Bitcoin price is down slightly as traders wait for the official results of the American election. The currency is trading at $13,700, which is slightly below yesterdays high of $14,093. Ethereum, Ripple, and Bitcoin cash are trading at $380, $0.24, and $237, respectively.

Yesterday, Bitcoin price rallied as traders refocused on the US election and the overall weaker US dollar. Indeed, the dollar index fell by more than 0.75% yesterday, in part because the market was waiting for a clear victory by Joe Biden.

Today, the dollar index is up by more than 0.50% because investors have started pricing-in a victory by Donald Trump. As of this writing, Joe Biden has won 238 votes while Donald Trump has 213 votes. However, as shown below, Trump is leading in most of the remaining pivotal states.

As such, Bitcoin price is probably falling because of the inverse relationship it has with the US dollar.

Still, Bitcoin bulls are optimistic that the price will resume the upward trend. Indeed, the amount of open interest in the futures market has continued to rise. Indeed, according to Decrypt, open interest in futures tied to BTC is regularly hitting $45 billion per day. Although the futures market is relatively small, investors believe that it is sending a picture of more demand of the digital currency.

On the weekly chart, we see that Bitcoin price has been in a strong upward trend since March this year. The price is slightly below the 78.6% Fibonacci retracement level, in a signal that bulls are in control. It is also slightly above the 50-day and 25-day moving averages.

Most importantly, it is attempting to move above the important resistance at $13,878. It also seems to be forming a cup and handle pattern.

Therefore, in the near term, I suspect that bulls will clear the current resistance as they target $15,000. To do this, it will need to have a power move above $13,878.

On the flip side, a move below the 50% retracement at $10,000 will invalidate this trend.

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Bitcoin Price is On a Path to $15,000 But It Needs to Clear One Hurdle - InvestingCube

While the crypto community decides whether Bitcoin (BTC) was born or merelyconceived 12 years ago, the fact is that Oct. 31, 2008, remains one of the most notable dates in humanitys modern history. Exactly 12 years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto published what some have described asa new bible Bitcoins white paper. Designed as a brand new purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash, many see the creation of Bitcoin as a response to a global financial crisis.

Related: Happy birthday dear Bitcoin: Cryptos first white paper turns 12

Cointelegraphs video team talked to Adam Back, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, about the birth of Bitcoin. Check out the video here:

Although Bitcoinhas recently become more appealing than both Jesus and sex, at least among Reddit users, lets not forget that its only Bitcoins 12th anniversary and that many great achievements and challenges still lie ahead, though for this real-world saga, we can only hope to know how this story will end and who will emerge as the victor.

Cointelegraph has reached out to Bitcoins friends and supporters, asking them to send their birthday wishes to the Big BTC.

Alex Wilson, co-founder of The Giving Block:

Muneeb Ali, CEO and co-founder at Blockstack PBC:

Michael Terpin, founder of Transform Group and BitAngels:

Jimmy Song, instructor at Programming Blockchain:

Alejandro De La Torre, VP of Poolin, a Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining pool:

Efi Pylarinou, fintech and blockchain advisor:

Scott Melker, trader, investor and the host of The Wolf Of All Streets podcast:

Taylor Pearson, entrepreneur and author of The End of Jobs:

Jonathan Reichental, CEO of Human Future:

Sandra Ro, CEO of the Global Blockchain Business Council:

These quotes have been edited and condensed.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Original post:
What industry leaders would wish for Bitcoins white paper 12th anniversary - Cointelegraph

The world-class trading platform, Bitcoin.com Exchange announced its participating in the Cryptopia Exchange rescue consortium in order to help redistribute coins to customers. Bitcoin.coms trading platform will provide an exchange environment in order to bolster the Cryptopia Rescue redistribution plan.

Back in January 2019, the New Zealand cryptocurrency trading platform Cryptopia Exchange suffered a major breach and it affected 2.3 million account holders from all around the world. Estimates note that roughly $860 million worth of cryptocurrency was held on the exchange before the hack. Bitcoin.com is pleased to announce that our exchange will assist a rescue program dedicated to helping Cryptopia account holders.

Bitcoin.com Exchange has joined a consortium called the Cryptopia Rescue program, and it will produce a platform to distribute coins to Cryptopia Exchange Account Holders. The group formed in order to create a class action against the Liquidator, Grant Thornton.

Victor Cattermole, a Cryptopia Rescue spokesperson said:

The liquidator was proposing to write off more than 50% of the coin holdings. In our alternative plan, we have established a relationship with Bitcoin.com to provide an exchange environment to emulate the Cryptopia model so that all coins can be redistributed.

Currently, the Cryptopia Rescue team is working to connect with as many account holders as possible. The plan is to do everything possible to provide the best resolution to Cryptopias former customers. Since launching on September 2, 2019, the premier Bitcoin.com Exchange has provided customers with a professional trading engine combined with top-of-the-line security practices.

Speaking about joining the Cryptopia Rescue effort, Danish Chaudhry, CEO of Bitcoin.com Exchange explained the exchange team looks forward to helping the crypto community.

We take this role very seriously within the consortium, Chaudhry stressed. [Bitcoin.com Exchange] will do everything we can as a united group to provide the best-in-class platform to redistribute Cryptopia account holders their coins via our exchange, he added.

There are five limitations Cryptopia Exchange Account Holders need to take into account.

When the Cryptopia Exchange trustee completes the claim approval process and selects a distribution date, a provided payout support plan for distribution may be added. Customers that have any questions or issues with the Cryptopia claim process will need to contact Cryptopia support.

What do you think about the Bitcoin.com Exchange providing support to Cryptopia account holders? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Cryptopia Logo, Bitcoin.com Exchange, Bitcoin.com Logo,

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Bitcoin.com Exchange Reveals Role in the Cryptopia Rescue Group | Promoted - Bitcoin News

Amiti Uttarwar, a Bitcoin Core developer, received a $150,000 development grant (in June 2020) from HDR Global (the parent company of BitMEX) and OKCoin.

Uttarwar is currently focused on improving certain aspects of Bitcoins (BTC) peer-to-peer (P2P) layer by addressing issues related to privacy and reliability.

The OKCoin team notes in a blog post that it can be challenging for a system to be peer-to-peer and for it to also work as cash. OKCoin points out that taking part in a peer-to-peer network leaks identifying information which can threaten the privacy that cash requires. Uttarwar wanted to address this issue and shes now working on different aspects of the problem in order to resolve it.

Uttarwar recently explained how this tension (between privacy and reliability) unfolds in Bitcoin.

As noted by the OKCoin team:

A peer-to-peer network, she argued, needs to have the three [main] characteristics:

Reliability: the valid messages need to be delivered to all the participants in the network;

Timeliness: the messages need to be delivered in a reasonable amount of time;

Accessibility: it shouldnt be too demanding, technically or computationally, to participate in the network (in the case of Bitcoin, to run a validating node).

Since Bitcoin also functions as a currency (or medium of exchange), it adds two other requirements. As noted by OKCoin, these requirements include:

Privacy: the behavior of the networks participants shouldnt be linked to their real world identities;

Upgradability: the network should run, inclusive of all versions of the software

The exchange also mentioned:

The reliability of the Bitcoin network depends on the efficiency of its peer-to-peer infrastructure but its ability to work as cash hinges on its privacy feature. The conflict between the two, Amiti observed, is the following: concerns of reliability imply you want to tell everyone your message but concerns of privacy require you dont want them to know its yours. Solving this conundrum is key to ensuring Bitcoins success.

(Note: to learn more about what Uttarwar is doing to improve the Bitcoin protocol, check here.)

As reported recently, OKCoin celebrated the Bitcoin whitepapers 12th anniversary by allowing users to buy BTC with low fees and within 2 minutes.

The OKCoin team explained that its still not too late to take a position and begin dollar cost averaging over time. The exchange pointed out that Bitcoin may still be in its infancy (or early stage of adoption and development), with considerable upside opportunity for new investors and traders.

The exchange also mentioned that Bitcoin represents the progress of the crypto and blockchain sector. The flagship digital currency has shown us the significance of the open-source community, OKCoin states.

The exchange added:

We believe that Bitcoin provides an opportunity for investment as well as currency and were proud to offer an easy global on/off ramp for Bitcoin.

Read more:
Bitcoin Developer Amiti Uttarwar Explains that BTC Protocols Success May be Ensured by Addressing Privacy and Reliability Concerns - Crowdfund Insider

The Bitcoin network hashrate has dropped significantly over the last four days sliding from a high of 161 exahash per second (EH/s) to 90 EH/s on October 27. Today, the Bitcoin hashrate has improved a hair as the networks security is currently hovering around 100 EH/s. However, the mempool log of unconfirmed transactions has spiked to levels not seen since the 2017 highs.

On Wednesday, October 28, 2020, the Bitcoin (BTC) hashrate is trying to regain what was lost during the last four days. According to statistics, since the October 27 high of 161 EH/s, the network hashrate is down -37.88% at 100 EH/s today. The overall SHA256 hashrate lost more than 40% between the highest point to the lowest metric recorded.

Analysts assume the drop was due to the end of the rainy season in Sichuan China and its been said that miners have been migrating to different regions in the country. The significant drop follows the networks all-time high when the hashrate spiked to 174 EH/s on October 14, 2020.

The executive from the mining organization Hashr8, Thomas Heller, spoke about the hashrate drop on Twitter on October 26.

Looking at the top 10 pools, we can see approx 22 EH/s left the Bitcoin network, Heller tweeted. Not a precise measure of course, but overlaid with the number of blocks mined per day, we can get a rough idea of the hashrate change. This coming difficulty adjustment is one to look forward to, the executive added.

Not too long ago, BTCs mining difficulty dropped from the highest point ever at 19.69T to todays range of 18.60T. With the hashrate so low, miners may see the difficulty drop even lower making it easier to mine bitcoins.

The next expected difficulty change however is still five days away scheduled for on or around November 2, 2020. Today there are 17 mining pools pointing their hash at the BTC chain. The top mining operation today is F2pool with 17.93 EH/s under the hood. F2pool is followed by Poolin, Btc.com, Antpool, and Binance Pool.

Now because the hashrate dropped and it has coincided with the price of bitcoin (BTC) rising, network fees have jumped considerably. Stats from bitcoinfees.cash indicates the next BTC block fee $8.26 and the current median fee is $5.10 per transaction.

Data from the mempool shows theres 121,000+ unconfirmed transactions waiting to be confirmed. Of course, the wait times have pushed the transaction fee market up because people are paying higher fees to get their BTC transactions confirmed.

For now, miners will have to be patient and wait out the five days in order for the difficulty to drop lower. It is uncertain how much migration is happening in China right now as far as Sichuan operations are concerned, but most of the hashrate losses stemmed from China-based mining pools.

What do you think about the big hashrate drop during the last four days? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, coinwarz.com/mining/bitcoin/hashrate-chart, Btc.com, bitcoinfees.cash,

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Mempool Clog: Bitcoin Hashrate Drops 40%, Backlog Shows Over 100K Unconfirmed Transactions - Bitcoin News

The code for Taproot, Bitcoins biggest upgrade in years, is finalized and has been packaged into a forthcoming update. Only, its not ready to be deployed yet because Bitcoin developers have differing opinions on the best route to activation.

Taproot will enhance Bitcoins smart contract capabilities by implementing a new digital signature scheme, Schnorr. Implementing the upgrade requires a soft fork of Bitcoins code, and there are a few competing proposals for how to activate it.

In a bid to expedite implementation discussions, Bitcoin Core contributor A.J. Towns recently surveyed 12 other developers who have been active in the implementation process to glean their thoughts on what activation should look like.

The results of the survey show that, while developers are generally aligned when it comes to the big picture of Taproots activation, they disagree on the details. As they debate the finer points, the developers conservative, careful deliberation may seem like nitpicking to outsiders.

But it shows that so-called soft-fork upgrades like Taproot are not entirely riskless events and that the specter of the controversial Segwit soft fork has haunted discussions.

Taproot activation proposals, explained

The Segwit transaction load increase was Bitcoins last soft fork, or an upgrade that is backwards compatible, meaning software running the old version of the code can still interact with the upgraded version.

Segwits activation was anything but smooth and relied on tweaks along the way after miners failed to adopt the upgrade in its first year. To keep the upgrade from failing, a new implementation proposal was adopted in the middle of the activation process. In an effort to put pressure on miners to upgrade, one proposal even suggested that node operators those Bitcoin users who run Bitcoins software and keep a copy of its ledger reject transactions from the miners who hadnt updated to SegWit to expedite its adoption.

In a perfect world, both node users and miners would upgrade simultaneously to ensure no conflict would split the chain or result in two rival factions supporting two different versions of Bitcoins code.

Even though Taproot is a non-controversial upgrade, the memory of Segwit is making developers cautious when evaluating this latest upgrade.

Two proposals

Two of the leading implementation proposals for Taproot rely on a mix of miner signaling and user activation. BIP 8, introduced in 2017 by Bitcoin developers Luke Dashjr and Shoalinfry, would include a signaling period for miners; if enough miners dont activate to reach consensus on the upgrade, then a flag day for activation would automatically upgrade Bitcoin nodes that have downloaded v0.21 of Bitcoin Core.

These nodes would reject blocks and transactions from miners who do not support Taproot, so in theory, this method would incentivize miners to adopt the new ruleset lest they lose out on profits.

In a second Taproot implementation proposal, Core developer Matt Corallos Modern Softfork Activation, fuses BIP 8 with BIP 9 (the latter being the proposal originally adopted to activate Segwit but which proved inadequate).

Corallos hybrid model first includes a one-year signaling period for miners. Second, if a super-majority of miners does not update during this timeframe, then the upgrade would be subject to a six-month review to make changes (if any) to the proposal.

The third and final step is a BIP 8-style activation period of two years, with a non-mandatory flag-day for node users to activate the update.

What Bitcoin developers think

For the first question in his survey, AJ Towns asks developers what percentage of miners need to signal an upgrade for it to be considered a safe majority. Eight believe that nothing less than 85%-95% would be sufficient. The thinking is that anything less threatens a network split where some miners run the older code and some the newer code, which would create two conflicting transaction histories.

Failing a miner-signalled activation, seven respondents think a flag day for node-enforced activation could come as soon as 12-18 months after activation begins. If too few miners adopt the upgrade, this would mean nodes could enforce the Taproot ruleset and only accept blocks from miners who also signaled for the upgrade.

In a perfect world, both node users and miners would upgrade simultaneously to ensure no conflict would split the chain or result in two rival factions supporting two different versions of Bitcoins code.

Almost all of the developers surveyed want to wait to see if miners and users adopt the upgrade on their own before deciding on a hard date for flag day (if theres enough early support, a flag day may not be necessary at all).

If activation doesnt come to pass through voluntary activation, then a flag day activation is the last option on the table. Most respondents were in favor of a mandatory flag day to automatically signal the update. This would mean updated nodes would reject blocks from miners who havent signaled for the upgrade.

Disagreements on the finer details

So-called forced signaling through the flag day would have the benefit of making Taproot default on any Bitcoin Core node running v.21; in turn, these nodes would only accept block data from miners who have also signaled the update, so in theory this would encourage miners to upgrade lest they lose their business.

But what if the miners have node users who do accept their blocks?

This is one caveat to forced signaling: If too many miners and node users dont accept Taproot and refuse to update their software, then the network could split into two competing chains. If enough economic interest backs the old version of Bitcoin, then the result could be two competing assets.

This outcome is partly why some developers, like Matt Corallo, think that forced signaling is unnecessary.

Since Taproot has been largely uncontroversial, it would be a political risk to force signal the upgrade, he argues. He considers the activation method a relic of Segwits user-activated soft fork, a proposal to activate Segwit through similar means after miners failed to adopt the upgrade. Segwit was very controversial and political. Taproot is not, but Corallo believes enforced signalling threatens to make it that way.

In his post, Towns writes the mandatory signaling would be a way to definitively enforce Taproots network-wide activation after enough consensus has been established through discussion and miner support.

If you want to maximize the number of nodes that will enforce the rules should a flag day occur, but also only choose the flag day after an initial activation attempt is already widely deployed, then you have no choice but to make signaling mandatory when the flag day occurs, Towns writes.

Whats the holdup?

Towns introduces an alternative activation proposal in the survey which features a four-year activation time frame. As ever in Bitcoin development discussion, this, too, received some pushback.

Once the decision to activate has overwhelming support from developers and users, the longer the timeframe for activation (beyond that practically required for miners to safely upgrade) the more things that can go wrong, former Bitcoin Core developer Eric Lombrozo said to Towns on Twitter.

Risks aside, if most developers and Bitcoiners think Taproot is a shoe-in for an upgrade, it shouldnt take four years to activate, especially since it has already been so-long in the making.

After all, if Taproots been in the works since 2018, shouldnt miners and node operators know what to expect?

As Blockstream CEO Adam Back put it on Twitter, Taproot cant be a surprise after several years.

Read more from the original source:
Bitcoin Developers Divided on Specifics of Taproot Activation - Coindesk