Bitcoin evangelist and Republican Senate hopeful Blake Masters has invested millions into a wide variety of cryptocurrencies. But according to recent financial filings viewed by The Verge, Masters own digital investments have seemingly tanked in value over this past years cryptocurrency crash.

Masters, proteg to billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, disclosed a dozen different investments into different cryptocurrencies and platforms in a personal finance filing last week. As of August 15th, Masters owned between $600,000 and $1.2 million in Bitcoin alone, a dramatic decrease from the $1.1 to $5.2 million he touted in financial disclosures last year. Masters did not disclose any significant profits from his Bitcoin investment, suggesting a decrease in overall value rather than a potential sell-off.

Amongst Masters current holdings are investments in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Filecoin, Litecoin, and Tezos. Filecoin and Tezos were the only cryptocurrencies that Masters reported earning interest from this past year, claiming to have made between $1,001 to $2,500 each.

While some cryptocurrencies have started to stabilize and regain value since their June lows, Masters own Bitcoin declines are consistent with the broader crash in cryptocurrency prices over the past year. Bitcoin is still down 60 percent from August 2021, while Masters second-largest holding Ethereum has shed more than half of its market value (Masters Ethereum value range of $250,000-$500,000 did not change year over year).

Masters campaign did not confirm whether his assets had decreased in value but suggested to The Verge on Monday that he used his cryptocurrency investments to loan money to his campaign. Masters only reported between $100,001 and $250,000 in loans as part of his yearly filing last week. A spokesperson for his campaign did not immediately respond to clarifying questions from The Verge.

Masters also disclosed more than $300,000 in book royalties from Zero to One, the Silicon Valley startup guide the Trump-endorsed candidate co-wrote with Thiel in 2014.

Once a candidate formally announces that theyre seeking public office, they are required to file public financial disclosures for each year of their campaign. While the disclosures dont require specific investment totals, candidates must provide an estimated range for the value of significant asset investments, including digital assets like cryptocurrency.

For Masters, who is running to unseat Sen. Mark Kelly (D) for Arizona, cryptocurrency proliferation and federal adoption has become a major part of his campaign platform. Right before the markets began to crash last fall, Masters tweeted that the US government should buy a strategic reserve of Bitcoin, likening it to Fort Nakamoto or the new Fort Knox. Masters has also offered NFTs to people who have contributed the maximum of $5,800 to his campaign and claims that his campaign accepts donations in Bitcoin.

In a May Fox Business interview with Maria Bartiromo, Masters suggested that Bitcoins caving value would only be temporary.

Its not like its only crypto thats crashing, right? Unfortunately, everything is crashing, Masters said in the interview. But its true, cryptos exceptionally volatile. I always tell people to only get involved, only buy Bitcoin if youre ready to buckle up and weather the storm because this is the Wild West.

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Blake Masters' Bitcoin investments tanked in 2022 - The Verge

A Latvian national has been handed over to the United States where he is accused of fraud through several companies offering false crypto investment opportunities. Ivars Auzins will appear in a federal court in Brooklyn to face multiple charges of wire and securities fraud.

Ivars Auzins, a citizen of the small Baltic nation of Latvia, was extradited to the United States on Friday. The Latvian has been handed over to the American judiciary on a six-count indictment charging him with wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracies to commit wire and securities fraud in connection with the operation of eight businesses that purported to offer, invest in, or mine digital assets.

Auzins will be arraigned on the indictment on Saturday in a federal court in Brooklyn before the Honorable Roanne L. Mann., the U.S. Department of Justice said in a press release. The charges were announced by United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace and Michael J. Driscoll, assistant director-in-charge of the New York Field Office of the FBI:

Auzins perpetrated a brazen scheme in which he fleeced investors who funneled millions of dollars into fraudulent cryptocurrency. This Office will continue to vigorously investigate and prosecute those who lie and steal from investors, including those like the defendant who operate from abroad.

According to the indictment, the Latvian allegedly ran several companies, the Auzins Entities, which advertised through email campaigns, social media, and websites dedicated to cryptocurrencies. They suggested valuable investment opportunities and solicited investments before suddenly disappearing.

Two of these, Denaro and Bitroad, raised funds through initial coin offerings (ICOs). Impressio Estate, Broi Investments (Bankroi), Changepro, Gemneon Investments, and Lycovest presented themselves as crypto investment platforms providing different investment plans and profit rates. Innovamine offered investments in mining a number of coins, including bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH).

Auzins and his co-conspirators allegedly enticed investors to put money into their projects through a series of material misrepresentations and omissions about the offered products and services, the profits that investors would earn by investing in the Auzins Entities, and the individuals who operated them.

Between approximately November 2017 and July 2019, individuals in the United States and other jurisdictions transferred at least $7 million in digital assets to Auzinss companies. Shortly after receiving these investments, these entities disappeared without providing their promised services, the DOJ pointed out.

The Justice Departments Office of International Affairs worked with Latvian law enforcement agencies to secure the arrest and extradition of Ivars Auzins to the United States, and the U.S. Marshals Service carried out the extradition, the announcement details. The New York Regional Office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission assisted the investigation.

Auzinss transfer to the U.S. comes after the recent extraditions of two Russian nationals accused by American authorities of crypto-related crime. Last week, the Netherlands transferred 29-year-old Denis Dubnikov, who is accused of laundering proceeds of ransomware attacks on individuals and organizations in the United States, including hospitals and healthcare providers. Earlier this month, Greece extradited 42-year-old Alexander Vinnik, alleged operator of BTC-e, who allegedly laundered at least $4 billion through the now-defunct digital asset exchange.

Do you expect more extraditions to the U.S. of people suspected of crypto-related crime? Tell us in the comments section below.

Lubomir Tassev is a journalist from tech-savvy Eastern Europe who likes Hitchenss quote: Being a writer is what I am, rather than what I do. Besides crypto, blockchain and fintech, international politics and economics are two other sources of inspiration.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Nomad_Soul

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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Latvian Extradited to US for Wire Fraud Involving Crypto Investments Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

Cardano has taken 26th place in the ranking of the top companies in terms of brand intimacy. The crypto start-up's position was higher than that of such companies as Twitter, Nike, BMW and even Cardano's market neighbor, Bitcoin.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson marked the achievement of his brainchild with a laconic tweet that both fully describes the essence of blockchain and what the project has done to the other companies behind it in the ranking, stating literally that Cardano is "moving the chains."

Moving the chains https://t.co/KWsqfbB7dB

Brand intimacy ranking was prepared by the New York agency MBLM. As a market research study in essence, the ranking sorts companies according to their level of comprehensive user sympathy for the brand. The level of brand intimacy is measured based on several components, calculated using artificial intelligence and big-data analysis.

Of course, the results of the vote may be surprising, but the Cardano community can rightfully be considered one of the most cohesive in the crypto space.

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By now, it seems that everyone who is a Cardano enthusiast is closely following the situation around Vasil hard fork. According to the latest reports from the blockchain's parent company Input Output, the long-awaited update is getting closer to its realization.

So, according to the freshest IOHK rollout out of the required 75%, already 56% of all stake pool operators have updated nodes to the required version 1.35.3. Also, all vital infrastructure components have been tested and released, except the Daedalus wallet, which will be readycloser to the beginning of September.

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Cardano Founder Reacts to Cardano Being More Intimate Brand Than IKEA, BMW and Bitcoin - U.Today

This is an opinion editorial by Shinobi, a self-taught educator in the Bitcoin space and tech-oriented Bitcoin podcast host.

The Lightning Network as a payment routing network has many similarities with the internet itself. You must be connected to the network, payments are routed from one source node on the network to a destination node just like data packets on the internet and it requires an unbroken connection from the source to destination. It also has one massive difference the requirement for liquidity. On the internet, as long as bandwidth is available (i.e., the pipes are not "clogged"), you can pass an infinite amount of information along a route as long as you have enough time to wait for it to get through. Lightning channels, however, can be depleted, as they require actually moving money from one side of a channel to another in order to route a payment, and eventually they will run out of money on one side and push all of it to the other.

This creates a necessary balancing act between the use of the network in the present to forward payments for individual users and the health of the network in the future regarding its capability of forwarding payments for other users. Each time someone routes a payment through a specific channel, they increase the likelihood that the channel they used will not be able to process payments in the same direction for other users in the future.

In essence, users attempting to adopt strategies en masse to benefit themselves in terms of guaranteeing the delivery of their payment can have negative effects on the overall liquidity distribution of the network and actually lower the likelihood of individual users' payments arriving successfully at the destination. Essentially, whatever strategy is dominantly used by end users to select routes for their payments is going to have systemic effects on the entire network. In the negative sense, i.e., how individual behaviors have degrading effects on the system as a whole this dynamic is known as the price of anarchy.

Rene Pickhardt has been engaging in a line of research to develop heuristics useful for improving the reliability of payment delivery across the Lightning Network. One strategy to achieve the goal that has come out of this research is referred to as Pickhardt payments. Currently the most frequently used strategy across the network is to prioritize route selection based on the lowest fee. This works rather well for small payments, but not so much for larger amounts. Intuitively, the reason should be obvious: such low fee routes are widely used which tends to push liquidity in one direction, leaving less available. The effect this has for other small payments taking the same route is small until approaching depletion, but for larger amounts, the odds of success become lower.

Pickhardt payments work by prioritizing reliability over cheapness, making educated guesses on the probability of a payment succeeding over different potential paths it could take. Just like the dominant, low-fee prioritizing strategy, over time as a node attempts to make payments and sees some fail it will update its assumptions on the probability of payment success and over time refine its accuracy. This should help prevent nodes in swarms always depleting the same channels, because their view of the network in terms of reliability will evolve uniquely over time.

An important part of path selection is considering which direction liquidity is flowing in a channel. Is it balanced both ways? Is it predominantly one direction? In his most recent research looking at the dynamic of the price of anarchy, Pickhardt noted his realization that, based on public gossip data, it may be possible to estimate the rate of drain in channels, how balanced or unbalanced the flow through it is and further improve the reliability of estimations on payment success or failure along certain routes. Estimating this correctly allows you to look at a channel and guess which direction has a high probability of completing a payment and which direction has a low probability.

Another aspect to Pickhardt payments is to optimize for both reliability and low fees. In modeling things to study the price of anarchy dynamics of the Lightning Network, it was discovered that optimizing for both reliability and fees lead to one of the worst externality costs for the network or the highest price of anarchy. This seems to create the greatest rate of channel depletions across the network out of all path selection strategies.

Now these effects don't exist in a vacuum or without counter balances. Routing nodes on the network are also actors that have tools at their disposal and can adopt strategies to optimize the flow control and counterbalance this. Routing nodes can alter fees to disincentivize pushing liquidity to one side of a channel, i.e., if most payments are flowing one direction they can charge higher fees for that and lower fees for going the other way. Nodes can open or close channels, creating new connections to meet higher demand. Nodes can also rebalance channels, pushing liquidity from one channel of theirs out into the network and back into another channel of theirs to alter the liquidity distribution in that channel. Nodes sending payments can also select and utilize different path selection strategies when they observe the current one is leading to frequent payment failures.

I'm sure people reading right now are thinking something along the lines of, "Who cares, the market will sort it out, Lightning is a market-driven system." Lightning is an almost entirely market-driven system, but it's not that simple when analyzing dynamics like the price of anarchy. Users of the network are not going to be analyzing routing algorithms manually, picking and choosing what to use with each payment; They are going to be using tools and software that automates all of this and hides it in the background. This makes this kind of research important to the overall health of the network. A way needs to be found to enable end users to engage with the network selfishly, prioritizing their own interests, without degrading the performance of the network as a whole.

Modeling how these two dynamics interact, the strategies for sending nodes and mitigation strategies for routing nodes is incredibly important for developing strategies for both classes of users to balance and optimize the overall health of the network and the reliability of payments for individual users. Routing data between different devices is a long-solved problem in computer science, which the Lightning Network builds heavily on but the dynamic of liquidity constraints adds a new facet to the entire field of research around reliably routing information.

The Lightning Network has been a huge success so far in improving the speed and scalability of payments using Bitcoin, but to continue that success at larger scales and a larger load from more users, the interaction of these two different dynamics needs to be thoroughly understood and accounted for. In order for users of the network to adopt successful strategies, those strategies must first be developed, understood and verified.

This is a guest post by Shinobi. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

Link:
Can Bitcoins Lightning Network Overcome The Price Of Anarchy? - Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin on Friday fell to its lowest level in more than three weeks, dipping below $22,000 amid a sudden crypto sell-off in early European trading.

Bitcoin plunged from $22,738 to below $21,12.34 at 4:00 p.m. ET, according to CoinDesk data. Earlier in the morning, the cryptocurrency fluctuated between $21,500 and $22,000.

It comes shortly after the world's largest digital coin surpassed the $25,000 level for the first time since June following a rise in U.S. stocks.

Ether fell from $1,808 to $1,728 at the same time before staging a muted rebound. It had slipped again, falling further to $1,683.90 by 4:00 p.m. ET.

A specific cause for a drop at that time, which also sent Binance Coin, Cardano and Solana falling, was not immediately clear.

"It's not showing the pattern of a flash crash, as the assets didn't immediately rebound sharply but sank even lower in the hours that followed," said Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. "It seems likely that is was as a result of a large sale transaction, in the absence of other more external factors."

Bitcoin and ether ended Thursday in the red, but ether has surged more than 100% since mid-June.

Yu Chun Christopher Wong | S3studio | Getty Images

Streeter said it appeared Cardano made the first plunge downwards, followed by Bitcoin and Ether and then smaller coins like Dogecoin.

"This fresh chill has descended amid fears that the market is heading for a crypto winter," she added. "Although at $21,800 Bitcoin is still some way off its June lows of under $19,000, volatility is once again wracking the market."

The digital coins may also be following equities lower.

"US equity markets have pulled back since Wednesday's release of the July Fed meeting minutes, the key takeaway being that the Fed likely won't be finished with rate hikes until inflation is tamed across the board, with no guidance offered on future rate increases either," Simon Peters, crypto market analyst at eToro, told CNBC.

"With the tight correlation between US equities and crypto in recent months I suspect this has filtered through to crypto markets and it's why we are seeing the sell-off. The trend has also perhaps been exacerbated by liquidation of long positions on bitcoin perpetual futures markets."

Citing Coinglass data, Peters said Friday had been the biggest liquidation of long positions on futures since June 18, also the date bitcoin reached its lowest price of the year around $17,500.

Bitcoin and ether ended Thursday in the red, but ether has surged more than 100% since mid-June as investors prepare for a massive upgrade to the ethereum network.

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Sudden crypto market drop sends bitcoin below $22,000 - CNBC

Ether has hugely outperformed bitcoin since both cryptocurrencies formed a bottom in June 2022. Ether's superior gains have come as investors anticipate a major upgrade to the ethereum blockchain called "the merge."

Yuriko Nakao | Getty Images

Since finding a bottom in mid-June, ether has massively outperformed bitcoin as investors anticipate a major upgrade to the ethereum blockchain.

Bitcoin hit a low of $17,601 on June 19 and is up around 31% since then as of Friday's trading price, according to CoinDesk data.

Ether also hit its recent low on June 19 at $880.93, but has surged 106% since then.

The huge divergence in performance in the two cryptocurrencies come down to one major factor: a big upgrade in the ethereum blockchain. Ether is the native cryptocurrency of the ethereum network.

Ethereum's upgrade, called the "merge," is slated to take place on Sept. 15 after numerous delays. The blockchain will change from a so-called proof-of-work system to a model called proof-of-stake. A full explanation of the merge can be found here.

Proponents say that the move will make the ethereum network faster and more energy-efficient.

"The upcoming Ethereum Merge is the biggest narrative in crypto right now and explains why Ether has left Bitcoin in its wake in the past month," Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto trading platform Nexo, told CNBC via email.

"A blockchain that pitches itself as being energy efficient will always capture the imagination of the masses and that's why Ether has the wind in its sails ahead of the Merge, a move to proof of stake."

But the recent ether rally, which has seen its price double in the space of two months, has been rapid.

One analyst said that the rally could continue but there may be some resistance at around the $2,000 mark. Ether was trading at $1,814 on Friday.

Jacob Joseph, research analyst at data service CryptoCompare, said that with no Federal Open Market Committee meeting scheduled for August and stocks seeing a rebound, "it is reasonable to believe Ethereum can still rally as we edge closer to the Merge."

"However ... $2,000 has proved to be a major resistance for Ether and the asset needs more wind behind its sail to break that level."

Joseph added that bitcoin is unlikely to outperform ether in the near term.

There are risks to the ether price rally, according to Trenchev.

"Any further (unlikely) delays to the mid-September Merge will see an unwind in a large portion of Ether's 50% rally since mid-July," he said.

There is always the chance that traders take profits too on the huge rally, Trenchev said.

"The Merge, if successful, might well prove to be a 'buy the rumour sell the news' type event, given the jaw-dropping gains we've seen in Ether," Trenchev added.

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Ether is up 100% since its bottom in June, massively outperforming bitcoin - CNBC

This is a transcribed excerpt of the Bitcoin Magazine Podcast, hosted by P and Q. In this episode, they are joined by Matthew Pins to talk about the regulatory landscape and how the government might try to legislate Bitcoin.

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Matthew Pines: You can assume any scenario you want. I can imagine a scenario where solar flare wipes out the grid and it's not good for Bitcoin, but is that relevant for anyone's decision making? I dont think there's a plausible scenario where Elizabeth Warren herself, takes executive power and bans Bitcoin.

I can construct an infinite number of these sorts of negative scenarios. The question is how much credence do you put in them? I think it's like symmetry. For every negative downside scenario, is there an equally likely, upside scenario? What would be the political conditions? Were really making a political assessment here. We're not making an economic assessment. We're not making an assessment about when the next block's gonna hit, it's like entirely a political judgment.

I don't put much stock in anyone's ability to forecast any kind of political evolution. So then it's a matter of what's the reasonable, bad case scenario, what's the reasonable best case scenario and where we're gonna more likely end up somewhere in the middle.

I think you're likely gonna see, especially in the Biden administration, an increasing willingness to push the limits of the national security justification against Bitcoin, and the climate kind of argument against Bitcoin. There's not a unified front. There's people in lots of parts of the government that are neutral, negative, positive, and it's a complicated, messy kind of bureaucratic machine.

Any particular instrument of power is very much disconnected from every other instrument. So you can get somewhat disconnected, if not downright kind of incoherent policy-making on different things. I think what we should more likely expect is a downside scenario, like Tornado Cash-style sorts of OFAC things that just become much more aggressive on Bitcoin.

This is to try to incrementally boil the frog on Bitcoin miners. Theyll try to get them to come into more of a wall garden, so to speak. It's not necessarily hitting the application layer, theyre trying to hit the corporate layer.

There's layers to Bitcoin beyond just the social consensus layer, Bitcoin layer. There's the political, economic, social layer of corporations, like state and local regulatory regimes and national enforcement. I think it's an interesting test case to see how far they think they can push things like the OFAC power, which is a really unique power, right? The Tornado Cash justification came from the National Emergencies Act and through a separate international economic act, International Emergency Economic Powers Act, that basically allows them to sanction foreign property and entities associated with foreign property.

I think there's gonna be some litigation about exactly, to what extent, smart contracts can be considered a person or a property or an entity. That would be where I'd be looking would be the technocratic wield the sanctions power, and then really scare compliance into companies not necessarily require it, but basically, leave the ambiguity open. Then, as we saw with the Ethereum stuff, self censorship takes place, right? So it's not compelled. It is scaring a bunch of people that are VCs or executives that don't wanna get in trouble and will just act on a precautionary principle and will just take action themselves, even if they may not be required to. That to me is the more downside scenario.

They do this and then a bunch of executive Bitcoin miners and other folks at the corporate layer, like they flinch. I think that is more the kind of game you're probably gonna see play out as opposed to the big hammer of the state's gonna come down and a bunch of jack-booted thugs are gonna come steal your hardware wallet. It's not gonna happen.

Eventually, those sorts of things end up in courts. It's very boring, right? It's like these sorts of things end up in lawsuits and two years later, after lots of court cases, you find out that like maybe there's new case law, maybe there isn't. I think people are overestimating how much of there's gonna be some major crackdown or even like major legalization, as opposed to just this random semi-drunken walk through a novel regulatory landscape.

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How Will Bitcoin Navigate Government Attempts To Control It? - Bitcoin Magazine

On-chain data shows the USDC exchange reserves sharply rose recently, something that could help push Bitcoin back up after the latest drop.

As pointed out by an analyst in a CryptoQuant post, the large amount of USD Coin that flowed into exchanges recently could be deployed to act as fuel for Bitcoin.

The exchange reserve is an indicator that measures the total amount of USDC currently sitting in wallets of all centralized exchanges.

Since stablecoins are tied to fiat (which in the case of USDC is USD), their value is as constant as the fiat currency itself. Because of this, investors often take shelter by shifting coins like Bitcoin into stablecoins during times when they want to avoid the volatility generally associated with much of the crypto market.

Once these investors feel the prices are right to dive back into the volatile markets, they exchange their stables for whatever crypto they want to buy into.

An especially large amount of buying from such holders can therefore help propel the prices of the major cryptos like Bitcoin.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the USDC exchange reserve over the last few months:

As you can see in the above graph, the USDC exchange reserve has usually made a top around when the BTC price has slid down in the last few months.

Following this top, the reserve has started declining, while the value of Bitcoin has either moved sideways or observed a surge. This makes sense as a decreasing reserve of the stablecoin implies investors are now shifting into volatile coins.

Most recently, the value of the reserve has seen a very sharp rise. The inflow indicator (which measures the total amount of coins moving into exchanges) also shown in the chart registered a big spike at about the same time as this rise.

This implies that most of the latest increase in the reserve has come from USDC that was sitting off exchanges since a while.

All these stablecoins can act as potential dry powder for fueling some upwards momentum for Bitcoin after the coins price has plunged below $22k today.

However, one thing to note is that only the USDC flowing into spot exchanges can influence the market like this. A large chunk of the latest inflows seem to have gone into derivatives instead, which, while also an indication of higher volatility for the market, doesnt specifically mean the price will tend to go up. This volatility could make the price swing in either direction.

At the time of writing, Bitcoins price floats around $21.4k, down 10% in the past week.

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USDC Exchange Reserve Spikes Can This Help Push Bitcoin Back Up? - NewsBTC

Bitcoins value against the U.S. dollar lost 7.3% during the last 24 hours after more than $600 million in value was removed from the $1.07 trillion crypto economy. Statistics show that a number of bitcoin miners capitulated over the last two weeks, selling 5,925 bitcoin worth millions, according to cryptoquant.com data.

Bitcoins U.S. dollar value slid from $23,593 per unit to $21,268 per coin at 8:30 a.m. (EST) on Friday morning. More than $600 million has been erased from the crypto economy during the last day as BTC lost 7.3% and ETH shed 7.4%. A number of other coins lost value against the U.S. dollar as well as BNB dipped by 5%, XRP slipped by 9%, and ADA lost 10.3% during the past 24 hours.

According to data stemming from cryptoquant.com shared by Ali Martinez bitcoin miners capitulated during the last 14 days. Bitcoin miners appear to have taken advantage of the recent upswing to book profits, Martinez said. Data shows that miners sold 5,925 BTC in the last two weeks, worth roughly $142 million.

Following Martinezs tweet, cryptoquant.com data shows more than 6,100 BTC have been sold since the first of August. The web portals Miners Position Index says bitcoin miners are moderately selling bitcoin. Using todays crypto market values, 6,100 BTC equates to $130.80 million, a much lower value than Martinezs quote price.

Miners took a break from selling BTC after a flurry of mined bitcoin was sold during the two months prior to August 1, 2022. A Blockware Intelligence Newsletter published on July 29 explained that the end of miner capitulation was near. According to the hash ribbon metric, Bitcoin is 52 days into a miner capitulation, the Blockware newsletter said. Blockwares report added:

The end of a miner capitulation historically marks a bear market bottom.

During the first two weeks of August, it seemed as though miner capitulation was over and BTC managed to tap $25,212 per unit on August 14. BTC has lost 14.58% since the August 14 high and its currently down 69% from the $69,044 per unit price recorded on November 10, 2021. This past week Bitcoins mining difficulty rose by 0.63% making it more difficult for miners to discover BTC blocks and with prices lower, mining bitcoin is less profitable today than it was five days ago.

Despite the difficulty rise, after coasting along under the 200 exahash per second (EH/s) zone at 182.40 EH/s the day prior on August 18, 2022, BTCs hashrate has skyrocketed to 267.40 EH/s. Thats a 24-hour increase of around 46.60% higher than the 182 EH/s recorded on Thursday afternoon (EST).

Using the current difficulty parameter, BTCs current market value and a cost of around $0.12 per kilowatt hour (kWh), a Bitmain Antminer S19 XP with 140 terahash per second (TH/s) can get an estimated $4.85 per day in profit. The Microbt Whatsminer M50S launched in July with 126 TH/s can get an estimated $2.74 per day in profit, according to current market statistics.

What do you think about miners selling 5,925 bitcoin during the last two weeks? Do you think miner capitulation is over or will continue? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,700 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

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.

Continued here:
Bitcoin Miners Take in Bear Rally Profits by Selling More Than 6000 BTC Since August 1 - Bitcoin News

The market might be down, but developer interest in bitcoin isnt. Since the all-time high almost a year ago, it has grown more than 8%, according to a recent study. Telstra Ventures data science team performed health checks on 3 top blockchain ecosystems and concluded that open-source developers signal strength of web3 community. The story here, though, is bitcoin. Which isnt really part of the web3 community, but thats a topic for another time.

The studys introduction briefly mentions Terras collapse and Celsius and Three Arrows Capital disaster stories. It doesnt mention Tesla panic selling 75% of its bitcoin, which is another reason for the downturn. Since January, a 60% loss in crypto market cap wiped $1.3 trillion, and VC investments tumbled 25.6% to about $9.3 billion, down from a record $12.5 billion invested during last years first half, Telstra said.

Nevertheless, developer interest in bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana remains high. According to the companys General Partner Yash Patel, developers decisions about which protocols to use will be driven by use case and will point to the winning protocols.

Telstra buried the lead and downplayed the phenomenon. Bitcoin has seen a steady growth in the number of active developers over the past 8 years, the study says. The fact of the matter is that developer interest in the network has been growing since its inception 13 years ago. Bitcoin continues slow and steady growth through price volatility, such is the networks rhythm.

Consider that bitcoin doesnt need as much development, because its trying to be money and not a world computer of some sort. Also, consider that the network is much older than Ethereum and Solana. Those two facts make this next bullet point even more impressive.

During the same period, Ethereums developer interest had a drawdown of 9.0% and Solanas number of active contributors has declined 21.0%. It figures. And still, those numbers are not bad at all considering were probably in a bear market.

Also, consider that developer interest in the same period for Solana is growing 173.0% compound annual growth rate and Ethereum is growing 24.9% compound annual growth rate. It figures, since we used to be in a bull market and Altcoins tend to do well in that environment.

Its worth noting that Telstras study includes Stacks projects in the mix, and well, Stacks is not bitcoin at all. Its also important to point out that bitcoin is in a category of its own and its not part of the altcoins world. In any case, besides Stacks and general Web3 projects, the repositories with more development interest in bitcoin land include the Zeus Lightning wallet, the Bitcoin Development Kit, the phenomenal Sparrow Wallet, Galoys projects including stablesats, and the essential Mempool.

Its important to point out how Telstra Ventures data science team arrived at those developer interest numbers.

So, the study is comprehensive.

So, the study has limits and only considers developer interest in established projects.

So, the study is GitHub-heavy. Developer interest in non-GitHub projects is not considered.

Perfect. Understood.

In conclusion, developer interest in the three studied blockchains remains high. However, after the collapse, it only continued growing on bitcoin. It figures, because bitcoin developers are interested in something bigger than fiat gains. Bitcoin aims to separate money and state, and market action doesnt affect the mission. Tick Tock, next block.

Link:
Nevermind The Bear: Developer Interest In Bitcoin Keeps Growing, New Study Shows | Bitcoinist.com - Bitcoinist