Category: Bitcoin

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Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News

Bullish: Bitcoin Long Term Holders And Miners Are Still Accumulating BTC

Recent market data shared by Glassnode, a cryptocurrency on-chain analytics platform, suggests the Bitcoin (BTC) has reached its top for the cycle yet, given that the rate of BTC accumulating is still increasing especially amongst Long Term Holders (LTHs) and miners.

Bitcoin’s Top is Not in Yet

Over the past few days, some people had panic-sold their Bitcoin following the recent drop of Bitcoin’s price below the $50,000 USD. Since the correction, the cryptocurrency is yet to reclaim the $60,000 USD level, which spurred some sentiment that Bitcoin’s top is in. However, Bitcoin’s LTH accumulating rate and miners’ net position change suggest otherwise.

In a tweet on Thursday, the analytics platform noted that Bitcoin accumulated back in 2020 is still increasing and that the BTC supply held by the long-term holders is up by over 67 percent. The Bitcoin positions of LTHs need to decline significantly in order to put the top in for the leading cryptocurrency, according to Glassnode.

Miner Are Not Selling Either

A separate data from Glassnode also confirmed that Bitcoin miners have been accumulating Bitcoin. Despite the recent dip, the accumulation rate for miners increased even further, as seen in the net position change below.

Bitcoin miners’ net position change. Source: Glassnode

Miners were known as sellers, as they needed to sell their Bitcoin mining rewards to cover expenses incurred during operation. However, they have been HODLing their rewards for the past month. This trend somewhat indicates that miners are still bullish on the cryptocurrency over the long term.

Another cryptocurrency analytics platform, Santiment, confirmed this growing rate of accumulation among BTC whale investors, precisely BTC addresses HODLing at least 10,000 BTC. About 90,000 BTC has been added to these addresses since April 5.

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Bitcoin Crypto News

Japanese Gaming Company Nexon Buys $100 Million Bitcoin

Japanese Gaming Company Nexon Buys $100 Million Bitcoin

Popular Japanese video game publisher, Nexon, announced on Wednesday it purchased about $100 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) as part of its treasury reserve. This is quite bullish for the Asian crypto market, as major companies in the continents are likely to follow suit.

Nexon Allocates Less Than 2% in Bitcoin

As Reuters reported, the gaming company purchased the Bitcoin at the average price of $58,000 USD per coin. Nexon’s Bitcoin reserve represents less than two percent of its cash reserve.

Following the words of Nexon CEO, Owen Mahoney, the company’s decision to buy Bitcoin comes amid their desire for a better hedging asset, not as investment speculation. This is the same reason that drove major companies like MicroStrategy to Bitcoin.

Our purchase of bitcoin reflects a disciplined strategy for protecting shareholder value and for maintaining the purchasing power of our cash asset. […] We believe bitcoin offers long-term stability and liquidity while maintaining the value of our cash for future investments.

Mahoney commented.

Nexon is a publicly traded company and a pioneer in the world of interactive entertainment software development. Its decision to allocate part of its cash reserve in Bitcoin is a milestone for the Asian crypto market, as many industry players believe it will cause some other companies in the Japanese and Asian countries to consider buying Bitcoin, as seen with Tesla.

Recent Corporate Bitcoin Investors

The Japanese gaming company now counts as the latest company to allocate part of its cash reserve to the leading cryptocurrency. Many companies have invested in Bitcoin this year in an effort to hedge against inflation. Some of these companies include Meitu, MicroStrategy, Purpose Bitcoin ETF AUM, Aker ASA, Square, Tesla, and so on.

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Australia Bitcoin Crypto News

Aussies Can Now Buy Cars with Bitcoin

CarBuyers.com.au has announced a new payment system that allows Aussies to sell their vehicles for Bitcoin all across the country, becoming one of the latest Australian businesses to adopt cryptocurrencies.

Buying Cars with BTC Across Australia

Paying with BTC will be identical to the company’s fiat offering. The process seems quite straightforward:

  1. The seller has to fill a contact form to set up a vehicle inspection
  2. Receive an offer
  3. Indicate they wish to accept payment for their quote in BTC via an electronic contract.
  4. Provide the required information and sign the contract.

Funds will be deposited into the customer’s digital wallet the same day — as long as the seller signs the contract and provides all the required information before the deadline.

The Bitcoin price will be determined and converted at exactly 2pm on the day of payment. We are not providing protection mechanisms against volatility. This is the nature of Bitcoin and the seller has the option to accept our traditional cash option to protect against this risk.

CarBuyers [supplied to Crypto News Australia]
Screenshot from CarBuyers homepage

Another Aussie Business Accepting Crypto

CarBuyers is one of the latest business in Australia that is now receiving BTC payments as cryptocurrencies soared in popularity in the country, not only as an attractive market for investors but also for companies from different industries.

Other than buying and selling crypto on a verified exchange, there are only a handful of legitimate businesses who are offering payment in this currency directly to consumers.

Daniel Werzberger, transformational director at CarBuyers [Yahoo Finance]

CarBuyers will be operating in every state of Australia, also exploring the possibility of paying commissions and bonuses to its employees in Bitcoin. For now, the company will only support BTC payments as an alternative to Australian dollars.

Paying With Crypto to Avoid Scams

Paying with cryptocurrencies can be an alternative method in Australia to acquired goods and services. Australians have reportedly lost over $175 million AUD to all kinds of scams during 2020.

A few days ago, two Australians lost over A$130,000 while trying to buy the Tesla 3 model, falling for fake invoice scams. These scams have become very popular in the country, as scammers simply leave the original design of the invoice while changing the bank details of the supplier.

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Binance Bitcoin

What Is Fuelling The Current Bitcoin Price Instability?

What Is Fuelling The Current Bitcoin Price Instability?

The price of Bitcoin has been on a roller-coaster of instability in recent days, but what is fuelling the dramatic slumps and surges? 

Whenever the price of a trillion dollar asset takes a sizeable tumble, speculation will abound as to the drivers of such instability. Are whales driving down the Bitcoin price so they can increase their vast holdings at discounted rates? Are Chinese electrical blackouts to blame for the falls? Or are possible changes to US capital gain taxation laws spooking crypto investors? 

Biden’s Proposed Tax Laws

Under President Biden’s proposed changes, capital gains taxes rates could hit over 43% for high income earners. This is a huge disincentive for investors who have profited from the surge in crypto markets as they may have to hand over a huge slice of any windfalls to Uncle Sam. Trading crypto is a volatile enough exercise without capital gain taxes, especially for newcomers who are not accustomed to the manic swings like unflappable long-term Bitcoin holders.

While there is no single answer, large and sudden falls generally indicate heavily leveraged trading positions being cleaned out. Unlike the stock market, crypto markets trade 24/7, and a fall in price while an investor sleeps has the potential to wipe out his/her positions. Rapidly falling stocks can also be suspended by an exchange so investors can pump liquidity into their trading accounts, but crypto markets are not equipped with the same circuit-breakers. Short positions are therefore ruthlessly liquidated, thus exacerbating the downward momentum.  

Bitcoin perpetual graph for leveraged traders via TradingView

Options To Short Bitcoin

What we know for sure is that there are many more options to short Bitcoin than ever before. Bearish investors can now short sell Coinbase, Tesla, MicroStrategy, or the Bitcoin itself to drive prices lower. For large institutional investors, this provides a massive opportunity to profit from the growing crypto space.  Investment banks have long used their financial weight and extreme leverage to drive down prices of stocks and commodities such as gold. Bitcoin is now big enough to attract their attention. Much can be gained by short-selling assets that then decline precipitously. 

For long-term crypto investors, wild swings are of mild concern. But for leveraged traders on Binance or other platforms, they are make or break occurrences. A correction of 2% or 3% has the potential to wipe them out. As crypto markets continue to expand and gain wider exposure, and large institutional investors enter the game, we can expect more not less of the roller-coaster style swings.   

Jackson Byrne – Crypto News Guest Author

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Australia Bitcoin Crypto News Sports

Australian Cricketer Brett Lee Donates 1 BTC to COVID-19 Charity in India

Former Australian fast bowler Brett Lee is now the second Australian cricketer to donate towards India’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. But Brett made his payment in the form of 1 Bitcoin (BTC).

Moved by the donation made by fellow Australian cricketer Pat Cummings, who donated $50,000 USD to the PM CARES Fund for oxygen supplies in India. Pat’s donation would be worth about 4090943.37 INR or RS 40 lakh.

It saddens me deeply to see people suffering due to the pandemic. I feel privileged to be in a position of making a difference […] I’d like to donate 1 Bitcoin to Crypto Relief to help with the purchase of oxygen supplies for the hospitals across India.

Brett Lee

Is India Still Banning Crypto?

Currently, Bitcoin is still not considered legal tender in India.

A Cabinet note is being prepared. It’s almost nearing completion and then it will be taken to the Cabinet… We will allow a certain amount of window for people to experiment on blockchain and bitcoin. However, the what formulation of cryptocurrency will be part of the Cabinet note which will get ready soon.

Nirmala Sitharaman, Indian Finance Minister

Cryptocurrency donated within India can be exchanged for Indian Rupee, but the industry is “still exploring” the process for using such funds from outside India.

The crypto fund was started by Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon (a Bangalore-based blockchain company), to help buy supplies of food and oxygen. So far the fund has collected $3 million USD, with a donation of $600,000 from Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum (ETH).

Considerations will need to be made by a regulatory body in India otherwise the cryptocurrencies gathered in the fund will not be usable. But it seems Sandeep is championing the initiative with great urgency.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Payments

PayPal CEO Admits Crypto Demand Much Higher Than Expected

Paypal Bitcoin
Paypal Bitcoin

In an interview with Time Magazine, Dan Schulman – the CEO of PayPal – talked about his experience running the company, as well as the demand for crypto on his payment platform.

Exponential Demand

With over 15.4 billion transactions carried out, it’s safe to say PayPal had a good run last year. Their move into crypto also seems to have supported the bull run Bitcoin has been on since late autumn of 2020.

When PayPal announced its plans for cryptocurrency adoption, a small shortage of Bitcoin supply occurred due to the unexpected demand.

Although the supply of Bitcoin didn’t dry up (and everything returned to normal within a few days) it seems PayPal still didn’t expect as many new crypto customers as they should have. In the interview, despite not giving out specific figures, Mr Schulman stated that the demand for digital assets exceeded their expectations “multiple-fold”, and that the enthusiasm surrounding the decision was also a welcome surprise.

Crypto user experience on Paypal mobile app

Schulman also spoke about the decline of paper money and predicted that not only would it be slowly phased out – but the role of banks in the payment landscape will also probably decline. According to Schulman, in the future the majority of transactions will be carried out through “super-apps”.

When all of those things start to happen, then central banks need to rethink monetary policy as well because you can’t just issue more paper money into the system because people aren’t using paper money. In the next 5 to 10 years, you’re going to see more change in the financial system than you have over the past 10 to 20 years.

Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal

Of course, this isn’t to say fiat will disappear overnight – plenty of people prefer to use cash. However, Schulman may be right: in countries like the Netherlands, there are already shops that don’t accept cash anymore.

In any case, Schulman’s interview seems to indicate that PayPal believe they made a good decision moving into the crypto world, and it looks like they plan to be staying in it for a while.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Hackers

$7 Billion Dollars Could Crash Bitcoin With a DoS Attack, Expert Explains

Doctor Matthew Green, part of the team that created Zcash, stated in a debate that if there were a malicious party willing to spend $7 billion USD it could start a cyber attack that could crash the network, effectively making it impossible for any transactions to be processed by the network.

However that would require the resources (power, money) of a nation-state or some secret billionaire to get the ball rolling, and since there is no monetary incentive it would possibly be for malicious reasons.

The way this Denial of Service (DoS) would be done is like a 51% attack, where if some entity spent $7 billion USD to create empty blocks it could flood the system. Therefore, that would stop other transactions from being validated and “deny service” to others wanting to use the network. That amount of money spent would produce the largest cumulative difficulty chain, with blocks that are empty (which is valid).

DoS attack to Bitcoin: the end?

Since a prolonged attack will be so expensive in both power and monetary cost it would be impossible to sustain it indefinitely. This means that it wouldn’t necessarily bring Bitcoin (BTC) down completely, but the price will probably drop temporarily and people won’t be able to use the network until the attack is over.

There are some counter measures that can be implemented to prevent instances like these. Project horizon created one such solution after they were hit by a 51% attack. Because a 51 percent attack requires a miner to produce blocks in secret before posting them to the blockchain, they added a delay penalty if a block takes too long to be created. Other methods include adding an element of Proof-of-Stake so that members that don’t own any of the digital asset can’t “grief” the network.

The way blockchain is designed also intrinsically helps against standard DoS attacks according to Alexandre Francois of PenTest Magazine.

For starters, it eliminates the risk of having a single point of failure. It can maintain a list of compromised IPs in its ledger, and this would be resistant to disruption attempts. As soon as a server with the list is compromised, a user can switch to any other node on the network to access a safe copy.

Alexandre Francois, PenTest Magazine

Bitcoin Mining Pools Have Been Targeted in The Past

A report published by U.S. technology company Neustar, for example, estimates a 200% increase in DoS events against their customers in Q1 2019 compared to the same period in 2018.

AntPool, BW.com, NiceHash, CKPool and GHash.io are among a number of Bitcoin mining pools and operations that have been hit by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) showing that this is not a rare occurrence.

However, as Bitcoin becomes more decentralised and mining power is spread over various continents it seems clear that even a nation state with a massive amount of resources could not crash Bitcoin permanently. The aggressor would arguably just incur massive costs to achieve a debatable result.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Sports

Top Quarterback, Trevor Lawrence Signs Multi-Year Sponsorship Deal with Blockfolio

Top Quarterback, Trevor Lawrence Signs Multi-Year Sponsorship Deal with Blockfolio

A popular American football quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, has signed a multi-year sponsorship deal with Blockfolio, a cryptocurrency portfolio tracking and management company. Under the agreement, the footballer can choose to receive his future bonuses in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Blockfolio Now Sponsors Trevor Lawrence

As reported on Monday, the development marks the first crypto sponsorship deal ever bagged by the Clemson Tigers’ quarterback.

We believe that Trevor is the future of football, and we think that crypto is the future of finance. Trevor represents a lot of the promise and potential of football at the highest level, and we think that crypto represents the same thing at the highest level of finance.

Sina Nader, COO of Blockfolio

Although Blockfolio did not disclose the exact number of cryptos – Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana – paid to the footballer, the company said the player’s first bonus was paid in cryptocurrencies on Friday. As per the report, the cryptocurrencies deposited to Lawrence’s Blockfolio account are worth more in today’s price.

Lawrence’s interest in cryptocurrencies led him to choose the crypto company amongst other companies in the banking and stock trading sector.

When it comes to my crypto portfolio, I wanted a long-term partner in the space that I could trust.

Trevor Lawrence

The Sports Industry is Loving Crypto

Interest in digital currencies in the sports industry seems definitely on the rise. For example, one of the top English football teams, Southampton FC, recently scored a new sponsorship deal with Coingaming Group. It will enable the club to distribute performance bonuses to players in Bitcoin at the end of every season until the next three years.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Market Analysis Markets

ASX Prices Climb as Bitcoin Price Plummets On Anzac Weekend

ASX Prices Climb as Bitcoin Price Plummets On Anzac Weekend
A board displaying stock prices is seen at the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in Sydney, Australia, February 9, 2018. REUTERS/David Gray

Over the weekend, Australia’s leading share market index S&P/ASX 200 saw a notable increase in price. Interestingly, the gains in ASX coincides with Anzac Day public holiday. This raises some questions on whether the increase in the Aussie market was related to the nation’s remembrance day.

Meanwhile, the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) declined within the week, while the S&P/ASX 200 gained.

Anzac-ASX Market Move

The 25th of April is the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) Day, dedicated to commemorate the soldiers “who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations”, especially those in the Gallipoli Campaign during World War I.

It seems Aussie traders and investors got optimistic about Anzac Day as S&P/ASX 200 increased by almost one percent in two days leading up to the remembrance day.

ASX 200 chart. Source: Market Index

Within the same period, Bitcoin declined by over three percent from $51,739 USD on Friday to $50,052 USD on Sunday.

Bitcoin price chart. Source: Coinmarketcap

ASX Drops 0.2% on Monday

On Monday though, the Australian share market lost some points. The ASX/S&P 200 dropped by about 0.2 percent of its opening value. The market closed at 7045.6 points, according to data from Market Index. The drop may be attributed to the fact that there was a low trading volume on the market.

ASX 200 chart. Source: Market Index

Bitcoin, however, gained some points on Monday. At the time of writing, it was trading at $53,772 USD on CoinMarketCap, which represents about an 8.11 percent increase over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin maintains a market capitalization above $1 trillion USD.

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Bitcoin Blockchain Crypto News Cryptocurrencies

UK Court Allows Craig Wright To File Lawsuit Against Bitcoin.org

Bitcoin on dark background
Bitcoin on dark background

Bitcoin.org — one of many websites that host the original Bitcoin whitepaper — is allegedly managed by someone who goes by the codename Cøbra. London legislators have allowed Craig Wright, who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, to file a copyright lawsuit against them.

A new round of Cøbra vs Wright?

Craig Wright is the chief scientist of blockchain firm nChain and he has claimed to be Satoshi multiple times. He attempted to have the Bitcoin whitepaper taken down by websites hosting it, even though this goes against the original ethos of the Bitcoin project.

When the takedown request came, the staff at Bitcoin.org (among others) publicly stated their refusal to comply. Besides, Satoshi’s PGP key is well-known: this could be used to prove the authenticity of the claim, which Craig Wright has never done.

We will continue hosting the Bitcoin whitepaper and won’t be silenced or intimidated. Others hosting the whitepaper should follow our lead in resisting these false allegations. We believe these claims are without merit, and refuse to [take it down].

Cøbra, domain owner of Bitcoin.org

It’s worth stressing that the court has not ruled in favour of Mr Wright in any way. The decision only allows the lawsuit to be filed — against an Internet pseudonym.

Furthermore, Cøbra has already expressed their disdain for the ruling, stating that they will not allow themselves to be bullied into compliance with Mr Wright’s demands. However, they have also stated that if they must give up their anonymity in order to fight to keep the whitepaper online, they are ready to do so. 

The Bitcoin whitepaper itself was published under a free and permissive MIT licence in 2008 and it has been hosted by numerous Internet activists, as well as governments.