Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

Spain has not been a stranger to the popularity of cryptocurrencies, and with this popularity, also comes the attention of people and organizations wanting to capitalize on the subject. Spanish tribunals have been flooded lately with lawsuits involving cryptocurrency scams related to bitcoin and ethereum based platforms, and the people using these to scam other users for millions of euros. Cryptocurrency-Related Scams Flood Tribunals in Spain Tribunals from Spain are now being flooded with cryptocurrency scam-related cases, that are affecting thousands of citizens, according to local reports . With the recent price increase of cryptocurrencies, scammers are always looking to do a quick buck, and they have been successful in Spain. One of the biggest scams reported is the one associated with a company named Algorithms Group, which scammed more than 280 million euros from 300+ investors. The brain behind this scam is a man called Javier Biosca, who acted as a broker buying and sellin...

U.S. banking corporation BNY Mellon is gearing up to offer crypto custody services out of Dublin where it has just established a digital hub. The news coincided with a stark warning issued by a top central bank official in Ireland who said people should only buy bitcoin if they’re prepared to lose money. BNY Mellon to Provide Custody for Digital Assets Through Dublin-based Unit Following a decision to enter the cryptocurrency space announced in February, the Bank of New York Mellon has now created a “Digital Innovation Hub” in Dublin. The unit will act as a custodian for crypto assets, the Business Post reported, noting that with the move, “the banking giant, is betting on the future of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.” The hub will allow clients to hold, transfer and issue digital assets, the Irish publication detailed. Custodial services will be provided for a variety of assets including the cryptocurrency with the largest market cap, bitcoin ( BTC ), non-fungible tokens ( NF...

Statistics now show the Eth2 deposit contract has more than 5.2 million staked ether worth over $13 billion locked into the smart contract. The contract launched on November 4, 2020, and three weeks later, the contract met the required threshold to initiate the Beacon Chain. It’s not cheap to become a validator these days, as today’s exchange rates show the 32 ether to get started will run a user more than $84k. More Than $13 Billion Worth of Ether Locked Into the Eth2 Deposit Contract Ethereum users have added quite a bit of ether to the “ Eth2 deposit contract,” as it’s called on Etherscan as 5,210,370 ETH has been deposited to-date. That’s $13.6 billion worth of ether locked into the Beacon Chain contract, which was invoked six months and three weeks ago. At the time of writing, there’s more than a dozen 32 ETH-sized transactions waiting to be confirmed. In order for an individual to become a staking validator, 32 ether worth over $84k today is required. Dune Analytics statist...

On Monday, the publicly-listed enterprise mining firm Marathon Digital Holdings announced the company has adopted the latest codebase offered by Bitcoin Core developers that features Taproot. Marathon is now signaling for Taproot according to the announcement. The North American bitcoin miner further noted that the firm’s mining operation Marapool will “cease filtering transactions.” Marathon Adopts Bitcoin Core Version 0.21.1 With Taproot Privacy Features The firm Marathon Digital Holdings (Nasdaq: MARA), has been making a number of business moves in the bitcoin mining sector in 2021. In December 2020, the firm announced the purchase of 70,000 Antminer S19 bitcoin miners from Bitmain for $170 million. Last week, Marathon revealed that Compute North’s mining farm in Texas will host 73,000 of Marathon’s mining rigs. Furthermore, in more recent times, Marathon made headlines for censoring specific bitcoin transactions in a mined BTC block. At that time, Marathon revealed to the pu...

In May 2020, back when the crypto economy was still tumultuous from the coronavirus outbreak fears and gloomy global financial outlook, in general, the private venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) revealed the 500 million-dollar “Crypto Fund II.” A report published on May 27 by the tech writer Eric Newcomer indicates that Andreessen Horowitz is contemplating $2 billion in financing for the next crypto fund. Former Bloomberg Reporter Says ‘a16z in the Process of Tripling Down on Crypto’ The well known venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz back in 2009 has been a driving force in the crypto industry in regard to financing projects and startups. Marc Andreessen has been a firm believer in bitcoin for quite some time now and a16z has funneled millions of dollars into the industry during the last eight years. In recent times, Andreessen Horowitz launched two funds dedicated to the development of “crypto networks and businesses.” ...

Belt Finance, a Binance Smart Chain-based decentralized lending protocol, lost $6.3 million in a flash loan attack last week. The attackers took advantage of a series of inefficiencies in the smart contract to manipulate the price of the set and obtain profit from a series of transactions. This is just the last of a series of attacks that seem to be pointing to Binance Chain protocols due to their vulnerabilities. Belt Finance Loses $6.3 Million in Flash Loan Attack Belt Finance, a borrowing and loaning protocol that operates in the Binance Smart Chain suffered a flash attack last week that caused losses of over six million dollars. The attack, that used Pancakeswap as a tool for executing its strategy, used a series of operations to manipulate its belt/BUSD pool, a stable token in the protocol, and profit due to this inefficiency. The Belt Finance team declared in a post mortem report that the attackers managed to exploit this bug eight times before being detected. The team of Be...

There’s a number of tools, charts, and models traders use to help them forecast bitcoin price cycles and our last article discussed leveraging the Golden Ratio Multiplier. The following editorial discusses another method of bitcoin price prediction analysis by utilizing Logarithmic Growth Curves. In September 2019, a comprehensive paper published by Harold Christopher Burger describes how crypto proponents can visualize bitcoin price cycles using the Power-Law Corridor model. Bitcoin’s Logarithmic Growth Curve In order to give our readers some deeper perspective, Bitcoin.com News has been covering a few useful price models that technical analysts and crypto traders leverage to forecast bitcoin’s future prices. The previous report discussed the Golden Ratio Multiplier and how bitcoiners can use the well known golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence to predict future values. The next subject takes a look at how crypto enthusiasts can use Logarithmic Growth Curves to get some perspec...

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty dropped this week at block height 685,440 and saw the largest negative drop of the year losing close to 16%. Overall the global hashrate has dropped around 2% since the price fell below the $40k handle. Currently, the mining difficulty is around 21 trillion, and it could drop another 16% in less than two weeks. Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Slides Close to 16% Down Following 2021’s Largest Epoch Difficulty Rise The price of bitcoin ( BTC ) has seen better days and following the drop in price, the hashrate has also slowed down to a certain degree. On May 29, 2021, at block height 685,440 the Bitcoin network’s mining difficulty slid by 15.97% , which is the largest epoch drop of 2021. It also follows the largest difficulty rise in 2021, which occurred at block height 683,424. At that time, the mining difficulty jumped over 21.5% and the global hashrate was around 179.2 EH/s on May 13. Right now, the mining difficulty is expected to drop even more in 12 days ...

Indian central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has officially advised banks that its banking ban circular is no longer valid as it was set aside by the country’s supreme court more than one year ago. Despite the supreme court’s ruling, banks have been citing the RBI circular when dealing with cryptocurrency. RBI Tells Banks to Stop Quoting Its ‘No Longer Valid’ Circular on Cryptocurrency India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), issued a notice on Monday clarifying its position regarding cryptocurrencies. The notice, entitled “Customer Due Diligence for transactions in Virtual Currencies (VC),” aims at “all commercial and co-operative banks, payments banks, small finance banks, NBFCs, and payment system providers.” The RBI wrote: It has come to our attention through media reports that certain banks/ regulated entities have cautioned their customers against dealing in virtual currencies by making a reference to the RBI circular … dated April 06, 2018. The Apr...

The Japanese government’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) has issued a warning to the crypto derivatives exchange Bybit claiming that the trading platform is allowing residents of Japan access to the exchange. The news follows the Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda criticizing digital currencies for speculation. Japan’s FSA Warns Bybit Fintech Limited Japan’s top regulator that handles banking, securities and exchange, and insurance sectors within the economy has recently issued a warning to Bybit Fintech Limited. Bybit is a crypto derivatives exchange that offers digital currency futures, perpetual swaps, and other types of contracts to crypto asset traders. The FSA’s warning claims that Bybit’s operators are allowing Japanese citizens to leverage the platform and notes that the exchange has not registered with the regulator. The news has been spreading like wildfire on social media and people discussed how Binance was warned about the same thing three years ago. In 2018, J...

The Bitcoin.com team is excited to announce integration of Ethereum into the Bitcoin.com Wallet . That means anyone can now buy, receive, store, trade, and send ether ( ETH ) with the convenience and security of the industry’s most user-friendly, non-custodial wallet. How It Works When you open the Bitcoin.com Wallet , you’ll now see the Ethereum section in your home screen. Tapping the “ BUY ” button will prompt you to enter a purchase amount. If you’ve already set up your payment method, your purchase will go through instantly. It’s that easy! If you have other cryptocurrencies in your Wallet, you can now swap any amount for ETH – or vice versa. You can also send and receive ETH using the Bitcoin.com Wallet , just like you do with any other asset. You also have the option to import an existing Ethereum wallet. Just tap the “ ADD/IMPORT ” button on the home screen and scan the QR code or enter the 12-word secret phrase from your existing wallet. Your Digital Assets, i...

With rising unemployment rates and rampant economic uncertainty, in the wake of the Covid crisis, a growing number of Brazilians are finding an alternative income source in cryptocurrency mining. GPU rigs have been spotted even in favelas as a relatively small investment can return more than the average salary in Brazil. Pandemic and Uncertainty Turn More Brazilians to Cryptocurrency Mining The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has taken a heavy toll on Brazil and the country ranks among the hardest hit, with over 450,000 deaths due to Covid-19 . South America’s largest economy shrank by more than 4% in 2020 resulting in a record high unemployment for almost a decade – 14.3 million citizens are jobless, the national statistical office announced earlier this year. Low or no salaries, along with bleak economic perspectives, have pushed Brazilians to find new ways to make ends meet. According to a recent report by Portal do Bitcoin, a growing number of people in the country have been tur...

The Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea will lead government efforts to oversee the country’s expanding cryptocurrency market. The agency has been tasked with the job after prolonged discussions over which Korean regulator should be responsible for the industry. Financial Supervisory Service Takes Responsibility for Crypto Sector in Korea It took the government months to determine who’s going to take charge of crypto market oversight, the Korean Herald noted in an article published this weekend. The executive power in Seoul announced Friday that the task has been assigned to the Financial Supervisory Service ( FSS ), one of the country’s financial regulators. The agency will be monitoring closely the implementation of previously introduced regulatory measures, the newspaper elaborated. These include the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information. The latter imposes certain restrictions on cryptocurrency exchanges operating in South Korea. The ...

The Central Bank Of Brazil, the highest monetary authority of the country, has released a note listing the general guidelines for the design of a hypothetical central bank digital currency (CBDC) for the country. While there are still no concrete steps taken in this direction, at least the document recognizes there have been discussions about this possibility in the institution. Central Bank of Brazil Issues General CBDC Guidelines The Central Bank of Brazil, the economic authority of the South American country, has released a document where it specifies the general guidelines of a future Brazilian central bank digital currency (CBDC). The note, titled “Banco Central do Brasil releases general guideline for a Brazilian CBDC,” details the characteristics and traits that a hypothetical CBDC emitted by the institution will have in the future. Among the characteristics detailed in the document, apart from mentioning its use as a money substitute, its compliance with AML and anti-terro...

Ever since government officials in China started talking about cracking down on bitcoin mining and reiterating crypto guidelines from 2017, digital currency proponents and the media have been focused on this region. Just recently, a Chinese state-backed online publication revealed that the Sichuan Energy Regulatory Office plans to hold a meeting on June 2, 2021, to discuss the implications of bitcoin mining. Sichuan Energy Regulatory Office to Meet on June 2 to Discuss Crypto Mining In recent times, the Chinese government has been discussing the crypto economy to a greater degree and much of the conversation has been directed at bitcoin mining. China’s officials hope to get the country carbon neutral by the year 2060 and capture a good percentage of carbon neutrality by 2030. Following a few meetings from the country’s Financial Stability Board and other Chinese politicians, a number of crypto firms stopped offering services to mainland citizens. Companies that started severing ...