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The reformed Bitcoin Maxi who saw the light: Erik Voorhees

March 3, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

“We felt like we were doing God’s work,” explains cryptocurrency payments pioneer Erik Voorhees as he recalls trying to convert the unbelievers in the early days of Bitcoin.

The man whose gambling platform SatoshiDice was once responsible for half of all Bitcoin transactions, is now an elder statesman of crypto and the CEO of the ShapeShift exchange.

He remembers Bitcoin being written off as a joke at the Money 2020 conference in Las Vegas back in 2012. At the time he was working for BitInstant, one of the first Bitcoin exchanges, and they had a booth right next door to PayPal.

“I remember the PayPal people nearby kind of snickering at us. A couple of them had maybe heard of Bitcoin. If they’d even heard about it, it was a total joke — a stupid scam on the internet, or something. It was a totally unproductive conference.”

History has not been kind to the snickerers and scam-sayers, many of whom have since been converted. In 2020, eight years after the conference, Paypal finally joined the fray, enabling users to buy and sell crypto, and it will soon add it as a method of payment at 29 million merchants.

Voorhees spread the gospel of Satoshi at the conference alongside Charlie Shrem and Roger Ver. Shrem was the founder of BitInstant, viewed by some as a martyr to the cause after serving two years in prison on a case related to an exchange user reselling Bitcoin on the darknet marketplace Silk Road. Ver was perhaps the biggest believer of all, earning the nickname ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ for his charismatic promotion of the currency.

“In terms of proselytizing, Roger was the absolute best. He was a total maniac about it” Voorhees recounts with a chuckle.

“Even for Charlie and I, who were very much supportive of the general sentiment, It was pretty overwhelming and just incessant.”

“Everyone that works at a startup feels a little bit like they’re changing the world, that they have this huge mission, and certainly every company tries to amplify that,” he says, being a CEO himself. But for Bitcoiners, Voorhees clarifies, “it is really a ‘change the world’ kind of thing, and to change the world on a fundamental level. It’s to change the institution of money itself — that is a profoundly tall order.”

Vorhees explains that he sees Bitcoin as nothing less than revolutionary:

“It’s not just a better user-interface for the money that people had before. It’s a different type of money that changes government, changes culture, changes social and economic relationships on a very very deep deep level. That’s why it’s taken so long to to catch on, to get recognized, because it is trying to move into such an entrenched institution.”

It’s 2012. @ErikVoorhees @rogerkver and I decided to pool our money together for the first #Money2020 event. We told them we wanted the best booth we could afford, but we needed to be next to the @PayPal booth so we can show the world OUR financial system!

Welcome, Paypal! pic.twitter.com/5BzvQDfvFb

— Charlie Shrem (@CharlieShrem) October 21, 2020

Libertarian roots

Now 35, Voorhees spent his early ‘90’s childhood in the mountains of Colorado before moving to the University of Puget Sound near Seattle in 2003. He studied international economics and business but doesn’t really feel like he learnt either.

“In the entire major of economics, though I had courses in the history of economic thought, I never learned about the Austrians,” he says, referring to the Austrian School of economics. Often ignored by mainstream Keynesian economists, Austrians are obsessed with things like hard money and decry unbacked fiat currencies so they have been embraced by gold-bugs and the Bitcoin community, which is after all, often called ‘digital gold’.

A freshly minted graduate in 2008, Voorhees left to pursue adventure in Dubai where “anyone with a college degree could immediately get a job, because they were growing so fast.”

Working as a marketer for a real estate agency, he watched from a distance as the world he thought he knew began to buckle under the weight of the unfolding Global Financial Crisis. Dubai did not feel its effects until half a year later, he recounts, describing the intervening time as “this very weird period where Dubai was going through this massive economic boom, and the rest of the Western world was falling apart.”

From this desert oasis spared from the global drought, the business and economics graduate “started really understanding money on what I felt was a very fundamental level.” For Voorhees, the story of money is a simple one: “money emerges as the good that is bartered for most frequently.” That used to be gold and is currently fiat money, but it could just as well be something else, if a more useful and efficient money was embraced.

Upon this realization, Voorhees took on a “very strong aversion to fiat currency and to government control of money” because as a believer in a market economy, he felt that no government should control the price or distribution of any goods. “Money was actually the most important good of all, and thus most important to not be centrally planned. And yet it was even in, you know, allegedly capitalist economies,” he says.

“A capitalist economy that has a government-managed money system seemed completely antithetical, but I didn’t have any answers or solutions to that other than some kind of return to the gold standard, which seemed somewhat anachronistic.”

Voorhees returned to Colorado after two years abroad, soon moving to New Hampshire to join The Free State Project, an organized political migration which he describes as “a multi-decade initiative to move 20,000 radical libertarians to one small jurisdiction [New Hampshire] to hopefully have an outsized influence on the political structure.” It was there, in the company of fellow radical libertarian political activists, that Voorhees encountered Bitcoin in 2011.

“At that point I got completely hooked, and a year later ended up leaving New Hampshire and moving to New York to join Charlie Shrem at BitInstant.” There, he took the reins of marketing as employee number three.

It was around that time that Charlie Shrem, Roger Ver, and Erik Voorhees — each of whom would go on to become crypto-luminaries in their own right — pooled their money together to set up a Bitcoin booth at the Money 2020 conference in Las Vegas. “We needed to be next to the PayPal booth so we can show the world OUR financial system,” Shrem recounted. Vorhees says they failed to convert anyone to Bitcoin at the conference despite their best efforts.

Belief in false profits

Vorhees admits he used to be a Bitcoin Maximalist, a believer in the one true coin who rejected all false currencies. “I used to be a maximalist. Obviously when I got into Bitcoin, it was kind of the only coin,” he says.

“As other coins came out I dismissed them, scoffed at them, and generally didn’t like them because I felt like they were a distraction from the important project.”

Though he tried to focus on Satoshi’s vision, the new projects started gnawing at him and he realized that many of them “were doing things that Bitcoin wouldn’t do or couldn’t do.” By mid 2014, his conversion was in full swing.

“My whole mindset began changing. One of the most important things about Bitcoin is that it is decentralised. And it seemed to me antithetical to have a decentralized digital economy where there is only one chain — you know, one code base, one chain, one set of economic rules. It seemed very appropriate that you would get multiple different digital assets, and that was actually part of the decentralization, part of the virtue of Bitcoin was that Bitcoin isn’t the only thing there.”

He tempers this by adding the usual provisos — most tokens are garbage, many are scams, a majority will fail. “It’s only a minority of them that are interesting, but a minority is a lot more than one.”

ETH Folks… try not to become to Binancechain what the Bitcoin Maxis are to Ethereum 🙏

— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) February 19, 2021

He still has empathy for his “shortsighted” maximalist peers, who he sees as victims of human nature’s tendency toward tribalism, which expresses itself in lots of ways, “Certainly it expresses itself in religion. And it has expressed itself in crypto, and some portion of people- their mind twists itself into complete advocacy of one flag and complete derision of all others.”

“[It’s] a group psychological phenomena and I don’t know how that stops, but I do think it is really harmful for the growth of decentralized digital finance generally.”

Gambling with Satoshi’s dice

Only a year after learning about Bitcoin, Voorhees launched Bitcoin-based gambling site SatoshiDice in 2012, which took the young crypto community by storm.

“On Reddit, this guy posted that he had created this casino-like mechanism where there’d be this dice roll, and based on the dice roll, a user would either get their coins sent back or lose them. I tried it, and there was magic in it immediately […] So I started working with him.”

This was groundbreaking because “it allowed any person in the world to place a bet by sending a Bitcoin transaction” no matter where they were from or how their local laws governed online gambling.

What’s more, the player did not need to trust SatoshiDice, because “it was provably fair,” meaning that it worked like a transparent machine where all odds and inner workings were open for anyone to inspect. Governments around the world have various commissions to regulate and audit gambling operations, but SatoshiDice’s function potentially made such organizations obsolete, powerless, or both.

“SatoshiDice showed you what the odds were. It was transparent with the odds, and you could prove that the rules were fair.”

The simple, trusted, and permissionless nature of SatoshiDice brought huge success to the platform. Within months of launch, the game was responsible for as much as half of all Bitcoin transactions.

SatoshiDice had an unofficial IPO on the MPEx exchange, a sort of Bitcoin stock market where unregistered Bitcoin companies offered shares and paid dividends denominated in BTC. These were the forerunner of the ICO boom several years later, and attracted similar attention from authorities for breaking securities laws.

Though the casino was “making a tonne of money,” it was also overwhelming as Voorhees felt his job of “running the world’s biggest Bitcoin casino” was distracting him from his greater calling of preaching the good word of Satoshi. Despite ongoing growth, he reluctantly sold the business in 2013 for 126,315 BTC which was then worth $12 million. That would be a cool $6.25 billion today.

Fighting the system

Voorhees did not enjoy calm for long, as the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) soon came after him for making a public offering of unregistered securities. Voorhees considered this unfair, seeing that his investors had made exponential returns. He ended up settling for $50,000.

“That was nine months of total misery, dealing with them. If I didn’t despise the government before, I certainly did it after that. It was such bullshit.”

A core value of his is that people should be free to transact with each other voluntarily, and that no government agency has the right to come in between them. In his worldview, “institutions and government exist purely to curtail people’s power over money,” whereas “crypto gives people total economic power to make transactions in any way they wish, and no one can stop it.” As Voorhees sees it, these two forces will inevitably clash.

Voorhees’ company Shapeshift allows users to trade cryptocurrencies without identity verification. Things were not always that way — in 2018 Voorhees says his company fell under the same rules as traditional banks and therefore had to implement Know Your Customer, or KYC, identity verification procedures, making anonymous transactions impossible. “That was absolutely miserable. Our customers hated it. I hated it.”

But by 2020, decentralized exchanges (DEX’s) which allow users to trade without depositing their funds with a third party were gaining ground and made it possible for Shapeshift to reorient its business and re-align with its libertarian values. All KYC was abandoned, and the platform became a gateway for users to trade on various DEX’s. “I had learned with Satoshi Dice that an economic relationship didn’t need anything other than a public key to send in a transaction, and anything else could be based around that,” he says.

Voorhees says that his opposition to KYC is not down to ideology but his desire to protect users against things like identity theft.

“Identity theft in the US alone is something like a $30B to $40 billion a year problem. It is more costly than all forms of property theft combined. It’s this massive thing, and crypto comes along and solves that problem.”
But how committed is he to this principle? Would he class it as theft if a government accessed user data to tax a client’s unreported financial transactions. “Yeah, exactly. Taxation is absolutely theft,” he responds with blunt matter-of-factness.

The WSJ investigates

ShapeShift’s ethos has proven controversial among adherents to the rules and regulations around traditional finance. An investigation by the Wall Street Journal alleged Shapeshift users had laundered $9 million via the platform. However a third-party analysis by blockchain intelligence firm CipherBlade suggested the investigation was flawed in assuming that funds were illicit even after passing through four different hands, causing the $9 million figure to be inflated by a factor of four. It is clear that Voorhees, who is normally calm and composed, was deeply affected by this.

“Here’s The Wall Street Journal coming after us, calling us the money launderer, when their own inflated number would put us as far better [at combating money laundering] than any of the major banks that they write about all the time.”

There’s a noticeable quaver in his voice. The battle is personal.

We spend the last minutes comparing attitudes toward money in different societies. In the Nordic countries for example, all taxes are a matter of public record. Voorhees finds this disturbing, adding that “a lot of people with money feel guilty about it” whereas creating wealth in an ethical way he believes is a good thing for society.

“I would like to see people who become very wealthy, first of all be proud of that, so long as they did it in an ethical way, and to use those resources in whatever way they think is best. I think that’s how that’s how economies grow and I think there’s nothing wrong with that.”

The reformed Bitcoin Maxi who saw the light: Erik Voorhees

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Second-Largest DeFi Liquidation Day Sees $24 Million Lost

February 23, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

Well, it eventually happened. The 22nd of February marks a crypto DeFi market crash. In fact, the crash itself has caused enough liquidations to rank it the second-highest liquidation event within the DeFi space’s history. Within just 24 hours, $24.1 million in loans were liquidated.

Compound Accounting For 60% Of Liquidations

DeBank, one of the many crypto data aggregators out there, revealed that the majority of these losses, $13.7 million, comes from Compound, constituting almost 60% of the entire market crash. The only one being close to those losses is Aave, which saw a relatively small loss of $5.4 million in liquidations.

The only other liquidation event larger than this one, and that’s by more than three times, occurred back on the 26th of November, 2020. That crash, in particular, was thanks to the DAI suddenly and spectacularly increasing in price, which caused a whopping $93 million worth of margin calls.

On Coinbase Pro alone, DAI recorded a whopping 30% increase. This, in turn, caused over $88 million in crypto loans to be liquidated within the protocol itself.

Every Factor Worsened The Event

Another important metric measured by DeBank was the total value locked (TVL) within the crypto space. According to the crypto aggregator, this saw a significant drop from $44.5 billion to $38.8 billion within just 24 hours, amounting to a decrease of 12.8%.

The only other time the DeFi markets managed to lose more in terms of percentage was back in January, when the DeFi market shed caused a decrease of 15.4% in TVL.

DeFi

Another compounding factor comes from the Ethereum mainnet itself, primarily its staggering gas fees. Merchants are now reporting a total price tag of $30 just to enact a transaction of any kind. As one would imagine, that doesn’t really encourage small-scale operations.

Couple this with crypto traders being in a constant state of bidding war just to ensure that their transactions are pulled through, alongside tumbling token prices and massive network congestion, it’s easy to see why some traders couldn’t manage to close their positions in time.

Kraken In A Bit Of A Pickle

As is always the case in these matters, the ones most affected by this spectacular DeFi crash are the margin traders and DeFi users. Kraken, in particular, is having a rough time of it, as mass liquidations shot the price down to as little as $700 while it was trading at the $1,400 range on various other exchanges. Needless to say, more than a few customers have voiced their opinions that compensation must be given.

All those major corporations that invested so heavily into Bitcoin also saw multi-million USD worth of losses as they managed to buy at the peak just to see their assets tumble down in value. The 22nd of February saw $9,000 wiped out of a single Bitcoin’s value, reminding everyone just how insane the crypto market can be once you get too comfortable with it.

Second-Largest DeFi Liquidation Day Sees $24 Million Lost

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Filed Under: blockchain, cryptocurrency Tagged With: Bitcoin, coinbase, Coinbase Pro, Compound, crypto, cryptocurrency, data, DeFi, ethereum, Exchanges, kraken, Market, Markets, opinions, other, reddit, Space, Trading, War

Tesla buys BTC, Mastercard supports crypto, DOGE founder speaks out: Hodler’s Digest, Feb. 7–13

February 13, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Bitcoin hits all-time highs as Tesla invests $1.5 billion

The past week is going to go down as one of the best in Bitcoin’s history. It all began when an SEC filing revealed Tesla has invested $1.5 billion in BTC and planned to start accepting crypto as a payment method.

BTC’s price immediately leaped to record highs on the news, surging by 20% in 24 hours. The announcement came weeks after Elon Musk added #bitcoin to his bio and revealed he supported the cryptocurrency.

Tesla’s Bitcoin exposure represents about 7.7% of its gross cash position, and the news has sparked hopes that other major corporations will follow suit. Galaxy Digital’s Michael Novogratz predicted that “every company in America” will emulate the electric vehicle maker by allocating part of its balance sheets to BTC.

But some treasury experts have been left scratching their heads over the change in Tesla’s investment strategy, with critics describing the move as “unusual” and “risky.” JPMorgan also piled in and said the purchase might not trigger a ton of similar investments.

Mastercard announces support for crypto on its network in big week for adoption

Tesla was just the tip of the iceberg, with a flurry of announcements proving that Bitcoin is now firmly in the mainstream.

Mastercard unveiled plans to start supporting crypto this year, paving the way for almost 1 billion people to spend digital assets at more than 30 million merchants. The company said the move was about giving its customers choice.

Elsewhere, PayPal revealed that its crypto service is going to be rolled out in the U.K., making it the first international market since a successful launch in the U.S. last fall.

Twitter, home to crypto-friendly CEO Jack Dorsey, confirmed it is looking into how it might pay employees who wish to be compensated in Bitcoin. Chief financial officer Ned Segal added that the social network is exploring whether it needs to have BTC on its balance sheet.

There was more to come. BNY Mellon, America’s oldest bank, announced that it will offer crypto custody services for institutional clients. Its chief executive, Roman Regelman, told the WSJ: “Digital assets are becoming part of the mainstream.” Other major banks, such as JPMorgan, now believe they’ll eventually have to get involved in BTC.

Speculation is now growing that Apple will be one of the next companies to embrace Bitcoin. The cherry on top of the cake came when the crypto-focused fintech platform BitPay revealed that card owners can now pay for goods and services using Apple Pay.

Key Bitcoin price metric signals traders are positioned for $50,000 

BTC surged beyond $43,000 without breaking a sweat on Monday, besting last month’s all-time high of $42,000. As the week progressed, Bitcoin managed to hit $48,900.

Many high-profile analysts openly predicted last year that $50,000 was a realistic price target for 2021. Just six weeks into the year, BTC has come tantalizingly close to this level.

Despite Bitcoin’s value trebling in the space of just three months, several crypto traders believe that the scene remains exceedingly bullish… and those looking for a local top might end up being disappointed.

One analyst, Cheds, told Cointelegraph: “In my view, bulls are still in complete control, and every day, we get more news of institutional adoption and demand and that, more than anything, will be the driving force.”

Another, CryptoWendyO, described $50,000 as “inevitable,” adding that a Bitcoin tweet from Musk could send BTC to $54,000.

Ethereum hits a new all-time high as CME futures go live

ETH broke $1,800 this week, setting new records several times along the way. All of this came as Ether futures made their long-awaited debut on CME.

It’s also been a very lucrative few days in the altcoin markets. Cardano has surged 71% over the past seven days, and Polkadot is up 49%, with Binance Coin crushing the competition after clocking gains of 103% in the space of a week. Even XRP managed to break $0.60 once again, which has the Sword of Damocles hanging over its head.

BNB’s gains are undoubtedly linked to the record levels of traffic coming to the Binance exchange, with the platform suffering an outage on Thursday as it went down for maintenance.

The total value locked in decentralized finance also managed to crack $40 billion this week. However, much of this surge is likely down to the soaring value of Ether rather than a dramatic explosion in activity.

Founder of Dogecoin sold everything in 2015 for “a used Honda Civic”

Not everyone is rolling around in $100 bills as a result of the crypto bull run. Dogecoin founder Billy Markus has revealed that he sold off his DOGE stash in 2015 for an amount equivalent to a used Honda Civic.

All of that means that he missed out on the Dogecoin mania that has helped the joke cryptocurrency gain 900% since late January, fueled by tweets from Elon Musk.

Writing on Reddit, Markus said that he can’t comprehend the prospect of DOGE ever reaching $1, writing: “That would make the ‘market cap’ larger than actual companies that provide services to millions, such as Boeing, Starbucks, American Express, IBM.”

Musk recently revealed that he had bought some DOGE for his nine-month-old son so he can be a “toddler hodler,” but there are fears that his days of tweeting about crypto could be numbered. Legal advisors have warned the billionaire that his social media activity and public statements could come under scrutiny from the SEC.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $47,592.20, Ether at $1,836.68 and XRP at $0.60. The total market cap is at $1,477,578,548,979.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Avalanche, BitTorrent and The Graph. There’s just one altcoin loser in the top 100 this week: Ampleforth.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis. 

Most Memorable Quotations

“Cryptocurrency has become a worldwide transaction of which you cannot even identify who owns what. The technology is so strong that I don’t see the kind of regulation that we can do. Bitcoin has made our currency almost useless or valueless.”

Sani Musa, Nigerian senator

“Elon Musk has exposed Tesla to immense mark-to-market risk.”

Peter Garnry, Saxo Bank head of equity strategy

“I see the promise of these new technologies, but I also see the reality: cryptocurrencies have been used to launder the profits of online drug traffickers; they’ve been a tool to finance terrorism.”

Janet Yellen, U.S. Treasury Secretary

“New account registrations are still open, not sure for how long. Also seeing ATH on this. Better get an account soon.”

Changpeng Zhao, Binance CEO

“It would not be surprising — given the focus on the chief executive’s tweets, Bitcoin pricing and recent dramatic market moves — for the SEC to ask questions about the facts and circumstances here.”

Doug Davison, former SEC enforcement official

“Digital assets are becoming a more important part of the payments world. We are here to enable customers, merchants and businesses to move digital value — traditional or crypto — however they want. It should be your choice, it’s your money.”

Mastercard

“Bought some Dogecoin for lil X, so he can be a toddler hodler.”

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO

“The main issue with the idea that mainstream corporate treasurers will follow the example of Tesla is the volatility of Bitcoin.”

JPMorgan

“We’ve done a lot of the upfront thinking to consider how we might pay employees should they ask to be paid in Bitcoin, how we might pay a vendor should they ask to be paid in Bitcoin, and whether we need to have Bitcoin on our balance sheet.”

Ned Segal, Twitter chief financial officer

“Markets are going up heavily, but we’ll be seeing some downwards momentum as well. Nothing goes up in a straight line.”

Michaël van de Poppe, Cointelegraph Markets analyst

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see there being almost some sort of a race now — you have Elon Musk, you have Michael Saylor, Jack Dorsey. You’re gonna see a lot of other visionary leaders in disruptive companies actually realizing that it’s really moved from ‘why’ to ‘why not.’”

Michael Sonnenshein, Grayscale CEO

“The target for consolidation is near $52k, where I’m expecting a bit of a correction but the measured move overall should take us towards $63,000.”

filbfilb, Cointelegraph Markets analyst

“Any wallet that won’t give you your private keys should be avoided at all costs.”

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO

“Central banks should ban the trading of it, and force anyone who holds Bitcoin and wants to use it in any transaction, to exchange it for another currency that does not have such a damaging side effect.”

Nick Boles, former British MP

“ETH futures go live on the CME today. This is huge. This is a bridge to institutions. This is a green light from U.S. regulators. ETH is becoming globally accepted commodity money.”

Ryan Sean Adams, Ethereum researcher

“If [Apple] decides to enter into the crypto exchange business, we think the firm could immediately gain market share and disrupt the industry.”

Paul Steves, Royal Bank of Canada Dominion Securities

“We expect to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future.”

Tesla

Prediction of the Week

Bitcoin price poised to hit $63,000, says trader filbfilb

The popular analyst filbfilb has declared that “the game has changed” for Bitcoin — and has revealed what he thinks will come next for the world’s biggest cryptocurrency.

The Cointelegraph Markets contributor has said that he’s anticipating “a bit of a correction” once BTC hits $52,000 but believes “the measured move overall should take us towards $63,000.”

And on the matter of corporate adoption, he wrote: “I really don’t think people understand that S&P 500 companies owning Bitcoin means that by default people’s pensions are exposed to Bitcoin. The % of people invested in Bitcoin has already reached the masses, they just don’t even know it.”

FUD of the Week 

Ethereum-based social media project shuts down as ETH fees approach new highs

An Ethereum-based project has ceased development due to rising gas prices, as the cost of transacting on the blockchain continues to push new highs.

Unite, which aimed to offer social media tokens, said the original idea for the project has been rendered unfeasible by the recent spike in fees, with the average cost of using Ethereum rising by a staggering 35,600% since last January.

The startup intended to allow social media users on sites such as Twitter and Discord to distribute Ethereum ERC-20 tokens to their audience and community. Developers also confirmed that they have decided against building the platform on a layer-two solution.

FTX CEO claims competitor responsible for racist messages delivered to Blockfolio users

Blockfolio’s Signal feed was briefly compromised this week, with some users receiving racist messages within the company’s app.

Now, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who acquired Blockfolio for $150 million last August, has shed light on what happened following a security review.

He claimed that the offensive content was produced and published by a competitor exchange that maliciously gained access to someone’s account.

Bankman-Fried didn’t name the culprit but stressed that funds were not jeopardized at any time. He also confirmed that Blockfolio has now fixed the vulnerability that led to this situation.

The executive has been praised for his handling of the situation, and he has apparently added $10 to the trading accounts of affected users, as well as donating to organizations dedicated to fighting racial and societal injustice.

India’s crypto ban is coming, hodlers to be given transition period: Bloomberg

An unnamed senior finance ministry official has claimed that India will soon completely ban crypto assets.

It’s reported that the use of cryptocurrency in all forms will be prohibited under the new law — meaning transacting through foreign exchanges won’t be allowed either.

Crypto exchanges have reacted with dismay to the news. Unocoin co-founder Sathvik Vishwanath said: “If government goes ahead with banning all cryptocurrencies, except the one backed by the state, it will not make sense to continue our business in India. But we’ll have to wait and watch.”

The Indian government has been determined to clamp down on crypto use after the supreme court overturned the RBI’s blanket ban on local banks providing services to businesses dealing with crypto.

Best Cointelegraph Features

Moment of truth? Tesla purchase is the moment Bitcoin has been waiting for

Despite some expected near-term volatility, Tesla’s exploration of the crypto realm will likely help the industry scale up to new heights.

Coincidence? Company stocks rise after they buy Bitcoin as a reserve

The market caps of most companies that bought Bitcoin have increased recently, but is that solely thanks to BTC?

A new trend? Non-crypto CEOs and celebrities embrace Bitcoin on Twitter

Are business leaders signaling the technological future they believe is coming to pass — an international and decentralized one?

Tesla buys BTC, Mastercard supports crypto, DOGE founder speaks out: Hodler’s Digest, Feb. 7–13

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Robinhood reportedly allowing instant deposits for crypto purchases again as DOGE surges

February 4, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

Stock and crypto trading app Robinhood has reportedly re-enabled instant deposits for cryptocurrency purchases after almost a week.

Robinhood has removed the original update on its support page suspending instant deposits, and its website currently shows certain users once again have “instant access” to up to $1,000 to buy crypto. Many of the app’s users also reported on social media they were able to access the trading feature last night.

The “instant buying” function is a paid feature that gives Robinhood customers instant access to funds from bank deposits and stock trades. Though users were still able to buy crypto using previously deposited funds, those deposits can take up to five business days to clear — when it comes to dealing with cryptocurrencies, this can mean missing out on volatile trading periods.

As small-time traders once again have access to this Robinhood feature, the price of meme-based cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) has risen more than 50% in the last 24 hours to reach $0.0475 at the time of publication. The token likely received an additional pump after billionaire Elon Musk name dropped DOGE in a series of tweets early this morning.

Elon has gone full doge pic.twitter.com/urQ6Q0R2tz

— Dan Held (@danheld) February 4, 2021

Robinhood is still under scrutiny after the investment app suspended buys of GameStop stock and others pushed by retail investors from the r/Wallstreetbets subreddit last week.

The company has since reportedly put its plans for an initial public offering on hold. In addition, lawmakers with the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing related to the GameStop trades on Feb. 18, with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev expected to testify.

Robinhood reportedly allowing instant deposits for crypto purchases again as DOGE surges

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Filed Under: blockchain technology Tagged With: Bank, bitcoin payments, Business, ceo, crypto, Cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency, dogecoin, elon-musk, financial services, house of representatives, investment, Investments, payments, reddit, Robinhood, Social Media, Trading, twitter, u.s.

Mark Cuban talks Bitcoin HODLers and blockchain stocks in recent AMA

February 2, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

Jumping on the r/Wallstreetbets subreddit for an Ask Me Anything session recently, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban shared his thoughts on GameStop shorts, general investing, and various crypto-related topics. The billionaire said “the game is changing” when it comes to stocks, but encouraged the Redditors to look at Bitcoin (BTC) investors for guidance.

“BTC HODLers are a great example to follow,” said Cuban. “Many bought at the highs in 2017 and watched it fall by 2/3 or more. But they held on because they believed in the asset. The same applies to stocks. When I buy a stock I make sure I know why I’m buying it. Then I HODL until I learn that something has changed.”

A Bitcoiner himself, Cuban said his crypto portfolio includes Aave (LEND), SushiSwap (SUSHI), Ether (ETH), BTC, and Litecoin (LTC). Last week, crypto sleuths were able to find at least two wallets connected to Cuban with more than 1000 ETH, staked Aave, and SUSHI. Upon being found out, Cuban admitted he had his “share of s—coins.”

The Dallas Mavericks owner went on to say he believed decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens have the potential to explode in the next decade, “but there will be a lot of ups and downs along the way.” In addition, the billionaire said the infrastructure surrounding investments may even change:

“Stocks will be on the blockchain in the future, and that will make the markets much more efficient, transparent and available to the small investor.”

Cuban has been more active speaking about crypto over the winter as the Bitcoin bull run began and many media outlets began reporting on the ecosystem more often. Earlier this month, he compared crypto markets to the dot-com bubble of the late 90s and even said he would consider a presidential run if the price of Bitcoin hits $1 million.

However, many of the billionaire’s views on crypto are in line with participants in the industry. Cuban has referred to Bitcoin as a store of value like gold, and recently suggested Redditors in the r/Wallstreetbets community have a better grasp on investments than the “slow” and “stale” practices of Wall Street investors.

“I think social investors have an opportunity to change stocks the way social was used to build crypto,” said Cuban on the Reddit AMA.

Mark Cuban talks Bitcoin HODLers and blockchain stocks in recent AMA

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Filed Under: blockchain technology Tagged With: Better, Bitcoin, blockchain, btc, Business, crypto, decentralized, Decentralized Finance, ETH, ether, finance, gold, HODL, Infrastructure, Investing, Investments, LINE, Litecoin, mark cuban, Markets, reddit, Stocks, Tokens, Wall Street

Former patrons can’t drown sorrows as first-ever bar to accept Bitcoin closes

October 18, 2020 by Blockchain Consultants

A legendary bar and restaurant in Germany that was reportedly the first to ever accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment has permanently closed.

According to an Oct. 18 Reddit post from Joerg Platzer, founder of Room 77, the first brick-and-mortar business to accept Bitcoin (BTC) is no longer accepting customers and has shuttered its doors. In a goodbye message riddled with references to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Platzer said “thanks again for all the fish and the generous tips” after more than 15 years in business occupying “that little joint in Berlin Kreuzberg.”

“We had a great time,” said Platzer. “Having a lot of fun and making many friends. It is clear by now that nobody will stop Bitcoin anymore. Sound money on a global scale will soon make it unfeasable [sic] to wage wars and it will create economic equality amongst mankind.”

Room 77, “the restaurant at the end of capitalism” located in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, Germany, was reportedly the first brick-and-mortar location in the world to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment. Platzer claimed to have received the first crypto payment in May 2011 for a pint of beer.

Given that the average price of beer in Germany is roughly $4.10 and Bitcoin had just reached parity with the U.S. dollar at that time, the patron could have easily paid for their drink with more than 1 BTC — now priced at $11,432. That’s a high-quality beverage.

Source: Room 77

Crypto Twitter users were quick to jump on the news with their pilgrimage stories to the legendary Bitcoin bar. Cointelegraph reported that even Bitcoin educator Andreas Antonopoulos had turned local business owners onto crypto after a chance meeting in the bar.

“A visit to Berlin was never complete without stopping by Room 77,” said Bitcoin Core developer Eric Lombrozo. “This place will always remain part of Bitcoin history.”

Phil Lucsok shared memories of his first time spending crypto in the real world:

“When I first got some Bitcoin, I just wanted to spend it somewhere AFK. I got to Room 77 on an early spring afternoon in 2013 and ordered a coffee since I didn’t want beer or food, just wanted to spend some decentralized currency for the first time in my life.”

Platzer did not provide a specific reason for the closure, but former patrons are speculating it may be related to restrictions due to the pandemic. Last week, authorities announced a curfew requiring bars in Berlin to shut down between 11:00 PM and 6:00 AM and restrict gatherings to no more than 25 people indoors. 

Though the ban was later lifted, many businesses worldwide are experiencing a drop in revenue as tourism drops and more people stay indoors.

“Blame it on COVID or blame it on gentrification,” said crypto economist Jon Matonis on Twitter. “Either way, this Kreuzberg landmark has served as a Bitcoin watering hole for over 10 years, with thousands making the obligatory pilgrimage.”

Former patrons can\’t drown sorrows as first-ever bar to accept Bitcoin closes

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Filed Under: blockchain technology Tagged With: Berlin, Bitcoin, bitcoin adoption, bitcoin payments, btc, Business, crypto, cryptocurrency, Currency, decentralized, facebook, Food, founder, Germany, money, news, post, reddit, twitter, u.s., world

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