Tag: Bitcoin

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Australia Bitcoin Brisbane Cryptocurrencies

Crypto Meets Coffee in Brisbane

Crypto is now part of your daily coffee run, via a café in inner suburban New Farm, Brisbane. This one-of-a-kind venture – Crypto Coffee – allows patrons to pay with funds from a crypto wallet, using a business model developed in partnership with cryptocurrency platform Swyftx.

https://content.cryptonews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/crypto-coffee.jpg
Crypto Coffee exterior and counter, with live currency screens.

Crypto Coffee uses crypto in all its transactions, removing banks from the equation entirely. Cryptocurrency platform Swyftx, based in the Queensland capital, helped bring the idea to life, removing currency conversion hurdles and helping to convert crypto newbies by offering A$20 worth of bitcoin to new Crypto Coffee customers.

How to Buy Your Coffee with Crypto

Simply sign up to Swyftx with the QR code in-store. Once customers have a wallet, staff will help them place their orders. Swyftx also provides Crypto Coffee with links to live currency price charts that are displayed alongside the menu board.

All meals on offer at the café follow the crypto theme, adding extra novelty to the experience. Options include Shiba toast, Doge BLT, and the BTC chipotle chicken toastie.

Crypto-themed menu items from Crypto Coffee. Source: deliveroo.com.au

Word of mouth has been Crypto Coffee’s best promotional tool, with LinkedIn also spreading the news to the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), whose blockchain course further publicised the café. Crypto Coffee’s Instagram page garnered immense interest in the weeks prior to the café’s opening, further fuelling awareness of the venture.

Crypto Coffee is located at 572 Brunswick St, New Farm.

Crypto Moves into the Mainstream

Australia-wide, more and more industries are accepting crypto as a means of payment. These include online shopping, house renovations, solar installation and luxury properties. An example of the latter is a 2021 sale of a A$8 million Brisbane mega-mansion in a deal that allowed the use of crypto alongside standard payment methods for the purchase.

By Lauren Claxton, Crypto News Guest Author

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Bitcoin Bitcoin ATM

El Salvador to Launch 1,000 Bitcoin ATMs for Purchase and Sale of BTC

El Salvador is leading Bitcoin adoption in Central and South America, declaring it will launch 1,000 Bitcoin ATMs across the country for buying and selling BTC.

The 1,000 new Bitcoin ATMs will be installed by Athena Bitcoin, which has established a strong presence in the Bitcoin ATM market and currently operates across the US, Colombia, Argentina and El Salvador.

Ceremonial launch of Athena’s Bitcoin ATMs. Source: Athena Bitcoin

Earlier this month, El Salvador became the first country in the world to recognise Bitcoin as legal tender. President Nayib Bukele stating that his country is “adopting Bitcoin for the benefit of the people“. Bukele, who many see as a revolutionary, also announced plans for a volcano-powered Bitcoin mining facility.

The Rise of Crypto ATMs

Chainbytes, another crypto ATM company, is also keen to get in on the action. It recently announced that it wants to “make El Salvador the manufacturing hub of Bitcoin ATMs for all of the Americas”.

There are approximately 22,000 crypto ATMs operating in the world today. ATM installations have increased by over 10,000 in the past year alone. These numbers seem to be a reliable barometer for worldwide crypto adoption.

Source: Coin ATM Radar

In Australia, Bitcoin ATMs do exist but are very rare, and almost non-existent outside of the capital cities. But as worldwide crypto adoption surges forward, access to crypto ATMs in Australia should increase as well.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Regulation

It’s Official, Bitcoin is Legal Tender in El Salvador – How it Will Work

El Salvador

In a historic move for the story of global Bitcoin adoption, the El Salvador legislative body has officially voted in favour of a bill adopting Bitcoin as legal tender.

On June 9, in a vote of 62 in favour, 19 opposed and 3 abstentions, history was made. All that’s left is for the president to sign it into law, expected to happen June 10.

This news following the breaking news on June 7, where Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, at the Bitcoin 2021 conference, announced that he would be submitting a bill to Congress that would effectively treat Bitcoin as legal tender.

Users Won’t Require a Government Issued Wallet

President Nayib Bukele discussed the development with Coindesk columnist Nic Carter, highlighting financial inclusion and noting that users won’t necessarily be required to have a government digital wallet. However, businesses would be mandated to accept Bitcoin for the sale of goods and services.

A Trust Fund Will Manage Bitcoin’s Volatility

To manage the volatility of the cryptocurrency, a trust fund would be set up to instantly convert Bitcoin to US dollars, effectively transferring the volatility risk to the trust. From time to time, the trust would replenish its US dollars through the sale of Bitcoins.

If there’s an ice-cream parlour [and the owner] doesn’t really want to take the risk, he has to accept Bitcoin because it’s a mandated currency but he doesn’t want to take the risk of convertibility, so he wants dollars deposited in his banking account and when he sells the ice cream, he can ask the government to exchange his Bitcoin [for] dollars. Of course he can do that in the markets also but he can ask the government to do it immediately.

Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador
El Salvador President
Nayib Bukele’s recently updated Twitter profile image: note laser eyes

Government officials are expected to meet with the IMF later in the week. Analysts eagerly await the outcome of the meeting as their response is likely to set the precedent for other nations following suit.

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Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto Exchange Crypto News Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin Supply Rises After ‘Unprecedented’ Year-Long Decline

Bitcoin coins
Bitcoin coins https://unsplash.com/photos/4KJJezDyo3M

The supply of Bitcoin available on exchanges has risen after a long slide that started more than one year ago.

Data from the blockchain analysis firm Glassnode shows that the balance of Bitcoins on exchanges has experienced a recovery to hit 2,461,801.581 BTC – the highest level in a month.

This rise comes after a supply decline that started in March 2020, when the total balance on exchanges soared to more than 3,000,000.

Over-The-Counter BTC supply decline

In a recent weekly report, Glassnode also found that the Bitcoin supply at Over-The-Counter (OTC) exchanges has declined to just 6,000. OTC desks allow investors to buy crypto without making orders on the public exchange and causing price disruptions.

The total balance held by the three OTC desks we track has continued to decline throughout 2021, reaching local lows of only 6k BTC this week. This suggests demand by larger buyers exceeds available supply at these OTC desks. Furthermore, this trend clearly commenced starting in Dec 2020 at which time miners were distributing heavily. This aligns with the strong growth in institutional interest in the asset as a macro scale investment.

Glassnode

In other words, Glassnode analysis suggests that institutional adoption of Bitcoin has increased, as confirmed by multiple banks and big companies getting involved in the crypto space.

What Does The Drop In Bitcoin Balance On Exchanges Mean?

It is hard to say exactly why the supply on all exchanges has been dropping. Investors may be holding onto their Bitcoins, which could mean that another bull run is on the way.

As previously discussed, it is also important to remember that the Bitcoin protocol include halvings, which by definition reduce the issuance of new coins.

All of the above factors could be linked to the price of Bitcoin (BTC) increasing over the same period to reach a price of around $65,000 AUD.

Post by Guest Author – Jasper Hamill

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Crypto News Dogecoin

‘Dogecoin Killer’ Shiba Inu Hits Australian Crypto Exchanges

SHIB ecosystem woof paper
SHIB ecosystem woof paper

Shiba Inu (SHIB) token has become available on many crypto exchanges, including Binance Australia and Swyftx.

SHIB on Swyftx exchange

SHIB vs DOGE

Just a few short years ago, Dogecoin (DOGE) was a joke. Arguably, not many thought it would become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency in the world following an astonishing price surge during 2021. Some investors looking for a repeat of the Doge “miracle” have recently turned to a new coin called SHIB, or Shiba Inu Token.

Named after a famous Japanese breed of dog, SHIB has been nicknamed “the Dogecoin killer” and it looks like it is now being taken more seriously than its pooch-themed image might suggest.

A word of caution

When Binance listed SHIB in its Innovation Zone, a place “where users are able to trade new, innovative tokens that are likely to have higher volatility and pose a higher risk than other tokens”, it issued the following warning:

Please note that, as of the time of writing, the top #1, #2 and #5 wallets hold 50.5%, 7.0% and 3.0% of total supply respectively.
SHIB is a relatively new token that poses a higher than normal risk, and as such will likely be subject to high price volatility after the Binance listing. Please ensure that you exercise sufficient risk management, have done your own research in regards to SHIB’s fundamentals, and fully understand the project before opting to trade the token.

Binance announcement [source]

The man who owns half the world’s Shiba Inu is Vitalik Buterin, whose holdings are now worth billions of dollars after SHIB shot up in price during May from around $0.000002 USD to about $0.000035 USD (an increase of over 15 times). He was given the deposit when SHIB was first minted and it’s understood that he did not know about the gift.

The team behind SHIB writes on their website: “We locked the 50% of the total supply to Uniswap and threw away the keys! The remaining 50% was burned to Vitalik Buterin and we were the first project following this path, so everyone has to buy on the open market, ensuring a fair and complete distribution where devs don’t own team tokens they can dump on the community.”

Is SHIB going to the moon – or doomed to plunge to Earth? No one can tell, but it will be very interesting to see what happens to the latest canine cryptocurrency phenomenon.

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Crypto News

Bitcoin is ‘Disgusting’, Says Billionaire Charlie Munger At Berkshire Hathaway Meeting

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting 2021 – source

The world’s most valuable cryptocurrency is “disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization” says billionaire Charlie Munger, famed as Warren Buffet’s right hand man during Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting.

Charlie Munger, 97, is worth more than $2billion and has spent close to a century being a huge benificiary of the prevailing economic system.

But Munger, vice president of the holding company Berkshire Hathaway, does not appear to be very keen on the emerging global financial system being built around crypto.

Speaking during a Q&A session at an annual shareholder meeting that’s claimed to be the most watched business event of the year, the super-rich nonagenarian was asked if he still considered Bitcoin to be “worthless artificial gold”.

“Of course I hate the Bitcoin success. I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth, nor do I like just shuffling out of your extra billions of billions of dollars to somebody who just invented a new financial product out of thin air.”

“I think I should say modestly that the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.”

Charlie Munger
Charlie Munger speaking at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting

Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, dodged the question.

“I knew there’d be a question on Bitcoin” he said. “I thought to myself: ‘Well, I’ve watched these politicians dodge questions all the time.'”

“I always find it kind of disgusting when they do it. But the truth is, I’m going to dodge that question because we’ve probably got hundreds of thousands of people watching this that own Bitcoin, and we’ve got two people that are short. We’ve got a choice of making 400,000 people mad at us and unhappy and/or making two people happy. That’s just a dumb equation.”

Warren Buffet

Berkshire Hathaway is a corporate giant which owns many famous companies including Duracell and Fruit of The Loom.

Fool’s Gold Or The New Standard?

Munger has previously said that Bitcoin is “too volatile to serve well as a medium of exchange”.

Speaking at the Annual Meeting of Shareholders of the Daily Journal Corporation in February, he said: “It’s really kind of an artificial substitute for gold. And since I never buy any gold, I never buy any bitcoin.”

“Bitcoin reminds me of what Oscar Wilde said about fox hunting. He said it was the pursuit of the uneatable by the unspeakable.”

Crypto investors don’t appear to share the billionaire’s feelings about Bitcoin.

The price of Bitcoin has now surged to well above $50,000 and Ethereum hit an all-time high as it soared to more than $3,000 per token.

In total, the total cryptocurrency market cap is over $2trillion – making it worth one thousand times more than Charlie Munger.

Warren Buffet himself is worth more than $100billion, so the total value of the cryptomarkets is roughly 20 times larger than his wealth.

Jasper Hamill – Crypto News Guest Author

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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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Bitcoin Coinbase Institutions

Bitcoin Whale Moves AU$1 Billion of BTC into Storage

According to the popular blockchain tracking and analysis service Whale Alert, a user has moved 13,204 BTC worth nearly AU$1 billion out of Coinbase and into an ‘unknown wallet’. This typically indicates a wealthy individual or large institution buying Bitcoin and moving it into ‘cold storage’ such as a hard wallet for safekeeping.

The transactions happened over a one-hour period and involved 34 individual transactions of around 380 BTC each worth approximately US$21 million each. The choice of number could be a reference to Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap but it’s probably just coincidental.

Naturally, the moves attracted attention, with several Twitter comments questioning whether this could be another big buy from Michael Saylor’s Microstrategy investment firm. However, these moves all occurred during a Sunday, which would be odd for a company or traditional financial institution.

Big BTC Moves

Although this recent transfer amounts to a considerable amount of cash, it’s relatively small compared to some previous big moves. Last year in June, just after Bitcoin’s 3rd halvening, a whale moved 132,255 BTC in three separate transfers, amounting to US$1.3 billion at the time.

In the number of actual coins moved, even that amount remains comparatively small. Way back in 2011, a single transaction was completed involving 550,000 BTC, worth a whopping US$30.8 billion today but a meager US$1.3 million at the time.

Bitcoin Continues to Push Higher

Large moves such as these indicate big players entering the market and placing their coins in longterm storage with the expectation of further growth. If an individual or company with that much money has such strong faith in Bitcoin then one can only assume a fair amount of research has gone into their decision.

Just this year alone, both Bitcoin’s individual market cap and the wider cryptocurrency market cap have almost doubled in value. Bitcoin recently crossed the significant $1 trillion mark, climbing from US$530 million on December 31st, 2020.

The price of one BTC hit a new all-time high of above US$58,600 yesterday before suffering a mild rejection that has taken it back down to US$56,000. However, the price remains above the upward trend line and has already begun to make a decent recovery.

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Australia Bitcoin Blockchain New South Wales

Australian Ranch Awarded Blockchain-based Soil Carbon Credits from Microsoft

microsoft

Major tech giant Microsoft recently announced ambitious plans to cut down on its carbon footprint and implement 100 percent renewable energy at its data centers by 2025.  Furthermore, the company plans to incentivize its suppliers to reduce their carbon footprint by rewarding certain sustainability projects like reforestation, soil sequestration, and bioenergy with carbon capture storage (BECC).

Soil sequestration is the process of increasing the amount of carbon dioxide stored in soil, thereby reducing the amount present within the atmosphere. To do so, cattle ranchers implement special grazing practices with the hope of achieving between a 4 and 6 percent concentration of soil organic carbon in their land.

The environmental regeneration project, Regen Network, built on the Cosmos (ATOM) blockchain, was designed to reward farmers that increase the carbon concentration in their soil. It does so by verifying a farm’s soil sequestration and issuing it tokens, known as CarbonPlus Grasslands credits, funded by corporations that wish to reduce their carbon footprint. Microsoft has partnered with the Regen Network to purchase 43,338 metric tons worth of carbon credits for the Wilmot Cattle Co, an Australian-based ranch owner. The initiative was originally launched by natural capital firm Impact AG and has now been bought by Microsoft.

In addition to reducing its carbon footprint and supporting companies that do the same, Microsoft also hopes to eliminate an equal amount of carbon that it’s been responsible for producing since the company began in 1975. The corporation has set a date of 2050 to achieve this goal, using a combination of negative emission technologies (NET) like BECCs, direct air capture (DAC), and other methods.

Tech Giants Call for Climate Change Action

Microsoft is not the only tech giant calling for more aggressive climate change action.

Elon Musk, CEO of fellow tech giant Tesla, famously announced a $100 million prize to whoever could provide the best carbon capture technology. The often controversial businessman has been a long time supporter of climate change action, environmental causes, and blockchain technology. 

Last week, Musk finally made clear his support for Bitcoin when he changed his Twitter profile to the hashtag #Bitcoin. He followed up the change with the tweet “In retrospect, it was inevitable,” appearing to confirm the widespread belief that he would one day buy Bitcoin. Immediately following the news the digital asset enjoyed a brief 20 percent rise in price, touching the $38,000 level. However, it quickly corrected back down to current levels, indicating strong bearish sentiment within crypto markets.

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Bitcoin Blockchain Crypto News Reddit

Elon Musk Pumps Bitcoin, Tweet Recorded in Bitcoin Blockchain For Eternity

Bitcoin (BTC) has seen some impressive gains this year, rising by a massive 25 percent in just the first week of January alone. However, nothing quite compares to the massive pump seemingly instigated by Elon Musk this morning when he changed his Twitter profile to the simple hashtag #Bitcoin, sending a strong endorsement of the world’s leading cryptocurrency to his 43.7 million followers. 

The effect of the update by the world’s richest man saw Bitcoin rocket from $32,000 to near $38,000 in a matter of minutes. That’s an almost 20 percent price rise in less than an hour, driven by an incredible $20 billion increase in trading volume. While the price corrected soon after to below $36,000, Bitcoin’s trading volume continues to grow, reaching around $88 billion as more traders across the US begin waking up.

“It was inevitable.”

After changing his Twitter status to Bitcoin, Musk tweeting the phrase “In retrospect, it was inevitable.” The tweet is widely understood to signal that Elon has now bought some Bitcoin, although it may also signal his feelings about the recent GameStop (GME) and Robinhood debacle that exposed the true level of fraud on Wall Street.

Musk has been following the GameStop events as they unfolded this week, Tweeting on Tuesday this week “Gamestonk!”, with a link to the r/WallStreetBets Reddit channel that’s been driving these massive stock market short squeezes.

Documenting Bitcoin, a Twitter account dedicated to keeping a record of Bitcoin events, noted that somebody had embedded Musk’s tweet into the Bitcoin blockchain for eternity. According to this tweet, the entry was inserted by Coin Corner tech lead @zakkdev.

Bitcoin longs and shorts liquidated

As a result of Musk’s tweet, nearly $420 million worth of Bitcoin shorts were liquidated in less than an hour, followed by $120 million in longs liquidated soon after as the price rapidly corrected. On Binance alone, $57 million worth of shorts were liquidated in just the first 10 minutes of Musk’s endorsement.

Not only did Musk’s tweet help pump Bitcoin but potentially saved it from an extended bear market due to options expiring. Billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin futures options expired today, an event which could have otherwise pushed Bitcoin below $30,000 and into an even deeper rut.

Overbought Territory

While the move is undoubtedly good for the crypto market, it does mean Bitcoin has moved into overbought territory, signaling the potential for a trend reversal to the downside. However, as is common in the cryptocurrency market, the current revolutionary sentiment could continue to drive the price to the moon.