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The latest news from the world of cryptocurrencies. Paid promotion: @gqsoul
Signal Turns Into Noise With MobileCoin Integration
Private messaging app Signal, which is also popular among crypto users, announced they're launching payments using MobileCoin (MOB). But then things turned sour.
Per the April 6 announcement, this is a beta feature in Signal Beta, available to the United Kingdom folks for testing and feedback purposes. They plan to expand the beta following more feedback.
Privacy-focused payments network MobileCoin, which uses the Stellar (XLM) Consensus Protocol (SCP) to synchronize a ledger, is the first payments protocol for which Signal added support, enabling a MobileCoin wallet to be linked to the messaging app in order to send/receive funds, monitor balance, and review transaction history. It's currently possible to convert to/from the MOB token on crypto derivatives exchange FTX, with other exchanges coming soon, they added.
Signal does not have access to a user's balance, full transaction history, or funds, they claimed, while users can transfer their funds "at any time" if they want to change services. Per Business of Apps data, Signal had 40m users in January this year.
But the reaction to this rollout wasn't entirely positive. Some claimed that Signal is "dabbling in shitcoin pump," and others added that Signal "has alienated all Bitcoiners" with this move.
Other criticism includes comments that Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike is using Signal to pump his MOB bag. Marlinspike has also been a technical adviser for MobileCoin.
However, he told WIRED that neither he nor Signal own any MOB tokens.
In 2018, the project announced a fundraising round led by Binance Labs for USD 30m denominated in ethereum and bitcoin. Per TechChrunch, the payments network recently raised USD 11.35m in funding across two rounds from Future Ventures and General Catalyst.
Furthermore, Marlinspike is listed as Chief Technology Officer in the MobileCoin whitepaper.
And speaking of the whitepaper, developer Tadge Dryja said that he found a MobileCoin whitepaper, which is reportedly just a copy of the 'Zero to Monero' paper with a few changes.
Others made similar allegations, such as Riccardo Spagni, the former lead maintainer of Monero
PayPal Crypto, Goldman Sachs Vehicle, BTC Bugatti and 20 Crypto Jokes
What a week! (Well, another one.) PayPal will launch a service that would allow its customers to pay with BTC, ETH, LTC, and BCH, Visa partnered with Crypto.com to settle transactions in USDC on Ethereum, Goldman Sachs might offer its first investment vehicles for BTC and other unspecified digital assets in Q2, and Tesla started contributing fixes to open-source software built on the Bitcoin network. While more than USD 600m in crypto trading positions was liquidated in one hour, Kraken CEO said BTC will be worth 1 Bugatti by the end of 2022. Tether’s independent accountant's report claimed the company's assets exceed its consolidated liabilities as of February 28, new Ukrainian finance minister said that crypto is "promising", and the politician charged with putting together Russia’s crypto regulation legislation called the forthcoming digital ruble a “higher form of money”.
Meanwhile, Ripple agreed to acquire 40% in Tranglo, and then it picked a fight with Bitcoin advocates, while LBRY was hit with a USD 11m legal challenge from the SEC, and a judge handed the convicted crypto tax evader a 3-year suspended jail sentence and a fine of around USD 163,000. In the meantime, the Oakland Athletics became the first team in Major League Baseball to sell tickets for crypto as a full-season six-person suite was picked up by Voyager Digital. In the NFT world, Justin Sun announced JUST NFT Fund for NFTs with more than USD 1m price tag. And Saturday Night Live attempted to explain “what the hell is an NFT?” A BTC investor who claimed he lost over BTC 17 to scammers has hit out at Apple for hosting a fake app on its store.
Enjoy this carefully selected collection of non-NFT jokes.
Ripple Bosses Break from Legal Battle to Bash Bitcoin
Not content with fighting the American regulatory Securities and Exchange Commission over the nature of the XRP token, the heads of Ripple have picked a fight with bitcoin (BTC) advocates – attacking the Bitcoin network’s often-maligned proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism.
In an interview with TechRadar, the Ripple Chief Technical Officer David Schwartz claimed that the PoW has been touted as a “secret sauce” but showed “cracks” right from the outset, adding that the design of the Bitcoin PoW consensus mechanism was “such that true decentralization and disintermediation was never a possibility.”
He said,
“A cryptocurrency should be a one-sided market; the users want a store of value and a means of exchange. But what Bitcoin did was turn it into a two-sided market. Miners have historically fought for high transaction fees, because that’s their revenue. The reality is that you have another set of stakeholders who are trying to charge the highest fees they can get away with, and that’s not much different from the way payments work at a bank.”
The media outlet quoted Schwartz as stating that bitcoin was “doomed to fail its most important mission: to deliver a system whereby people can transact freely with one another, without the involvement of any intermediary.”
Meanwhile, the Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse also questioned Bitcoin’s carbon credentials.
He conceded that BTC was “an exceptional store of value,” but attacked its payment potential, writing,
“It’s just not ideal as a payments mechanism because of PoW energy costs/carbon dioxide emitted – estimates show a weighted average carbon intensity of 480-500 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kWh.”
“It’s great to see more and more individual players taking action to address climate change/use renewables for mining, but we need consensus (no pun intended) across the entire industry to make all cryptos 100% renewable,” he added.
Bitcoin defenders reacted with incredulity, with one observer quipping in a Twitter reply,
“So when will legislators/authorities utilize carbon-neutral tech such as XRP to facilitate instant, cross-border payments?”
itcoin critics have repeatedly attacked the network’s PoW model, with much evidence to suggest that a number of powerful mining pools rely on cheap, arcane and highly polluting coal-powered energy stations in China and elsewhere.
But even from the outset, defenders – including founder Satoshi Nakamoto himself all the way back in 2010 – have sought to justify PoW and its energy usage model.
And late last month, Lyn Alden, the founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy defended PoW and the Bitcoin network, pointing out that Bitcoin’s “total energy usage is determined primarily from market capitalization and difficulty adjustments, not transaction volume” – which means that “marginal bitcoin transaction/spending choice has virtually no impact on” the network’s total energy usage.
PayPal Launches Crypto Pay Services in US for Bitcoin, Ether, Altcoins
The payments giant PayPal – widely credited with inadvertently sparking the current crypto bull run last year with its major crypto move – has announced the launch of a service that will allow its customers to pay with cryptoassets such as bitcoin (BTC).
In a press release, the firm stated that its latest move would “significantly expand the utility of cryptocurrency,” and would be “available at millions of global online businesses.” It further stated that the service would be “continuing to expand over the coming months.”
Like its last move, which allowed offering account holders the ability to buy, sell, and (almost) hold crypto on its platform, the new service – named Checkout with Crypto – has initially only been made available in the United States.
However, the innovation, which debuts today, will also allow for conversions from crypto to fiat at the transaction stage, with the company adding that “converting cryptocurrency holdings to fiat currency at checkout,” would be enabled. This fact, it said, will allow “certainty of value and no additional transaction fees.”
The firm claimed that its new services would allow firms and individuals to receive payments in crypto and its CEO Dan Schulman was quoted as stating,
“Enabling cryptocurrencies to make purchases at businesses around the world is the next chapter in driving the ubiquity and mass acceptance of digital currencies.”
The company said that its new service supports bitcoin, as well as litecoin (LTC), ethereum (ETH) and bitcoin cash (BCH) “depending on what customers are holding with PayPal and the balances available in each cryptocurrency.”
And PayPal added that a “cryptocurrency conversion spread will be built into the conversion from crypto to USD.”
Dipping Bitcoin, Bitcoining Tesla, Angering BitClout + 20 Crypto Jokes
This was a big week in crypto. Tesla now accepts bitcoin payments and doesn’t plan to convert it to fiat, but BTC was tanking despite many bullish news as a massive amount of options was about to expire. Then, another analyst said that EIP-1559 will not end users headache caused by Ethereum high fees, an unconfirmed report from a Ripple-SEC court hearing may have sparked an XRP rally, and as financial sector players called for improved KYC regulations, South Korean deputy prime minister called the crypto market “overheated”. Meanwhile, Coinbase announced ‘business presence’ in India, sales and income figures are rising through the roof at South Korea’s largest exchanges, Mitsubishi and banking & telecom giants invested USD 62m in DeCurret, Morgan Stanley dismissed reports regarding an M&A deal for Bithumb, and the owner of Greenidge Generation aims to go public.
And on we went. Many high-profile players were growing increasingly angry with the new project called BitClout, and soon Anderson Kill sent a cease-and-desist letter to its creator. As Vitalik Buterin and Brian Armstrong weighed in on NFTs, Justin Sun finally managed to win a bid for a Beeple artwork, Sophia the Robot entered the NFT game, and the NFT craze spread into the worlds of mainstream comedy, Cubist art, and literature. As DeFi and CeFi are heading towards convergence, DeFi sandwich traders got ‘salmonella’.
And now, enjoy the best jokes of the week.
Tesla Starts Accepting Bitcoin Payments – and Will Not Convert to Fiat
The leading US-based electric car manufacturer Tesla has come good on promises from last month, announcing that will not only accept payments in the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin (BTC) – but will seek to keep any of the BTC it receives. (Updated at 08:18 UTC: updates throughout the entire text. Updated at 15:37 UTC with the latest market data.)
Bitcoin prices have been climbing gradually since the news broke, increasing from below USD 54,000 to above USD 57,200, before correcting lower again. At 15:36 UTC, BTC trades at USD 56,430 and is up by 2% in a day, trimming its weekly losses to less than 1%.
On Twitter, Tesla supremo Elon Musk announced that the company would not be seeking to convert any BTC payments it receives into fiat.
The new payment option is available in the continental US, but the company has indicated that it is likely to expand into overseas markets later this year.
“When prompted during the purchase process, we may, in our sole discretion, allow you to select bitcoin as the payment method for your purchase of eligible products and services,” the company said, adding that BTC is the only cryptocurrency Tesla accepts.
However, it appears that a number of compliance-related measures have also been put into place.
In new bitcoin-devoted sections on its website, the carmaker wrote: “We may require you to provide us with additional information to allow us to verify your identity when you select bitcoin as your payment method.”
The firm also noted that prices would continue to be listed in USD, with BTC-paying customers invited to specify they wanted to use the token during the payment process, where the amount of BTC payable would be automatically calculated.
Customers wishing to pay in BTC are allowed to either scan a QR code to “auto-populate the recipient field with the alphanumeric code” or enter wallet and payment details in a specified field.
Some curious-minded Twitter users have already been exploring what the new payment screen looks like.
On its legal page, the company made repeated warnings about the consequences of customers failing to check wallet address details correctly, stating repeatedly that it would not be held liable in such instances. It also added that payments in tokens with similar names – like bitcoin SV (BSV) – were not accepted, and attempts to pay with such tokens would result in coins being lost.
Tesla’s decision to buy USD 1.5bn worth of BTC earlier this year has galvanized businesses and private investors around the world, leading companies in Europe and China to follow suit – with investors in South Korea and elsewhere claiming that the electric carmaker’s actions have spurred them into high-stakes BTC buys of their own.
Bitcoin and Ethereum Settle Below Major Supports, XRP Consolidates
☄️Bitcoin price is down 7% and it even broke the USD 54,000 level.
☄️Ethereum settled below USD 1,710, XRP extended its rally and tested USD 0.600.
☄️MIOTA, THETA, and DENT are up by 15%-62%.
Bitcoin price failed to settle above the USD 58,000 resistance on a few occasions. As a result, BTC reacted to the downside and broke many major supports near USD 57,000. It even declined below the USD 55,500 support level and it is currently (05:30 UTC) below USD 54,000.
Similarly, most major altcoins started a fresh decline. ETH is down 5% and it broke the USD 1,710 support zone. Conversely, XRP/USD extended its rally above the USD 0.550 resistance and it even tested the USD 0.600 zone.
Bitcoin price
After a strong rejection near USD 58,000, bitcoin price started a fresh decline. BTC broke the USD 57,200 and USD 57,000 support levels. It opened the doors for more losses below USD 55,500 and USD 55,000. The price even spiked below USD 54,000, but the bulls appeared near USD 53,300.
It is currently trying to correct higher towards the USD 54,200 level. Going further, an immediate resistance is near the USD 55,000 level, followed by the key USD 55,500 pivot level.
Ethereum price
Ethereum price also followed bitcoin and it broke the USD 1,750 support zone. ETH even settled below the USD 1,710 support level and tested the USD 1,660 zone. If it moves higher, the previous support at USD 1,710 and USD 1,750 could stop upsides.
On the downside, if ETH fails to stay above the USD 1,660 level, it could decline further towards USD 1,600 or USD 1,580.
BNB, ADA, litecoin, and XRP price
Binance Coin (BNB) is declining and it might revisit the USD 250 support zone. If BNB extends losses, it could test the USD 240 support. Any more losses might call for a move towards the USD 220 level. On the upside, the bears might remain active near USD 265 and USD 272.
Cardano (ADA) declined over 6% and it broke the USD 1.220 and USD 1.200 support levels. ADA might continue lower towards the USD 1.050 support level. The next key support is near the USD 1.000 and USD 0.998 levels. On the upside, ADA is likely to face hurdles near USD 1.200.
Litecoin (LTC) failed to settle above the USD 200 and USD 205 levels. LTC declined below the USD 195 support and it might test the USD 180 support. Any more losses might call for a drop towards the USD 172 support zone.
XRP price remains attractive and it extended its rally above the USD 0.550 resistance zone. The price even tested the USD 0.600 level and it is now consolidating gains. The previous resistance near USD 0.550 and USD 0.545 might provide support in the near term.
Other altcoins market today
Several altcoins gained over 10%, including DENT, TFUEL, BTG, THETA, MIOTA and AR. Out of these, DENT extended its rally by another 62%. Conversely, SC, IOST, ENJ, BTT and LUNA are down over 10%.
Overall, bitcoin price broke a few important supports such as USD 57,000 and USD 55,500. In the short-term, BTC might correct higher, but the bulls might struggle near USD 57,000.
Total market capitalization:
If a CBDC Is an ‘Instrument of Control,’ It’ll Fail – Expert
A financial expert has hit out at the Russian Central Bank’s digital ruble project, hinting that it amounts to a plan to control the entire financial system – and claiming that if this is the case, it will fail both on the domestic and the international stages.
Speaking to Regnum, Konstantin Ordov, a professor of financial management at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, stated that to create a digital ruble “in order to form a new instrument of control” would “discredit the very notion of digital transformation” – the Central Bank ostensible goal.
Ordov added,
“If the principal and only advantage of a digital ruble would be that, at any given time it will be possible to know everything about all financial transactions, the interest this digital innovation will vanish even within Russia, not to mention its chances of becoming a global currency.”
The Central Bank, like many other central banks in leading economies, is now motoring ahead with central bank digital currency (CBDC)-related progress, and is hopeful of launching a pilot platform this year, following up with “real-world” transaction testing in 2022.
But experts have been very vocal with their opposition to the move, particularly if the Central Bank pursues a centralized approach to its token. Earlier this year, another academic in the country warned that the digital ruble would create a “centralized database” of Russian citizens’ spending behavior.
Ordov did not completely write off the Central Bank’s plan, however, claiming that the CBDC did have “huge economic potential for Russia” if the bank played its cards right.
He claimed that the bank could learn from cryptoassets and explore the possibility of enabling instantaneous payments with zero or minimal commission fees, as well as smart contract technology, which has the power to ensure the integrity of contracts and guarantee payments.
But to do so, the digital ruble would “not be able to survive and usher in potential benefits all on its own,” the professor claimed.
Instead, Ordov said, the token should seek to “become an integral part of the digital economy,” by fully integrating with the worlds of blockchain technology, cloud-based tech and smart contracts.
Doing so, he said, would mean cutting off support to “an inefficient banking sector and a bloated bureaucratic apparatus that monitors and regulates what can be done algorithmically, and doing so without corruption and conflicts of interest.”
Visa Boss Wants Company ‘in the Middle’ of Crypto as Cash ‘Declines’
The Visa CEO Alfred Kelly says that his company is set to embrace bitcoin (BTC)-related business in earnest, and claims that partnerships in both the crypto and stablecoin sectors are already in the pipelines – while adding his voice to claims that cash is in decline.
Speaking on a Fortune podcast, Kelly claimed that the coronavirus pandemic had hit cash hard, stating,
“Cash and cheques will be with us for some time, but I do think their usage will decline at an accelerated rate because of the pandemic.”
He stated that it was important that Visa was “in the middle” of the crypto industry, even if the path forward for coins like BTC was still not exactly clear.
Once again, he sought to draw a line between what he termed “digital currencies” backed by fiats including the dollar – likely a reference to stablecoins – and “more speculative assets,” cryptoassets such as BTC.
And once more, doubling down on similar sentiments expressed in January, he called the coin “digital gold,” and outlined Visa’s BTC-related plans, explaining,
“We’re trying to ... enable the purchase of bitcoin on Visa credentials. And working with some bitcoin wallets, we will allow bitcoin to be translated into a fiat currency.”
This, he added, would allow BTC to “immediately be able to be used at any of the 70 million places around the world where Visa is accepted.”
In the stablecoins field, meanwhile, Kelly said that Visa was currently working with “about 35 different players.”
He stated that fiat-pegged tokens have “a strong potential” to “become a new payment vehicle,” and act as an “accelerant” in “emerging markets around the world.” He said,
“These are currencies that are fiat-backed, but we’re allowing this translation ... into a fiat currency and in a wallet where there’s a Visa card. And again that Visa card can be used with the translated digital currency over to the fiat currency to make purchases.”
But when pushed, he refused to make any bold predictions about the fate of crypto. He stated that he could not forecast whether crypto would “take off” in the mainstream, adding,
“Are we going to say about crypto five years that it was a fad, or is it going to become extremely mainstream? I’m not smart enough to know. But what I am smart enough to do is to make sure that our company is in the middle of it today.”
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This Is Why 'Hedge Against Inflation', Bitcoin, Dropped On Inflation Fears
Bitcoin (BTC) once again showed that it is indirectly correlated to macroeconomic factors that can move the stock market, and, in turn, affect the price of the most popular cryptocurrency that is often touted as an independent asset class.
Bitcoin fell around 10% on March 4, from USD 51,680 to USD 46,550 in the early hours of March 5. At 14:35 UTC, BTC is trading at USD 48,749 - down 2% in a day and up 4% in a week. The price rallied by 38% in a month and 458% in a year. BTC is down by 17% from its all-time high of USD 58,641 (per Coingecko), reached on February 21.
"If we think about it though, bitcoin wasn't reacting to the Federal Reserve at all. It was reacting to the stock market," QuantumEconomics.io founder Mati Greenspan said in his latest newsletter.
He went on to explain the reasoning behind this statement.
On March 4, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell commented that economic reopening is likely to cause inflation, which he claims will be temporary - to which the market reacted negatively, with stocks dropping and Treasury yields jumping. The S&P 500 stock index dropped 1.34%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.1%, and Nasdaq's down 2.11%.
Greenspan said that "no matter how temporary the Fed may think that inflation will be, its sudden change in narrative from "we don't see it coming" to "yeah, it's coming but will probably not last long" is not at all reassuring."
BTC seemed to be reacting as well, said Greenspan, declining in the face of higher inflation, contrary to a popular narrative, according to which higher inflation means people should be buying hard assets that are limited in supply - including BTC, gold, and land.
The analyst said that "it's imperative to point out that the move in bitcoin following the Fed's comments was actually pretty small. While adding that there's a time correlation between the Fed's statement and the BTC move, he noted that BTC is up since the start of 2021, when it stood at around USD 29,000.
But the bond markets are "bearing the brunt of the selling" following the Fed's comments, according to Greenspan.
Grimes and Paris Hilton Go Full NFT – But Some Warn of Trouble Ahead
The non-fungible token (NFT) gravy train is building up a head of steam in the music and art industry.
Within just hours of dance producer 3Lau posting record-breaking sales of almost USD 12m for a batch of exclusive NFTs, the award-winning Canadian musician Grimes and the celebrity socialite and sometime singer Paris Hilton have clambered aboard. But some are warning that the NFT music and art bubble could be about to pop.
Grimes, who is also famously the partner of Tesla chief and bitcoin (BTC) fan Elon Musk, successfully sold some USD 6m worth of digital art in NFT form via the Nifty Gateway marketplace.
The move is another lurch toward crypto and blockchain technology for the Musk-Grimes family. Musk has taken the BTC plunge, calling it his “safe word” and then investing in USD 1.5bn worth of the token through his Tesla auto-making firm. He also joined the dogecoin (DOGE) hype train, buying tokens for his and Grimes’ son, X Æ A-12.
The news was followed by an announcement from the internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, who hinted that he and 1980s star MC Hammer would be working with Hilton on an NFT release that he claimed may fetch up to USD 30m. Hilton claimed that she was “excited” and “fascinated” by the world of NFTs, although her response was met with incredulity by many outspoken crypto advocates.
However, some are warning that the NFT craze could be fleeting.
The EulerBeats music and art project recently raised some USD 458,000 in sales of 27 original NFT tracks, as part of a project from Treum, backed by ConsenSys, on the secondary market. But a Twitter user named Dark Pill observed that “any NFT issuer can devalue your holdings if someone pisses them off.”
Dark Pill was reacting to the news that a developer had “copycatted” EulerBeats’ work on the Binance Smart Chain blockchain protocol.
And this led Constantin Kostenko, the Senior Director of Blockchain Solution Architecture & Strategy at ConsenSys Mesh, and one of the architects of the EulerBeats project, to apparently concede that NFT projects could be undermined with relative ease.
Grayscale Eyes Altcoins Amid Increasing Competition For Bitcoin Investments
As Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are gaining traction in Canada, new competitors for Grayscale emerge, the company is increasingly eyeing altcoins. (Updated at 16:17 UTC: updates throughout the entire text.)
The major crypto asset management firm owned by Digital Currency Group (DCG) has confirmed that they're looking into at least 23 different digital assets "for potential new product offerings," as the press release stated.
There is no guarantee that assets named in the above list will receive a corresponding investment product, the company stressed. "The process of creating an investment product structured similarly to those Grayscale already offers requires significant review and consideration, and is subject to substantial internal controls, sufficiently secure custody arrangements, and regulatory considerations," it said.
Any newly-created products from Grayscale will be announced separately upon launch.
Meanwhile, the world’s largest BTC fund is selling off as investors rush to the exits. Per Bloomberg data, the USD 31.6bn Grayscale Bitcoin Trust dropped 21% this week, outpacing bitcoin's own decline (currently 12% in the last week). The trust holds over BTC 655,750 (USD 31bn).
"It's more indicative of the fact that there are so many shares are available, and it indicates demand for bitcoin at these prices is falling off," said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart.
Sonnenshein discussed the risk of GBTC's premium disappearing at the Bloomberg Crypto Summit on Thursday, saying: "It’s certainly a risk, no question about it, but ultimately price discovery in GBTC every day is driven entirely by market forces."
Grayscale’s trusts help investors to get exposure to cryptoassets through a more traditional investment vehicle by buying its publicly listed shares. These trusts hold the underlying cryptoasset while the value of each share of a trust is dependent on the amount of cryptoasset under management.
MIT, Jack Dorsey & More Pour Resources into Bitcoin Development Efforts
Forward-thinking innovators are looking for new ways to power Bitcoin (BTC) development, with one of the world’s biggest tech universities, IT CEOs and entrepreneurial pop stars all turning their attention to the betterment of the Bitcoin network.
In the latest development, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has waded in via its MIT Media Lab-run Digital Currency Initiative (DCI).
The DCI has announced that as part of its new Bitcoin Software and Security Effort project, it will embark on a “four-year research and development program” to “harden the Bitcoin network and steward the industry's commitment to funding open-source software.
The DCI stated that it would be working with “industry leaders” on its initiative, which will see its project group work on Bitcoin Core development by “attracting domain experts in network and operating system security, compilers, programming languages and more to join the effort.”
The MIT group stated that it had already raised USD 4m worth of funding to help its cause, and hoped to raise double this amount over the long-term, with contributions coming from a number of leading BTC proponents and industry players – such as Twitter and Square chief Jack Dorsey, Fidelity Digital Assets, CoinShares, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss of the Gemini group of crypto companies and perennial BTC bull Michael Saylor, the head of MicroStrategy and an MIT graduate.
The DCI project will see the collective “move from three to eight” senior Bitcoin developers and research professionals, bolster the system against software-based attack threats and inflation risks, as well as build up “long-term defenses against layer-1 Bitcoin Core bugs.”
Saylor, in typically pro-BTC mood, stated,
“Bitcoin is the most important innovation since the advent of the internet.”
But the MIT project is not the only big business-powered initiative aiming to shore up Bitcoin against future-related risks and network issues. Earlier this month, Dorsey and rap superstar Jay-Z announced that they would be stumping up BTC 500 (USD 23m) to the ₿trust, another Bitcoin development drive that will initially focus on bolstering teams in Africa and India.
Dorsey has also launched his own development initiative through Square’s Square Crypto unit, which is seeking to improve the Bitcoin user experience for ordinary participants.
Earlier this week, the Twitter boss splashed out a further BTC 1 contribution to the Brink initiative, a donation-funded Bitcoin network R&D drive, and a frequent recipient of Square Crypto funding. The Human Rights Foundation, Kraken and Gemini are also among supporters of the Brink drive.
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Grayscale Still 'Commited' To Converting Its Bitcoin Trust into ETF
Major US-based crypto investments company Grayscale Investments said they're "100% committed" to converting their Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into an exchange-traded fund (ETF). However, according to them, the timing will be driven by the regulatory environment.
"Each Grayscale product is at various stages of this lifecycle and our intention has always been to convert these products into an ETF when permissible," they said, adding that they're confident in their current positioning and engagement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Per the company, now only GBTC and Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) are currently SEC-reporting companies, meaning that both these trust are closest to becoming an ETF.
The investment giant said that they withdrew their earlier Bitcoin ETF application, submitted in 2016, because "the regulatory environment for digital assets had not advanced to the point where such a product could successfully be brought to market."
Meanwhile, last month, the company had at least nine ETF-related positions to LinkedIn, signaling it is anticipating a green light from the SEC for a crypto ETF. "It signifies, one, that they are planning to file for an ETF and that they hope the approval process would be potentially quick and thus don’t want to miss out on hitting the ground running," Todd Rosenbluth, Director of ETF research for CFRA Research, told Bloomberg back then.
According to the company, when GBTC converts to an ETF, shareholders of publicly-traded GBTC shares will not need to take action and the management fee will be reduced accordingly.
GBTC, which is now closed for investments, has USD 38.8bn in assets under management. ETHE (also closed) - USD 6.4bn.
While other trusts, such as Bitwise, BlockFi, Osprey Bitcoin Trust, and Canadian Bitcoin ETFs are emerging, the Grayscale trusts have so far been a dominant way for institutional investors to enter the cryptoverse.
The trusts are structured to hold the underlying crypto, while the value of each share is dependent on the amount of crypto under management. They also provide a familiar structure for accounting and taxation. However, there is no way to redeem the underlying crypto.
Meanwhile, many believe that approval of a Bitcoin ETF in the United States would be a watershed moment for BTC adoption. Multiple surveys has indicated that financial advisors in the US would be keen to put their clients' money into BTC ETFs. Moreover, the time is now nigh for the SEC, particularly as crypto ETFs have become almost commonplace north of the border in Canada – as well as Europe.
At 13:24 UTC, BTC trades at USD 57,965 and is almost unchanged in a day. The price increased by 4% in a week and 18% in a month.
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No Optimism For Ethereum In March - L2 Scaling Solution Delayed
After ignoring requests to comment on their progress by Cryptonews.com, the team behind Ethereum (ETH) scaling solution, Optimism, finally confirmed that the network's mainnet public launch is not happening in March. Their new "rough estimate" for the launch is now July.
"The expedited timeline took most projects by surprise and we did not give ample notice for our community to prepare for launch. ... In our excitement, we only considered our own needs and failed to consider our partners’ timelines & requirements," the developers said today, adding that they're postponing the launch in favor of a more coordinated community launch.
According to them, an uncoordinated rush into Layer 2 without enough community preparation is dangerous and there's a risk that popular decentralized apps might get forked and launched by adversaries with the intention of defrauding users.
"Our goal is to make sure that foundational projects, infrastructure providers, block explorers, wallets, and token bridges have time to integrate, audit and test," the team said, adding that their main heuristic for opening mainnet to the broader public is "stability and ecosystem readiness."
Layer 1 (L1) is the base protocol (the Ethereum blockchain), while Layer 2 (L2) is any protocol built on top of Ethereum.
As reported, Optimism is an L2 scaling solution, which allows for the Ethereum mainnet to be 'unburdened' from the great number of transactions it has to process. It uses optimistic rollups to achieve lower fees and latency, as well as greater throughput compared to Ethereum L1 alone. The team behind Optimism was funded by venture firm a16z (Andreessen Horowitz) back in November - a round that enabled the latest Optimism hires and with them, expedited timeline.
a16z described Optimism as "an extension of Ethereum, with adherence to Ethereum development paradigms, which results in a very easy transition for developers, wallets and users."
At the time of writing (05:12 UTC), ETH trades at USD 1,624 and is up by almost 3% in a day, trimming its weekly losses to less than 9%. The price is up by almost 4% in a month and 1,091% in a year.
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Shifting Blockchains, Moving Privacy, Funds & Trusts and 20 Crypto Jokes
This past week in crypto, Pantera CEO said that bitcoin is “ahead of” his firm’s forecast schedule to hit USD 115,000, analysts blamed misinfo for bitcoin’s correction, SushiSwap announced its expansion to Avalanche, and Charles Hoskinson claimed that “more than 100 companies” will shift from Ethereum to Cardano. Meanwhile, Bitcoin and Litecoin are moving closer to their privacy upgrades, while Bottlepay launched BTC Twitter payments. eToro reached the 20m users milestone, as it aims to go public via a merger, Bitpanda was valued at USD 1.2bn, BNY Mellon invested in Fireblocks, Morgan Stanley aims to offer three bitcoin funds to its rich clients, and Grayscale launched five new trusts, after which livepeer skyrocketed.
The newsweek wasn't over yet, nay, nay. The Thai central bank banned a fiat baht-pegged stablecoin, Ray Dalio dissed dollar debt-buying in the form of bonds, Chinese media reported of a sharp rise in bogus crypto, blockchain and digital yuan-related schemes, while Arthur Hayes agreed to surrender in the US on April 6. Meanwhile, South Korea’s taxman is on the warpath with crypto in its sights. Then we also saw attacks on personal tokens and NFTs. Speaking of which, 'NFT' surpassed 'Ethereum' on Google, Sotheby's is set to follow Christie's with an NFT collaboration with artist Pak, and we looked into who Metakovan is, the buyer of USD 69m-worth Beeple's piece. And then, Elon Musk was seeking to sell an EDM song about NFTs, Beeple composed a portrait of a naked Musk, and Justin Sun waded into the chaos. Speaking of Musk, he and Zach Kirkhorn are now Technoking of Tesla and Master of Coin.
And now – your weekly dose of crypto jokes.
Coindogg - A digital rewards platform for content creators and their supporters
CoinDogg is a new cryptocurrency for the CoinDogg platform which will enable content creators to monetize their content across all platforms in any currency while incentivizing fans to support their favorite content creators by rewarding them with tradable NFTs. The CoinDogg platform will facilitate both content monetization for creators and NFT rewards for their supporters. Fans will be able to trade NFTs in the marketplace similar to existing platforms such as Rarible, Opensea, etc. Join us in launching the most useful blockchain digital rewards and loyalty program and content creator assisted support that make the web so beautiful!
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Post-COVID-19, Bitcoin & Co May Help UK Escape from Economic Funk
After the UK’s decidedly mixed response to the coronavirus pandemic, the nation has proven something of a frontrunner in all things vaccine-related, leading it to start easing out of its latest two-month-plus national lockdown on March 8 ahead of its European counterparts – almost a year since the country began its first lockdown.
The economic story since Spring 2020 has proven to be full of woe, and last week the British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak delivered a budget that attempted to plug the gaping chasm in the UK economy. Included were delayed tax rises, increased government borrowing, an extension of the furlough project, corporate rates rises and yet more short-term public spending.
The budget has already been on the end of stern criticism from the influential economic think-tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) calling some of Sunak’s measures “unanswerable,” per the Guardian.
Later, the IFS was harsher still, labeling the Chancellor “Scrooge Sunak” after the budget also unveiled government plans to slash spending in the longer term, reported the BBC.
Even ex-Prime Minister Theresa May waded into the debate. Per Sky News, May claimed that the budget had neglected the innovation and research & development sectors.
Sunak, it appears, is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t – and it all points to a bigger problem identified last month and before – the fact that Office of National Statistics data shows GDP slowed by almost 10% in 2020, and that there is a USD 84bn hole that needs plugging, per Bloomberg.
With Brexit still driving economic uncertainty in the UK, some might argue that the country badly needs a growth engine, ideally one based on new technology, and with the power to disrupt the existing financial sector, which London ruled the roost over during the European Union era.
Some might argue that such a growth engine already exists, if the government will only be brave enough to embrace it: crypto.
FX Branch of Japanese Giant SBI Planning Crypto Move – Report
Another subsidiary of the Japanese financial giant the SBI Group, FX Clearing Trust, is reportedly targetting crypto-related business expansion.
Per an official release, the firm has now acquired a license for investment trust-related business operations, and will rename itself the SBI Clearing Trust.
The firm was set up in 2014, and has capital reserves of over USD 1.8m. Although the official release made no direct mention of crypto-related developments, Nikkei, reported that the SBI arm was also planning to expand into cryptoasset investment-related operations in the near future.
The company stated that in recent times, the need for trusts in finance had “become more sophisticated and widespread,” adding that in order to “respond to the diversification” of the investment market it was “not limiting” itself to the FX market.
SBI operates a number of crypto-related subsidiaries, including its own domestic crypto exchange, SBI VC Trade, and the mining firm SBI Crypto.
The most recent move comes in a busy month for SBI and its quickly expanding crypto and blockchain operations. Last week, the firm announced that it would be using its blockchain and distributed ledger technology prowess to digitize local gift certificates issued by the Chamber of Commerce in Miyama, Fukuoka Prefecture.
The Miyama is SBI’s sixth such blockchain tie-in with digital gift certificate initiatives organized by city governments as an attempt to revitalize their local economies – allowing users to spend their certificates using smartphone apps.
However, the developments have been somewhat overshadowed by events elsewhere in Asia, with SBI supremo Yoshitaka Kitao telling the Financial Times this week that SBI was set to pull out of Hong Kong due to recently imposed restrictions on business “freedom.”
He also claimed that other Japanese firms were likely to follow suit, but stated that the firms in question did not have the courage to admit it yet. Kitao said,
“They are unlike me. I’m a very straightforward guy. But all the others, in their bellies, they think they should move out or won’t invest more in Hong Kong.”
Canada's Bitcoin ETFs Losing Momentum, But Not Investors' Interest
Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in Canada seem to have lost their initial explosive growth, waning with other major plays in the market, but analysts argue that the interest in ETFs is still there.
The Purpose Bitcoin ETF (BTCC) was launched on February 18 as North America’s first ETF, soon picking up the pace and displaying an impressive start. Yet, this pace has largely slowed down since.
Looking at the data provided by on-chain analysis firm Glassnode, on March 3, Purpose Bitcoin ETF recorded inflows of BTC 152.9, worth USD 7.75m.
In comparison, for two days prior, the number of BTC was around 460, while upon the launch, on February 22, Glassnode shows inflows of nearly BTC 2,252, at the time worth USD 121.82m. That is a whopping 1,372.9% drop in the amount of BTC in a bit more than a week.
Glassnode further shows the ETF's holdings on March 3 to be BTC 11,294, currently worth USD 554.7m. Its assets under management (AUM) stood at USD 722m on Wednesday, showing an increase of USD 120m since the beginning of this month. AUM has had a slow rise following the 33.7% jump on February 22.
Evolve Funds Group's Bitcoin ETF (EBIT) launched on the Toronto Stock Exchange a day after BTCC. Per the reports, some USD 3.2m shares traded on Tuesday, down from nearly USD 15m right after its release. According to the website, EBIT's AUM on March 3 was USD 39.985m. Net Asset Value (NAV), which represents the value of all the securities held by the ETF, was USD 24.6m, up 2.94%.
As for the reasons behind these drops, former Merrill Lynch trader Tom Essaye told Bloomberg that there was "a rollover in a lot of the momentum plays in the market — not just Bitcoin, but Tesla and tech stocks more broadly," and the interest is coming out of these plays now.
"The initial surge in interest was evidence of some combination of pent-up demand, investors switching from other means of getting bitcoin exposure, and the fact that bitcoin's price was notching new highs as the Purpose ETF began trading," Ben Johnson, Morningstar's global director of ETF research, said, adding that longer-term, volumes would be correlated with BTC's price.
Mohit Bajaj, director of ETFs for WallachBeth Capital, also told Bloomberg that "some of it is definitely tied to bitcoin fluctuating," but that these ETFs are still young and it will "take time for investors to get comfortable with it."
Additionally, Nate Geraci, president of advisory firm ETF Store, was quoted as saying that "the fading demand is temporary and more reflective of the price of Bitcoin versus lack of interest in the ETFs."
Overall, the launch of the new BTC ETFs helped attract USD 5.2bn to Canadian ETF managers in February, the second-highest month of inflows on record, according to a separate article by Bloomberg reported.
Also, as reported, Evolve Funds Group lowered its management fee on their Bitcoin ETF, initiating a price war.
Meanwhile, Ethereum ETF's might be coming to the country soon. CI Global Asset Management filed a preliminary prospectus for CI Galaxy Ethereum ETF a week ago, while Evolve Funds Group filed its own prospectus for the Ether ETF with the Canadian securities regulators this Tuesday.
At the time of writing (15:41 UTC), BTC trades at USD 49,324 and is down by 2% in a day and 1% in a week, trimming its monthly gains to less than 48%. It rallied by 464% in a year.
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a simple step counter app, easy to use and non-intrusive app, for the user who wants to monitor his activity and receive Actina rewards directly from the mobile phone, without social network.
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Bitcoiners Strike Back At Craig Wright & His Lawyers
Anything involving Australian computer scientist Craig Wright, known as Faketoshi due to his unproven claims that he's in fact Bitcoin (BTC) creator Satoshi Nakamoto, turns into a baffling saga.
UK-based litigation law firm Ontier representing Wright's Tulip Trading Limited (TTL), received or about to receive a response from the US-based law firm Anderson Kill on behalf of their client, FastBitcoins' founder Danny Brewster - offering Wright a choice: admit the disputed BTC is not his, and "unnecessary litigations" may be avoided.
"You and your clients Tulip Trading Limited and Craig Steven Wright, and their agents, are hereby placed on notice that our client and many others similarly situated have an equitable interest in the bitcoins held at the 1Feex address to which Mt. Gox's stolen funds were drained in an amount not less than, and likely exceeding USD 17.5m," said the letter by Anderson Kill lawyers to Ontier, shared online by Brewster, a victim of the 2011 Mt. Gox hack.
The letter, signed by the firm's partners Preston Byrne and Stephen Palley, goes on to say that:
TTL and Wright owe Brewster the legal and equitable duty to hold any funds the former two have received on Bitcoin or any fork, on constructive trust for Brewster and "others similarly situated";
Brewster reserves the rights to, among others, seek an asset preservation order and to bring suit against TTL and Wright for conversion;
Ontier's clients and their agents are requested to preserve all evidence related to the dispute, adding that "failure to comply with this obligation will result in severe sanctions associated with and arising out of spoliation of evidence."
This followed the UK-based litigation law firm Ontier announcement of the start of legal proceedings against a number of unspecified Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin ABC (BCH ABC) and Bitcoin SV (BSV) developers on behalf of TTL, which is controlled by Wright - requesting that these developers deploy code to enable TTL to "regain access to and control of its bitcoin," allegedly stolen from Wright in February 2020.
The Anderson Kill letter, however, notes that,
if Ontier's "client is not in fact the owner of the bitcoin in the 1Feex address, our client has rather less to quarrel about with you and may be willing to adopt a more conciliatory attitude in this matter," while "any unnecessary litigation" may be avoided if TTL/Wright confirm they never controlled the address.
Mark Karpelès, the founder of the infamous, fallen Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, chimed in as well, writing that "someone is finally calling Craig Wright's bluff regarding the 1Feex bitcoins." Karpelès added that he has "no doubt those coins were stolen from Mt. Gox in 2011, which means CSW's alleged ownership is invalid and some would call his claim fraudulent."
In the meantime, Wright has faced a number of legal issues of his own over the years, one of the most prominent being the long battle with his late partner Dave Kleiman’s estate.
Here Are the Ways Governments Could Attack Bitcoin – and None of them Sound Hot
Experts are starting to muse about the possible strategies governments could use if they ever decided to wage war on Bitcoin (BTC) – and derail an asset whose rise in the past few months has been nothing short of meteoric.
PayPal’s crypto plunge last year (set to expand in 2021) and Tesla’s decision to purchase USD 1.5bn worth of bitcoin have arguably been watershed moments for the token – bringing it to mainstream conversations around the world. But some undoubtedly feel that the BTC movement has grown too big for its boots, and could plot its demise.
Should a government decide to side with this latter group, how could it go about attacking BTC?
Per a Quillette opinion piece, Alex Gladstein, a prominent BTC advocate and the chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation, a non-profit that claims to support civil liberties in authoritarian societies, governments may have limited options when it comes to fighting BTC, as it appears strong on the protocol level.
However, governments are far from powerless, and could attempt to seize power through taking “control of a majority of the bitcoin hashrate” – a little stunt that would cost a government some USD 5bn in hardware purchases alone.
But Gladstein all but discounted this possibility, noting that it would not enable governments “to change the bitcoin consensus rules, or print more bitcoin or steal anyone’s holdings.”
Such an “exotic assault,” would also disrupt the “world’s few semiconductor manufacturers” – already flat out at work on other projects, requiring them to instead contribute “to this very speculative purpose,” he wrote.
However, BlockTower Capital founder Ari Paul has a different opinion.
