Droppers of btc

2021-01-14 20:00:30 ​​Further Details of ‘Offline’ Chinese Digital Yuan ‘Hard Wallet’ Emerge

The masterminds behind the digital yuan – the forthcoming Chinese central bank digital currency – have provided further explanation about a new “hard” wallet, which makes no use of smartphone technology.

Per Tencent’s media arm, the hard wallet, which resembles a conventional credit card but for a digital LCD readout in its top right-hand corner that lets users know their remaining balances, is being developed with an eye on elderly Chinese citizens, many of whom have little or no IT experience.

As reported earlier this month, the hard wallet is being used in a pilot at the Shanghai-based Jiao Tong University School of Medicine’s Tongren Hospital staff canteen.

The canteen has been fitted with portable and counter-top point-of-sale devices, featuring digital yuan interoperability. These have allowed canteen staff to carry out transactions using the digital yuan and the new hard wallet, which is the brainchild of the Postal Savings Bank of China.

At least four other state-owned commercial Chinese banks are working with the central People’s Bank of China (PBoC) on the new digital currency.

The hard wallet, said its architects, can be used offline and does not require a Wi-Fi or network connection to operate. The architects also claim that the solution will be of use to individuals suffering from dementia, ensuring accessibility options for a wide tranche of the population.

The card-like device makes use of Near-Field-Communication (NFC) technology, meaning that they can be used with a large array of conventional POS devices. Many Chinese POS devices already make extensive use of NFC-compatible e-pay hardware that lets them accept contact-free pay from smartphones.

The display screen on the hard wallet shows how much is being charged to the card in active transactions, and how many transactions can be made with the device before it needs to be synced with a PBoC-run ledger (possibly an ATM or card reader at a commercial bank).

Chinese media outlets have also reported that the hard wallet may also be fitted with certain anonymity-protective protocols, possibly allaying fears that the PBoC will use the token as a way to begin Big Brother-style monitoring of Chinese citizens’ spending habits.

A government-run agency has also stated that it is working on solutions for the visually impaired, with alt text, voice-operated functions and voice assistants being built into banks’ future versions of digital CNY-compatible apps. Open / Comment

2021-01-11 20:00:11 ​​This Multibillion Bitcoin Dump By US Gov Could Be a Drop in the Bucket

The bitcoin (BTC) price has been a runaway train of late and there is seemingly nothing that can get in its way. Some believe that even if one of the largest BTC whales, the US Government, decides to sell its stash now worth billions of USD it wouldn't have a material effect on the market as BTC trading volumes more than doubled in a month.

As reported, in November, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has forfeited BTC 69,370, worth over USD 1bn at the time. At the time of writing (07:59 UTC), it's worth more than USD 2.7bn, as BTC is trading at USD 39,629 after it briefly touched USD 42,000 yesterday.

The US government now controls the 6th richest BTC address (and the 4th richest if we exclude addresses controlled by crypto exchanges).

Meanwhile, the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California recently filed a civil complaint for the forfeiture of those coins. If history is any indication, the bitcoins could be due to be sold in an auction by the US Marshals Service. That is what happened in 2014 and 2015 when the US government gained control of more than BTC 144,000 — worth USD 122m at the time and USD 5.7bn today — and sold them.

Indeed, auctioning off the bitcoins could be tempting for an incoming administration for whom the money spigot is poised to open wider as the pandemic tightens its grip on the economy.

A matter of ‘US national security‘

If the US government takes a similar track this time around, it is difficult to know how the market would react until it actually happens. However, Pierre Rochard, a Bitcoin strategist at the Kraken exchange, points out that the sale would be a drop in the bucket compared to the robust trading activity in the BTC market of late. Today, the 24-hour BTC trading volume stands at around USD 70bn (it was around USD 30bn on average in December).

“So I don't think a USD 3 billion auction would have a material effect,” Rochard told.

But he said he’s concerned about the bigger picture: “I think the auction would undermine US national security.”

In a recent post on GitHub, Rochard further noted,

“The expeditious auctioning off of seized bitcoin in 2014 and 2015 was, in my view and with the benefit of hindsight, a mistake. The Federal Reserve can create an infinite quantity of US dollars, the proceeds received in the auction. Bitcoins can not be created out of thin air and there is a limited quantity of them.”

As a result, Rochard explains that he is “lobbying for legislation to prevent the auction from happening, for United States national security reasons.”

One of the bills he is supporting is the Bitcoin HODL Act, which would allow the US Marshals Service to “securely keep and store bitcoin assets acquired through seizure until further legislation is passed, effective immediately.”

Instead, the BTC would be held in a custodial wallet that would be managed by the US Treasury without the threat of selling, swapping, auctioning, or otherwise encumbering the assets until more legislation is afoot.

The DoJ did not respond to our request for comment.

Meanwhile, Rachid Ajaja, CEO and Founder of AllianceBlock, recently said that it is unlikely that BTC whales - those who hold enough BTC to impact price - are going to be selling any time soon.

“Bitcoin is experiencing a supply shock at the moment, and miners can't keep up with demand. For this reason, it's unlikely that any whales will relinquish BTC liquidity until the price is closer to USD 100k+,” he said, adding that any crash we do see will not be as drastic as those that we have seen before thanks to increased network effects and institutional involvement. Open / Comment

2021-01-07 21:00:31 ​​Bitcoin Overtakes Ethereum, BNB Valuation, BitMEX

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.

Adoptions news

Bitcoin (BTC) has outperformed Ethereum (ETH) in terms of the daily transferred value, reaching USD 14.58bn per day, compared to Ethereum's USD 13.96 per day, according to the data provided by Money Movers. BTC re-took the lead in the second half of December 2020, after Ethereum had surpassed it in early September last year.

Altcoins news

After examining binance coin (BNB)'s burn yield's, Price/Earnings (P/E), Price / Sales, transactions per day, and regulatory risks, Messari said it has valued BNB at USD 43.5 per token. The 10th largest cryptoasset by market capitalization trades at around USD 44 today and is up by 6% in a day and 20% in a week.

Exchanges news

BitMEX said it has completed its User Verification Programme, adding in an announcement that it has been "successfully implemented, making BitMEX one of the largest crypto derivatives exchanges in the world with a fully verified active user base." With the remaining open positions from unverified accounts closed and the scheduled expiry of the December 2020 futures completed, 100% of volume on the BitMEX platform is now fully verified. Over USD 100bn equivalent volume has been traded following the December 4 verification deadline, said the exchange.

Tokenization news

Ukraine’s football club Dynamo Kyiv is set to release its own “team-branded,” blockchain-powered digital token. The club, which has won an unequaled 28 Ukrainian Premier League titles, as well as two UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup trophies, will work with a United States and UK-based blockchain provider named Moonwalk on its new crypto project. In a press release, Moonwalk wrote, “Fans will be able to earn tokens based on their participation with the team and spend the tokens in Dynamo Kyiv’s 70,000-seater stadium and digital marketplace.”

Mining news

The Iranian electricity provider, the Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company (Tavanir) said that it has, in conjunction with law enforcement authorities, closed down 1,620 illegal crypto mining farms that have burned through 250Mw of power since July 2019, the month when crypto mining was legalized in the country. Per the Financial Tribune, Tavanir claimed that it would be “strict in dealing with unauthorized miners,” claiming that offenders would be fined to the same degree as “the loss they impose on the national grid,” with mining rigs “disconnected from the national grid” and prosecutions sought. Open / Comment

2021-01-04 21:00:26 ​​Russian CBDC To Create 'Centralized Database' of Spending, Expert Warns

Another Russian crypto expert has warned of the dangers of the nation’s Central Bank issuing a so-called digital ruble, claiming that neither consumers nor banks are yet sold on the idea of using a digital fiat.

In an interview with AB News, Viktor Dostov, the Chairman of the Russian Electronic Money and Remittance Association and the head of the Center for Distributed Ledger Technologies at St. Petersburg State University, said that end-users would likely have their heads turned by digital ruble payment solutions.

Dostov opined that a Russian central bank digital currency (CBDC) would be more “convenient and cheaper” than existing payment platforms.

However, he added that the “attractiveness of switching to the digital ruble” for many other consumers would be “far from obvious.”


Dostov stated that conventional commercial bank-issued alternatives have become easier than ever to use of late, making use of QR codes and contact-free interfaces. He also opined that commercial banks would likely push back against the idea of sharing data on their (and their customers’) transactions so directly with the Central Bank.

Moreover, he said, ordinary citizens would likely become “concerned” that massive digital ruble adoption would allow the “complete transparency of Russian payments for the state, creating a “centralized … database” of spending.

He claimed the financial sector was “still not convinced” of “the necessity and advantages” of a CBDC, “both for themselves and for future customers and users.”

However, Dostov pointed out that the Central Bank is keen to press forward with its plans, which it thinks would allow it to ensure, for instance, that welfare payments and the welfare system in general, is not subject to abuse. The expert added that a digital ruble could ensure that child benefit payments, for example, were only spent in stores selling products for children.

A rollout could take place “in the next few years,” he said. The Central Bank is hoping to pilot a token later in 2021.

And in the face of the Central Bank’s determination, banks and others are gradually moving away from the idea of resisting a CBDC rollout, but instead thinking about “how banks will survive” in this new paradigm and “what new services banks will be able to provide in order to replace the income they lose” if a digital ruble is issued. Open / Comment

2021-01-01 20:00:23 ​​Coinbase to Face Class Action Suit over XRP Listing

An alleged customer of the crypto exchange giant Coinbase has hit the trading platform with a class-action lawsuit – claiming that the crypto firm “illegally sold” him “securities” in the form of Ripple’s XRP tokens, which has actually enjoyed a surprising rally today.

In a legal document submitted to a District Court in California on December 30, a lawyer for the plaintiff, identified as Thomas Sandoval of St. Louis, wrote that as Coinbase is a “digital exchange” and as a “commodities broker for cryptocurrencies,” it is “not licensed to sell securities.”

The lawsuit alleges that given the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s action against Ripple and insistence that XRP is a security, it is clear that Coinbase flaunted the rules by listing XRP, claiming that doing so had provided it with “an unwarranted competitive advantage over digital asset exchanges that only sold commodities.”

But the plaintiff claimed Coinbase did all of this knowingly.

The lawyer added,

“Investors such as [Sandoval] invested capital in XRP with the expectation of profit from Ripple’s sole efforts.”

And the suit went on to allege that Coinbase had defrauded its customers on a massive scale, claiming the exchange “knew at all times” that XRP “did not meet the definition of a commodity,” was perfectly aware that was a security, and knew that to go ahead and trade in it was outside the legal parameters of its business operations.

Sandoval claims that he bought XRP in early November this year.

Despite the more recent surge, XRP prices have been in freefall since the SEC launched its legal action against Ripple. The regulator claims that XRP is little more than an unregistered stock in its issuer, a claim that Ripple denies, citing legal rulings as evidence that the SEC is mistaken.

Coinbase decided to suspend trading in the token earlier this week.

Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, Ripple is unlikely to beat the lawsuit alleging the company violated federal securities laws by selling the digital asset XRP without registering it as a security: "At stake in the Dec. 22 suit may be the ability to trade XRP and more than a billion dollars, though settlement for a fraction of that is also possible." Open / Comment

2020-12-28 20:00:21 ​​Bitcoin Rallies Above USD 28K with Market Cap Over USD 0.5 Trillion

The most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin (BTC) accelerated its rally, hitting USD 25,000, USD 26,000, USD 27,000, and USD 28,000 less than a day, while its market capitalization jumped above USD 0,5 trillion. (Updated at 11:43 UTC with the latest price data.)

At the time of writing (11:41 UTC), BTC trades at USD 28,257 and is up by 14% in a day and 20% in a week. The price rallied by 64% in a week and 278% in a year.

BTC is the best performing cryptoasset among the top 10 coins by market capitalization today. Its dominance, or the percentage of the total market capitalization, jumped above 70% for the first time since March 2017. Open / Comment

2020-12-25 20:00:27 ​​Economists Speak of ‘Once-in-a-Millennium Change’ in Monetary History

Leading economists are suggesting that the world is heading for a sea change in terms of the way people use money – and think that cash’s days are numbered as digital forms of currency edge toward mainstream adoption.

Per the Japan Times, Masashi Nakajima, a professor of Economics and Business Administration at Reitaku University, in Chiba Prefecture, and a former central Bank of Japan (BoJ) official, stated,

“We are seeing a once-in-a-millennium change in the history of currencies after the long-time use of currency notes following the world’s first introduction in China about 1,000 years ago.”

And while 11th-century Chinese economic thinkers may have been the first to develop the precursor to the modern banknotes, Nakajima and others like him appear to think that it may be the Middle Kingdom’s modern antecedents who deal paper money the death blow.

The government’s digital yuan project is in its final testing stages, and Beijing seems adamant that it wants the token up and running well ahead of the Winter Olympic Games – set to kick off in early February 2022.

And China remains something of a center of gravity for the crypto world, too. Despite a state crackdown in September 2017, some of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world still remain in Chinese hands, while many bitcoin (BTC) and altcoin miners are still based in the nation. BTC and altcoin ownership also remains high in China.

The same media outlet quotes Hiromi Yamaoka, a former senior official in charge of payment and settlement systems at the BoJ, as stating,

“China has prompted moves toward digital currency (around the world). It (has done so at) surprising speed, as central banks tend to take a cautious stance [on new systems].”

Nakajima, meanwhile, reportedly said that “advances in technology including blockchain to counter cyberattacks and counterfeiting” have “largely contributed to the realization” of digital currencies “while people are now able to use digital currencies anywhere at any time via their smartphones.”

The Japanese experts’ comments come just weeks after Niall Ferguson, a Scottish economic historian, author and the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, stated,

“We are living through a monetary revolution so multifaceted that few of us comprehend its full extent.”

Ferguson added that the revolution has been expiated by the coronavirus pandemic, which, he said has “accelerated our advance into a more digital word” and “significantly increased our exposure to financial surveillance as well as financial fraud.”

Ferguson also opined, on the subject of BTC,

“Rather than seeking to create a Chinese-style digital dollar, Joe Biden’s nascent administration should recognize the benefits of integrating bitcoin into the United States financial system.” Open / Comment

2020-12-21 20:00:42 ​​Few Tokens Besides Bitcoin To Become SoV, Ethereum To Reshape Finance - Novogratz

Mike Novogratz. Source: A YouTube video screenshot
Very few cryptoassets will stand the test of time and become lasting stores of value (SoV) outside of bitcoin (BTC), Mike Novogratz, the CEO of digital asset-focused financial services firm Galaxy Digital, said, adding that he is increasingly confident that the Ethereum community will help reshape the future of finance.

In an interview with Raoul Pal on Real Vision, Novogratz said:

“When you criticize litecoin (LTC), you get hammered by people. It was a variation of bitcoin. A lot of people bought litecoin and say, well, I cannot afford a bitcoin, but I can afford a litecoin, which makes no economic sense but that was their argument. I think in pure store of value coins, I do not think a lot of the smaller ones will have long-lasting gigs. Now, then there are utility coins like, protocols, you think about ethereum (ETH), definitely, EOS, hashgraph, all of these coins that want to be the base layer of trust, where lots of things get processed.”

However, Novogratz estimates that “90-95% of the real talent that is entering the space as programmers are programming around the Ethereum world.”

And on the subject of Ethereum, he added,

“That is really where you are going to rebuild the future of finance and the future of lots of things.”

As reported, Ethereum already has more developers than Bitcoin.

Novogratz, who already warned banks over DeFi, opined that while “bitcoin is an easier story on a risk-adjusted basis,” he was “liking Ethereum more and more as I see this thing go.”

The businessman recalled that, back in 2017, he “would invest in sexier projects with good founders and decent communities, and as soon as there was liquidity, I would sell them.”

Novogratz also claimed that previous crypto bubbles have strengthened his focus on key investment parameters, such as market capitalization and fully diluted market capitalization.

Saying that this was the best investment lesson he learned in 2020, he advised investors to focus on the second marker, which refers to what a token’s market cap would be if all available coins in total supply were issued.

He stated,

“When you get the growth at an accelerating rate, you can stay long. Even if prices do not make sense, because that compounding of the second derivative really creates the excitement around it. If it was Zoom, like I am going to short Zoom, that was a mistake to short Zoom. They were growing at an accelerating rate.”

The CEO added that, as a rule of thumb, when market cap levels get to “stupid levels” and “when the community is valuing this new protocol at stupid levels, even in this wild bubble already with all equities,” investors have “got to sell.”

“You’ve got to take some profits off the table,” the Galaxy Digital CEO said.

Novogratz also cautioned crypto investors that paying attention to these markers would turn certain individuals into “momentum traders,” but would also help people “know the good projects,” so they would “not buy fundamentally on the big dips.” Open / Comment

2020-12-11 20:00:42 ​​Sweden Launches E-krona Feasibility Review

Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, has edged another step closer to launching its much anticipated central bank digital currency (CBDC), dubbed the e-krona – with a lengthy government review of the consequences of a national CBDC rollout beginning today.

Back in February this year, Sweden gazumped many of its European and intercontinental counterparts by announcing that it had begun testing the e-krona, which makes use of blockchain technology. The Riksbank has been working with technology provider Accenture on its token.

And in a new development, Bloomberg reported that Per Bolund, Sweden’s financial markets minister, has officially launched a feasibility review into the e-krona. The review will probably be complete by late November 2022, and will be spearheaded by Anna Kinberg Batra, the ex-chairwoman of the Riksbank’s finance committee.

The country has remained firmly agnostic about whether or not it will go ahead with the CBDC issuance, with the central bank stating categorically on its website that “no decisions have yet been taken on issuing an e-krona.”


However, the central bank governor Stefan Ingves wrote, back in mid-October, “There shall be digital state money as legal tender, an e-krona, issued by the Riksbank.”

Ingves will still need to convince both the Riksdag (the Swedish Parliament) and the government of the wisdom of the move, but has already submitted a proposal to parliament this year, asking it to appoint a panel of experts to judge the e-krona feasibility.

The Swedish government has taken pride in the fact that the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) declared in 2018 that the nation was the world’s most cashless region. The central bank claims that 90% of all monetary transactions in the nation are done completed without the use of cash.

Bloomberg quoted Bolund as stating,

“It’s crucial that the digitalized payments market functions safely, and that it’s available to everybody.” Depending on how a digital currency is designed and which technologies are used, it can have large consequences for the entire financial system.”

However, as reported, over the past few years Swedes have been increasingly concerned about the elderly, those living in rural areas and people from migrant backgrounds being left behind by businesses switching to Swish no longer accepting cash.

Last year all but one of Sweden’s political parties supported new laws requiring Sweden’s major banks to continue to offer cash services across the country. Open / Comment