Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

Just recently, the Bitcoin Cash community has been discussing the large number of transactions the network has been seeing on a daily basis during the last month. Statistics show that bitcoin cash daily transactions have been increasing every day since the last week of 2020. Bitcoin Cash miners have processed upwards of 300,000+ daily transactions on various days during the past week. The crypto economy and myriad of blockchain networks have been getting a lot more attention during the last few months. Not only has a number of digital assets jumped tremendously in value, but many of these tokens are seeing increased usage as well. More recently, Bitcoin Cash proponents have been noticing that the BCH chain is handling a whole lot more transactions than usual. Since the last week of December 2020, BCH transaction counts per day have steadily risen northbound and have come awfully close to matching the Bitcoin ( BTC ) network’s daily output. At the time of writing, onchain data ...

The founder and chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund firm, has clarified his view on bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Ray Dalio also reveals that he and his colleagues at Bridgewater “are intently focusing on alternative storehold of wealth assets.” Bridgewater Founder Ray Dalio ‘Greatly’ Admires Bitcoin Ray Dalio, founder and chief investment officer of Bridgewater, has clarified his view on bitcoin and revealed what his company has in store for cryptocurrency. With about $140 billion in assets under management, his hedge fund is the largest in the world. AICIO Magazine and Wired Magazine have called Dalio the “Steve Jobs of Investing,” and TIME Magazine has named him one of the 100 Most Influential People. In a research note published on the Bridgewater Associates’ website on Thursday, Dalio wrote: “I am writing this to clarify what I think of bitcoin. Please pay attention to what I am saying here and not what those in the media are saying...

Fidelity Digital Assets President Tom Jessop has shared his view on the future of bitcoin and cryptocurrency regulation under the Biden administration. He confirms that Fidelity is seeing strong demand for bitcoin from institutional buyers. Fidelity Digital Assets’ Head Optimistic About the Future of Bitcoin Jessop explained what he expects in terms of cryptocurrency regulation from the Biden administration in an interview with CNBC last week. Jessop is head of Corporate Business Development for Fidelity Investments and president of Fidelity Digital Assets. He began by talking about Joe Biden’s pick as the new chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler. Given the MIT blockchain professor’s experience in the space, Jessop said, “I think it paints a more generally constructive attitude, or a picture, in terms of what we might expect going forward.” The Fidelity Digital Assets head also believes that positive crypto regulations implemented during the...

The Pirate Bay has been the world’s most popular torrent web portal for the last eighteen years. Despite a few hiccups during that time, the site remains accessible via mirrors and proxy websites. In addition to remaining online, Pirate Bay has been accepting bitcoin for donations since 2013 acquiring more than $4.5 million worth since then. The Pirate Bay’s Bitcoin Stash Since 2003, when it was founded by the Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, the Pirate Bay has been the most popular, and perhaps the most beloved torrent website in the world. The web portal is basically an index of digital content hosted online so users can download, own, and seed the content via Bittorrent technology. Of course, in 2009, the Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, and Fredrik Neij got into some trouble over copyright laws. While the founders dealt with prison sentences during that time, the Pirate Bay continued to operate and in 2013, the web portal announced it was accepting bitc...

A cryptocurrency fund manager has been charged in a U.S. federal court. He allegedly took over $5 million from investors interested in investing in his crypto funds, promising them high returns. In reality, he was running a Ponzi scheme and is now facing up to 30 years in prison. Crypto Fund Manager Arrested for Running a Ponzi Scheme The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday that Jeremy Spence has been arrested and charged in Manhattan federal court in a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme. The 24-year-old from Bristol, Rhode Island, is also known as “Coin Signals.” Spence is “a cryptocurrency trader who solicited funds for various cryptocurrency funds that he operated, with commodities fraud and wire fraud offenses,” the DOJ described, adding: Spence took cryptocurrency worth over $5 million from more than 170 individual investors after making false representations in connection with these cryptocurrency funds. U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss explained that the defenda...

A U.S. federal judge has rejected a motion filed by a former Ethereum Foundation developer over allegations of assisting North Korea to bypass sanctions. Prosecutors claim, Virgil Griffith, aided the regime by providing critical information on cryptocurrencies. Prosecutors Say Griffith’s Speech Was About the Use of Cryptos to Circumvent Sanctions Per Law360 , a jury is now set to determine if Griffith violated the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by giving a speech at the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference in 2019. Kevin Castel, a U.S. District Judge, denied Griffith’s motion because the “short and vague” four-page indictment lacked specific details of his alleged criminal actions. He further commented on the matter: Examining the indictment in light of the parties’ arguments, the court concludes that it provides adequate notice of the charges against Griffith sufficient to enable him to prepare for trial and, if it becomes necessary, plead double jeopa...

The Indian government has finally moved forward with a cryptocurrency bill. Entitled “The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2021,” the bill has been listed for consideration in the current parliamentary session of Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament. It seeks to create a framework for India’s official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) but prohibit all cryptocurrencies. Indian Government Set to Introduce Cryptocurrency Bill in Current Parliamentary Session After almost two years of waiting, the Indian government has finally moved forward with a cryptocurrency bill. According to Lok Sabha’s bulletin dated Jan. 29, the bill entitled “The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2021” is listed for consideration in the current parliamentary session. The budget session of Parliament commenced on Friday and will conclude on April 8, with a recess between Feb. 15 and March 8. The union budget w...

Ukraine’s government-owned nuclear power plant picked a firm to build a massive data center in Rivne for cryptocurrency mining operations. After a bidding process, Energoatom chose Kyiv Energy Construction Company to handle the nuclear plant crypto mining project. Nuclear Power Plant Operator Expects to Launch the Data Center in 2022 According to official documents , the data center will be based in the Rivne nuclear power plant, after the construction firm got 8.92 million Hryvnia ($317,620) in funding. The only competitor in the bidding was Ukrenergobudproek. However, they allegedly made an expensive offer, said the regional news outlet Forklog . The Kyiv Energy Construction Company expects to finish the data center building by August 31, 2022. Per the announcement, the contractor is required to send the documentation that details the whole process. It includes “host state registers, electronic archives, and computing facilities.” In terms of technical details, the nuclear power...

The San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase recently announced the company plans to do a direct listing, as opposed to following the initial public offering (IPO) route. The decision means that Coinbase can float its shares on an exchange without hiring a financial institution to underwrite the settlements. Coinbase to Skip IPO Process, Shoots for a Direct Listing Just recently people familiar with the matter received a tip that the exchange giant Coinbase had plans to sell shares privately ahead of the IPO. In mid-December, Coinbase revealed the confidential filing of an S-1 initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. However, on January 28, 2021, Coinbase announced a proposed direct listing as opposed to the IPO that was initially planned. For instance, a few weeks prior rumors spread that Goldman Sachs would be the exchange’s underwriter. On Thursday Coinbase wrote: Coinbase Global, Inc. today announced its intent to become a publ...

Bitcoin mining rig manufacturers are dealing with a semiconductor supply crunch according to regional reports stemming from China. There’s been a global semiconductor supply shortage and it’s affecting nearly every type of business in the supply chain that manufactures cars, PCs, laptops, smartphones, and cryptocurrency mining devices. Moreover, the recent shortage has invoked the demand for second-hand and older generation mining rigs. Semiconductor Shortage Complicates Mining Rig Manufacturing Currently, the world is dealing with a semiconductor supply crunch which has been spurred by the aftermath of Covid-19 and the lockdowns. Automobile makers, PC manufacturers, smartphone production, and almost every electronics manufacturer under the sun is dealing with this issue. For instance, reports detail that auto giants like Toyota Motors, Nissan, Ford, Volkswagen, and more have been chomping at the bit to obtain microchips from suppliers like TSMC. On January 27, 2021, the financial...

As bitcoin struggles to kickstart yet another record-breaking rally, Scott Minerd, the CIO at Guggenheim Investments says this could be down to the inadequate institutional support. According to Minerd’s assessment, this lack of sufficient institutional investor support means it will be hard for bitcoin to trade above $30,000. The CIO, however, thinks the viability of the crypto as “an asset class is still very likely.” In a short video , Minerd chronicles bitcoin’s rise and how the crypto initially did not have a large enough market capitalization to attract institutions. However, after the crypto rose to $10,000, perceptions changed. The CIO explains: When we had bitcoin at $10,000, it was pretty easy to see that there was a clear path to $20,000.Once it went past $20,000 you could definitely see based on technical work how you could get to $35,000 or even higher. Minerd, who has previously predicted a maximum price of $400,000 for the BTC , says the current investor base is ...

The infamous meme token dogecoin has been skyrocketing in value rising more than 325.21% during the last 24 hours. After remaining below a U.S. cent for years, the humorous crypto asset is now exchanging hands for $0.05 per unit. The reason behind the big dogecoin price spike is similar to the recent Gamestop/Wallstreetbets story as a Reddit group called Satoshistreetbets has been behind the recent pump. In April 2019, the Tesla founder Elon Musk said dogecoin (DOGE) was his “fav cryptocurrency.” In June 2020, day traders from Tiktok decided to encourage people to buy dogecoin in order to get the price per unit up to a dollar. The dollar price per DOGE never came to fruition, but the crypto asset saw some significant gains from the pump. Then during the first week of January 2021, news.Bitcoin.com reported on dogecoin gathering well over 500% gains during the year. Now the K-9 crypto asset is making headlines again as the price has been surging during the last 24 hours. DOGE ...

Another class-action lawsuit has been filed against Ripple Labs and CEO Brad Garlinghouse. This lawsuit follows the one filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleging that the defendants sold XRP , which it considers unregistered security, for over $1.38 billion. The lawsuit, filed Monday in a Florida district court alleges that the “sale of XRP cryptocurrency tokens to Florida residents” violates Florida securities laws. The suit names Ripple Lab Inc., XRP II LLC, and Garlinghouse as the defendants. They have allegedly sold “millions of dollars (or more)” in XRP tokens since 2013 without registering either with federal or Florida authorities. Recently, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs, Garlinghouse, and co-founder Christian Larsen alleging that they sold over 14.6 billion units of XRP for at least $1.38 billion. After the SEC’s lawsuit, several major cryptocurrency exchanges delisted XRP , including...

PRESS RELEASE. PARSIQ , a blockchain monitoring and workflow automation platform connecting on-chain and off-chain applications in real-time, announced that its PRQ token is now listed on OKEx with USDT base pair. Please take note of the following go-live schedule: PRQ Deposit : 07:00am January 28, 2021 (UTC) PRQ Spot Trading : PRQ / USDT : 10:00am January 28, 2021 (UTC) PRQ Withdrawal : 10:00 January 29, 2021 (UTC) PARSIQ is a blockchain monitoring and workflow automation platform that serves as a multi-level bridge between blockchains and off-chain applications. PARSIQ’s features automate the blockchain analytics and monitoring process, providing customizable workflows with real-time intelligence. Developers and individual users can transform the blockchain data to their favorite off-chain application or web service. Among the obvious use cases is monitoring the wallets of traders and ordinary users. Among the non-obvious are complex system integrations for financial ins...

Canadian investment management firm Ninepoint has completed an initial public offering (IPO) of its bitcoin fund on the Toronto stock exchange. The company says the offering is the largest IPO of a bitcoin investment fund in Canada to date. Ninepoint Partners announced Wednesday that its Bitcoin Trust has completed an initial public offering (IPO) of CAD$230 million ($180 million). “It is the largest initial public offering of a bitcoin investment fund in Canada to date,” said John Wilson, Ninepoint’s co-CEO and managing partner. The fund’s Class A units are now trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange in both U.S. dollars and Canadian dollars under the symbols BITC.U and BITC.UN respectively. The fund seeks to provide investors with exposure to bitcoin “through an institutional-quality platform that is cost-efficient” to them and “to provide a secure, simpler and exchange-traded investment alternative for buying and holding bitcoin.” The fund invests in BTC directly. ...