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Trading volume on BitMEX hit 2019 low

The daily trading volume on the largest crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX has dropped down to 86,850 BTC — lowest since the November 2018. This was brought to attention by CL, Twitter analyst.

“This market is officially lifeless,” — he wrote in his account.

BitMEX is the platform with the highest liquidity in the world for cryptocurrency derivatives trading.

Venezuelan government to gift the retirees with cryptocurrency for Christmas

Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuela, said that all the country’s retirees and officials will get 0.5 El Petro (around $30) as a Christmas gift.

El Petro is a national cryptocurrency of Venezuela. As the government of the country says it is fully backed by oil. The government is trying to use El Petro in the country’s economy and for trading with other countries, however, with not much success so far.

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USA can launch their own cryptocurrency

The Federal Reserve is looking into developing a digital currency in the US. It was announced by its Chairman Jerome Powell in a letter to lawmakers this week in his reply to the letter from Congressmen French Hill and Bill Foster. They are concerned that the Chinese cryptocurrency on which the Chinese government is already working can jeopardize the USA’s position in the world’s economy.

Powell specified that so far the Federal Reserve “not identified potential material benefits of a general purpose central bank digital currency to the implementation of monetary policy" and is only studying the rationale for creating it.

Tether and Litecoin have the largest portion of whales

IntoTheBlock said what percentage of the most popular cryptocurrencies is owned by the largest owners. Tether and Litecoin turned out to be the most centralized: 63% of USDT is owned by 132 addresses, and 47% of LTC is owned by 131 address.

The data for the other large crypto currencies looks like this: ETH — 151 addresses own 39%,
Bitcoin Cash — 112 addresses own 29%, Bitcoin SV — 103 addresses own 24%, and 39% of Cardano is owned by only 41 addresses.

PayPal CEO said he has bitcoins

Dan Schulman, the CEO of payment processor PayPal, revealed that he owns only one cryptocurrency, bitcoin. He also said that BTC is an “interesting idea”, and blockchain is a “promising technology”.

“As for cryptocurrency, it is still very volatile, and that they do not have much demand for it by merchants because merchants operate on very small margins. What they need to do is to turn it to fiat immediately. There is a charge for turning it into fiat, that is why any advantages in price will be eaten up by this conversion fee”, Schulman said.

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Bitcoin crashes below $7,000

Last Friday the world’s first cryptocurrency lost over 10% om price and crashed below $7,000 on a number of exchanges. Such low price of bitcoins is registered for the first time since May this year.

Against this background, the “fear index” has dipped down to extreme values at the level of 20. According to the site Alternative.me it can mean a possible growth of the cryptocurrency.

Binance CEO refutes rumors about the raid in Shanghai office of the exchange

On November, 21 media announced that the largest office of Binance in Shanghai shut down after a police raid. Many analytics connect this news to the cryptocurrencies losing prices, including bitcoin’s dropping below $7,000.

Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, refuted this information, calling this information a FUD block.

“No police, no raid, no office. Hope you didn’t pay to read that FUD block.” — he wrote in his Twitter-account.

The USA can make Facebook’s cryptocurrency a security

The House of Representative of the USA introduced a new bill about acknowledging managed stablecoins such as Libra as securities.

"Managed stablecoins, such as the proposed Libra, are clearly securities under existing law. This legislation simply clarifies the statute to remove any ambiguity. Bringing clarity to the regulatory structure of these digital assets protects consumers and ensures proper government oversight going forward", — stated Sylvia Garcia, one of the bill's authors.

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Fraudsters are selling Gram. Telegram warns users

Pavel Durov’s team said that selling of Gram tokens has not started yet, and asked users to not fall for scammers’ tricks.

“Some websites offer Gram for sale and pretend to be connected with Telegram. Please be advised that these sites are not official and have no relation to Telegram. Gram has not yet been given to anyone and Telegram is not selling Gram”, - states the official Telegram-channel of the company.

Cryptocurrency worth of $4.4 billion stolen in 2019

According to the research company CiperTrace, the amount of theft and scamming in the sphere of cryptocurrency reached $4,4 billion since the beginning of the year.

The report says that in Q3 of 2019 criminal have stolen the minimal amount during the past years. However, in comparison with the last year, the losses increased by $2,7 billion.

The company’s experts also named the largest crypto crimes of the year: the cryptocurrency pyramin PlusToken ($2,9 billion) and shutting down of the exchange QuadrigaCX ($195 million).

Andreas Antonopoulos: governments place a damper on bitcoin price

Andreas Antonopoulos, famous bitcoin enthusiast, said that governments act to lower bitcoin’s price, but this is not a conspiracy, it’s just their “job”.

“We know for a fact that when the bitcoin bubble started to go up really fast in 2017, the U.S. Treasury decided to fast-track the deployments of futures markets in order to stop that bubble. A lot of people see that as conspiracy, but if you look at the mandate of institutions like the Treasury, that’s actually their job”, Antonopoulos said in his interview with crypto blogger Ivan on Tech.

According to the analyst, this allowed investors to open positions for on lowering the price of bitcoin which balanced the market, as well as reduced its volatility.

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Bank of America named bitcoin the best asset of the decade, billionaires invest into BTC, and ethereum’s volatility is at its lowest

 Bank of America: bitcoin is the best investment of the decade

Bank of America Merrill Lynch named bitcoin the best asset for investment of the decade. 1 dollar invested in 2010 would now be $90,026.

For comparison, 1 dollar invested in American stocks during the same period would have the price of $3.46. Myanmar's national currency was named the worst asset, since 2010 $1 invested in it now has a value of just $0.004.

Yet another billionaire bought bitcoins

The number of billionaires investing in cryptocurrencies is steadily growing.

Financial expert Bill Pulte announced his purchase of 11 BTC (around $78,000). He is the CEO of investment company Pulte Capital Partners and is worth about $11 billion. Pulte thinks the main advantage of bitcoin is an opportunity to make a transaction to any part of the world without a middleman. According to the billionaire, bitcoin canmake the life of the poor easier and make the world a better place.

Ethereum’s volatility drops to the level of 2016

Ethereum has been trading in the narrow range of $140-150 for a long time now. According to CoinMetrics.io, ETH’s volatility index dropped to 2016’s lowest.

On December, 8 Ethereum has undergone Istanbul hard fork, which did not lead to the cryptocurrency’s price growth, despite expectations

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Ethereum’s price is threatened, and the number of bitcoin hodlers is growing

Ethereum is threatened: Plus Token pyramid’s assets started moving

The organizers of a cryptocurrency pyramid Plus Token moved 789 525 ETH (about $105 million) to an unknown address. Twitter account Whale Alert paid attention to the transfer.

Matteo Leibowitz, the Block’s analyst, thinks that scammers can buy Ethereum futures for sale, crash down the spot price and close future contracts with a profit.

In the summer the Chinese police managed to detain the suspects in the Plus Token ponzi scheme case, but access to wallets could not be obtained.

The price of unspent UTXOs in loss hits a record high

The number of unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) in loss rose to all-time highs above $45 million, according to a research by Glassnode.

This indicates the rise of the number of “hodlers” - people who hold bitcoin despite its price decrease.

Federal Reserve: over 50% of bitcoin transactions are illegal

Lael Brainard, member of the United States Federal Reserve Board of Governors, said that 25% of all bitcoin users participate in illegal operations.
“One study estimated that more than a quarter of bitcoin users and roughly half of bitcoin transactions, for example, are associated with illegal activity”, — the representative of FR said at an ECB event.

She also said that only a third of exchanges meet the requirements for AML (anti money laundering), CFT (combating the financing of terrorism) and KYC (know your customer) procedure.

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Hackers steal 2 million NULS token, Ethereum hard fork scheduled for January,1 and Craig Wright “proved” he is Satoshi Nakamoto

 Hackers steal 2 million NULS tokens

Threat actors hacked and official account of the NULS projects and transferred 2 million of tokens. 550 thousand of them have already entered the market, the NULS team says.

At the same time the exchange rate of the coin has stayed almost the same – the currency lost in price just 0.58%. The developers are going to make a hard fork of altcoin to prevent hackers from spending the rest 1,45 million of tokens. The hacking took place because of the NULS 2.2 version security vulnerability.

 Ethereum hard fork to take place on January, 1

Ethereum’s hard fork is scheduled for block 9,200,000 which is expected to be mined by January 1, 2020. The update is designed to delay the Difficulty Bomb by 4 million blocks (equivalent to 611 days).

The developers asked nod owners to update their software before December 30, 2019.

 Craig Wright “proved” that he is Satoshi Nakamoto

The Australian scientist Craig Wright demonstrated “proof” that he is the bitcoin’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

During an interview with Modern Consensus, Wright showed an article to explain the choice the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym. The article is about a philosopher Tominaga Nakamoto who lived in 18 century. The printed out document, made according to Wright in 2008, also contained the following handwritten notes:

“Nakamoto is the Japanese Adam Smith. Honest Ledger + Micro Cash. Satoshi is Intelligent History. Not too hard.”

He explained that Tominaga Nakamoto wrote about “honest money and the rational nature of things”. Wright compared his with Adam Smith – one of the founders of the theory of economics.
Craig Right publicly claimed that he was the creator of bitcoin in 2019 about hasn’t yet provided sufficient evidence to prove it.

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 Tone Vays: bitcoin will kill altcoins

Bitcoin’s hash rate growth will eliminate most of altcoins, trader Tone Vays says.

He noted that since December 2017, bitcoin’s hash rate has grown by 800%, which was not the case with altcoins. The trader has also added bitcoin’s dominance index went from 50% to 70% in 2019, and next year it will be 85%.

“I think we have another 10-15% in Bitcoin to gain on the sh*tcoins as it continues towards 90% and 95% and then 98%”, - Vays said.

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Dear beloved subscribers, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Our team wishes you an endless cash flow, sincere kindness, incredible success, interesting ideas and great health for new achievements!

We believe in you and genuinely hope that you will amass wealth, be reasonable with spending and enjoy work-life balance.

As a tradition, we wish hodlers the growth of crypto market, arbitragers – only successful schemes, and we wish miners always work with profits.

Already today you can start building your invincible financial fortress the walls of which will protect you against storms and turmoil. This fortress will help you and your family live the same lifestyle despite all the disruptions behind the fortress wall.

It is time for New Year’s resolutions and goals. Achieving them will make your life interesting, bright and successful.

Happy holidays!

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Why will altcoins disappear and what will become of bitcoin in 2020

Tone Vays: all altcoins will disappear

Analyst Tone Vays famous in crypto community thinks that the price of the most popular altcoins will drop to zero because they are worthless and cannot substitute for bitcoin.

“Who will use Litecoin when we have Lightning Network, who will use Ethereum when we have side chain Liquid Network? Will people use Binance token? I don’t know because it’s useless”, — Vays said.

He also added that he doesn’t expect to see bitcoin cost over $10,000 in 2020.

Bloomberg: bitcoin will become stronger in 2020

Bloomberg’s analysts published a report with cryptocurrency predictions, according to which bitcoin will become stronger in 2020. The experts note that bitcoin become more and more popular as investment against a weak dollar and global uncertainties.

According to them, limited number of coins and halving of the block reward in May 2020 will account for increasing price of BTC.

“Bitcoin's initial reaction to the U.S. airstrike was a good test of our premise that the first-born crypto is maturing toward a digital version of gold”, — the report says.
On January 3, bitcoin reached its seven weeks’ maximum after U.S. military attack near Baghdad which killed Iraqi general Qasem Soleimani.

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CME launched bitcoin options, and bitcoin network continues to grow

CME Group launched bitcoin options

Chicago exchange CME Group launched bitcoin options trading on January, 13.  The core of the instrument are bitcoin futures contracts introduced by the company in December 2017. After the latter were launched, BTC price started going down from its historic high of $20,000 and hasn’t bounced back to that level yet.

On January,14 bitcoin grew by 4,61%, and the majority of TOP-100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization demonstrate positive dynamics.

127 million of BTC addresses appeared since the end of 2017

Despite bitcoin market being bullish, since 2017 the network got 127 million addresses. According to Decentralized, sometimes the number of new addresses registered within 24 hours reached over 300,000.

“For a sense of scale, the number of people holding more than 0 bitcoin in Jan 2011 was a mere 70,0000. Today that number is north of 28 million — a 400x growth over the decade”, – the company’s analysts write.

They add that the average day in 2019 saw Bitcoin processing over 300,000 transactions in comparison to a mere 5000 in 2011.

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Bitfinex tranferred $1 billion in BTC, and why it is too late to buy BTC

Bitfinex exchange transferred $1 billion in BTC with $80 commission

Cryptocurrency platform Bitfinex confirmed that it was them who made the mysterious transfer of 123,447 BTC (around $1,1 billion) registered by bitcoin enthusiasts. According to the company’s CTO Paolo Ardoino, the transaction was a part of a transfer of 150 thousand BTC to the platform’s hot wallet.

As a result of this operation, the second largest bitcoin address has emerged. It should be noted that the commission for the transfer of $1 B was just $80.

Why it’s too late to buy bitcoin now

In the near future bitcoin’s price will not longer increase, BK Capital Management’s co-found Brian Kelly thinks. He notes that
the growth rate of addresses in the network lags behind bitcoin’s price increase.

"The Bitcoin price got a little bit ahead of the address growth. So, just like I said about Apple, just like I said about the 'triple Qs' in 2000. When an asset goes straight up, that's means a lot of the news is priced in", — he explains.

According to Kelly, back in December the situation was the opposite, when the BTC price was on a decline, the number of addresses continued to increase. He adds that this was a strong buy signal that turned out to be spot-on.

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Miners earned $5 billion in 2019, there is a drop of interest to bitcoin as the price rises, and Peter Schiff lost his coins

 Miners made an estimated $5 billion in revenue during 2019

As the specialists of The Block counted. Of that figure, $4.89 billion was in the form of block rewards and the rest – some $147 million – was made via transaction fees. The calculations were made based on bitcoin’s price at the time of mining.

For comparison, in 2018 miners got $5,26 billion in revenue, and in 2017 – $3,19 billion. The block reward will be 12,5 BTC until May 2020, and will drop to 6,25 BTC after halving.

 Interest to bitcoin is dropping as the price rises

Google Trends is considered as one of the main
metrics of interest in cryptocurrencies among the masses. Almost all the time the number for “bitcoin” searches was growing after the price’s growth, however now the tendency is broken.

This was brought to attention by Twitter user Haejin. Since the beginning of January, BTC has risen in price by $ 2’000, and altcoin capitalization has grown by 50%, while the number of Bitcoin searches in Google has decreased.

 Crypto skeptic lost access to his bitcoin wallet

Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, famous for his negative feedback about cryptocurrencies, said that he had lost access to his wallet. Interestingly, he blames the wallets software in the loss of the coins.

“I just lost all theBitcoin I have ever owned. My wallet got corrupted somehow and my password is no longer valid. So now not only is my Bitcoin intrinsically worthless; it has no market value either. I knew owning Bitcoin was a bad idea, I just never realized it was this bad!”, -Schiff tweeted.

Crypto community suggested that the businessman simply forgot his password and does not want to admit it.

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Bitcoin options trading volumes rise and why Ethereum will rise in price

 The trading volumes of bitcoin options on CME doubled

On January 13, bitcoin options trading started on the website of CME platform. On the first day, traders exchanged 55 contracts (about $ 2.37 million), and by the end of the week volumes had grown up to 122 contracts (about $ 5.27 million).

These figures significantly exceed the trade turnover of the competing trading platform Bakkt, which launched Bitcoin options for a month. According to the Skew Analytics platform, Bakkt’s trading volumes account for a small fraction of the CME figures. In terms of turnover of BTC futures, Bakkt is also behind CME Group.

 Ethereum correlates with the market better than other cryptocurrencies

According to Binance Research, the correlation of cryptocurrencies continues to increase. Ethereum has the highest coefficient (0.75), followed by Litecoin and EOS (0.74). Analysts emphasized that the trend towards the joint movement of the cryptocurrency exchange rate is intensifying in the bear market.

The top three leaders in price growth for 2019 among the TOP 10 cryptocurrencies are: Binance Coin (+ 127.56%), Bitcoin (+ 86.78%) and Litecoin (+ 29.50%). Researchers added that the altcoin season never happened, since the bitcoin dominance index for 2019 rose from 52% to 68%.

 Why Ethereum will rise in price

The Ethereum network is the leader in the number of deployed decentralized applications (DApps), analysts at the DApp.com platform say.
According to them, the largest number of applications appeared on the Ethereum blockchain in 2019 - 1.2 million users registered in them.

“Ethereum has more than 1.4 million DApps users, including 1.28 million new users, as well as 137,000 old users, which makes up 10% of the total number of active application users,” the study said.

DApp.com analysts believe that the growing popularity of DApps on Ethereum will contribute to the long-term increase in the value of cryptocurrency. Experts say that the market for financial decentralized applications (DeFi) will make the greatest contribution in the near future.

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Tether issues token backed by gold, Ripple considers IPO, and Musk speaks about cryptocurrencies

 Tether issues a gold-backed token

Tether, the creator of the popular stablecoin USDT, announced the launch of a new token baked by gold. Tether Gold (XAUT) represents one troy ounce within the gold bars.

The bars themselves will be kept in a Swiss vault, and Tether will pay for the storage.

“Tether Gold provides the combined benefits of both physical and digital assets, removing the drawbacks of holding gold in more traditional ways, such as high storage costs and restricted access”, — Paolo Ardoino, the CTO at Tether, said.

 Elon Musk: cryptocurrencies will not replace cash

The famous businessman Elon Musk contemplated on cryptocurrencies and stated that he was neither their supporter nor the opponent, however finding bitcoin’s White Paper to be “pretty clever”.

Musk also noted that digital currencies are often used in illegal transactions, although the crypto community does not like to mention this.

“This sort of gets the crypto people angry, but there are transactions that are not within the balance of the law. And, normally, cash is used for these transactions. But, in order for illegal transactions to occur, cash must also be used for legal transactions. You need an illegal to legal bridge. That’s where crypto comes in,” — the entrepreneur said.

He added that cryptocurrencies have found their niche due to the fact that cash cannot be used everywhere, but the role of digital currencies is secondary.

 Ripple CEO announces his wish to hold IPO

And this can seriously affect the price of XRP. Brad Garlinghouse, CEO at Ripple, mentioned the possibility of an initial public offering (IPO) of the company during the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“In the next 12 months, you’ll see IPOs in the crypto/blockchain space. We’re not going to be the first and we’re not going to be the last, but I expect us to be on the leading side… it’s a natural evolution for our company,” — he said.

In the comments to the post, Twitter users expressed the hope that the IPO would attract funds from institutional investors and positively affect the XRP price.

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Interest in the bitcoin halving has reached its maximum since 2016, and has dropped for IEO

 Interest in bitcoin halving has reached its maximum since 2016

People’s interest in halving is growing - according to Google Trends, the number of “bitcoin halving” searches has grown to its highest level since 2016.

The last halving of the bitcoin block mining reward took place in July 2016, it was then when Google Trends recorded the largest number of related searches. Over the past two months, this figure has increased from 11% to 40%. The upcoming halving will take place in May 2020 - traders have high hopes for it, since previously bitcoin’s price surged some time after the event.

 Larry Cermak: IEOs are dead

Initial exchange offerings (IEOs) return is near to zero, The Block analyst Larry Chermak points out. He analyzed the most popular platform and came to the conclusion that the IEO era has passed.

“IEOs are dead. There appears to be a clear relationship between the return and the number of days since the IEO. The average return of IEOs approaches 0% in 200 days. In other words, nearly no one wants to hold IEOs long term,” — he wrote in his twitter-account.

In Q III of 2019, 64% of projects showed positive returns; in Q IV their number dropped to 43%. Now only 23% of companies are in positive territory.

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Due to coronavirus, ASIC deliveries from China are delayed, and litecoin surges 17% in 24 hours

 Deliveries of ASIC from China are delayed due to coronavirus

Chinese manufacturers of ASIC miners have postponed delivery of equipment due to the coronavirus outbreak. All offices and plants in the country were quarantined at least until February 10, according to Zodd Zverev, the CTO of the mining pool 1Thash & 58COIN.

“Internal logistics is almost completely paralyzed in the country, deliveries of food and strategic goods to fight the virus are in priority. Since it is forbidden to go to work and the police strictly controls this, the delivery and installation of new ASICs is practically impossible, ” he said.

In addition, the top management of mining companies, including Bitmain and Canaan Creative, left the country. They should return no earlier than the end of February — the beginning of March. Zverev believes that the slowdown in the introduction of new equipment will help miners stay in the profitable zone on the eve of halving.

 Litecoin surged 17% in 24 hours and approached $70

The world’s seventh cryptocurrency by market capitalization went up by more than $10 in price and came close to $70.

LTC rises in price amid the general growth of the cryptocurrency market, but at a faster pace than bitcoin: in January, the BTC price grew by 30%, whereas litecoin strengthened by 65%.

It is worth noting that the first half of last year was very successful for LTC. Over the period from January to June, the coin added 350% in price - this was due to the halving of the block mining reward which took place in August.