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In this week's edition, we examine the latest price movements of the major currencies, we struggle to understand whether the 2018 bear fund has shown itself and will cover some of the other articles that have dominated the news in recent times. weeks.
BTC, the markets reach new lows, LTC exceeds BCH in the rankings
It was a new week of low cryptocurrency, as the price of BTC struggled to remain above $ 3,200 and the total market capitalization of all currencies beyond the $ 100 million mark. Since Monday morning, BTC has dropped slightly more than 7%, Stellar (XLM) down 17.5%, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SV (BSV) are the worst in the top ten, with each half of the Bitcoin Cash fork that falls about 22%.
For the first time in 2018, Litecoin (LTC) effectively outperformed BCH in terms of market capitalization, currently valued at approximately $ 1.64 billion compared to the ever-shrinking $ 1.45 billion of BCH. The flip position in the rankings does not really mean a victory for LTC as much as a loss for BCH, as it becomes more evident every day that passes after the fork that there have not been real winners in the big fork of Bitcoin Cash debacle that has upset markets and left behind a trail of devastation and loss.
Almost all currencies fell by 95% + from the start of the year, with much less than 99%. Even the bitcoin itself had lost 50% of its value only in the last 30 days.
An optimistic point to get out of last week's news was the fact that, despite the decline of 85% in 2018, bitcoin has still improved much more than an investment compared to Google or Apple in the last 2 years. In fact, BTC was still up more than 400% during a period when Apple (AAPL) was up 74% and Google (GOOG) was up 70%. Although it is possible to move the time intervals to paint bitcoins as a terrible investment (for example, if you look at your annual track record), in the medium to long term it remains one of the most profitable investments that could be traced back to 2010 – of far superior to any type of investment, raw materials or even real estate investments.
Historical price history of 2 years (BTC = blue, AAPL = orange, GOOG = red). Source: tradingview.com
Pro Bitcoiner joins the Trump administration
In another interesting revelation that might prove useful to the bitcoin, the new chief of staff of the United States, nominated by President Donald Trump, is known to be very explicit in his pro-bitcoin attitudes. The chief of staff has no direct authority over government policy when it comes to bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but the move could represent a fundamental change in federal sentiment towards bitcoin, at least in terms of the Trump administration. Mick Mulvaney, director of the US Office of Administration and Budget, had previously made the following comment on the blockchain:
"Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the financial services industry, the US economy and the provision of government services, and I am proud to be involved in this initiative." – Mick Mulvaney
The former White House strategist Steve Bannon also has a long history with cryptocurrency before joining Trump administration. Apart from being on the board of directors of the IGE group, led by Brock Pierce and led by the games, Bannon announced he wanted to make his "deplorable" cryptocurrency in July of this year.
SEC that breaks down fraudulent ICOs
It is true that the activity of Initial Coin Offering (ICO) has been in decline throughout 2018; partly due to a downward trend in the markets, partly due to a supersaturation of the market, but partly due to the fact that they have attracted the attention of the US federal government. Now hundreds of millions of dollars less taken over by the end of 2017, ICOs have been subjected to a more thorough check, not only because of the size and size, but also the likelihood of investor fraud.
In their most recent annual report, the SEC clearly states their desire to focus more on fraudulent reports within the cryptocurrency space, stating:
"Given the explosion of ICOs in the last year, we have tried to pursue cases that offer broad messages that have an impact on the market beyond their four curves …
A moving example of our impact approach is the enforcement of the SEC against co-founders of an alleged financial services start-up. This action, together with the joint declaration of the Enforcement Division with the Commission's Office of Inspections and Conformity Examinations, which called for caution regarding the promotion of celebrity of international product organizations, led to an almost immediate cessation of these promotions. Another example is the SEC's action against an allegedly fraudulent ICO that targeted retail investors to finance what they claimed to be the first "decentralized bank" in the world. We moved quickly to stop the fraud by obtaining a court order, and the action showed our ability to get a handset on digital resources. "
Among the tools added to the SEC arsenal for fraud detection is a greater understanding of the blockchain analysis and the development of a very powerful analysis software that can help to trace the paths to and from towards the cryptocurrency of the scammers, an art that is helped by the fact that many scammers (wrongly) believe they are anonymous through the blockchain. Overall, 20 cases have been brought against ICO scammers from the SEC in 2018 to date – a huge increase since 2016, a year that failed to collect a single mention from the federal guard dogs.
The price of Bitcoin may be low, but Twitter scams are on the rise
The scammers posing as billionaire CEO Elon Music managed to pull nearly $ 200,000 from Twitter users in the latest BTC scam to rock on the popular social media platform. Crypto icons such as Vitalik Buterin and Andreas Antonopoulos have already been targeted by such scams, but this last one seems to have taken much more BTC than usual, perhaps due to the fact that hackers managed to get a "verified" Twitter account and change all the information to look like the Musk Twitter page.
Twitter has quickly commented on the incident, promising to issue changes to the platform that make it more difficult for "verified" accounts to be requirements and adapted for the purpose of executing scams.
Bitcoin and global warming
A study recently published by the geologists of the University of Hawaii concluded that the Bitcoin network could indirectly increase global temperatures by an average of 2 degrees Celsius by 3030, based on a substantial increase in user adoption. , related to an increase in the hash rate network required to successfully extract new blocks. Currently, the electricity generated necessary to make the Bitcoin network work is estimated to consume 69 million tons of carbon in the year – a number that should increase year on year.
Hash rate of the Bitcoin network. Source: blockchain.com
The study finds that a lot of bitcoin mining is performed in countries that use coal and fossil fuels as the main means of producing electricity, such as China and other East Asian countries. However, critics of the study have noted that his conclusions are based on many hypotheses and conclusions of a reality that may not come true. Firstly, they point out that the authors did not take into account a worldwide tendency to decrease dependence on fossil fuels for energy generation, a potential migration of mining to areas using cleaner forms of energy (such as Hydroelectric or solar energy), or the possibility that the adoption of bitcoins is not as widespread as the study speculates.
In any case, the Bitcoin Network consumes even more electricity on a daily basis than many countries around the world – 160 of which for accuracy – with its current energy consumption (between 58 and 73 terawatts per hour) ) that rivals that of the country of Austria, which houses about 9 million people. Even though the amount of electricity consumed has declined in the second half of 2018, its current rate is unlikely to decrease as the power of network hashes tends to rise much more easily and faster than it does. The study did not include other Proof of Work (PoW) coins that also require a large amount of electricity to perform huge amounts of calculations, such as Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC), although all the others PoW coins combined do not come close to matching the amount of electricity needed to run bitcoins.
The critics of the study aim to show that up to 80% of all bitcoin mining uses renewable electricity, which means that bitcoin is actually one of the greenest energy-consuming industries as it does not burn almost as much fossil fuel as an assumption by the authors of the study. Indeed, some provinces of China, where a significant amount of bitcoin mining operations are located, produce overwhelming amounts of hydroelectric power
Also in the news
- A series of bomb threats have rocked the west coast of the United States in the last week. Every bomb threat had some things in common, mostly, everyone was asking $ 2000 to spread the bomb's detonation, and everyone was asking for the $ 2000 to be sent in bitcoin denominations to the same, particular bitcoin address. Although no bombs were actually discovered in any of the threatened positions, the report proved to be highly disruptive, as it is generally the policy of every large company and institution to take every bomb threat with utmost seriousness.
- "Wrapped Bitcoin" will arrive on Ethereum, intended to provide a new source of stability during the trading of Ethereum tokens. The wrapped Ethereum (wETH) already exists as a popular commercial ERC20 pairing, since the ETH itself is not actually a token but can be tokenized by putting aside a part of the ETH in a designated fund, using it to return named tokens in terms of ETH. This stablecoin procedure is now applied to bitcoin (wBTC), which has the advantage not only of facilitating the trade of BTC against ERC20 tokens in DEX, but also of removing a portion of BTC from circulation, potentially increasing its value. Plans are also underway to introduce a "Cash Bitcoin Wrapped".
- The Winklevoss Twins are back in the news, this time for chasing the famous bitcoin "first criminal", Charlie Shrem, who served just over a year in a federal penitentiary to help users of the original dark net market The Silk Road get bitcoin. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss accuse Shrem of detaining about 5,000 bitcoins after they hired him to buy thousands of bitcoins for them in 2012. At that time, the bitcoins were worth only about $ 120, but the Winklevii suspected the funds that Shrem used in its recent expenditure (to buy 6 properties, 2 Maseratis and 2 motor boats) was collected at the time of their agreement.
- In another exceptionally clever idea for an ICO, a company with the name Planetary Resources worked with Crypto Firm ConsenSys to raise money for an asteroid-mining company for resources. As of 2009, the company has already raised $ 50 million in funds for private investors and launched 2 satellites; however, the funds have dried up and proposes a series of ICO funding to help bring the business back into orbit.
- The masters of the Bitcoin wallet blockchain.com are currently donating $ 25 in Stellar Lumens (XLM) to the first 3 million respondents of his portfolios in an attempt to help increase the adoption of fast-growing currency. Blockchain.com has recently integrated Stellar into its user portfolios, making it 4th currency currently supports. Blockchain.com wallet owners can request their free Stellar from the website here.
