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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

Source

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Google Finance Adds Dedicated Data Tab on Bitcoin and Ether

March 1, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

Google has finally hopped on the crypto bandwagon. With the crypto industry now worth a mouth-watering $1 trillion, it can no longer be disregarded.

Google Adds ‘Crypto’ Tab To Feed

With many institutions coming into the crypto space in the last year, and many more projected to make a move soon, Google is making the crypto transition, as many had expected.

Through its Google Finance domain, the American tech company will enable its Google Finance users to get up-to-date price movements for their favorite cryptocurrencies. The domain platform, which originally catered for stock and currency markets, will see ‘crypto’ debut in its “compare markets” finance segment.

The new addition will let users know the latest price changes for popular virtual assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash.

Google had taken a stand-offish approach to the emerging blockchain technology previously. During the early years of cryptocurrencies gaining steam, the Alphabet subsidiary had banned crypto adverts on its platform. It went as far as bringing down videos on its Youtube platform that discussed cryptocurrencies.

But in a 2018 Blockchain Summit in Morocco, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Alphabet Inc., noted that the company had clearly missed it when it came to the nascent technology. Rumors are now making the rounds that the company is quietly acquiring crypto startups and investing in established crypto businesses. Ripple Labs’ is also mentioned as one of its crypto partners.

Crypto Now Gaining Global Attention

Bitcoin has played a vital role in cryptocurrencies reaching the enviable heights it is now on. With the premier digital asset owning a large share of the $1.6 trillion crypto market, global institutions and tech companies have found it hard to ignore it. 

MicroStrategy, a business intelligence firm based in Virginia, United States, has been beating the crypto drums for some time now. With its remarkable investments in BTC, it now holds a sizable share of BTC available in the ecosystem.

Electric car company Tesla Inc. also moved into the crypto space with an initial $1.5 billion investment in BTC. It is also looking to use the virtual asset as a payment solution, just like Mastercard and Visa plan to do.

The increased demand is making global financial regulators jittery as the sector is largely decentralized. TUS Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) commissioner Hester Peirce have called for a dynamic regulatory framework. Peirce says this will better aid the development of the nascent technology and reduce its potential for misuse.

Google Finance Adds Dedicated Data Tab on Bitcoin and Ether

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Filed Under: blockchain, cryptocurrency Tagged With: alphabet, Better, Bitcoin, bitcoin cash, blockchain, btc, Business, car, Cash, Co-founder, Companies, crypto, Cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency, Currency, Currency Markets, data, decentralized, Digital, ether, ethereum, exchange, finance, google, Investing, investment, Investments, Litecoin, Market, Markets, mastercard, ripple, SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, Space, Startups, tech, Technology, tesla, United States, visa, youtube

Grayscale Trust Records Negative Premiums Amid Market Crash

February 27, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

At its inception, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust was downright revolutionary. It opened many doors for the crypto space to gain higher levels of mainstream presence. As a testament to this, it’s the largest listed crypto asset out there, boasting a total of $30.17 billion in assets under management.

Grayscale’s US Supremacy

The fund itself was launched all the way back in 2013. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) quickly broke new ground, becoming the institutional vehicle of choice when it comes to the US’s crypto space. In a big part, this is thanks to the SEC being extremely prudish in allowing Bitcoin-based exchange-traded funds, but even so, GBTC is an amazing concept.

The US Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC) stands as the official regulator of investment trust funds, being exclusively designed for accredited investors that have proven their worth numerous times. Even so, retail investors can get their hands on it, as well, should they opt for a six-month lockup period to get access to it.

Skyrocketing Premiums Slowly Decreasing

With all of this in mind, this leads to the GBTC asset to be traded at a premium: The price of GBTC is more than the price of the equivalent amount of Bitcoin represented in its shares. This occurs as the demand from retail traders starts to rise within the secondary markets.

Institutional clients have it better, however, being able to buy at par-price from Grayscale Investment directly. This completely bypasses whatever price GBTC is on the OTC market.

This premium can skyrocket, with GBTC witnessing as high as 40% above the Bitcoin equivalent’s asking price. Over the past four weeks, this calmed down considerably, with a premium ranging from 5% to 10% when Bitcoin reached $58,000 and saw a subsequent and violent correction. Some speculate that this is just the start, however.

Trading GBTC At A Discount

Now, however, amid an increase in the US 10-year Treasury Bond’s interest rate, which generally destabilized the stock and crypto markets, GBTC is in a bit of a problem. With everything going down, there was a distinct appetite loss for secondary markets.

This, in turn, unbalanced GBTC, making it go for a discount. GBTC also has no real way to recover from this, as there isn’t a surefire way to convert GBTC directly into BTC.

The odd thing is, GBTC has been subject to several spectacular market crashes within the general Bitcoin market. None of that ever seemed to really bother GBTC and its rather impressive market premium.

Something that could be affecting it, however, is the new entrance of BTC Exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Purpose ETF is now on the market, wresting the monopoly from GBTC as the one and only Bitcoin derivative officially listed. Nothing concrete can be said for truth, but things certainly change when new competitors enter the ring.

Grayscale Trust Records Negative Premiums Amid Market Crash

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Filed Under: blockchain, cryptocurrency Tagged With: Better, Bitcoin, btc, correction, crypto, cryptocurrency, Currency, ETF, Go, grayscale, investment, Mainstream, Market, Markets, monopoly, SEC, Space, Trading, us

SEC Commissioner Calls for More Serious Work on Crypto Regulations

February 15, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

There has been significant hope that the Biden administration will make the most progressive step forward in crypto regulations. On the back of heightened Bitcoin demand and adoption, a Commissioner at the country’s top securities regulator is calling for serious regulatory consideration.

The Stars Are Aligning

Last week, Hester M. Pierce, a longtime Commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), spoke with Reuters about the need for cryptocurrency regulations. In her interview, Pierce, a long-running crypto fan, explained that institutional demand for digital assets had made regulations more of a necessity, and the SEC will need to act quickly.

Pierce’s affinity for cryptocurrencies has long been noted – even earning her the moniker “Crypto Mom.” As she explained to Reuters, the stars seem to have aligned for the SEC to finally take crypto regulations seriously, with a new administration and the increasing institutional demand.

“It’s not only that there have been calls for clarity for some time and that a new administration brings the chance to take a fresh look, but it also is a moment where it seems others in the marketplace are also taking a fresh look,” Pierce told Reuters.

The policymaker isn’t exactly wrong. 2020 saw significant institutional crypto adoption, with several large companies committing millions into Bitcoin to hedge against inflation and protect themselves from the coronavirus’s devastating economic impact. The increased investment led to a price surge for Bitcoin, which, as expected, spilled over to most other cryptocurrencies.

2021 hasn’t proven to be so different. In the past week alone, car manufacturer Tesla has announced a $1.5 billion commitment to Bitcoin and its integration of the leading cryptocurrency as a payment method for future products – most likely starting with the upcoming Cybertruck.

Mastercard, the top payment processor, and credit card manufacturer, has also announced that it would integrate Bitcoin into its services. The move will see the firm provide Bitcoin access to its almost billion-strong user base and 30 million merchants. Days later, Bank of New York Mellon, the country’s oldest banking institution, confirmed that it would now provide Bitcoin custody services. 

There’s Hope After All

These announcements – particularly that of Tesla – have driven Bitcoin’s recent rally, bringing the asset agonizingly close to the $50,000 price peg. Analysts believe that $50,000 will be in play this week – a phenomenon that will take Bitcoin over the 100 percent gain mark in less than three months.

Now that more companies are expected to make similar announcements, Pierce is correct in calling for crypto regulations. Fortunately, the Biden administration appears poised to fly where the Trump administration failed.

Last month, Cynthia Lummis, a pro-crypto Senator from Wyoming, told crypto hedge fund founder Anthony Pompliano that incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is keeping an open mind towards crypto regulations. The Senator, who is now a member of the Senate Committee, explained that she had also launched a Financial Innovation Caucus to educate her Congressional colleagues and other policymakers on digital assets going forward.

SEC Commissioner Calls for More Serious Work on Crypto Regulations

Source

Filed Under: blockchain, cryptocurrency Tagged With: Adoption, Apple, Bank, Banking, Biden, Bitcoin, car, Companies, crypto, Cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency, Custody, Cybertruck, Cynthia Lummis, Digital, exchange, founder, hedge fund, interview, investment, Janet Yellen, mastercard, New York, other, payment processor, SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, senate, tesla, trump, wyoming, yellen

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

Source

Filed Under: blockchain technology Tagged With: Adoption, altcoin, analyst, Apple, Apple Pay, Bank, Banks, Better, Binance, Binance Coin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Price, Bitpay, blockchain, btc, Business, Canada, Cash, celebrities, ceo, chief, Co-founder, commodity, Companies, correction, crypto, Crypto Ban, crypto exchange, Cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency, Currency, Custody, decentralized, Digital, Disrupt, dogecoin, electric vehicle, elon-musk, equity, ETH, ether, ethereum, exchange, Exchanges, executive, finance, fintech, founder, Futures, Go, government, grayscale, head, Hodler's, Hodler's Digest, IBM, India, indian government, investment, jack dorsey, jpmorgan, Law, LINE, Mainstream, maker, Market, Markets, mastercard, money, news, other, payments, PayPal, Polkadot, Predictions, reddit, Regulation, SEC, security, signal, Social Media, social-network, Space, starbucks, Stocks, supreme court, Technology, tesla, Tokens, Trading, twitter, u.s., U.S. Treasury, us, view, vulnerability, world, xrp

Nasdaq-Backed Crypto ETF Product Now Available in Bermuda

February 10, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

The Hashdex Nasdaq Crypto Index ETF recently went live on the Bermuda Stock Exchange. The fund is designed to provide institutional investors an entry into cryptocurrencies without the risk of holding them physically.

What is the ETF all about?

The Hashdex Nasdaq Crypto Index ETF is a joint venture between US-based stock exchange Nasdaq and Brazilian fund manager Hashdex. The product was first announced in September last year. At the time, Bermuda Stock Exchange (BSX) revealed that the ETF will be comprised of three million Class E shares valued at $1,000 each.

Nasdaq-Backed Crypto ETF Product Now Available in Bermuda

The ETF comes with a basket of top digital currencies, but 78.61% of its value is tied to Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency in the world. Ethereum compresses 16.86% of the fund while Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Stellar Lumens, and Chainlink hold anywhere between 0.65% to 1.58% share each.

Talking about the offering, CF Benchmarks CEO Sui Chung said,

“The Nasdaq Crypto Index represents another leap towards the institutionalization of crypto as investors look for broader exposure to the digital asset class.”

Eyeing alternative finance

CF Benchmark is the calculation agent for the Nasdaq crypto index. Chung said that indices like NCI and several others from their firm are quickly becoming a Launchpad for a new range of financial products. They will ultimately help in making cryptocurrencies more widely accessible and drive adoption around the world.

Crypto ETFs now allow institutional investors to get exposure to digital assets without having to hold them physically. The ETF simply tracks the price of an asset or a basket of assets and can be traded freely on the stock markets. The ETF holders can also invest in Bitcoin indirectly.

While other jurisdictions are opening up to this new variety of financial instruments, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has not accepted a single application for a Bitcoin ETF to date. Since exchange-traded funds are still illegal in the US, investors only have one way to get indirect exposure to Bitcoin i.e., via a Trust. Grayscale, one of the largest crypto asset managers in the world, also runs the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.

Nasdaq-Backed Crypto ETF Product Now Available in Bermuda

Source

Filed Under: blockchain, cryptocurrency Tagged With: Adoption, Bitcoin, bitcoin cash, Cash, ceo, Chainlink, crypto, Crypto ETF, Crypto Index ETF, Cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency, Currencies, data, Digital, digital currencies, ETF, ethereum, exchange, Fund Manager, grayscale, index, Litecoin, Markets, NASDAQ, Nasdaq crypto index, other, SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, Stellar, stellar-lumens, Stock markets, Sui Chung, us, world

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