This is an opinion editorial by Ariel Deschapell, co-founder of multi-cloud hosting platform Hydra Host, senior fellow at Lincoln Network and a team member at BIPBounty.org.

The idea that Bitcoin lacks innovation compared to other cryptocurrencies is pervasive, but is it true?

The Bitcoin protocol undergoes significant changes much more slowly than other cryptocurrencies, the latest, of course, being the implementation and activation of Taproot. But this is a feature, not a bug.

As the foundation of a massive open-source ecosystem, changes should be well thought out and should consistently demonstrate widespread consensus that the benefits of the change outweigh costs. While true and generally accepted, this line of thinking can also be a cop out. Its important to recognize the necessity of consensus, but we must think deeply about what consensus means, how it is achieved and how we could potentially improve upon how it happens.

Overall, the idea that slow development is a better pattern is simply an awful heuristic and a false dichotomy. The options available to the Bitcoin communitys protocol development are infinitely more varied and nuanced than simply slow or fast. Careful, comprehensive, deliberate, inclusive; all of these adjectives do a much better job of describing what the Bitcoin community should actually aim to facilitate. This explicit wording is important, for whatever values we subscribe to will be used to judge initiatives and efforts, and the only aspiring ideal worse than slow is likely fast.

The simple passage of time does nothing on its own to ensure a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) receives more eyeballs, reviews, serious consideration or engagement. It also does nothing to ensure that the developer community is focusing its finite efforts and attention on the right areas.

If we seek to defend innovation in the Bitcoin community, the easiest way to do so would be to point at the truly expansive body of continuous research and development in the bitcoin-dev mailing group and other forums of technical information exchange. It is undeniable that Bitcoin boasts a huge mindshare of world-class programmers, cryptographers, mathematicians, economists and more. These individuals continue to wrestle with pivotal problems, such as implementing greater degrees of privacy, and scaling the greater Bitcoin network to global throughput without losing the very characteristics that make it Bitcoin.

This community is delightfully and intentionally unstructured and informal. There exists no standardized process by which any idea or proposal graduates to becoming included in Bitcoin. The only way for a proposal to reach eventual inclusion is to receive the extensive attention, support and subsequent work from the community required to do so. From the research and analysis required to convince the community that the benefits significantly outweigh the costs, to the breakdowns and communication necessary to motivate the wider ecosystem to upgrade software and prepare use cases, to the actual work of finalizing and implementing the code itself.

Maintaining and supercharging this process is essential, and while it will always be slower than a standardized and formalized system in a relative sense, there is always room for improvement to make it happen more effectively on its own terms.

The knee-jerk impulse to fight against any assertion that the Bitcoin development process is not ideal, or that it can benefit from improvement, is usually based on the implicit assumption that any effort to improve it necessarily means adding more centralization and control. However, this is far from true. Just as the Lightning Network debunked the claim that increasing transacting scalability necessitated increasing the block size.

Similarly, BIP bounties are an attempt at improving the incentives driving Bitcoin development and consensus building. Administered by the Lincoln Network, a nonprofit organization focused on fostering technologies that support human liberty, BIPBounty.org collects donations to fund standardized bounties earmarked for specific BIPs. Although it only lists one bounty at the moment, this structure is designed to accomplish the following:

BIPBounty.org sprang out as a concept from the BIP119 controversy. In December 2021, the BIPs author, Jeremy Rubin, placed a bug bounty on his own BIP via Twitter.

Very quickly, other supporters of the BIP threw in their hats and offered their own complimentary bounties. The total bounty amount quickly snowballed. That this happened completely spontaneously and organically was a tremendous sign of pent-up community willingness and demand to dedicate financial resources to move the ball forward on discourse and consensus.

Naturally, BIPBounty.org has begun with the BIP119 bounties, but as a project it has no aims in regards to any specific BIP. Its goal is to encompass all BIPs and allow the Bitcoin community itself to decide which proposals are of greater interest and worthy of their tax deductible contributions.

BIPBounty.org is new and is attempting to tackle an ambitious problem. The hypothesis by which we will evaluate our efforts is that there is community interest for such an endeavor beyond a one-time interest in the context of a single BIP. By enabling that, we can sustainably accelerate research and development deliverables and discourse across BIPs.

All of this requires community buy-in and engagement. And most crucial at this early stage is feedback. To that end, we at Lincoln Network hope that the best and brightest of the Bitcoin community will continue to engage with us and help us in our efforts to drive effective, collaborative and sustainable Bitcoin development.

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

More:
How BIP Bounties Will Supercharge The Bitcoin Network - Bitcoin Magazine

Oct 11 (Reuters) - It's not easy being a crypto investor.

They've seen the value of their holdings drop like a brick this year, and now many are stewing over the safety of their crypto cash after a series of heists that's seen around $2 billion spirited away by hackers.

Enter the ghost of technology's past.

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Hardware wallets - old-school physical devices similar to USB drives that stash crypto holdings offline - might seem a throwback to a more innocent digital age, but they're proving to be a popular response to a cutting-edge conundrum.

The global hardware wallet market, valued at $245 million in 2021, is expected to swell to over $1.7 billion by 2030, according to market research firm Straits Research.

It's being fueled by a steady stream of cyber robberies that, according to researcher Chainalysis, has seen thieves steal $1.9 billion in crypto in the first seven months of the year, an increase of 60% from a year earlier. Much of this was stolen directly from blockchains or "hot" online wallets.

It's not only hacks making investors edgy. Others lost access to their crypto when major lenders such as Celsius Network and Voyager Digital collapsed in July.

"We have definitely seen increased interest in hardware wallets, and in general self-custody, post-several issues," said Adam Lowe, chief product and innovation officer at U.S.-based CompoSecure (CMPO.O), one of several hardware wallet makers seeking to capitalize on a rush for safety.

"The day of or day after those events, we would see very significant (sales) lifts."

There's no such thing as a free crypto lunch, though: While hot wallets are convenient and allow for quick trading, hardware wallets typically don't appeal to first-time investors, who often buy cryptocurrencies on big exchanges and might choose to keep their assets on those platforms, where they can simply log in with a username and password.

Although hot wallets are usually free and offer quick access to crypto, they can be vulnerable to hacks. In August, nearly 8,000 crypto wallets on the Solana blockchain were hit by hackers who made off with more than $5 million in crypto.

"Users are strongly encouraged to use hardware wallets," Solana said at the time.

France's Ledger, another hardware wallet maker, said it saw a spike in sales after the Solana wallets heist.

"We do see significant uptick in user-based interest in some of these situations of stress in the markets," aid Alex Zinder, global head of Ledger Enterprise.

Most hardware wallets connect to a mobile app, where the owners of the digital keys needed to access their crypto keys can control their funds. Some use "Secure Enclave" technology, a security feature used to store sensitive data.

Josef Ttek, bitcoin analyst at Czech-based hardware wallet company Trezor, says he expects better phone interaction with cold storage wallets in the future, to serve investors in places like South America and Africa, where it's more common for users to have mobile phones than personal computers.

Yet companies in this ballooning market might be advised to make hay while the sun shines.

One long-term question is whether phone makers will want to get in on the action, said Stan Miroshnik, co-founder and partner at 10T Holdings, which led Ledger's $380 million Series C funding round last year.

"One question, I think, for the industry and where it's going and in part what will drive consumer adoption, is what if every iPhone has a built-in Secure Enclave hardware wallet?"

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Reporting by Hannah Lang in Washington; Editing by Tom Wilson and Pravin Char

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

Original post:
Cryptoverse: Hack jitters push bitcoin investors back to the future - Reuters

Employees work on bitcoin mining computers at Bitminer Factory in Florence, Italy.

Alessandro Bianchi | Reuters

Software used in bitcoin mining just got its first upgrade since late 2012, and a coalition of companies including payments giant Block (formerly Square) is trying to help push the open-source protocol forward to become an industry standard.

The move could help open bitcoin mining to more participants by supporting lower-quality internet connections, as well as improving security so miners get properly compensated for their work.

Bitcoin operates on a proof-of-work mining model, meaning that miners around the world run high-powered computers to create new bitcoin and validate transactions. Mining requires professional-grade equipment, some technical know-how, a lot of electricity and a special kind of software.

Rather than directly accessing the bitcoin protocol, the vast majority of miners today work through an intermediary protocol called Stratum, which facilitates communication between the bitcoin network, miners, and the mining pools that combine the hashing power of thousands of miners all over the world.

Miners use Stratum to submit their work and to collect a reward if they successfully complete a new block of transactions.

On Tuesday, a coalition of bitcoin developers is releasing version 2 of Stratum under an open-source license for the mining industry to evaluate and test.

It will take some work to convince the mining industry to adopt the new protocol, so Spiral a subsidiary of Jack Dorsey's payments companyBlock(formerly Square) is teaming up with bitcoin mining company Braiins to launch a group to test and fine-tune the open-source software before they push mass adoption.

Steve Lee, the lead at Spiral, tells CNBC there are several significant benefits to the upgrade, including cutting down on the use of data.

Currently, it is common for each mining rig in a large farm to directly connect to a pool. This setup wastes a lot of energy. Lee says that Stratum V2 supports a proxy that aggregates all the connections and only establishes one connection with the pool.

The process of sending that data is also changing to a more efficient method.

"All told, much less data needs to be transmitted between miners and pools, and this could help miners in remote regions of the world with poor internet," noted Lee.

The upgrade is designed to improve security, as well. Today, it is possible to steal hash rate from a miner, which can lead to some miners losing money. Hash rate is a term for the collective computing power of the bitcoin network. To resolve this, Lee says Stratum V2 introduces a standard security mechanism with authentication and encryption between miners and pools.

The version being released Tuesday is for initial testing, and in early November, a more robust version will come out that supports additional functionality, including job negotiation a "feature that represents a historic shift in the censorship-resistant mechanics of bitcoin mining by replacing a pools responsibility of assigning work to miners with the ability for miners to select their own work," according to a joint statement released by Spiral and Braiins.

There are orders of magnitude more miners than pools, so if miners select transactions it is far more decentralized than just a handful of pools, Lee explained.

"Working for industrywide adoption of the upgraded Stratum protocol is one of the most important developments in improving the decentralization and censorship resistance of bitcoins architecture," Lee said.

As for timing, the pilot and integration testing will happen this fall, and next year, the upgraded protocol will likely see greater adoption once miners and pools are confident it is working well.

"I'd anticipate a gradual increase in hash rate in 2023," Lee told CNBC. "Reaching 10% hash rate by the end of 2023 would be a great success," continued Lee.

Lee added that it will likely take several years to see the latest version of Stratum replace the original.

Miners know the benefits of upgrading to Stratum V2 very well, but pushing the entire mining industry over some of the remaining development and adoption hurdles is a big task," said Jan Capek, co-founder of Braiins.

"Universal standards for running and building Stratum V2 and the efforts of this working group to push the industry forward will provide the momentum bitcoin needs to finally upgrade from a version of its mining protocol that was built a decade ago, continued Capek.

Similar to the Lightning Network, which is a technology built on top of bitcoin's base layer to make payments more efficient, there will be different implementations of Stratum V2. However, the open-source version released Tuesday will make it easier to collectively test out the technology. It will also ensure that the various projects can interact with one another.

Tuesday's announcement is part of Block's larger push into the bitcoin mining industry.

On the sidelines of the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami in April, digital assets infrastructure company Blockstream and Block announced that they were breaking ground on a solar- and battery-powered bitcoin mine in Texas that uses solar and storage technology fromTesla.

Tesla's 3.8 megawatt solar PV array and 12 megawatt-hour Megapack will power the facility.

Block is also independently working on a project to make bitcoin mining more distributed and efficient.

The idea of making the mining process more accessible has to do with more than just creating new bitcoin, according to Block's general manager for hardware, Thomas Templeton. Instead, he says the company sees it as a long-term need for a future that is fully decentralized and permissionless.

"Mining needs to be more distributed," Dorsey wrote in a tweet in October,when he first floated the idea. "The more decentralized this is, the more resilient the bitcoin network becomes."

Toward that end, the company is solving one major barrier to entry: Mining rigs are hard to find, expensive and delivery can be unpredictable. Block says it is open to making a new ASIC, which is the specialized gear used to mine for bitcoin.

The project is being incubated within Block's hardware team, which is beginning to build out a core engineering team of system, ASIC and software designers led by Afshin Rezayee.

See original here:
The software used in bitcoin mining is getting its first big makeover in more than a decade here's what's changing - CNBC

This is an opinion editorial by Trent Dudenhoeffer, a certified financial planner at Watchdog Capital.

Believe it or not, bitcoin is money.

This may be a hard sell to many of us in the Western world, specifically here in the United States. I get it; the dollar is the reserve currency of the world. Yes, there is inflation, but its not that bad, despite todays inflation being the highest its been in more than 40 years.

I dont know about you, but the ever-decreasing value of my dollars is one of the reasons I learned about bitcoin in the first place. Whoever said we needed to have inflation? John Maynard Keynes did, by the way, and its the economic theory taught in schools throughout the nation.

My point is it can be difficult for Western civilization to understand why bitcoin is important. Many are blinded by the strength of the dollar and are unable to appreciate bitcoins utility.

To jog your memory, lets go through five examples of what bitcoin can do that the dollar, other fiat currencies and gold cannot.

The theme of censorship has been in the spotlight over the last decade, and especially relevant in the last handful of years.

Twitter deplatformed a sitting president of the United States.

COVID-19 origination theories once viewed as heresy are now largely accepted as valid. Believing in this theory earlier led to the deplatforming of many prominent people, including legitimate, respected doctors.

And this is just whats happening on social media. What happens when your money is censored?

Look no further than the Canadian trucker protest that took place in early 2022. The Canadian government sought to require vaccination of every trucker that entered its country. At the sight of this obvious intrusion of human rights, the truckers decided to protest the mandate by essentially closing the capital city of Ottawa by blockading the streets.

One thing led to another, and before you knew it, the Canadian banking system began to turn off the money of every person involved in these protests. Thats right. Whether you were a trucker yourself, donated some money to the efforts or passed out food, you were on the hit list and you had your money turned off. Frozen. It was there, but you couldnt do anything with it.

Today, its a trucker protest. What if its a womens rights protest next? A protest against abuses by a country youre allied with? Who decides?

Bitcoin sure as heck doesnt. Bitcoin doesnt care about the color of your skin, your political affiliation, the country youre in, what videos you watch on YouTube, etc. If you play by the same rules that everyone else plays by, you can use bitcoin.

This is one reason why thousands of people donated bitcoin to the Canadian truckers cause. It was money that no one, not even the government or banking system, could stop. More than 21 bitcoin was raised in the effort by 5,000 donors, at the time totaling nearly $1 million in support.

Bitcoin is censorship-resistant money.

Jurisdictional arbitrage will become more prevalent with political parties leaning further to the extremes here in the United States, as well as across the world. You see polarization, capital controls and capital flight taking place every day:

As a citizen, sometimes you must act fast or risk being too late to flee, but how do you move an entire household of trinkets and things with you as you leave? How do you cross borders with wads of cash falling out of your pocket or gold ingots weighing you down?

The answer is simple: you dont. Good luck getting anything of value across borders without it being confiscated. But you can move your bitcoin and if you do it correctly, you can move it with no one else knowing and without any evidence.

All you need to do is maintain 12 (or in some cases 24) words. These words can represent your entire livelihood and are known as a seed phrase. By having these words, you can bring your wealth anywhere in the world.

Thats what Laleh Farzan did. After receiving threats from the Taliban in 2016, she fled to Germany. Most of the time, when you flee a hostile area such as Afghanistan amid chaos, youre bound to run into thieves and/or unrelenting governments. The emigrants typically leave with nearly zero possessions.

But for Laleh, she was able to store her wealth via her seed phrase. It was contained on a tiny piece of paper which thieves and others disregarded. Once she arrived in Germany, she was able to sell a portion of her bitcoin for fiat to pay for everyday expenses.

Bitcoin mining requires a great deal of energy. Talking heads on the news have parroted this line plenty of times. Its supposed to consume all the worlds energy by 2020 (howd that work out?).

One might argue, the more energy bitcoin consumes, the better.

Hear me out.

Bitcoin miners act as an energy consumer of first and last resort. Essentially, they will always buy (use) energy if its available to them. What most dont know about our modern energy grids is that this type of reliability and consistency is extremely helpful. Rather than having to plan for energy demand peaks and troughs, energy producers can simply provide energy without worrying that no one will use it.

Long story short: Bitcoin miners stabilize entire energy grids. If youd like a deeper dive, read more here.

Not only do miners stabilize grids, but bitcoin mining encourages using the most efficient energy sources available. As a miner, your profit and loss statement is very easy to decipher: your revenue is the bitcoin you mine, your expenses (for the most part) are the energy required to mine it.

As a business owner, you ideally want to increase revenue and decrease expenses to beef profits. Besides mining more bitcoin, whats the easiest way to increase profit? Lower your expenses, aka your cost of energy. Whats the cheapest energy available to us? Energy that comes naturally: solar, wind, hydro, etc.

Bitcoin is ushering in new developments and innovation in green energy, and even more importantly, wasted energy.

Bitcoin miners attempt, as best as they can, to mine with energy that would otherwise be wasted. Its a win-win for both parties. The miner gets cheap energy and the energy producer sells energy that otherwise would have not produced any revenue. A great example of this is flared gas mining. When I first saw a video of miners using flared gas, I knew it was a game changer. It makes sense for every single producer on earth to plug in a bitcoin miner to earn more revenue and decrease emissions. Its a no-brainer.

Did you know that an estimated 60% of energy produced is lost before reaching the consumer? Bitcoin miners will happily buy the otherwise wasted energy from producers, thus allowing the producers to earn more revenue as well as provide reliable expectations for supply and demand.

Its only a matter of time before miners fully integrate themselves with energy markets.

Ever needed banking services after 5:00 p.m. or on a weekend? Pretty inconvenient, right? In a world of globally connected markets and on-demand everything else, why havent our financial services been held to the same availability standards?

Bitcoin has an up-time of 99.99%. Spanning more than 12 years, the Bitcoin network has only experienced a cumulative 14 hours of downtime.

I can be anywhere in the world at any time of the day and interact with the Bitcoin network as long as I have internet connectivity. If internet connectivity is an issue, some geniuses much smarter than me are working on ways to account for it.

24/7, 365. No holiday closures. No circuit breakers during volatile times. Tick tock, next block.

Commerce occurs on the internet rather than meat space more and more as the years go by.

Im not going to focus on commerce that requires a product to be physically shipped to your house in this post, but what I want to talk about instead are products and content that you consume directly on your computer.

Why do I have to divulge my credit card information and address to the Wall Street Journal if I want to read an article? Why do I have to do the same with Spotify to listen to a podcast?

Bitcoin, and its scaling layers, such as the Lightning Network, are going to disrupt e-commerce with internet-native micropayments.

There is a growing trend in the space known as value-for-value. Lets look at Fountain as an example. Fountain is a podcast app that is built directly above Bitcoins base layer on the Lightning Network. While using Fountain, podcast listeners can load up a Lightning wallet and stream tiny portions of a bitcoin known as satoshis, or sats directly to the content creator. These streams may be as small as five sats per minute, which today has a value of $0.0011.

Content creators can now rely exclusively on their audience to fund their venture if they prefer. Many podcasters appreciate this idea to align their own incentives with their listeners: zero product shilling, zero false advertising, etc. This also allows for a more engaging experience between the two parties.

Another fantastic use case for bitcoin in internet commerce is those pesky paywalls. Lets use the Wall Street Journal again as an example. I rarely ever read the Wall Street Journal, but lets say one article catches my eye that I desperately want to read. Then I encounter a paywall. 99 out of 100 times, Im going to exit the window and forget about the article.

The odds of me getting my wallet, typing in my credit card info, all my other personal information and likely having to sign up for a monthly subscription are next to zero.

With the Lightning Network, the Wall Street Journal may put up a paywall using BTCPay Server. In this instance, I can whip out my Lightning wallet, scan the QR code, pay the invoice and begin reading the article. The whole process may take less than 30 seconds without the publication having any clue who I am or where I live. This avenue of billing could expand the Wall Street Journals reach considerably, keep the one-time readings affordable and respect their viewers privacy.

Although these types of transactions arent nearly as world-changing as some of the other points mentioned above, its another arrow in Bitcoins quiver. Another real-world use case that bitcoin does worlds better than our current system.

No, bitcoin isnt dead. This isnt the first bear market and it certainly wont be the last.

Too many are fixated on bitcoins fiat price. What most dont realize is that bitcoin continues to work just as advertised. Its reliable, open to all and there are no rulers only rules.

Bitcoin is objectively better money. I look forward to everyone else coming to this realization.

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

Read more from the original source:
Five Examples Of Bitcoin's Real-World Utility - Bitcoin Magazine

The below is a direct excerpt of Marty's Bent Issue #1271: Soaring rates, begging and bitcoin's relative strength. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Last week, we discussed the fact that credit default swap spreads for sovereign nations are becoming completely detached from their historical averages. In that piece, we highlighted that rapidly rising rates will begin to have a material effect on the interest payments on sovereign debt. Our friend Lawrence Lepard did some rough calculations on the exact impact this type of high-rate environment will have on the amount of money the U.S. government will owe their counterparts in interest payments if rates continue to rise. At this rate, interest payments will be about 3.5 times what they were in 2020. Of course, this won't happen right away as a lot of these Treasurys need to mature. However, if you take a look at the maturity calendar, a considerable amount of these Treasurys are due to mature over the next two years.

While interest payments on the U.S. sovereign debt may not balloon to $1.2 trillion immediately, they will begin to increase materially in pretty short order. This is happening as tax revenues are all but certain to fall dramatically as Americans attempt to deal with a rate of inflation that is screaming far beyond whats reported via the consumer price index; and as capital gains tax revenues dry up as most will probably have to report losses on their stock portfolios and home sales. Anyone with a lick of common sense and rudimentary math skills can see that this problem is about to have a material effect on peoples confidence in the U.S. governments ability to pay its debts and, by extension, overall confidence in the U.S. ability to be the leader of the Western world. It doesnt matter how much the DXY rallies.

Not only that, but everyone who has become wholly dependent on the easy money gravy train that left the station in 2008-2009 is literally beginning to beg for the Federal Reserve to reverse course on their hawkish policy. In the last three weeks alone, weve seen the U.N., the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and ARK Investments Cathie Wood come out and ask the Fed directly and indirectly to reverse course.

We find ourselves in very weird times. Everyone from the U.N. to the IMF to large asset managers is coming out and admitting that their way of being is wholly dependent on the gravy train barreling down the tracks at full speed. They have built their worldview around a dependence on central planning and free money flows that push up the prices of the assets they own and lull the world into a false sense of security. Markets have been forced to quit their heroin addiction cold turkey and the withdrawal shakes are more violent than anyone could ever imagine they would be. The world is wandering into uncharted territory. As the heroin addicts beg their dealer to give them their fix, bitcoin is quietly showing relative strength in the background.

As those in the mainstream continue to pooh-pooh $18,000-$20,000 bitcoin after an approximately 75% fall from highs attained late last year, the nascent peer-to-peer digital cash system seems to be developing a stable base as everything around it begins to crumble at an increasing pace. This is something to keep an eye on in the weeks and months to come. Who knows whether or not this relative stability will continue moving forward? If it does, while everything else continues to crash, it would be a massive signal that there are likely more and more individuals out there recognizing the value proposition that bitcoin provides as a monetary good divorced from the whims of the central planners who have lit the world on fire.

Could the decoupling be upon us? We shall see.

More:
Is Bitcoin Decoupling From Treasurys, Equities And Bonds? - Bitcoin Magazine

Sharing a statistically significant positive correlation with the leading coin Bitcoin [BTC], Bitcoin Cash [BCH] logged a decline in its price in the last week. According to data from the cryptocurrency analytics platform CoinMarketCap, the price per BCH coin fell by 8% in the past seven days.

Data from Santiment showed that the consistent decline in the price of the asset pointed to BCH distribution by investors.

Also, the surge in BCHs trading volume and the lack of a corresponding price rally during intraday trading hours on 13 October hinted at buyers exhaustion. As per CoinMarketCap, BCHs trading volume had rallied by 65% in the last 24 hours.

With the last seven days marked by a decline in BCHs price, buying pressure dropped in the last week on a daily chart. As a result, on 5 October, the assets Relative Strength Index (RSI) and Money Flow Index (MFI) fell below their respective neutral lines to pursue new lows.

At press time, the MFI inched toward the oversold region at 33.41. Following a similar progression, BCHs RSI rested at 41.79 at press time.

As sellers gradually overran the BCH market, a new bear cycle was initiated on 10 October. At press time, the Moving average convergence divergence (MACD) was made of red histogram bars with an intersection of the MACD line (blue) with the trend line (red) in a downtrend.

In addition, a look at the assets On-balance volume (OBV) confirmed that investors have heavily distributed BCH since 9 September. The indicator has since been on a downtrend, and the price has fallen by 15%.

While these key indicators have shown a decline in BCHs accumulation in the last week, a look at the assets Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) revealed a divergence with its price.

In the face of its falling price, BCHs CMF rested above the center line to post a positive value of 0.08. This typically represents a surge in buying pressure which usually precipitates a rally in the price of an asset.

However, as in the current market, a CMF/price divergence occurs when the price of a crypto asset trades at the oversold zone while its CMF continues to rise. This is usually taken as a buy signal, so traders looking to move against the market need to take note of this.

Read more from the original source:
Bitcoin Cash [BCH]: All you need to know before you write off this alt - AMBCrypto News

The world's largest crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments has filed its opening legal brief challenging the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions (SEC) decision to deny the conversion of its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a spot Bitcoin ETF.

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is an investing tool that bundles securities like stocks or commodities, allowing investors to buy shares on the public market without the need to directly own the underlying assets. In the case of a Bitcoin ETF, this underlying asset is Bitcoin, the worlds largest cryptocurrency.

Last October, the SEC allowed several Bitcoin futures ETFs offering derivative contracts that speculate on the future price of Bitcoin. Spot Bitcoin ETFs, which would be tied to Bitcoin's market price, however, are still not available to American investors.

In its filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Grayscale argued that a fundamental norm of administrative procedure requires an agency to treat like cases alike.

However, by greenlighting Bitcoin futures exchange-traded products (ETPs) while repeatedly rejecting Bitcoin ETFs backed by the actual underlying asset the financial regulator acted in excess of statutory authority.

The Administrative Procedure Act and Exchange Act require rules and regulations to be applied without favoritism for one type of product or another, Craig Salm, Grayscale's Chief Legal Officer, said in a statement.

The brief further stated that although Bitcoin may be a relatively new asset, the legal issue here is straightforward.

According to Grayscale, by failing to justify its vastly different treatment of Bitcoin futures ETFs and spot Bitcoin ETFs, the SEC has violated the APAs most basic requirements.

Grayscale has long sought to convert GBTC, the industrys largest Bitcoin fund, into a spot Bitcoin ETF, arguing that it would help resolve the problem of the deepening discount the GBTC shares have been trading at since February last year.

In June this year, the Commission, however, rejected the firms application for a Bitcoin ETF, arguing that it did not do enough to protect investors from "fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices."

The decision prompted Grayscale to sue the regulator, with CEO Michael Sonnenshein stating at the time that the investment firm will continue to leverage all of its resources to advocate for its investors and the "equitable regulatory treatment of Bitcoin investment vehicles.

Tuesdays brief described the Commissions decision as arbitrary, capricious and discriminatory, further stating that there is simply no justification for continuing to inflict such serious investor harm."

According to Grayscale, the SEC must submit its brief by November 9, with Grayscale responding on November 30. Both parties are expected to submit a final brief on December 21.

Yesterday's filing also came hot on the heels of the SEC once again rejecting the launch of a Bitcoin ETF sought by asset management firm WisdomTree.

Stay on top of crypto news, get daily updates in your inbox.

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'No Justification' for SEC to Deny Bitcoin Trust Conversion Into ETF: Grayscale - Decrypt

The last four months have been marked by a boring price action from the leading coin, Bitcoin [BTC], data from on-chain intelligence platform Santiment revealed. In the past few weeks, BTCs price oscillated strangely between the $19,000 price region and the psychological $20,000 price region.

Noticeably, the king coin has been increasingly less volatile in the past few weeks. Glassnode, in a recently published report, compared BTCs performance with that of the broader financial markets. It found that,

Recent weeks have seen an uncharacteristically low degree of volatility in Bitcoin prices, in stark contrast to equity, credit, and forex markets, where central bank rate hikes, inflation, and a strong US dollar continue to wreak havoc.

According to Santiment, this decline in volatility could be attributed to the lack of whale presence in the BTC market. The count of BTC whale transactions that exceed $100,000 and $1 million also declined nearly to a two-year low, data from Santiment revealed.

A persistent fall in BTCs volatility has been partly induced by the lack of whale presence in the BTC market. This aimed to signify attempts by investors to establish a bear market floor. A look at the assets supply on exchanges supported this position.

According to data from Santiment, BTCs supply on exchanges dropped by 13% in the past four months. The percentage of the coins total supply on exchanges fell from 10.10% to 8.72% between June and October.

The decline in BTCs supply on exchanges was an indication that buying pressure for the asset rallied in the period under consideration.

While this ordinarily should aid a price uptick, the downtrodden nature of the broader financial markets made it impossible for the price of BTC to rise significantly.

While the fall in BTCs supply on exchanges might have indicated a rally in buying pressure in the past four months, a look at the assets Mean Dollar Invested Age (MDIA) revealed that the BTC network was plagued by an increasing repository of dormant coins.

Data from Santiment also showed that BTCs MDIA has been on a long stretch upward in the past four months showing stagnancy on the network.

However, for the king coin to see any significant price action, a fall in MDIA is required. This will mean that previously dormant coins have started to change hands.

According to Bloomberg, October, historically, has been a good month for BTC.

The virtual currency tends to rise roughly 25% in October and has, since 2015, advanced more than 85% of the time during it.

Investors hoping for a respite may thus have something to rejoice about.

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Bitcoin: Before you make your next trade in October, read this - AMBCrypto News

Hedging against downside has always been a challenge for Bitcoin BTC miners, and the current bear market is a perfect example of how energy prices and crypto market volatility can negatively impact miners profit margins and their ability to stay solvent.

Oftentimes, institutional and retail traders use BTC-, stablecoin- and U.S. dollar-settled derivatives (options and futures contracts) to create hedging strategies that mitigate downside in Bitcoin price, and now an instrument specific to Bitcoin mining is available to miners.

The Oct. 10 launch of Luxor Hashprice NDF, a non-deliverable forward contract, will allow miners to hedge their exposure to Bitcoin price and the energy costs associated with mining.

According to Luxor Technologies, hashprice is the revenue BTC miners earn per unit of hash rate, which is the total computational power deployed by miners processing transactions on a proof-of-work network.

The over-the-counter derivatives contracts are settled using Luxors Bitcoin Hashprice Index, and investors can choose to settle in dollar-pegged stablecoins, dollars or BTC. A primary benefit of the instrument is that contract sellers can lock in Bitcoin mining revenue, while contract buyers can tap into the upside potential of Bitcoin mining without the need for physical exposure.

Related: Will the Bitcoin mining industry collapse? Analysts explain why crisis is really opportunity

According to Luxor co-founder and CEO Nick Hansen:

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

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New hashprice-based derivatives instrument gives Bitcoin miners another way to hedge - Cointelegraph

Popular crypto analyst Benjamin Cowen is bullish on one Ethereum (ETH)-based altcoin and says it may even outperform Bitcoin (BTC).

In a new interview with Altcoin Daily, Cowen lays out the case for his bullish Chainlink (LINK) sentiment.

A lot of the things I talk about on my channel right now are how Bitcoin dominance should go much higher. But while I say that there are always a few altcoins that outperform Bitcoin even when the dominance is going higher. And if history is any indication, at the end of a bear market and in the accumulation phase before the next bull market, Chainlink is a reasonable place to look.

Cowen says that the decentralized blockchain network has been integrated into many projects to enable smart contracts and secure data sharing. However, the strength of the project is not translating into a higher price due to the overall bear market conditions.

Chainlink sort of acts as a backbone for a lot of cryptocurrencies. Weve seen over the years, just how many cryptocurrency projects its integrated itself into and I would argue that it provides a very valuable service in providing real-time feeds via the blockchain.

One of the reasons why I think it hasnt done as well recently, obviously, is not necessarily because Chainlink isnt a great project its more so just because of the overall market risk and the fact that we are in fact in a bear market, but I do think the fundamentals of Chainlink shine through a bit better in the bear market than they sometimes do in the bull market.

He says in the coming months he is looking to see how well LINKs price will hold up if there is a continued downturn in the markets driven by the US raising interest rates.

One of the things Im looking for is how well does LINK hold up if we do get some more fear closer to the end of the year with the Fed continuing to raise interest rates and how does it hold up against Bitcoin.

He says that LINK, currently trading hands for $7.04 at time of writing, is undervalued in its current price against BTC. At time of writing, LINK is valued at 0.0003620 BTC.

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Bitcoin Primed To Go Higher, but One Ethereum-Based Altcoin Will Outperform BTC: Crypto Analyst Benjamin Cowen - The Daily Hodl