Crypto Fight

2021-06-26 20:00:42 ​​Institutions have no appetite for Bitcoin at this price level: JPMorgan.

JPMorgan does not expect a bull run for Bitcoin over the medium term based on the BTC-to-gold volatility ratio.


As Bitcoin’s (BTC) price failed to hold its breath above $35,000 on Thursday, JPMorgan expects an overall bearish movement below the critical price level based on the BTC-to-gold volatility ratio.

In a note sent to investors on Wednesday, JPMorgan detailed its reasoning to see the fair value of Bitcoin between $23,000 and $35,000 over the medium term. The banking giant previously pictured a $140,000 roadmap if the biggest cryptocurrency matches gold’s allocation and volatility profile.

But that’s off the table for the foreseeable future, according to JPMorgan’s note, which predicts that “full convergence or equalization of volatilities or allocations between gold and Bitcoin is unlikely in the foreseeable future.“

JPMorgan also said that China’s crackdown on mining operations would have a positive impact on Bitcoin over the medium term, “as it accelerates a shift away from China’s high share in bitcoin’s hash rate, reducing concentration.”

Not many institutions are joining MicroStrategy’s hunt to buy the dip. “More than a month after the May 19 crypto crash, bitcoin funds continue to bleed, even as inflows into physical gold ETFs stopped,” JPMorgan said, adding:

“This suggests that institutional investors, who tend to invest via regulated vehicles such as publicly listed bitcoin funds or CME bitcoin futures, still exhibit little appetite to buy the bitcoin dip.”
Related: Bitcoin price dips below $34K as day of Grayscale’s BTC unlocking draws near

According to JPMorgan, another major factor preventing a possible bull run is the end of a six-month lock-up period for the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust fund, which saw a nearly $4-billion inflow in December and January. As Cointelegraph reported, July 19 will see the most significant single unlocking day, with 16,000 BTC worth around $627 million released.

Following the April all-time high, Bitcoin has been hovering between $30,000 and $40,000 for the last couple of weeks. After diving below $29,000 on Tuesday, BTC’s price is moving around $34,000, according to Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView data. Open / Comment

2021-06-22 20:00:54 ​​Iran government reportedly bans local blockchain association.

A crypto warning list is the main cause of the ban, according to the head of the Iran Blockchain Community.

The Ministry of Interior of the Islamic Republic of Iran has blocked the activities of the Iran Blockchain Community (IBC), but the association claims they still haven’t received direct notice.

The Social Affairs Organization of the Ministry required reports on IBC’s financial performance and dealings with cryptocurrency exchanges via a notice posted in local newspaper Hamshahri Online last week, according to local sources.

Over the weekend, the ministry blocked the association’s activities, but IBC spokesperson Sepehr Mohammadi, who is also the CEO of one of two crypto exchanges listed as sponsors of the association’s website, said no verbal or written warning was given to the board members.

In an open letter to the Social Affairs Organization, the IBC chairman noted that monitoring the performance of blockchain ecosystem participants is the right of the association. He added that issuing and publishing warning lists for new users to avoid traps is also a mission for the IBC.

High-risk Iranian companies involved in crypto were on the IBC warning list, so Mohammadi believes this is the leading cause of the ban. “Vested interests will do anything to stop IBC's efforts. They managed to publicize the notice before IBA was informed,” he added.

According to the local media, a member of the parliament accused crypto-related domestic nongovernmental organizations of transferring foreign currency overseas. As one of the NGOs in the crypto and blockchain space, IBC denied the claim and said the association is focused on promoting blockchain technology in the country.

Following a “summer ban” for crypto mining, Iran is seeking healthy regulation for cryptocurrencies. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the country needs to legalize cryptocurrency activities to preserve and protect national interests. He called for a joint study between different parties to establish a legal framework for cryptocurrencies. Open / Comment

2021-06-19 12:01:18 ​​New DAO launches after $230M funding round including Peter Thiel, Alan Howard.

A new decentralized autonomous organization, BitDAO, announced its launch with a $230 million private sale and major contributions from Singapore-based Bybit.

BitDAO, a new decentralized autonomous organization, is launching after a $230 million funding round led by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel.

BitDAO announced its DAO launch on Tuesday in conjunction with completing a private sale from initial partners led by Thiel, Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital and Founders Fund.

Other investors included billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard, liquidity platform Spartan Group, Jump Capital, Fenbushi and Kain Warwick of DeFi protocol Synthetix, among a total of more than 20 players in the decentralized finance industry.

Bybit, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges, is a major initial proponent of BitDAO, pledging recurring contributions to the new DAO at launch. The company specifically pledged a contribution of 2.5 basis points of its futures contracts’ trading volume to the BitDAO treasury, which is expected to generate over $1 billion per year based on this year's run rates, the DAO said.

BitDAO’s recurring contributions-powered treasury will be used to provide liquidity as well as to drive new protocols such as decentralized exchanges, lending and synthetics protocols.

According to the announcement, BitDAO also plans to support blockchain projects through grants, and aid existing and emerging projects through token swaps.

A spokesperson for BitDAO told Cointelegraph that the DAO will hire both permanent and project-based teams, including advisers from Spartan and Dragonfly, and developers from Sushiswap.

The DeFi industry has seen a notable decline in recent months due to a major sell-off on the cryptocurrency markets. According to DeFi data provider DefiLlama, the market topped in mid-May at a total value locked (TVL) of around $158 billion. At the time of writing, DeFi TVL amounts to $128 billion. Open / Comment

2021-06-14 21:00:33 ​​Bitcoin Taproot upgrade finally locked-in, activation set for November.

With Taproot achieving the 90% critical consensus mark among mining nodes, all is now set for Bitcoin soft fork activation later in November.

The Taproot upgrade has achieved the first significant milestone on the road to activation as 90% of the Bitcoin (BTC) mining hash rate signaled for the protocol improvement within the current difficulty epoch.

Data from Taprootwatch, a webpage created by Bitcoin developer Hampus Sjöberg, shows the lock-in stage is now completed.

All recognized mining pools signaled for the upgrade with Slush Pool being the first to do so. It is perhaps fitting that Slush Pool also mined block 687285 that sealed the Taproot lock-in.

AntPool and F2Pool — the top two Bitcoin mining pools by hash rate share — were also among one of the earliest supporters of the Taproot activation in the BTC mining arena

In a conversation with Cointelegraph Bitcoin core developer Pieter Wuille explained the activation step for Taproot, stating: “According to BIP341, once locked in, activation is automatic at block height 709632 - expected around November 14, 2021.”

Wuille also commented on the significance of Taproot, adding:

“It's the first consensus change since Segwit activated in august 2017. It extends Bitcoin's script capabilities in ways that make certain things cheaper (especially more complex applications like multisig and layer 2 things), and somewhat more private by often hiding what the exact spending rules were.”

According to Wuille, the activation in November is only the beginning as the real work will be building the software to leverage the benefits of the protocol improvement.

June 12’s historic significance for Bitcoin has also moved beyond Taproot as the day seen a record number of transactions mined in a single block. Data from blockchain explorer Blockchair shows 4,075 transactions in block height 687249.

This record figure is almost twice the average transactions per block recorded on June 11 and is four times the typical transaction count for Bitcoin blocks.

With hash rate declining amid mining restrictions in China, Saturday’s transaction count average might be due to a slowdown in block production forcing more transactions to be included in a single block. Open / Comment

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2021-06-11 19:00:22 ​​IMF plans to meet with El Salvador’s president, potentially discussing move to adopt Bitcoin.

The International Monetary Fund has previously spoken out against smaller nations like the Marshall Islands recognizing a digital currency as legal tender.

The International Monetary Fund has said El Salvador’s recent decision to make Bitcoin legal tender in the country may raise legal and financial concerns.

In a Thursday press briefing from the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, spokesperson Gerry Rice said the group was already in discussions with lawmakers in El Salvador over a loan to support the country’s economy, having approved emergency funds related to the pandemic last year. However, Rice said an IMF team would be meeting with President Nayib Bukele today and implied crypto would be a likely topic for discussion.

“Adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender raises a number of macroeconomic, financial and legal issues that require very careful analysis,” said Rice. “We are following developments closely, and we’ll continue our consultations with the authorities.”

Spokespeople for the IMF have often voiced concerns about countries adopting digital currency. In March, the group issued a similar warning against the Marshall Islands’ recognizing its digital sovereign currency, called SOV, as legal tender, as it may pose similar legal and financial risks. In that case, a spokesman said the islands’ local economy had been strained by the economic fallout of the pandemic and likely wouldn’t be corrected with the SOV.

In the case of El Salvador, the time between the introduction of ideas and action is seemingly short. President Bukele first announced he would propose a bill making Bitcoin (BTC) legal tender in El Salvador at a pre-recorded video message at the Bitcoin 2021 conference this weekend. The legislation passed with a supermajority in the nation's Legislative Assembly yesterday.

Though the country is still seeking support from the IMF related to the pandemic this year, it has already begun to consider the energy needs of Bitcoin miners. Bukele said he would be instructing state-owned electrical company LaGeo, to make certain facilities available to miners to utilize geothermal power from the country’s volcanoes — El Salvador currently operates the two geothermal plants in Ahuachapán and Berlín.

“Crypto assets can pose significant risks,” said Rice. “Effective regulatory measures are very important when dealing with them.” Open / Comment

2021-06-07 20:00:34 ​​Bitcoin 2021 conference Miami: Here’s what you missed so far.

We've rounded up a few notable moments from the first day of the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida.

The first official day of the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida yielded no shortage of newsworthy events. Thousands of conference-goers came together to take in speeches, interviews and panels from a wide array of guests, such as Miami mayor Francis Suarez, who spoke about the city’s efforts “to create the Bitcoin, blockchain and mining capital of the world.” Suarez’s track record is filled with various forms of involvement in the crypto and blockchain space, as he noted in his speech.

“The days of a currency being tethered to a central bank are coming to an end,” Suarez said after expressing several favorable views about Bitcoin, including: “The U.S. will become a powerhouse for clean energy Bitcoin mining.”

Other speakers, panelists and interviewees included Kraken head of growth Dan Held, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor and Draper Fisher Jurvetson founder Tim Draper, among many others. Peter McCormack, the host of the What Bitcoin Did podcast, maintained one of the conference stages for some of the day’s action, introducing guests.

During Michael Saylor’s time on stage, he was asked about his experience in the crypto space so far. “I realized that I first bought Bitcoin one year ago yesterday, and so this is the end of my rookie year,” Saylor said.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also spoke at the conference today on the topic of the bankless population. “Internet needs a native currency,” he said during his interview. “We need to be able to transact with it every single day.”

During a later on-stage discussion, Binance US CEO Brian Brooks said: “If you’ve never worked in a big bank, you have no idea how bad the problem is.” Brooks previously served with the United States Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Before joining the regulatory body, he had several career stops, including spending years with OneWest Bank N.A.

Be sure to follow Cointelegraph on Twitter to keep up with all the latest happenings at Bitcoin 2021. Open / Comment

2021-06-04 19:00:51 ​​Iota 2.0 ‘Nectar’ DevNet goes live to achieve full decentralization.

The Nectar DevNet follows on the heels of the Chrysalis upgrade and is an expansion of the Pollen Testnet released back in June 2020.

The roadmap to Iota 2.0 has reached another milestone as the Iota Foundation launches the Nectar DevNet.

In a blog post published on Wednesday, the Iota developer announced the news of the Nectar DevNet launch, which forms an essential part of the preparatory work for the release of Iota 2.0 slated for late 2021.

The Nectar DevNet follows on the heels of the Chrysalis upgrade and is an expansion of the Pollen Testnet released back in June 2020. The Iota 2.0 DevNet sets the stage for the transition to a feeless, permissionless and fully decentralized Tangle network.

According to the announcement, the absence of a centralized coordinator is one of the major elements of the Nectar DevNet. Indeed, in Iota 2.0, the legacy Coordinator system will be replaced by a decentralized Coordicide.

Back in February 2020, hackers attacked Trinity — Iota’s native wallet — stealing about $2 million and causing a network downtime that lasted almost a month to prevent further damage from the attack.

Since the Trinity wallet hack, Iota has moved forward with its planned transition to full decentralization and the emergence of an incentivized Coordicide. According to the release, the Iota Foundation revealed that Nectar will rely on network consensus validation with honest nodes earning “mana” as rewards.

Commenting on how mana will incentivize adoption, William Sanders, director of research at the Iota Foundation, told Cointelegraph:

“Incentive to participate arises from the demand to use the network. Users who want to use our DApps, spend our tokens, or secure data on the Tangle, have a natural incentive to acquire mana to use the Tangle. Mana is not a token since it cannot be traded, and its value will be always be dependent on the demand for access to the network.”

Apart from feeless transactions and complete decentralization, tokenization capability is another major feature of the Nectar Iota 2.0 DevNet. The research prototype offers the first opportunities for creating digital assets like utility “coins” and nonfungible tokens on the Iota network.

Commenting on the Nectar DevNet release, Iota Foundation co-founder Dominik Schiener called the Iota 2.0 research prototype a “game-changer.” According to Schiener, the Iota developers are eager to receive useful feedback on Nectar’s capabilities in preparation for the main Coordicide update.

Back in March, Iota released the Alpha version of its smart contract protocol to enable trustless cross-chain transfers. Indeed, cross-chain interoperability is becoming a major focal point in the blockchain ecosystem. Open / Comment

2021-05-31 19:00:38 ​​Australian tax office: Report crypto profits or else.

The ATO said it already knows who is invested in cryptocurrencies and expects cooperation.

The Australian Taxation Office has urged citizens to accurately report any profits made in the process of trading cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), anticipating tax filings from a pool of 600,000 Aussies who it now believes to be invested in digital assets.

The ATO’s assistant commissioner, Tim Loh, told News that people still make the mistake of treating crypto like a currency as opposed to an asset. The ATO wants to rid citizens of the myth that cryptocurrency profits are tax-free, or that they only need to be declared when cashing back out to fiat money.

Loh said the tax office was already aware of who is invested in cryptocurrency thanks to the cooperation it has received from exchanges and banking institutions.

“(We) follow the money trail back to the taxpayer and we do that through the ATO which has data matching profiles with cryptocurrency exchanges and they provide that information to us and we use that information to cross match with people’s tax returns,” Loh said.

“There isn’t a game of hide and seek. We have got that information and all we are asking people to do is follow the rules. We know most Australians follow the rules,” he added.

Loh said he was alarmed by some people’s readiness to ignore tax obligations incurred in the world of cryptocurrency. The ATO will contact 400,000 Australian citizens in 2021 to urge them to review their previously lodged tax returns and to prompt them to report capital gains or losses on crypto trades.

As for the process of keeping accurate tax records, Loh said the best practice would be to record every transaction in Australian dollar terms, keeping note of dates, times and wallet addresses.

“The best tip to nail your cryptocurrency gains and losses is to keep accurate records including dates of transactions, the value in Australian dollars at the time of the transactions, what the transactions were for, and who the other party was, even if it’s just their wallet address,” said Loh. Open / Comment

2021-05-28 19:30:00 ​​South Korea Crypto Scammers Targeting People in Their 50s & 60s.

“Crypto” fraudsters in South Korea are increasingly preying on citizens in their fifties and sixties, a new report has found, with crypto-flavored multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes now running wild.

Per EDaily, the regulatory Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) says there was a rise of 41.6% in the number of instances of suspected crypto-themed fraud cases reported in the country in the period January to October last year on the same period in 2019.

The media outlet quoted a number of anonymous individuals as stating they had handed over large chunks of their pensions and retirement savings to people they thought they could trust, making investments in some cases on the advice of friends they had had since “elementary school.”

One man explained that he had lost 90% of his funds after trusting an old school friend with an investment suggestion. Another woman in her 60s explained that she had lost USD 177,000 on an investment – cashing in bonds in order to raise the money.

EDaily quoted a legal expert as stating that a particularly favorite target for MLM fraudsters pretending to represent bona fide crypto firms and “funds” were “middle-aged women struggling with the difficulty of making stock market investments.”

So-called crypto moms have been flocking to bitcoin (BTC) in recent months in South Korea – but it appears fraudsters are attempting to take advantage of this trend, with outlandish promises of three- to tenfold returns on investments.

The FSS explained that while recently introduced legislation required crypto players to abide by anti-money laundering protocols it “does not yet regulate” for “consumer protection or MLM fraud” instances, warning citizens to instead be on their guard against investment offers that seem too good to be true. Open / Comment