Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

The blockchain stablecoin issuer Tether Operations Limited has recently surpassed a $50 billion market valuation after seeing exponential growth during the last few years. Furthermore, the stablecoin tether has launched on the trading platform Coinbase Pro this week marking the San Francisco-based exchange’s first time supporting the dollar-pegged token. Tether Market Cap Increases by 170% in 6 Months The blockchain company has reached a milestone this week as the firm’s dollar-pegged token USDT has surpassed a $50 billion market capitalization. Back in November 2020, Bitcoin.com News reported on how USDT towered over the stablecoin competition, as the market cap grew by 2 million percent in four years. At that time, records had shown tether’s ( USDT ) market valuation was around $18.5 billion. At $50 billion today, the USDT market valuation increased by 170.27% since November. Tether Operations Limited says that the skyrocketing market cap stems from a myriad of use cases incl

PRESS RELEASE. AscendEX, formerly BitMax, an industry-leading digital asset trading platform built by Wall Street quant trading veterans, has announced the listing of the Showcase Token (SHO) under the pair USDT/SHO on Apr 28 at 1:00 p.m. UTC. Showcase is an NFT mobile application designed to empower micro-influencers and fans. It provides a platform for content creators to create and sell limited edition tradeable non-fungible tokens backed by their brand. These NFTs allow for decentralized ownership, transfer, provenance, and proof of authenticity for digital assets. Showcase as a platform focuses on mobile-first design, fiat integration, lower-priced NFTs, beyond rare art NFTs, user experience, and social media integration. On the Showcase platform, creators can design and edit custom artwork in the app, which is then attached to a unique NFT or “Badge.” Limited edition badges are listed for sale, and fans may purchase them, and Showcase will pay revenue to the creators. B

The cryptocurrency mining rig and ASIC chipmaker Bitmain revealed a new digital currency mining device that’s dedicated to mining ethereum. While the Ethereum network is slowly transitioning from proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) system, Bitmain’s new Antminer E9 aims to be one of the fastest ether miners on the open market. Antminer E9 Mining Rig to Command 3 GH/s of Hashpower Two days ago on April 24, the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) manufacturer Bitmain published a teaser video about a new ether mining rig. The device is not for sale yet and E9 prices have not been announced. However, speculative estimates assume the machine could be around $20k per unit or upwards of $30k per machine. The company revealed the new Antminer E9 specs on Twitter with the accompanying teaser video published to Youtube. “[The] Antminer E9 ethereum miner. Equivalent to 32 – 3080 graphics cards, Equipped with a hashrate of 3 GH/s, power efficiency of 0.85 J/M, and power

Filebase, a blockchain-based object storage company built on top of the Sia network has revealed the business has closed an initial seed round gathering $2 million from investors. Interest in decentralized storage networks has blossomed in recent months and Filebase expects the growth of global data to surpass 175 Zettabytes by 2025. The project is currently working with three distributed storage projects and plans to expand to Arweave and Filecoin by the end of 2021. Filebase Raises $2 Million In the future, blockchain advocates believe that distributed ledger networks will help bolster decentralized storage rather than leveraging centralized clouds and API services used today. In 2021, there are a number of blockchain projects dedicated to data-storage solutions and a company called Filebase utilizes a number of the most-used decentralized storage systems. Essentially, Filebase is a multi-tenant, S3-compatible API service that is built with the Sia network. However, Filebase de

The critically acclaimed rap phenomenon Marshall Mathers, professionally known as Eminem has revealed he is jumping into the non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles game. Eminem is auctioning three types of NFTs via Nifty Gateway and each design was created by the hip-hop legend. Slim Shady Enters the NFT Fray Week after week, the NFT universe continues to grow larger and a great number of celebrities are joining in on the NFT bandwagon. The space has continued to swell with a myriad of different NFT projects, concepts, and marketplaces. Bitcoin.com has reported on a number of popular projects and luminaries minting non-fungible token collectibles like actress Lindsay Lohan , Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Rob “Gronk” Gronkowski’s NFTs, Tom Brady’s Autograph project , Topps Garbage Pail Kids and Baseball cards, Annoying Orange NFTs, and NFT collectibles by Kenyan filmmaker Rich Allela. Now the multi-platinum recording artist and ofte

Today, April 26th, 2021, the virtual gallery of OVR.ai was inaugurated to showcase artists working with non-fungible tokens (NFT) and beyond. Considering the hype around the NFT phenomenon this year and also given that the Coronavirus pandemic prevents most artists from exhibiting works in museums and participating in exhibitions, as well as also people from being able to visit art galleries, the company OVR decided to introduce a museum in its blockchain-based virtual world, allowing the top artists in the field to exhibit their NFTs. Starting today, it is possible to download the OVR app (available on both Android and iOS) and visit this section of the virtual world dedicated to art. The NFT Artists of OVR Among the artists exhibiting their Non Fungible Tokens today for the opening of OVR’s gallery is Italian artist Giovanni Motta , born in 1971, who has just opened his solo exhibition in Shanghai, selling out before the opening. Motta will have a dedicated gallery on OVR, as

Bill Miller, the founder and chief investment officer of Miller Value Partners, does not think bitcoin is a bubble. Instead, he said it is at the beginning of mainstream adoption. Remaining bullish on the cryptocurrency, the famed value investor explained that bitcoin’s price will rise as the demand for the crypto is growing faster than its supply. Bill Miller Bullish on Bitcoin Longtime value investor Bill Miller is the founder of Miller Value Partners and currently serves as the chairman and chief investment officer. He is also the co-portfolio manager for Opportunity Equity and Income Strategy funds. Prior to Miller Value Partners, he co-founded Legg Mason Capital Management. He was asked in an interview with CNBC last week whether there is a lot more upside to the price of bitcoin. Miller replied: “There are many many different ways to look at bitcoin. The simplest way is just the supply and demand.” Emphasizing rising institutional interest in the cryptocurrency as it enters

Veteran investor Jim Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with billionaire investor George Soros, is still worried about governments outlawing bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. “If cryptocurrencies become successful, most governments will outlaw them, because they don’t want to lose their monopoly,” he said. Jim Rogers Still Worried About Government Banning Bitcoin Renowned investor and George Soros’ former business partner who co-founded of the Quantum Fund and Soros Fund Management, Jim Rogers, still believes that the government can ban bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Noting that he “never bought or sold any cryptocurrencies,” Rogers told Kitco News’ Michelle Makori last week: If cryptocurrencies become successful, most governments will outlaw them, because they don’t want to lose their monopoly. “Every government in the world is working on computer money now, including the U.S. The Chinese are there already. I cannot imagine that governments are going to say ‘ok, th

Two Turkish cryptocurrency exchanges are being investigated by the authorities in Turkey after they abruptly halted trading. The authorities have blocked access to the bank accounts of the second exchange and detained four people so far. Sixty-two people have been detained in connection with the first exchange whose CEO has fled the country. Second Turkish Crypto Exchange Being Investigated Following the alleged exit scam pulled by cryptocurrency exchange Thodex, another crypto trading platform is being investigated by Turkish authorities, the state-run Anadolu news agency said Friday. Vebitcoin, a Turkey-based crypto trading platform, became the second crypto exchange to face troubles within about a week after the country’s central bank banned crypto use for payments. Vebitcoin posted a notice on its website on Friday stating: “Due to the recent developments in the crypto money industry, there was a much higher density in our operations than expected. We would like to state with

Bitcoin prices have dropped below the $50k region during this week’s trading sessions sinking to a low of $47,555 on Friday. The popular creator of the stock-to-flow (S2F) bitcoin price model, Plan B has discussed the recent price dip and stressed that “nothing goes up in a straight line.” Plan B believes this price drop might be a “mid-way dip,” similar to the crypto bull runs in prior years. ‘Looks Like the Mid-way Dip,’ Says Plan B During the first week of March, Bitcoin.com News reported on Plan B’s popular but also controversial stock-to-flow (S2F) price model . In that report, Plan B was very confident and BTC ’s price surpassed the model by 26%. People believe that the S2F price model predicts bitcoin’s price reaching six-digit price ranges in the future. Since that report in March, however, BTC ’s price has dropped -26.72% after the crypto asset’s all-time high of $64,895 per unit. Plan B doesn’t seem phased by the drop and after prices fell, the S2F creator consoled hi

Ripple Labs cofounder Chris Larsen has a bone to pick with bitcoin and crypto networks that leverage proof-of-work (PoW). Larsen’s latest write-up explains that the crypto industry needs to reconsider PoW because of the effects on the environment. The Ripple executive believes that other types of consensus algorithms have been effective at being secure while only “using a tiny fraction of the energy.” Ripple Cofounder Believes Crypto Networks Leveraging Proof-of-Work Should Consider Alternatives While the global economy struggles after a year of Covid-19 lockdowns and business shutdowns, a great number of people are very interested in tackling climate change. Ripple Labs cofounder Chris Larsen has written a blog post about the environment and why the crypto industry should reconsider leveraging PoW. Larsen believes that if the Bitcoin ( BTC ) network’s verification model doesn’t get addressed, then at some point, it will lose out to a crypto asset network that does. “With more ind

On May 3, tokens stemming from the Chia network, a smart transaction blockchain created by the Bittorrent creator Bram Cohen, will start trading and transactions will be fully enabled. Rather than leveraging the proof-of-work consensus algorithm, Chia will utilize a model called proof-of-space which relies on storage. With Chia’s transactional launch pending, the project has sparked shortages over the demand for hard drives and solid-state drives (SSDs). Chia Network Fuels High-End Hard Drive and SSD Shortages Bram Cohen , the inventor of the popular torrenting application Bittorent has created a cryptocurrency that’s set to launch next month. Because Cohen is behind the Chia project , the pre-stages of the digital currency network have seen significant exposure since Chia was announced. Chia’s team believes that the project can allow anyone the ability to verify transactions without being dependent on “single-use hardware or a big electricity bill.” Chia released the project’s Bus

A Kenya-based digital media company, Picha Images, is reportedly set to hold one of the first non-fungible token (NFT) auctions in Africa. The auction event, which is set to be held between April 26 through May 3, 2021, will initially feature the works of Rich Allela, the award-winning photographer and filmmaker from Kenya. Perpetual Royalties According to a report , in return for purchasing the NFTs, the buyers will get a “hacker-resistant proof of ownership of a digital piece of art.” Inversely, the NFTs give artists, who have been getting “a raw deal,” a chance to earn more. Meanwhile, in its own statement, Picha Images claims the creation of NFTs shows that the company is “placing the wellbeing of their creative artists first by exposing them to a way to secure their work, maintain the copyrights to their creations and earn royalties in perpetuity.” NFTs Empower Artists On the other hand, Allela is quoted commending Picha Images, which harnesses artificial intelligence

A dogecoin investor has shared his story of how he became a crypto millionaire in a little over two months after learning about the meme cryptocurrency and pouring all his savings into it. He said he was inspired by Elon Musk’s tweets about dogecoin. A Doge Millionaire Shares His Story Glauber Contessoto, a 33-year-old who works at a music company in Los Angeles, has shared his story of how he became a dogecoin millionaire in just a little over two months. He invested over $180,000 in dogecoin on Feb. 5 when its price was about 4.5 cents, the investor told CNBC Make It in an interview published Friday. He learned about the meme cryptocurrency on Reddit and was inspired by Tesla’s technoking Elon Musk who tweeted about DOGE on several occasions. Contessoto explained that he was drawn to dogecoin for a few reasons. Besides loving the Reddit community surrounding dogecoin, he said he appreciates that the crypto was inspired by Shiba Inu “Doge” meme. He is also very bullish on the co

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce believes that the U.S. government cannot ban bitcoin, stating that “it’s very difficult to ban something that’s essentially a peer-to-peer technology.” The commissioner is hopeful that with the new chairman who has deep knowledge of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, the SEC can take a fresh look at some of the reasons used to reject bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). SEC Commissioner Says ‘Very Difficult’ to Ban P2P Technology Hester Peirce, a commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) who is also known in the crypto community as “crypto mom,” was asked whether there is a possibility that the Biden administration could ban bitcoin in an interview with Fox Business’ Charles Gasparino on Thursday. With new cryptocurrency regulations in the works, investors are concerned whether the government will ban cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin. Some people have warned that governments can outlaw bitcoin if it becomes a risk to their fina