for it to be verified.

You Can Buy Up To $25,000 of Crypto Daily

Provided the e-mail address associated with the user’s PayPal account matches the one used to sign up to Coinbase with, a user can simply log in to their PayPal account from within the app – and voila, up to $25,000 worth of crypto can be purchased daily.

As world leaders and pioneers in the world of payments, PayPal also reassured Coinbase customers that their data was perfectly safe with them – and that PayPal looks forward to helping the world of crypto grow.

“Funding crypto purchases through PayPal offers a familiar and trusted experience as you explore the world of crypto. Working with the payments ecosystem, PayPal has built up the knowledge and implemented the proper tools in order to assure transparency, performance and security in all services.”
Paypal

For now, the service is only available in the USA – but PayPal is planning to expand its crypto network within the coming months after the Paypal CEO admitted that the demand was overwhelming.

Bitcoin Crypto News Institutions

MicroStrategy is HODLing 91,579 BTC Announcing 10% Revenue Growth for 2021

Post author By Caitlin Carey
Post date May 1, 2021

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

Michael Saylor’s big Bitcoin moves have delivered profitable returns for MicroStrategy investors as the company announced a 10% growth in revenue for Q1 2021.

In the first quarter, $MSTR had one of the strongest operational quarters in our software business in years, highlighted by 10% revenue growth and continued improvement in non-GAAP profitability. We continue to #hodl all 91,579 of our #bitcoin.https://t.co/Yrz8DGZkVV
— Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) April 29, 2021

Q1 2021 MicroStrategy Business Highlights

The MicroStrategy First Quarter webinar shows the company acquired 20,857 BTC for and average buying price of $52,087, using proceeds from convertible notes and excess cash.

Michael Saylor is Corporate America’s Poster Boy for Bitcoin

He is the man who became the first CEO of a publicly listed company to purchase Bitcoin for MicroStrategy shareholders, in August 2020. Following Saylor’s lead, other major institutions have jumped on the bandwagon of acquiring Bitcoin, including: Greyscale, Goldman Sachs, Tesla, PayPal, and Visa.

Alotta Money NFT

Michael explains:

Conventional treasury strategies are broken… What are you gonna do? Look at the last 12 months: ROI; Bitcoin is up 461%. S&P is up 25%. If you invested all of your treasury assest in the S&P, you’d’ve kept up with the price of Capital… Gold: up 9%. It’s a disaster; it’s not keeping up with the cost of Capital.
Michael Saylor

As the value of the dollar is becoming more and more inflated, and BTC and other cryptocurrencies out perform traditional stocks, big money is now looking to Bitcoin as a better store of value.

So Why Bitcoin? … I have to manage shareholder value and if you want to maintain or grow shareholder value, you’re gonna have to grow your assets at a rate faster than the cost of Capital.
Michael Saylor

Michael is an enthusiastic evangelist and a pioneer for the movement of mass adoption into investing in Bitcoin. He tweets regularly on the topic and shares his knowledge and opinions freely in interviews, on why he believes Bitcoin to be a superior asset.

#Bitcoin is a bank in cyberspace. Deposit the amount of money you wish to keep.
— Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) January 28, 2021

Bitcoin as a Store of Value

We’ve heard enthusiasts say over and over that “Bitcoin is a store of value“. It’s “better than gold”. It’s “The Best performing asset”, like, ever. The proof is in the pudding. Actually it’s in Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy End of Financial Quarter Results report.

Caitlin Carey – Crypto News Guest Author

Bitcoin Crypto News Institutions

MicroStrategy Plans to Buy More BTC After 52% Surge in Revenue

Post author By José Oramas
Post date May 1, 2021

MicroStrategy has made official its Q1 revenues, showing outstanding profits due to its Bitcoin holding strategy and booming sales of related products.

According to the official company release, MicroStrategy has raised over US$1 billion in additional capital to expand its Bitcoin holdings, to a total of 91,000 BTC —approximately A$6,692,205,190.

MicroStrategy Announces First Quarter 2021 Financial Results

Its total revenues for Q1 were US$122 million, a 10.3 increase compared to the Q1 of last year. Its sales of product licenses and subscription services also boomed, making US$31.3 million, a 52.3% increase compared to 2020.

“MicroStrategy’s first quarter results were a clear example that our two-pronged corporate strategy to grow our enterprise analytics software business and acquire and hold bitcoin is generating substantial shareholder value.”
Quarter 1 Report

MicroStrategy to Buy More BTC this Year

MicroStrategy has been one of the top-tier Bitcoin buyers since mid-2020, allocating substantial amounts of BTC to its balance sheet. It seems the company has not lost its appetite since then, as they reportedly plan to buy and hold more BTC this year.

“We will continue to acquire and hold additional bitcoin as we seek to create additional value for shareholders.”

Its shares (MSTR) surged to one-month highs in mid-April, touching an intra-day high of US$770. Its shares were recently added as a fully tradable tokenised stock (MSTR) on Binance as well, together with gain tech Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT).

Australia Bitcoin Scams

Australia School Teacher Pleads Guilty And Claims Bitcoin Scammer Made Off With The Money

Post author By Cristian Lipciuc
Post date April 30, 2021

Melanie Kilgour – who is currently a teacher at a Secondary College in Shepparton – pleaded guilty to accusations of pocketing nearly $150,000 AUD of funds from the Alexandra Community Hub back in 2019.

Update 03/05/2021: Image removed.
Update 06/07/2021: Melanie gives her side of the story

In court, Melanie Kilgour – who also goes by married name Melanie Gourlay, stated that “the funds were all gone”.

Out of a total of $148,908 AUD – which was drained from the Community Hub’s accounts through a total of 38 separate transactions, $50,000 purportedly went to a friend who never paid her back, and an undisclosed amount was spent on house repairs.

National Australia Bank Spotted Different Signature

The fraud was detected due to Mrs Kilgour forging the signature of the Alexandra Community Hub director’s signature to the bank.

When NAB detected that the signature of John Cannon – the local Community Hub director – was substantially different from previous signatures of his in their database, they reached out to him for explanations.

However, Mr Cannon replied that he had not signed off on any of those transactions. What’s more, he was not even in the area at the time the transactions were allegedly signed.

Overseas Bitcoin Lover Took The Money

Outside of the $50,000 sent to the mysterious debt-dodging friend, the defence claimed that some had been spent on home repairs – and that the rest of it had been sent in Bitcoin to an “overseas lover” who had taken the money and disappeared.

However, Judge Michael Tinney was not quite impressed with these Mt. Gox-esque explanations.

“(The home renovations) it’s false is it … what there a builder? What’s the cost of the house? It’s impossible for me to act on submissions from the bar table … well the scammers aren’t (the builders) are they … these internet transactions mean nothing to me.”

Mrs Kilgour apparently sold her house in Alexandra recently for a total of $116,000, which were placed in a trust fund that will allegedly be liquidated and used to pay back ACH.

Mrs Kilgour will reappear before the court on the 24^th of June.

Bitcoin Dogecoin Ethereum Market Analysis

Crypto Markets Outlook – 100 Day Performance DOGE, UNI, BTC, ETH

Post author By Crypto News Guest Authors
Post date April 30, 2021

Source: Coin Metrics Network Data Charts

There are many indications that we’re still in a crypto bull market, so let’s take a look at some popular coins and how they have been performing.

Which Coin Won The Last 100 Days?

The last 100 days have been a turbulent period for crypto enthusiasts. There have been some coins that delivered phenomenal returns, while others have been less impressive. Let’s compare some of the big players.

Source: Coin Metrics Network Data Charts

$100 worth of the relative safety of Bitcoin (BTC) puchased 100 days ago is now worth $135, not too shabby compared to bank interest and government bonds.

$100 worth of Ethereum (ETH) purchased 100 days ago is currently worth a more exciting $186 today driven largely by the explsion in NFTs.

Meanwhile, $100 worth of Uniswap (UNI) has rocketed to $401 in the past 100 days as traffic to the platform continues to grow.

But the real winner of the past 100 days is Dogecoin (DOGE), which would have seen $100 multiplied to a whopping $2,742 during the same timeframe. Such returns are not even considered feasible by those that invest in stocks or other ‘real world’ commodities.

Dogecoin’s Long-term Prospects

For Dogecoin investors there is a significant probability that the coin may retrace its spectacular recent run. Many serious crypto thinkers believe it to be something of a joke that does not deserve its multi-billion dollar market cap. But occasionally markets behave strangely as the past 100 days shows. A single tweet from Elon Musk can send the Dogecoin price vertical. Its value is not based on solid fundamentals or impressive whitepapers, it’s a vehicle for those enjoy memes and don’t take life too seriously.

Jackson Byrne – Crypto News Guest Author

Tags Uniswap

Bitcoin Blockchain Crypto News

Administrator of $366 Million USD Dark-net Bitcoin Laundering Service Caught Using Blockchain

Post author By Robert Drage
Post date April 30, 2021

Swedish-Russian citizen, Roman Sterlinghove, has been arrested by U.S. authorities after 10 years of operating a darknet bitcoin website. The administrator of the Bitcoin Fog anonymising service was arrested in Los Angeles on 27 April.

Bitcoin Fog was one of the original “mixing” services, launched in 2011, specifically designed to hide the identity of the participants in a transaction. Services like these are usually used to make transactions on the dark-net so that people could trade in goods and services anonymously with cryptocurrency.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) analysed over 10 years worth of blockchain data:

Analysis of bitcoin transactions, financial records, Internet service provider records, email records and additional investigative information, identifies Roman Sterlingov as the principal operator of Bitcoin Fog,
Devon Beckett, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) special agent

According to Beckett’s statement, more than 1.2 million Bitcoin (BTC) worth $336 million (at the time of the transactions) were sent through Bitcoin Fog. Sterlingov received between 2% and 2.5% for each transaction adding up to about $8 million USD back then.

Blockchain Helped Catch The Bad Guys

Authorities estimate at least 23% of the Bitcoin that flowed through the mixing service was transferred to darknet-based narcotics marketplaces such as Silk Road and AlphaBay. In 2019, undercover IRS agents engaged Sterlingov through the platform, claiming they wished to launder the profits from ecstasy sales.

With blockchain analytics, the thing we say over and over is that all this activity is on this ledger forever, and if you did something bad 10 years ago you can be caught and arrested for it today.
Sarah Meiklejohn, Computer scientist

Law enforcement agents were able to find where Sterlinghov was paying for his hosting fees, which was through using Bitcoin to buy Liberty Reserve. From there the IRS was able to find personal information like home address, phone number, and a Google Drive account that held instructions on how the Liberty Reserve coins.

Previously in 2016, the founder of Liberty Reserve pleaded guilty to laundering $250 million USD through his digital currency business.