Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

On Dec. 5, 2022, at block height 766,080, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty adjustment dropped 7.32% lower, making it the largest difficulty reduction in 2022. The current difficulty is approximately 34.24 trillion and it will remain at this point for the next two weeks or 2,016 blocks. Bitcoin Miners Catch a Break as the Network’s Difficulty Drops 7.32% Lower Bitcoin’s difficulty retarget has dropped, which makes it a bit easier for bitcoin miners to find a block than it was during the two weeks prior. The difficulty change occurred around 8:50:29 p.m. (ET), at block height 766,080 and it was the largest reduction this year. The difficulty reduction was larger than the prior record that was recorded at block height 745,920. At that time on July 21, 2022, the network’s difficulty dropped by 5.01% and the difficulty was around 27.69 trillion. Prior to the 7.32% reduction down to 34.24 trillion, the network’s difficulty rating was at a lifetime high of 36.95 trillion. Satoshi created the ...

An Indian central bank official claims that if there is anything cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether can do, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) should be able to create a product that will do the same job without the associated risks. “This is essentially what we are doing in the CBDC experiments,” he stressed. RBI Official on Cryptocurrency vs Digital Rupee Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Deputy Governor T. Rabi Sankar talked about cryptocurrency and central bank digital currency (CBDC) Friday at an event organized by the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA). “We saw an environment where private currencies were evolving. We realized that this poses a threat to investors, systems, and the economy. We also realized that private currencies have shown that digitalizing currency can possibly benefit,” the RBI official said. “The way to deal with it was to provide a digital currency.” Referring to non-government-issued cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether, as “private” cryptocurrencie...

Standard Chartered Bank says the price of bitcoin could drop to $5,000 next year. The bank’s analyst explained that cryptocurrencies could fall further and more crypto firms could “succumb to liquidity squeezes and investor withdrawals.” Standard Chartered Bank’s $5K Bitcoin Scenario Standard Chartered Bank published a note titled “The financial-market surprises of 2023” Sunday. The note outlines a number of possible scenarios that “we feel are under-priced by the markets,” wrote Eric Robertsen, Standard Chartered’s global head of research. One of the scenarios is bitcoin’s price dropping to $5,000 next year, which would be about a 70% drop from BTC ’s current price of around $17,000. Robertsen detailed: Yields plunge along with technology shares, and while the bitcoin sell-off decelerates, the damage has been done. More and more crypto firms and exchanges find themselves with insufficient liquidity, leading to further bankruptcies and a collapse in investor confidence in digita...

Laliga, the premier Spanish soccer league, has announced the implementation of a new system that will use blockchain for tracking soccer balls that were used to score a goal. The system, which will be provided by Gol-Ball, a third-party company, will certify these balls to allow users to purchase them through official markets or raffles. Spanish Laliga to Use Blockchain System for Soccer Ball Certification Laliga, the leading soccer league in Spain, has announced it will be one of the first organizations to certify balls used to score goals using blockchain tech. The institution has already partnered with Gol-Ball, a third-party company, to implement the system. The system, which is slated to be used after the Qatar world cup, will be used to track each ball used in each match and to separate and identify which ones were used to score each one of the goals — something that was not done before as each football was rotated and mixed with the others. Samuel Eto’o, Laliga’s ambassador...

According to the latest reports from the Brazilian tax authority (RFB), institutions have again broken crypto purchasing records in Brazil. The organization registered that almost 42,000 companies purchased some kind of cryptocurrency during October, a new record that overturns the 40,161 that declared having purchased crypto during September. Brazilian Companies Purchase Crypto in Waves More and more companies are introducing crypto as part of their treasuries in Brazil. According to the last data issued by the Brazilian tax authority (RBF), which is empowered by law to receive crypto purchasing statements from taxpayers, almost 42,000 companies bought some kind of cryptocurrency during October. These 41,817 companies that purchased crypto broke the previous record number registered in September when 40,161 institutions also broke the previous record. However, the number of individuals that bought crypto during the same period fell to 1.265.818 from the almost 1.5 million citizen...