Bitcoin Could Be More Resilient to Global Electric Failure Than Banks – Cointelegraph

What if the world was hit with another major disaster, but this time, it included global electrical failure? Would Bitcoin (BTC) survive, would it thrive, what about the banks? We have the answers.

Bitcoin consumes massive amounts of electricity and with the constant growth of the network, this number will only increase. The Bitcoin protocol relies on the internet for communication. Thus, if all of a sudden, if there was a disruption to the worlds electric grids, one might conclude that this would doom the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin Energy Consumption Relative to Countries. Source: Digiconomist.

However, Andreas Antonopoulos disagrees. He believes that the decentralized nature of Bitcoin in combination with its ability to rely on alternative communication modes, would prove it much more resilient than the traditional banking system:

In fact, I would predict that if we did have a massive electric failure or natural disaster that damaged infrastructure such as the Internet or the electric grid, Bitcoin would be one of the first things to come back. And the reason for that is because not only is Bitcoin a self funding system, but also because of the decentralization of users, node operators and miners who would have many, many incentives to rebuild local infrastructure in a very decentralized way. Remember, Bitcoin doesn't need the Internet in order to exchange transactions and blocks.

Furthermore, Antonopoulos points out that Bitcoin could rely on satellites, radio, or telephone lines for communication, instead. In his opinion, Bitcoin would be the first one to rebound. Whereas for the global financial system to bootstrap itself from the ground up in a world without reliable electric grids, that would likely take months, if not years.

Antonopoulos believes that political attacks present a much more imminent danger to Bitcoin, especially the sneaky ones:

I am worried about political attacks, especially sneaky political attacks, like changing the tax status of cryptocurrency in order to drive it underground. And I do think that such a tax could alienate a big chunk of the middle class and speculative investors who will not take the risk to oppose the government in order to use Bitcoin.

However, he concludes that although this would affect the price and hamper adoption, it would not destroy the system:

The price can be attacked in many different ways. And those attacks can drive the price down quite dramatically and perhaps, even for extended periods of time. But they will not change either the monetary fundamentals or the technical operation of the network.

Bitcoin has long since proven that its system is robust. In 11 years of operation, the network has seen zero downtime.

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Bitcoin Could Be More Resilient to Global Electric Failure Than Banks - Cointelegraph

What to Know About Billions’ Cryptocurrency Drama If You Know Nothing About Cryptocurrency – Vulture

Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME

If youre a fan of the Showtime drama Billions but having a tough time following the current seasons cryptocurrency story lines, youre not alone. Not only do the actors have trouble keeping up with the series twists and turns, even those who work in the financial sector dont necessarily understand crypto mining, a subject that pops up several times in season five. Half the people in finance couldnt explain what mining is to you, says New York Times best-selling author Ben Mezrich, who joined the Billions writers room this season as a consulting producer. A large percentage of them have no idea, because its complex.

As the writer of Bitcoin Billionaires and The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal the latter of which was adapted into the movie The Social Network Mezrich is a natural fit for the Billions team. His expert knowledge of cryptocurrency has provided the series with an opportunity to further explore this once-dark, underground area of finance. He also wrote this seasons third episode, which has Gordie Axelrod (Jack Gore), son of billionaire Bobby Axe Axelrod (Damian Lewis), running his own crypto-mining operation.

From the safety of his home in Quechee, Vermont, where hes riding out the COVID-19 pandemic, Mezrich was kind enough to guide Vulture through the intricacies of these esoteric plotlines. The result is this useful explainer for those of us who love Billions, but are still lost when characters like Axe and Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) start talking Bitcoin and blockchain.

Its a form of electronic money that sparked interest in recent years due to its skyrocketing prices. Its money that goes instantly from one person to the other, and theres no middleman, says Mezrich. A can be sent from person-to-person via their phone, just like a text.

The most well-known example of cryptocurrency is Bitcoin, which was created in 2009. But theres almost an infinite amount of cryptos at this point, says Mezrich.

This is the process of how the money is transferred from person-to-person. Because cryptocurrency doesnt use banks, miners are the ones who verify each transaction. Say I send you a Bitcoin, says Mezrich. The way that transaction is verified is, miners are working on computers attached to the network, which are doing these mathematical equations. And these equations, when theyre solved, they verify our transaction, and as a reward, the miner gets a certain amount of Bitcoin.

The process is very much like a contest, because all these different miners are competing to solve the equation, with the winner getting the Bitcoin. Mezrich likens mining to the race for the golden ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: You open all these wrappers and one of them is gonna have a piece of gold in it. But you dont know which one, and so youre incentivized to get all the [chocolate bars] you can. This is what these miners are doing: Theyre just continually trying to solve these equations. Because whoever solves it first, gets the golden ticket the Bitcoin.

You probably remember this term being bandied about by Chuck last season regarding mobile voting. A blockchain is a digital database containing information that can be simultaneously used and shared within a large, decentralized, publicly accessible network, according to Merriam-Webster.

Because its where all crypto transactions are logged. If I send you one Bitcoin, says Mezrich, that transaction is logged onto the blockchain. And the way it becomes verified is by these miners. Theyre the ones who essentially put these equations onto the blockchain.

Those guys are miners, and they were dealing with the aforementioned mathematical equations, which are not only very complicated, but require enormous amounts of computing power, says Mezrich. If you walk into a crypto mine, its computer after computer after computernot unlike what was inside the sketchy warehouse that served as the miners base in the episode.

The miners were drawing power from a town in upstate New York, which is where the legal issue comes into play. The problem is, if youre mining Bitcoin and you need to draw tons and tons of power, eventually, that cost can be more than what youre earning, explains Mezrich. So miners are always trying to find cheaper electricity. Enter the small town in question: The town gave the miners priority over their electrical power. By doing that, the miners are saving a lot of money, and they make a kickback deal with the town to get cheap electricity, but the way they get the cheap electricity is its being routed to them rather than the rest of the town, causing brownouts.

Axe is involved because hes the leader of a consortium that combined its resources to fund this operation. In the general scheme of things, its not a bring-down-Axe crime, but its certainly a way in [for Chuck], says Mezrich. So for now, there isnt enough evidence connecting him to this venture for Chuck to take legal action yet.

Instead of just mining Bitcoin, Gordie was mining a lot of different cryptos at once out of his prep-school basement. The way Axe describes his sons scheme to Wags (David Costabile) Its the smart way to do the stupid thing he was doing isnt much different from how Mezrich explains it. With multi-mining, you have a better chance of making money and you have less of a chance of getting caught, because youre hacking electricity on a smaller scale.

He was trying to pull down enough electricity to power a whole bank of crypto mines a bunch of computers to run all these calculations, says Mezrich. In so doing, he ended up short-circuiting and causing a massive power-grid failure.

Mezrich admits that Billions took a bit of dramatic license here.

He absolutely committed a crime by tapping into his schools (and the towns) power grid. If he had had his own power source, if he was just working at home with that, it wouldnt be illegal, says Mezrich. As for the actual crypto mining, Mezrich used Gordies tradition-bound prep-school headmaster as a stand-in for those who still see Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as the dirty part of the finance world. The mainstream has still not accepted it, he says. The headmaster would be one of the types who sees [Gordies behavior] as an affront to the men of honor that these kids are supposed to become.

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What to Know About Billions' Cryptocurrency Drama If You Know Nothing About Cryptocurrency - Vulture

‘No need’ to invest in bitcoin or gold during the pandemic, says wealth manager – CNBC

Everyone has heard the stories of youngpeople striking it rich by investing in bitcoin.

But Peter Mallouk, president and chief investment officer of wealth management firm Creative Planning, says investors turning to speculative assets like bitcoin or gold and silver are betting on the wrong investments.

"You have incredible companies that we know are not going anywhere, selling for half off. There is no need to go over into the speculative world," Mallouk said. Investors should instead focus on buying the stocks of traditionally stable companies that are trading low because of the coronavirus shutdown.

Check out this video for a full breakdown on why Mallouk says you should avoid cryptocurrencies and to learn where you should be investing instead.

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Bitcoin Block Generation Speed Falls to 2017 Lows – Cointelegraph

There were only 95 blocks generated on the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain on Sunday, according to data presented by pseudonymous Bitcoin analyst digitalik.net.

In last 10 years we had only 8 days with less than 100 blocks, the analyst tweeted, referring mostly to the 2017 third-quarterperiod.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, digitalik.net attributed the low block time to the recent Bitcoin halving and the decreased BTC hash rate in particular:

Many miners cannot generate a profit now because their expenses are still the same and income cut in half.

According to the chart provided by the analyst, BTC daily block generation metric fluctuated around 100120 blocks per day after the halving, but then dropped to just 95 blocks on Sunday.

The block generation speed depends on the hash rate and Bitcoin mining difficulty, digitalik.net explained. The latter, which gets automatically adjusted every 2016 blocks, is designed so that mining one block will take approximately 10 minutes.

However, the expert is skeptical about block generation speed coming back to normal after the next recalculation, given that the BTC price stays below $10,000:

I don't think [the] next diff adjustment will bring it back to 10 min/block. Because adjustment is done based on [the] entire period average (since last adjustment). And this average is not real current picture because it includes also one week before halving."

On the other hand, "if [the] price breaks up above 10K and keeps going up, then some of those miners might turn their equipment back on increasing hashrate.

As recently reported by Cointelegraph, BTC transaction fees have seen anomalous volatility amid the halving, increasing over 800% in one month.

With the block reward cut in half, around 17% of miners revenue now comes from transaction fees.

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Bitcoin Block Generation Speed Falls to 2017 Lows - Cointelegraph

You can now bet on Bitcoin or Ethereum with this new priceless token – Decrypt

In brief

DeFi is unlocking never-before-seen ways to do derivatives.

The Universal Market Access (UMA) Project announced Wednesday the launch of the ETHBTC synthetic token on the Ethereum mainnet, initially available via Uniswap V2. This Ethereum-Bitcoin token is the first real-world test of UMAs priceless synthetic token smart-contract design and marks the beginning of a new era of derivative products made possible by blockchain technology.

The ETHBTC token tracks the price ratio between Ethereum and Bitcoin. If ETH rises faster (or falls slower) than BTC, the token value will increase, and vice versa if Bitcoin leads. The tokens are considered priceless because they dont rely on data from oracles to price swaps, relying instead on a community-driven dispute mechanism.

ETHBTC tokens can be exchanged with DAI on Uniswap V2 and initially cost about 0.02 DAI per token. Anyone can create and sell ETHBTC tokens using UMAs open source command line tool by depositing DAI as collateral. Tokens expire August 1 and can be redeemed depending on the final ETH to BTC price ratio.

In the announcement, UMA co-founder Hart Lamber explained ETHBTC was chosen as the first mainnet priceless synthetic token because its related to DeFi while highlighting the friendly competition between the two leading cryptocurrencies. ETHBTC also offers exposure to large-scale success or adoption of one crypto over the other without actually holding either one, a novel product in the DeFi landscape.

Uniswap V2 launched just days ago with a host of new features, including direct ERC20 token swaps that allow ETHBTC tokens to be swapped directly for DAI. In the previous version of Uniswap, ERC20 token swaps were routed through ETH transactions, increasing fees and making pair trades less viable.

Lamber warned in the release that the ETHBTC priceless synthetic token is an experimental alpha product and should be approached with caution and small amounts of money to start. The smart contract code has been audited by OpenZepplin and an emergency shutdown can be initiated by UMA token holders.

The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.

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You can now bet on Bitcoin or Ethereum with this new priceless token - Decrypt

Bitcoin prices slip amid speculation that a block of the cryptocurrency possibly linked to creator Satoshi Nakamoto just changed hands – MarketWatch

Bitcoin prices retreated Wednesday afternoon amid speculation that a long-dormant block of coins, with links to the presumptive creator of the virtual asset, just changed hands.

A Twitter account set to issue tweet alerts when coins tied to certain addresses trade, indicated a trade of a batch of virtual currency that is possibly tied to Satoshi Nakamoto, the person or persons who wrote the software code for the digital currency back in 2009. The identity of Nakamoto has long been speculated on but the originator of bitcoin has never been verified.

Read:Elon Musk says hes not bitcoins mystery man Satoshi Nakamoto

Check out: Legendary sci-fi author says suggestion he invented bitcoin flattering but untrue

About 11 years ago, he created, or mined, the original batch of bitcoins that are widely known as the genesis block.

The tweet suggests that the batch of some 40 or 50 bitcoins that changed hands on Wednesday were mined within the first month of the creation of bitcoin.

See:Craig Wright Claims He Is Bitcoin Inventor Satoshi Nakamoto

To be sure, the anonymous nature of the bitcoin makes it impossible to know the owner of the coins but the technology that underpins bitcoin makes tracking addresses of the certain blocks of coins possible.

Sleuthing for coins tied to the progenitor of the digital asset has become a regular pastime in the crypto community. Tracking big blocks of bitcoin also helps to understand the habits of those who hold substantial influence on bitcoin prices by dint of their holdings.

Bitcoin futures, representing a single bitcoin, were off 1.3% in Wednesday afternoon, with the most-actively traded May BTCK20, -0.20% BTC.1, -0.20% at $9,550, while bitcoin spot prices BTCUSD, -0.83% were off 1.8% at $9,525, according to data from CoinDesk.

Bitcoin futures are up more than 32% so far in 2020, and they had been trading at an intrasession peak at $9,895 on Wednesday before settling lower.

A number of industry participants have pointed out that the fact that the bitcoins are 2009 vintage doesnt necessarily mean that they are related to Nakamoto.

However, that didnt stop interest in bitcoin surging on Twitter, with the term satoshi becoming a viral term on the social-media platform Twitter Wednesday afternoon.

Bitcoin was created as an alternative payment system 11 years ago, one that operated anonymously and peer-to-peer, eliminating the so-called trusted third party.

The cryptocurrency was born amid worries that modern currency is manufactured by central banks printing fiat money to boost economic growtha view that has gained increasing traction amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Proponents of bitcoin argue that because the digital asset is decentralized from central banks or governments, individuals can conduct transactions without an intermediary. That is part of the appeal of bitcoin.

However, the nascent asset hasnt made significant headway in price since hitting a December 2017 peak near $20,000.

Critics also point to the cryptocurrencys association with money laundering as one of its biggest drawbacks. So far, bitcoin hasnt achieved sufficient scalability to make it a legitimate currency much less a store of value, other opponents say.

That said, bitcoin has managed to hold its own compared with gold thus far this year, with gold futures GC00, -0.73% up 15% in the year to date. By comparison, the S&P 500 index SPX, +1.66% is down 8.1% so far this year and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.52% are off nearly 14% after a coronavirus-induced downturn virtually brought the equity markets to their knees in March.

Read:What is the bitcoin halving and which day does it happen?

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Bitcoin prices slip amid speculation that a block of the cryptocurrency possibly linked to creator Satoshi Nakamoto just changed hands - MarketWatch

The Fed Is Bitcoins Best Friend – Forbes

Getty

It is nothing new in equities to watch an index rise towards a round number and fall back when it touches it, but for a new generation of crypto hodlers its a new experience.

There are always reasons given, ones that are plausible but not inclusive.

The Bitcoin price seems reluctant to go over $10,000

Classically the explanation is that there are sellers at, in this case, $10,000, who dump when the price gets close. Sounds likely. The more sophisticated version is that there are people who bought at $10,000 who then saw the price fall hard and that have been holding until the price gets back there, then sell. That is very stupid trading behavior, but I have heard real people say as such, so it is a factor.

However, mathematically, to break any level never to return on a skewed random walk, the chances of a clean break are about 1 in 5, more or less depending on the underlying trend buried in the random noise. That is to say, if there is a small directional trend inside a big wobbling market (hello bitcoin) the price will bash around any arbitrary level many times before it never revisits that level again. This doesnt require the behavior of novice investors behaving strangely or any other theory or conspiracy to make a price appear to approach a level and then fall back. Obviously, we can roll human factors into that theory without them clashing. We can also spout on about support and resistance and again it might be a real factor or simply false pattern detection by our pattern seeking brains.

Charts are not generally good predictors of the future and work best in crazy times when the markets lose their normally overwhelmingly random fluctuations.

I use charts to help me see where an instrument has been and gauge its temperament. I draw few lines and keep it incredibly simple. Charts are prefect predictors of the past and that has some value because it gives context.

The only question remains, which way is the market going? So looking at the chart thats what we should ask, which way is the market going?

Which way is the Bitcoin price going?

With the halvening behind the bitcoin (BTC) investor, the price should soon be through $10,000. The Federal Reserve have said it will do whatever it takes while encouraging the government to spend like a sailor.

Thats dole for the masses in floods of dollars. So what currency should you hold, when Europe is printing and Japan is printing and China is printing, and on and on. Couple that with what looks like international coordination to competitively devalue and its hard to think of a place to get out of the way of all this monetary easing.

Which is why I have as much bitcoin as sensible diversification allows.

Clem Chambers is the CEO of private investors websiteADVFN.com and author of 101 Ways to Pick Stock Market Winners and Trading Cryptocurrencies: A Beginners Guide.

Chambers won Journalist of the Year in the Business Market Commentary category in the State Street U.K. Institutional Press Awards in 2018.

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The Fed Is Bitcoins Best Friend - Forbes

Bitcoin-Backed Ethereum Token tBTC Paused Due to Poorly Tested Redemption Code – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

Keep Network says a flawed code addition forced the shutdown of its bitcoin-backed Ethereum token, tBTC, just two days after it launched.

On May 18, deposits of bitcoin into tBTC were paused for 10 days a move prompted by a bug that was supposedly missed by a security audit and was later found by two of the network's contributors.

That bug, Keep Network revealed in a Medium blog post Wednesday, related to a flaw in the processing of deposit redemptions (when users try and pull bitcoin back out of the system), essentially due to the code's inability to tell different types of bitcoin addresses apart.

"The team triggered this pause after finding a significant issue in the redemption flow of deposit contracts that put signer bonds for open deposits at risk of liquidation when certain types of bitcoin addresses were used in redemption," Keep Network, which is behind the Thesis project that launched the token, said in the post.

The team noted that redemptions had originally been restricted to p2wpkh address outputs, but were later widened to include "any other output scripts." The issue arose if a user tried to redeem pay-to-scripthash (p2sh) addresses. This changed code had not been specifically tested, bar more generally on testnets at a later stage, the post concedes.

"[D]ue to a bug in the redemption dApp in use at the time, the proof step of the redemption flow never occurred," Keep Network wrote. "These p2sh addresses would have failed validation had the proof step occurred, but reliance on the dApps display of a completed state meant the team assumed the redemption had completed successfully, when it in fact had not."

A second bug was also found meaning that, even if the proof code had been free of issues, a "malicious redeemer" could have specified an output script that resulted in an invalid bitcoin transaction.

Community manager at Blockstream, Daniel Williams, who has an interest in bitcoin and goes by the handle, @Grubles, critically summed up the primary bug in a May 20 tweet, saying:

While the bug and subsequent pause have been a setback for the Thesis team, a new call out has been made to solicit help from code auditors to help track down any further issues.

In addition to technical and process changes, the Thesis team will be announcing how it plans on approaching a "redeploy of the tBTC system" and how that will impact existing plans around the KEEP token distribution.

"Were looking forward to showing the world a stronger, more secure Bitcoin on Ethereum," the team said

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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Bitcoin-Backed Ethereum Token tBTC Paused Due to Poorly Tested Redemption Code - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

This Bitcoin Documentary From Africa Is Streaming on Amazon Prime – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

Demand for bitcoin is still surging across Africa, regardless of the broader economic crisis, according to peer-to-peer exchange data from Paxful and LocalBitcoins.

However, there is no single African crypto narrative because users in jurisdictions across the continent use the technology for vastly different circumstances.

Starting Friday, Amazon Prime will offer the documentary Banking on Africa: The Bitcoin Revolution, made by South African filmmaker Tamarin Gerriety with sponsorship from the crypto exchange Luno. It features industry heavyweights including SatoshiCentre founder Alakanani Itireleng in Botswana and South African monero developer Riccardo Spagni. The film shows how vastly different their lives are, from a Botswanian goat farm to Spagnis urban rooftop and drone.

So far, it appears Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Ghana are home to the fastest-growing communities of bitcoin users on the continent.

A January 2020 report by the market research firm DataReportal estimated 11% of Nigerians and 13% of South Africans under the age of 64 with internet access own cryptocurrency, compared to the 7% global average.

One such bitcoiner, Nigerian entrepreneur Keith Mali, bought his first bitcoin in 2016, dropped out of university in 2018 and has been giving lectures at schools across the region about bitcoin ever since. Hes also the founder of the social media startup Swirge.

Cryptos have a higher chance of growth [in Nigeria] compared to the West ... especially for cross-border remittances, Mali said. We just launched our public beta during this pandemic and weve grown beyond 20,000 users, with no initial coin offering.

People are looking at ways to diversify their incomes, he added.

Likewise, a Nigerian BuyCoins user named Nnanna Ijezie said he and many of his friends use multiple accounts, including Luno, Coinbase and BuyCoins, to convert a portion of their salaries into bitcoin for savings. Nigerians who travel or have family abroad also use bitcoin for remittances, he said. Exchanges are predominately used for buying, while social media groups for traders are used for liquidation.

Anyone in Nigeria for the past five years has experienced devaluation at least twice so [bitcoins] volatility is a trade-off people are willing to make, Ijezie said. But most of the trading is happening offline. In Nigeria, the market is also tied to the strength of the diaspora population.

BuyCoins, Binance and Luno all see lucrative traction in Nigeria. This week Lunos research partner, Arcane Research, issued a report to complement the Banking on Africa film. The report said Lunos four million users, primarily in South Africa but also including many Nigerians, are inspired by inflation concerns, political instability and scant access to affordable financial services. They transact $4.5 million worth of cryptocurrency every day.

Data from both Arcane Research and peer-to-peer exchanges indicate traction in Ghana and Kenya is also surging.

Entrepreneurial bitcoin educator Michael Kimani in Kenya said he is running a class of 25 people, paying $200 each for 2.5 hours for five weeks. Its his third class since last November.

The classes are mostly equally representative, roughly half of them are women, Kimani said, describing his educational project Crypto Baraza. Whats driving their interest is the fact that our economy could be heading south. The students coming to my class are looking to escape the economy, they are looking for alternatives. Bitcoin is that.

Like so many African bitcoiners, Kimani is a freelancer juggling several jobs. In addition to research and technical services, he runs the Blockchain Association of Kenya, a nonprofit think-tank comparable to the Coin Center in Washington, D.C. He prefers using over-the-counter groups on WhatsApp rather than exchanges like Luno.

The groups Im on are like 120 or 150 people in each. I didnt start getting paid in it [bitcoin] until recently. Ive never paid for anything in it, Kimani said, describing how he uses bitcoin.

He added his students generally arent attracted to bitcoin for philosophical reasons, nor any aversion to central banks. Instead, they want to use it.

Many of the students in my class will tell you their first experience with crypto was a scam or a bitcoin mining scheme, Kimani said. Ive seen schemes like this as far back as 2014. Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, weve gone through the scam cycles and came out with higher volumes.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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Monster 369MB Block Processed on Bitcoin SV – Cointelegraph

Blockchain service provider TAAL has processed the largest block to date on Bitcoin SV 369MB in size and containing 1.3 million transactions.

TAAL announced the milestone on Twitter. The block is an order of magnitude larger than anything currently achievable on Bitcoin (BTC) or Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Jerry Chan, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of TAAL, said the transactions were primarily processed by users of an application out of China, who competed with each other to see who could create the most transactions in a contest designed to test the transaction capabilities of the network.

It follows hot on the heels of a block with 1.1M transactions processed on May 13.

According to Chan, though groups like TAAL do engage in mining, their focus is on transaction processing to develop the infrastructure needed for the BSV network to thrive.

We want to encourage more generation of transactions so were going more for transaction volume and not the number of blocks necessarily, the CEO said. He argued that Bitcoin has an artificial block size limit and eventually would get to the point where there will be no more blocks produced.

Were happy to cue up as many transactions as we need until its worth it to print it into a block, Chan added.

Chan anticipates spikes in transaction volume from time to time, when processors can hold them until its worthwhile putting them in one big block. Unlike the BTC network, BSV can continue without significant congestion at such high volume, he said.

The percentage of miner revenue coming from fees is currently low for BSV. According to crypto analytics site Messari, the transaction fees for BSV on May 19 were just $271 while BTCs were valued at $960,928.

The minimum fee rate on the open BSV network is 0.5 satoshis/byte, with the possibility of negotiating for an even cheaper rate.

Cointelegraph has reported some crypto miners might be shifting back from the BTC network to coins like BSV and BCH following the halving. BSVs hash rate grew from 1.1 EH/s pre-halving to 2.15 EH/s on May 16, when the 1.3M-transaction BSV block was mined.

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Monster 369MB Block Processed on Bitcoin SV - Cointelegraph