Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

On November 2, 2021, the Ethereum network’s global hashrate tapped an all-time high (ATH) at 873 terahash per second (TH/s) or close to 1 petahash. Alongside Ethereum’s ATH, a myriad of hashrates have returned back to the highs the network’s once held before the crypto mining crackdown in China. Hashrates Return Following China’s Crypto Mining Crackdown This Past Summer Last summer at the end of June, a great number of cryptocurrency networks saw their hashrates decline significantly, but today many networks have recovered from the large losses. For instance, the Bitcoin ( BTC ) network hashrate plummeted to a low of 69.11 exahash per second (EH/s) on June 28, and today BTC ’s hashrate is coasting along at 169 EH/s. That’s an increase of 144.92% and a variety of other crypto protocol hashrates have also seen significant recoveries in terms of global hashrate. During the same time period the Bitcoin network’s hashrate shuddered last summer, Litecoin’s ( LTC ) hashrate dipped to a l

On Tuesday, the world’s largest financial derivatives exchange, Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group, announced the upcoming launch of ethereum-based micro futures slated to be listed on December 6. The launch follows CME Group’s bitcoin micro futures listing in May, which saw 100,000 micro bitcoin futures traded during the first six days after launch. CME to Launch Micro Ether Futures Pending Regulatory Approval CME Group announced on Tuesday that the company plans to launch micro ether futures on December 6, “pending regulatory review.” According to the CME announcement, each share will account for one-tenth of one ether. “Micro ether futures will provide an efficient, cost-effective way for a range of market participants – from institutions to sophisticated, active, individual traders – to hedge their spot ether price risk or more nimbly execute ether trading strategies, all while retaining the features and benefits of CME Group’s larger-sized ether futures,” the announcement

On November 1, at block height 707,639, a blockchain parser caught two bitcoin whale transfers that moved approximately 19,876 bitcoin worth $1.2 billion in the mix of 2,819 transactions. Interestingly, the owner used a similar splitting mechanism the old school mining whale blockchain parsers caught, spending strings of 20 block rewards throughout 2020 and 2021. Bitcoin Whale Watching Bitcoin whales are mysterious animals because in a blockchain world of pseudonymity we only see them when they move. Last year and this year as well, Bitcoin.com News has hunted a specific whale entity that spent thousands of bitcoin mined in 2010. Every single time the whale spent the decade-old bitcoin that sat idle the whole time, the entity spent exactly 20 block rewards or 1,000 BTC . After the transfer, the wallets holding 1,000 BTC dispersed the funds into smaller-sized wallets. According to the creator of btcparser.com , the close to 20K BTC transferred at block height 707,639 on November

PRESS RELEASE. Education Ecosystem (LEDU), a leader in online project-based learning, is excited to announce that it is presently creating over 1000 video projects for CMC Top 100 blockchains to teach developers how to build new applications related to financial apps, decentralized markets, games, crypto wallets, and more. With more crypto exchanges releasing their APIs and SDKs, Education Ecosystem seeks to plug a gap where crypto developers do not have tutorials and resources to learn how to build crypto products. Education Ecosystem believes that creating these projects, which entail a tutorial and downloadable resources to help the learners will encourage learning and innovation of crypto products across top exchanges and platforms. According to the CEO, Education Ecosystem is rolling out this development as part of its efforts to be the leading learning platform for intermediate to expert level developers on Youtube . While announcing this big development, the CEO noted that

Ubisoft, one of the biggest gaming companies in the entertainment world, mentioned blockchain as one of the key points of focus for the future of the brand. The company said it is exploring blockchain as an innovative technology to be included in games in its latest earnings report. While blockchain’s play-to-earn trend has experienced a boom this year, the traditional gaming industry still has yet to embrace blockchain as part of a flagship product. Ubisoft to Explore Blockchain for Future Products Ubisoft, the gaming giant known for mega-successful franchises like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, mentioned blockchain technology as a key element for the future of the company. In its latest earnings report, which corresponds to the first half of the 2021-2022 fiscal year, Ubisoft stated it has been exploring blockchain technology since its beginnings, to see how it can be used to further enhance the experience of gamers in virtual worlds. The report states: Ubisoft has been explorin

Paraguay is one of the destinations being considered by various companies for setting up their bitcoin mining operations. Last week, Chinese company Future Fintech announced formal plans to build a bitcoin mining facility in the country, explaining they were determining the best location for the upcoming farm. In June, local media declared that there were eight Chinese economic groups interested in coming to the country. Paraguay Considered for Its Bitcoin Mining Potential Paraguay, an often overlooked country of South America, has recently been in the sights of mining institutions interested in establishing operations in the country. Paraguay presents several advantages for these groups, like an abundant supply of unused hydro-electrical power that could be put to work. Bitcoin mining activity has been stigmatized as a “dirty” industry, but having this much clean energy, companies could mine without worrying about the effect on the environment. Future Fintech, a Chinese company th

Digital Currency Group (DCG), a Manhattan-based, crypto-focused VC conglomerate, has reached a $10 billion dollar valuation in a secondary sale where existing investors sold part of their shares to new ones. The funding round was led by Softbank and also included participation from Capitalg, Google’s investment firm. $700 million worth of shares changed hands via the sale. Digital Currency Group Sells $700 Million in Secondary Sale Round Digital Currency Group (DCG), a crypto-focused company, announced a secondary sale where existing investors sold part of their shares to newcomers to the company. The deal, which involved $700 million worth of shares changing hands, was led by Softbank with the participation of Capitalg, Google’s private equity investment firm. This further cements the importance that DCG has in the current crypto-focused world. With this new investment round, the valuation of the company reached $10 billion. While the name DCG might seem obscure and not recogniza

A Kenyan communications strategist, Mwotia Ciugu, has told African investors to be wary of investing in bitcoin which he claims is worth zero. Bitcoin Structurally Incapable of Delivering on Its Promise In an op-ed published by The Elephant, Ciugu insists bitcoin (BTC) is structurally incapable of delivering on its promise of becoming an alternative store of value or a hedge against inflation. In addition, the strategist also claims bitcoin fails both as a currency and an investment. Although he concedes that Africa has one of the highest cryptocurrency adoption rates , Ciugu cautions, however, that the top cryptocurrency’s volatility and scalability issues mean it cannot act as a currency. Ciugu is quoted explaining: Bitcoin fails as a currency because of two things: volatility and scalability concerns. In its 12 years of existence, bitcoin has maintained extremely high levels of volatility i.e. 60 per cent to 100 per cent annualized. To further support this point, Ciugu mak

Global investment bank Goldman Sachs is reportedly predicting that the price of ether could rise to $8,000 by year-end. The bank’s analysts explained that cryptocurrencies have traded in line with inflation breakevens since 2019. Ether Could Reach $8K by Year-End, According to Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs has reportedly explained in a research note circulated by the bank’s managing director of Global Markets, Bernhard Rzymelka, that the price of ether ( ETH ) could hit $8,000 by year-end. The note details that cryptocurrencies have traded in line with inflation breakevens since 2019, according to Zerohedge. Referencing a chart showing the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index (red) on a log axis and the USD 2-year forward 2-year inflation swap (blue), Goldman’s analysts noted that “the local backdrop looks supportive for ethereum.” The analysts added: “It has tracked inflation markets particularly closely, likely reflecting the pro-cyclical nature as ‘network based’ asset. And the lastes

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has indicated that the shiba inu (SHIB) cryptocurrency will be listed on its platform on Tuesday. The dogecoin rival has gained much popularity recently, rising 97% in the past seven days and 825.5% in the last 30 days. Kraken Indicates Shiba Inu Will Be Listed on Its Platform Tuesday Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken tweeted Monday about listing the shiba inu cryptocurrency (SHIB) on its platform. According to the San Francisco-based exchange, the company’s product lead, Brian Hoffman, said if the tweet gets 2K likes, Kraken will list shiba inu Tuesday. At the time of writing, the tweet has been liked 45.1K times and retweeted 11.6K times. Founded in 2011, Kraken says it is the world’s largest global digital asset exchange based on euro volume and liquidity. Globally, its client base trades more than 60 digital assets and seven different fiat currencies, including EUR, USD, CAD, GBP, JPY, CHF, and AUD, its website details. Kraken was the first U.S. cry

This past summer the American multinational technology company, Amazon, published two job listings for a blockchain lead and a digital currency expert. Now Amazon Web Services (AWS) is looking for a principal digital assets specialist that can “help drive adoption across the global digital asset community.” AWS Is Looking for a Principal Digital Assets Specialist One of the ‘Big Five’ tech companies, Amazon, has shown signs of interest in cryptocurrency solutions and blockchain technology for quite some time now. For instance, on May 26, 2020, the company patented a “distributed ledger certification” protocol. In February 2021, the e-commerce giant posted a job listing for a software development manager to lead a blockchain pilot project located in Mexico, alongside Amazon’s “Digital and Emerging Payments” division. This past June, the company’s employment portal said Amazon was seeking a blockchain expert in order to create “business use cases across decentralized finance (defi

Following a number of ASIC mining rig acquisitions from the manufacturer Canaan, the bitcoin mining operation Genesis Digital Assets announced on Monday that the firm is developing an industrial-scale bitcoin mining data center in West Texas. According to the announcement, Genesis says that the new facility will have 300 megawatts of capacity with a “low carbon footprint.” Genesis Announces New Bitcoin Mining Facility With 300 Megawatts of Capacity The mining firm Genesis Digital Assets has announced the launch of a new bitcoin mining facility that will be located in West Texas. The Genesis data center will get energy from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). The entity ERCOT is a large power supplier in Texas and statistics say the firm supplies 90 percent of the state’s electric load. Genesis stresses that the new data center with 300 megawatts will showcase “sustainable infrastructure, high efficiency, and a low carbon footprint.” The Texas facility announcement f

Inflation continues to remain hot in the United States as supply constraints and higher oil prices continue, seeing barrels of crude surge above $80 per unit. Meanwhile, data released on Friday indicates that consumer expenditures have risen to 4.4%, the highest run-up of inflation the country has seen in 30 years. Inflation Continues to Rise in US Americans are dealing with higher inflation levels these days as new data indicates that personal consumption expenditures have spiked in September to 4.4%. Reuters reports that the inflation run-up is “continuing a run of inflation at levels not seen in 30 years.” Americans losing purchasing power has been attributed to supply chain shortages, sky-high oil prices , and the ongoing Covid-19 procedures mandated by the Biden administration. Reuters reporter Howard Schneider explains that the rising inflation levels in the U.S. could undermine Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell’s claims that inflation will be “transitory.” However, Co

Burger King is giving away 20 bitcoin, 200 ether, and two million dogecoin this month in partnership with trading platform Robinhood. “Each entrant may receive up to 21 Prize Codes” that can be redeemed for cryptocurrencies on Robinhood. ‘Burger King With a Side of Crypto’ Fast food restaurant chain Burger King has announced “Burger King with a side of crypto,” its newest offer for Royal Perks members. To be eligible to participate, customers must “make a minimum $5.00 pre-tax Burger King (‘BK’) food and/or beverage purchase” either online at BK.com, using the BK app, or at participating BK restaurants, the company explained, adding: The prize pool includes two million dogecoin, 200 ethereum and 20 bitcoin, so only 220 guests could receive a bitcoin or ethereum cryptocurrency prize. “There will be 2,000,220 Prize Codes available as of the start of the promotion,” Burger King further detailed. Participants must be Royal Perks members, for which sign-up is free. According to the

In mid-October, Bitcoin.com News reported on how decentralized finance (defi) or algorithmic stablecoins have seen significant demand in 2021. One particular stablecoin called OHM is quite different from the traditional reserve currency defi protocols today, as OHM is a free-floating currency backed only by what’s held in the Olympus DAO treasury. OHM may not be backed by a U.S. dollar in the usual fashion, but the stablecoin’s $3.6 billion market valuation makes it the fifth-largest crypto reserve currency by market capitalization. Meet Olympus DAO: An Algorithmic Currency Protocol When stablecoins were first introduced, a centralized model appeared where a blockchain network is used to distribute tokens that have fiat backing held by an audited third-party custodian. The centralized model still exists today, and the top two stablecoins in terms of market valuation, USDT and USDC are both perfect examples of that type of model. In recent times, decentralized finance (defi) or alg

Have you lost the password for a Dogechain.info wallet or have it locked behind 2FA and fear you will never get to hold your precious coins ever again? Good news, KeychainX wrote a handy guide on how to recover such wallets. This is a trusted service provider that specializes in recovering lost Bitcoin wallets from wallet.dat files, Dogecoin wallet passwords, Android wallet or spending PIN, Ethereum JSON files, presale wallets and can even decrypt blockchain.info 15,17,19 or 21 word mnemonic seed that is no longer officially supported. Dogechain.info Wallets Can Be Recovered According to a recent KeychainX article , the team has been able to recover a number of dogechain.info wallets that both had their password lost and their 2FA blocked over the course of the previous month. Dogechain.info is a self custodian doge wallet that uses the same parameters like blockchain.info used back in 2015. It has the wallet ID, 2FA security and the encrypted wallet and keys stored on a server in t

As defi continues to expand, it risks embracing the very ideology it initially sought to reject as the primary beneficiaries of this new financing paradigm are those who already own digital assets. Replacing Intermediaries Doesn’t Directly Improve Finance When it comes to financial products and solutions, almost everything comes with a catch, be it exceptional returns on investments or low financing rates. Decentralized finance (defi) is no exception. Defi has gained immense popularity because it sought to remove traditional finance’s (tradfi) inherent problems and downsides. While there is no denying that the emergence of defi has indeed lowered access barriers to financial solutions, we can’t overlook the uncomfortable reality that defi is becoming, at least to an extent, the same as tradfi, with a ‘decentralized’ tag. The Blurring Line Between Defi and Tradfi Lending In the traditional system, anyone who wants to borrow funds from banks or private lenders must furnish their cr

South African finance minister Enoch Godongwana has put forward proposals that bar pension funds from investing in cryptocurrencies, and has also set November 12 as the public comment deadline. Cryptocurrencies a Grey Area According to a report by Business Insider SA, Godongwana’s timeframe for the public to comment on the draft proposals suggests he wants the changes to come into effect before the end of the year. Prior to Godongwana’s proposals, South African pension funds considered cryptocurrencies a grey area where an investment of up to 2.5% of assets held was permissible. However, as the Business Insider explains, this ambiguous part of regulations used by pension funds to legally invest in cryptocurrencies will be removed once the minister’s proposed changes get approval. “A [pension] fund may not invest in crypto-assets directly or indirectly,” the report explained, quoting new rules published in a government document . Meanwhile, the finance ministry’s draft proposals

Venezuelan authorities seized over a hundred mining machines in a residential area of a central state. According to reports, the mining farm was operating illegally without permits that the national cryptocurrency watchdog, Sunacrip, requires for these operations. The seizure was led by the national police, officers from the national power company, and personnel from Sunacrip. Venezuelan Mining Farm Seized by Authorities Authorities seized over a hundred miners that were operating illegally in a clandestine farm located in a residential zone in Miranda, a central state in Venezuela. According to reports from local media, authorities located the farm due to the strain it was imposing on the power distribution system in the area. This prompted an inspection by the police and authorities from both the national power company (Corpoelec) and the national cryptocurrency watchdog (Sunacrip) to check for unreported mining activity. The farm was dismantled and the mining equipment was seiz

Cryptocurrencies are a popular investment among Iranians and estimates suggest that the number of those who already own one coin or another may be as high as 12 million. The majority of Iranian traders prefer the services of local crypto exchanges, the chief executive of one of them claims. Iranians Said to Transfer $180 Million in Crypto Daily Despite the lack of proper rules for most of the crypto space and the government stance on the matter, a growing number of Iranians have been investing in decentralized digital money over the past months and years. “An estimated seven to 12 million Iranians own cryptocurrencies,” according to Hamed Mirzaei, CEO of Bitestan, one of the country’s crypto exchanges. “Iranians’ daily crypto transactions is estimated between 30 and 50 trillion rials ($181 million), while there is no regulation over trade in cryptocurrencies,” Mirzaei was recently quoted as saying by Peyvast magazine. According to a report by the English-language business portal Fi

Some of the premier figures in crypto gathered at the Waldorf Astoria, Shanghai on October 27th, 2021, to celebrate a new alliance with a mission to advance the blockchain industry. The Blockchain Infrastructure Alliance (BIA) was inaugurated with a dinner hosted by the crypto-fiat payment network, Alchemy Pay , alongside co-hosts Polygon Network, NEAR Protocol, Draper Dragon, and Bit.Store. The event was graced by the presence of over a hundred celebrities and leaders of the industry, including Tencent, Alipay, Mastercard, Binance, Huobi, OKEx, Polygon, NEAR, NEO and many others. At the dinner, John Tan, the CEO of Alchemy Pay, gave an opening speech on behalf of Alchemy Pay a nd took the opportunity to present the company’s ecosystem as well as remark on the outlook for BIA. Tan showed just how much Alchemy Pay’s network had developed. After two years of rapid expansion, the Alchemy Pay ecosystem now boasts more than 150 core nodes, including banks, merchant networks, DeFi proto

A warning by Tesla and Spacex CEO Elon Musk about the mounting national debt in the U.S., government spending, and the proposal to tax unrealized capital gains has highlighted the benefits of cryptocurrencies, particularly bitcoin. Elon Musk Says ‘Spending Is the Real Problem’ Tesla CEO Elon Musk made several tweets about the U.S. national debt and government spending last week. He also warned against the proposal to tax unrealized capital gains, aimed at billionaires, which was scuttled Friday amid questions about whether it would even be constitutional. Musk believes that if the proposal were to go ahead, the government would not stop at billionaires. “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you,” he tweeted early last week. Commenting on a Washington Post article stating that he would “pay as much as $50 billion under the tax over its first five years, while Bezos could pay as much as $44 billion,” the Tesla CEO tweeted to his 61.7 million follo

Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, has warned that the U.S. is “sliding into depression.” He said that a giant crash is coming, after which “a new depression” will follow. Bitcoin is among his recommendations for smart investing. Robert Kiyosaki Sees Giant Crash Coming, Followed by a New Depression Famous author and investor Robert Kiyosaki has warned of a new depression in the U.S. following a “giant crash.” Rich Dad Poor Dad is a 1997 book co-authored by Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter. It has been on the New York Times Best Seller List for over six years. More than 32 million copies of the book have been sold in over 51 languages across more than 109 countries. The famous author tweeted Friday that the U.S. is “sliding into depression.” He said President Joe Biden and the Fed are “ripping off people,” noting that they “need inflation to prevent new depression.” Kiyosaki stressed: “Inflation rips off the poor. Inflation makes [the] rich richer. Biden and F