Tag: cryptocurrency

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Australia CoinSpot Crypto News Cryptocurrencies

Aussies Can Now Buy Luxury Cars with Crypto Through CoinSpot

CoinSpot is now allowing Australians to purchase luxury vehicles using up to 30 types of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ethereum.

This comes as the high-profile crypto exchange enters a partnership with Melbourne-based prestige car retailer Dutton Garage: 

Any purchases made will go through CoinSpot’s over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk to limit exposure to fluctuations in the market. This will also help prevent slippage for customers transacting values over A$50,000 and minimise low liquidity risk.

‘Strong Demand’ for Crypto Car Purchases

In a joint statement, CoinSpot and Dutton Garage said the partnership was in response to “strong demand” from Australian customers to purchase vehicles and other luxury items using crypto.

“With Web3, digital currencies are becoming more than just stores of value, and instead, legitimate ways to purchase big-ticket items,” said Gary Howells, CoinSpot’s chief product officer. “Increasing crypto’s utility is the key to driving mass adoption of what we believe is the future of finance.”

Juv Jayaram, chief technology officer at Dutton Group, added: “Working with CoinSpot enables our customers to access their crypto investments and transact with us in a seamless and transparent manner.”

The CoinSpot-Dutton deal is not the first meeting of crypto and car commerce in Australia. In April 2021, carbuyers.com.au announced a new payment system that allowed Aussies to use bitcoin to cover the purchase of a vehicle. Two months later, auction house Lloyds started accepting major cryptocurrencies as payment for sport and collector cars.

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Crypto News Sports Tezos

Manchester United to Partner with Tezos for $27 Million Per Year Sponsorship Deal

English Premier League football club Manchester United is expected to announce a promotions partnership with blockchain platform Tezos. According to sports news website theathletic.com, the deal is worth US$27 million annually and will place Tezos front and centre on United’s training kit.

Tezos Replaces Aon as Man United’s Training Sponsor

Tezos is said to have agreed to a multi-year contract with Manchester United. While an official announcement is pending, Man U has reportedly been filming promotional material at its training centre.

https://madaboutepl.net/2020/10/team-news-and-predicted-manchester-united-lineup-vs-psg/
Manchester United players celebrate a goal. Source: Mad About EPL

This comes as American insurance company Aon’s eight-year contract with the club concludes. United has been without a training kit sponsor for the current season, following the collapse of negotiations with The Hut Group. The Manchester-based company withdrew its interest over concerns regarding potential fan boycotts of United’s commercial partners as part of a protest against the club’s ownership by the Glazer family, who have placed it in considerable debt since taking over in 2005.

United has been in discussion with several other companies, including others in the blockchain field, for the sponsorship deal. However, it is expected the Tezos announcement will be finalised in coming weeks. Manchester United and Tezos have declined to comment on the deal.

Crypto Extends Its Reach in Sports Sponsorship

Tezos is not new to sports sponsorships. Notably, it became the first blockchain sponsor of the New York Mets baseball team in May 2021 and is in partnership with Red Bull Racing to develop an NFT experience for the team. The company has also joined the line-up of sponsors for McLaren Racing across IndyCar, Formula 1 and esports.

However, Tezos isn’t the only blockchain making sponsorship moves in the sporting world. In August 2021, meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin entered a partnership with Watford FC (another popular EPL club). This million-dollar agreement saw Watford players wear the Dogecoin logo for the remainder of the season.

Coinbase has also become an official sponsor of the NBA and is looking to break into other professional basketball leagues including the WNBA and the NBA 2K league.

Additionally, Dutch football club PSV Eindhoven entered a deal in August 2021 with Anycoin Direct to be paid entirely in bitcoin, helping to promote cryptocurrency adoption throughout Europe.

By Lauren Claxton, Crypto News Guest Author

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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 Fans Are Trying To Rig Google’s “One Dollar” Search Results

Dogecoin DOGE on Reddit
Dogecoin DOGE from Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/na0r8c/one_dollar_interact_with_this_post_and_image_so/

A group of Dogecoin (DOGE) fans have launched a bid to influence Google’s search rankings so that a picture of the popular canine cryptocurrency appears whenever someone performs an image search for “one dollar”.

The call was made on a Reddit page with the title: “One Dollar. Interact with this post and image so it will be shown in searches for one dollar.”

Dogecoin DOGE on Reddit
This is the image that Dogecoin fans are trying to send up the Google Image Search rankings [Reddit]

The post refers to hopes that Dogecoin will eventually be worth one dollar, in a one-of-a-kind competition between crypto evangelists who would often speculate about Bitcoin replacing the dollar as a global currency.

Worth about 50 cents AUD at the time of writing, Elon Musk’s favourite meme coin is now the fourth largest cryptocurrency and its journey seems definitively moonbound. Yet its astronomical growth does not seem to be enough for some Doge fans.

Is It Working?

The bid to engineer the search results appears to be working. When we searched for “one dollar”, a Dogecoin image was indeed riding high in the rankings.

Doge appearing for "one dollar" search images on Google
Doge appearing for “one dollar” search images on Google

Despite the recent fluctuations in price, enthusiasm seems to be running high between Doge supporters, with Reddit user comments like “When Tesla accepts Doge, 1 Doge = $35,000, take it or leave it” or “Waiting for Tesla to accept doge since the announcement of Elon’s appearance on SNL…” where he discussed all things DOGE.

On the Reddit page advertising the stunt, users were also talking about Elon Musk’s recent poll in which he asked if Tesla should start accepting the currency. Results are in and almost 80% in favour of DOGE payments, leaving not much room for interpretation of market sentiment.

No one say whether or not Dogecoin will hit the one dollar milestone, or go to the moon – maybe even literally.

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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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Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Cryptos Dogecoin

Mark Cuban talks about Dogecoin on the Ellen Show, with 2.6 Million Viewers

Mark Cuban told Ellen that he accepts the Dogecoin cryptocurrency as payment for his Mav’s basketball team merchandise and suggested she should do the same for her Ellen shop.

“Should I buy some Dogecoin?” is possibly the most popular question coming from the mouths of noobs looking to get into crypto over the past several weeks and months. And with Mark Cuban telling the 2.6 million viewers on the Ellen show to go buy DOGE, will surely help its poularity grow.

Dogecoin Started as a Joke

The meme coin that started off as a joke, has performed insanely well, much to the surprise of the more serious crypto investor. Dogecoin has climbed into the top cryptocurrencies on CoinGecko, currently sitting at #7 under well known majors; Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance coin, Ripple and Cardano.

It went from being a crypto currency joke, to now becoming something that’s becoming a digital currency.

Mark Cuban

Dogecoin was created in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, as a payment system free from traditional banking fees. Since, it has gained a huge online following and made headlines again recently by hitting it’s all time high of 0.40c per coin, rising over a whopping 450% in value over just one week.

Cryptocurrency is just an asset to invest in. Bitcoin is like a digital version of Gold, Ethereum is a digital version of a currency and then you’ve got Dogecoin… which is just fun!

Mark Cuban

Is Dogecoin a Good Investment?

Because Dogecoin started as a joke and has limited utility, some might say it’s not even an investment at all. However, it certainly has strong branding and provides a great way to introduce new people into the cryptocurrency space.

We’re seeing some shops have starting accepting DOGE as payment, such as merchandise on the Dallas Maverick Store, owned by Mark Cuban. And with such a strong meme presence and an army of famous ambassadors such as Elon Musk and Snoop Dogg shilling the project on social media, love it or hate it; Dogecoin is here to stay.

Caitlin Carey – Crypto News Guest Author