Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

A speechwriter for former U.S. President George W. Bush and a bitcoin critic, David Frum has claimed that the low-interest rates are fueling the crypto asset’s rally. Frum suggests that the crypto asset might experience a “fast and deep price crash” if and when interest rates start to rise. Institutional Interest in BTC In comments made via Twitter, Frum, who regurgitates the BTC mining inefficiency claims, also attacks the crypto asset’s store of the value proposition. He states that of “all the pro-bitcoin arguments, surely the worst is the store against inflation.” Still, despite this criticism, the crypto asset continues to gain support from institutional investors and large companies. For instance, electric carmaker Tesla, which recently amended its investment policy, revealed it had bought BTC worth $1.5 billion. Furthermore, according to bitcointreasuries.org , the website that tracks companies or institutions that have exposure to BTC , over 1.3 million coins or 6% of...

PRESS RELEASE. While Bitcoin and the greatest part of altcoins are going down, Pteria DAO’s token PTERIA could not be outdone and is currently on Mars, exceeding $40. The moon is now too close, so Mars is the real new all time high to reach. However, the token, listed for the first time on decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap and Balancer just a few months ago, today marks its all time high and is now worth over $40, as you can see on Coinmarketcap or Coingecko . Recently Pteria announced its interesting staking project that offers up to 24% annual reward for those who block its PTERIA tokens and vote for the DAO’s proposals. Currently, in less than a month, over 2 million tokens have been staked on the platform called Aragon . Pteria and Wallem All of this is happening at a time when due to Covid-19 and related worldwide lockdowns and curfews, the Wallem project, the first game to use the PTERIA token, is on a hiatus. Like Pokémon Go, Wallem allows you to capture ...

One of Cape Cod’s largest hospitals received two bitcoin donations this year totaling $800,000 in value. The Massachusetts-based not-for-profit medical centre (NPO), Cape Cod Healthcare, explained that an anonymous donor donated $400k last Friday and the NPO received a $400k bitcoin donation last month as well. Cape Cod Healthcare Gets $800K in Bitcoin Donations The hospital Cape Cod Healthcare (CCHC) is considered one of the leading providers of healthcare services in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. This week, the NPO told the Boston Globe staff member Anissa Gardizy that it received two bitcoin ( BTC ) donations worth $800,000. CCHC’s senior vice president and chief development officer, Christopher Lawson, said the donor wished to remain anonymous and sent an email last month asking the hospital to accept BTC donations. Lawson said the donor had helped CCHC before the two crypto donations, and had just recently asked if the hospital would accept his BTC gift. Lawson told Gardizy tha...

The rollercoaster-ride in cryptocurrency prices on Monday was accompanied by Binance’s fresh restrictions for ethereum and ERC-20 tokens. Ethereum Network Congestion Fingered as the Culprit for the Temporary Halt Through the official Binance Twitter account , one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges by volume, announced that it had “temporarily suspended withdrawals of $ ETH and ethereum-based tokens” due to network congestion while underscoring that user funds were SAFU (Secure Asset Fund for Users). #Binance has temporarily suspended withdrawals of $ETH and Ethereum-based tokens due to high network congestion. Rest assured funds are #SAFU and we apologize for any inconvenience caused. Updates to follow. — Binance (@binance) February 22, 2021 Although Binance has since reversed its earlier decision and restored service in an announcement 37 minutes after its first tweet, traders were quick to pile on with the criticism. This latest move came amid a spike in ...

South Korean financial watchdogs are about to start overseeing crypto-related activities in the nation, and additional barriers for exchanges keep appearing. Moreover, one of the South Korean regulatory bodies codified the measures announced last year on privacy coin listings. No Major Domestic Exchanges Can List a Privacy-Centric Crypto-Asset According to Electronic Times , the Financial Services Commission’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) confirmed that all privacy coins would be delisted from the domestic cryptocurrency exchanges. The watchdog argued that difficulties in determining transaction details carry a high risk of money laundering through such cryptocurrencies. Although the FIU just confirmed it, the local press first reported the measure in November 2020. The FIU pledged to ban privacy coins such as monero ( XMR ) and zcash (ZEC). South Korean platforms such as Okex have since been forced to delist several privacy coins to align with the anti-money laundering (AM...

“The most important lesson I learned was the power of showing up.” Safiya Walker reflects on her time running track at Brown University and the sense of responsibility she felt toward her teammates, coaches and the family, friends and fellow students who supported her throughout her athletic journey. “Even if you’ve been up all night … Continued The post Black at Ripple’s Safiya Walker on the Importance of Inclusion and Always Showing Up appeared first on Ripple. http://dlvr.it/RtG06y

On February 22, 2021, an author published a post on substack.com about an anonymous Twitter account that may have belonged to the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto. The researcher discovered a Twitter account dubbed ‘Goldlover,’ and found some interesting coincidences with the account’s tweets and Bitcoin’s creator. The Curious Goldlover Tweets An author called Varun published an interesting analysis of a specific Twitter account that may or may not belong to Bitcoin’s creator. Varun said in his research analysis that he stumbled upon the Twitter account called ‘Goldlover,’ and noticed that the account was quite “chatty” for a period of time. Running bitcoin — halfin (@halfin) January 11, 2009 The researcher also said that Satoshi Nakamoto was the same way up until the inventor left the community for good. The Goldlover account ( @fafcffacfff ) was created in May 2008 and Varun says that a script was written. The Goldlover tweets mentioned gold quite often, and Varun’s findings s...

On February 19, the Canadian podcaster and Freedomain Radio host, Stefan Molyneux, discussed his thoughts about bitcoin following the crypto asset’s tumultuous rise capturing over a trillion-dollar market valuation. Molyneux’s recent speech describes the liberating potential bitcoin could bring to the masses and how the crypto network has the ability to change humanity for the better. ‘Bitcoin Is a Currency That Serves the People at the Expense of the Parasites’ Just recently the crypto evangelist and philosopher, Stefan Molyneux, spoke about the Bitcoin blockchain in great detail. Molyneux opened his speech by answering a question about BTC and ETH having a hard time scaling. The Freedomain radio host said that it is good to critique, but that people in the crypto space wouldn’t give up so easily. Molyneux mentioned that bitcoin’s market capitalization just crossed the trillion-dollar milestone and noted that the people who have added that value won’t throw in the towel. He i...

Veteran trader Peter Brandt has implied in a tweet that bitcoin will go through deep price corrections before it gets to the $200,000 mark. Brandt points to the 2015-17 bull run when bitcoin went through similar corrections about nine times as the precedent the crypto asset might follow. More Corrections Expected Consequently, Brandt is asking his Twitter followers to predict the number of similar 30% price corrections that they expect to see before BTC ultimately gets to the $200,000. Already, as Brandt explains in the tweet, the crypto asset has gone through one such correction since the March 2020 price crash. Nevertheless, since then the crypto asset, whose price grew by more than 300% in 2020, has been on an upward trend. On February 21, the crypto asset set a new all-time high of $58,228, according to Messari data. As a consequence, some bitcoiners now predict that a price of $100,000 can be achieved in 2021. In the meantime on Twitter, the reaction to Brandt’s BTC pric...

The recent ramp higher in cryptocurrency prices has assuredly attracted its fair share of cheerleaders and detractors alike, but the reality of this climb has been a concurrent increase in network fees from rising transaction volumes. Binance is Blamed for Purposely Choking Ethereum’s Network to Drive More Users to Its Own Platform The resulting volumes have clogged networks like Ethereum, which have seen gas costs climb almost 20x over the last 12 months . For the growing DeFi market, these sky-high costs have elicited significant criticism from the community and mobilized the ecosystem to hunt for more affordable options. Enter Binance, which may dethrone Ethereum as the new DeFi hotspot due to its interoperability and lower transaction costs. Binance Smart Chain (BSC), which works on a Proof of Authority (POA) model, is centralized (Binance picks the authorities that run each node) relative to Ethereum’s entirely decentralized approach. This has prompted some users to criticize...

Nvidia announced that it will start limiting the efficiency of mining ethereum or any other crypto using its new range of upcoming graphics processing units (GPUs). In a blog post published Feb. 19, the U.S. hardware maker said this limitation will feature first on its new Geforce RTX 3060 card, which is scheduled for release on Feb. 25. Nvidia revealed that the new GPU software drivers are designed to detect specific attributes of the ether ( ETH ) mining algorithm, and limit the hash rate, or cryptocurrency mining efficiency, by around 50%. However, the software won’t limit the efficiency of all crypto mining activities, Itpro reported , “with the limiter only activating when processes use Dagger Hashimoto or Ethash-like algorithms.” The Nasdaq-listed firm is hoping that the restriction will discourage the purchase of gaming-oriented graphics cards for large ethereum mining operations. ETH is one of a few coins that can still be mined using graphics cards. GPUs, which are mai...

Russia’s parliament has advanced the bill that proposes to recognize cryptocurrencies as property. The proposed law will provide legal protection for cryptocurrencies but income from their activities will also be subject to taxation. Cryptocurrencies to Be Considered Property in Russia Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of Parliament, adopted a bill that recognizes cryptocurrencies as property and subjects income from them to taxation in the first reading, RIA Novosti reported last week. Noting that the document was submitted to the parliament by the government on Dec. 1, 2020, the publication detailed: The bill proposes to recognize digital currency as property for the application of the tax code. As Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin explained earlier, this will allow the owner of the cryptocurrency to count on legal protection and defend his rights in court. Prime Minister Mishustin talked about the Russian government’s plans to recognize cryptocurrencies as property back in...

While the decentralized finance (DeFi) space is not new, it has experienced massive growth to surpass $37 billion. Consequently, the sector attracted a lot of attention, which, in turn, led to the unearthing of multiple deficiencies that the industry has. As a result, many projects have been continuously cropping up to address these issues. While the projects are working at a record pace to tackle these challenges, the industry still has a lot of upgrading to do. Enhance the DeFi Experience Chipping in to help solve one of DeFi’s insufficiencies is CyberFi , a startup that seeks to offer intelligent trading and enhanced automation to make DeFi user-friendly. The project is a new-gen intelligent trading and automation platform (ITAP). It is described as a multi-product ecosystem that comprises automation products, seeking to enhance the DeFi experience. CyberFi is the first platform of its kind that aims to fill a gap in DeFi trading by addressing a variety of issues, including hig...

The price of bitcoin has climbed to phenomenal heights during the last few weeks and this has fueled the crypto asset’s mining sector a great deal. Despite the fact that the Bitcoin network’s mining difficulty has never been higher at 21.72 trillion, the hashrate has climbed to a whopping 180 exahash per second (EH/s) and there’s 23 mining pools dedicating significant hashrate to the Bitcoin blockchain. 180 Exahash and a 21.72 Trillion Difficulty Bitcoin (BTC) continues to climb higher and higher in value and on Sunday the crypto asset tapped another all-time price high. BTC reached a whopping $58,300 price per unit on February 21, and the asset’s market valuation captured 1.09 trillion in value. The price of BTC has made bitcoin mining extremely profitable as next-generation mining rigs are making bountiful profits. For instance, the Microbt manufactured Whatsminer M30S++ with 112 terahash per second (TH/s) gets $37 a day. The popular Bitmain Antminer S19 Pro (110 TH/s) gets a...