Most of us will be dead by then.

Projected to happen in the year 2106, Bitcoin will suddenly stop running based on the code its network of users is running today. Users wont be able to send bitcoin to others; miners securing Bitcoins global network will no longer serve a purpose. Bitcoin will just stop.

The good news is that the bug is easy to fix. Its a problem Bitcoin developers have known about for years since at least 2012, maybe earlier, according to Bitcoin Core contributor Pieter Wuille. To some developers, the Bitcoin bug potentially sheds light on the limits to Bitcoins decentralization, since the community will all need to join together to fix it.

Related: Cardano Introduces Proof-of-Stake With 'Shelley' Hard Fork

Read more: A Bitcoin Hard Fork? The Science of Contentious Code is Advancing

This is a consensus change, but a very simple one, and I hope one that will be non-controversial, Blockstream co-founder and engineer Pieter Wuille told CoinDesk in an email. We have about 80 years left to address [the bug]. Who knows what might happen in such a time frame.

The bug is simple. Bitcoin blocks are the containers within which transactions are stored. Each Bitcoin block has a number tracking how many blocks come before it. But because of a limitation revolving around how block height numbers are stored, Bitcoin will run out of block numbers after block number 5101541.

In other words, at a block height roughly 86 years into the future, it will be impossible to produce any new blocks.

Related: OpenEthereum Supported 50% of Ethereum Classic Nodes. Now Its Leaving the Project

The change requires whats known as a hard fork, the most demanding method of making a change to a blockchain. Hard forks are tricky in that theyre not backwards-compatible, they require everyone running a Bitcoin node or miner to upgrade their software. Anyone who doesnt do so will be left behind on a stonewalled version of Bitcoin thats incapable of any activity.

While some blockchains, such as Ethereum, execute hard forks regularly, a hard fork isnt the happiest word in Bitcoin land.

The last time a Bitcoin hard fork was attempted, it attracted vicious debate. Several big Bitcoin businesses and miners rallied around a hard fork called Segwit2x in 2017. The problem is that far from everyone in the community agreed with the change, so many saw it as an attempt to force the upgrade on the community, which doesnt exactly jibe with Bitcoins ethos of leaderlessness.

Read more: No Fork, No Fire: Segwit2x Nodes Stall Running Abandoned Bitcoin Code

Because of this diary entry in Bitcoins history, when many people in Bitcoin hear the phrase hard fork, they think of a centralized power trying to impose a change.

However, this bug fix hard fork comes in stark contrast to Bitcoins most famous hard fork attempt. Rather than attracting debate, the community and developers will most likely agree it is a change that needs to be made.

After all, anyone who chooses not to upgrade their software will eventually be running a dead Bitcoin chain.

The bug fix is unlikely to be a controversial hard fork change. But that doesnt make the issue any less interesting.

In conversation with CoinDesk, Head of Product and Research at Bitcoin tech startup Veriphi, Gustavo J. Flores, argued that it brings to light a limit to Bitcoins protocol ossification.

Read more: Hard Fork vs Soft Fork

Bringing to mind squishy cartilage hardening into bone over time, protocol ossification is the idea that Bitcoin will grow harder to change as it matures. The first several years of Bitcoins life, the protocol was immature and there were far fewer users and developers tinkering with the software, so the technology was easier to change. But Bitcoin may be hardening into a bony specimen that will be very difficult to change.

Protocol ossification means a certain point in time, some say it should be now, where Bitcoin doesnt change anymore. The rules are set such as a countrys constitution would be set, unchangeable, since it would be too decentralized to coordinate any change, Flores told CoinDesk.

The reason many Bitcoin technologists think ossification is a good quality is because it is a sign that the system is actually as decentralized as the community wants it to be, ensuring the system is really free from one person or entity stepping in and pushing through a change that isnt good.

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Flores went on to argue that protocol ossification helps to prevent future tentatives that would resemble Segwit2x, where some actors try to force an upgrade, because theyre known developers or big businesses, and this ends up hurting Bitcoin because its either untested code or cryptography, or because the change removes the core value proposition or would decrease decentralization which would hurt the core value proposition on the long-term.

However, this bug makes it desirable to be able to coordinate a hard fork to fix it, since we all want Bitcoin to be able to survive that deadline, Flores said.

It basically brings us back to reality, where the dream of protocol ossification (which makes us achieve ultimate decentralization) is a further than expected and it might be just a dream, which we can get closer over time, but we cant ever complete it since emergencies such as this, might present themselves, Flores told CoinDesk.

Link:
Fixing This Bitcoin-Killing Bug Will (Eventually) Require a Hard Fork - Yahoo Finance

Blockchain has been calleda pillar of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, comparing it to technologies such as the steam engine and the internet that triggered previous industrial revolutions. It has the power to disrupt existing economic and business models and may prove particularly valuable in emerging market economies.According to experts, blockchain also holds great promise as a method of fighting corruption, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, where more smartphone penetration can facilitate the adoption of new technology.

But what is it? Simply put, a blockchain is a chain of digital blocks that contain information. Once the information has been created, it is very difficult to change. It includes information about the sender, the receiver, and the amount of currency.The data is trustworthy because it is bound in a strict framework of rules and cryptographic keys, and only people with the right key can access or modify the data.Blockchain also removes the need for an intermediary, such as a bank or a lawyer. In short, it facilitates transparency, which is the enemy of corruption.

Blockchain has been used for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but many other possible uses are emerging, such as energy markets, digital identity, supply chain, health care and financial services. But there is one especially important for Latin America and the Caribbean: fighting corruption.

Corruption has a disproportionate impact on the poor and most vulnerable, increasing costs and reducing access to services, including health, education and justice,according to the World Bank. Corruption also impedes investment, with consequent effects on growth and jobs. According to aTransparency International survey, more than half of Latin Americans said that their government is failing to address corruption, and one in three people who had used a public service in the last 12 months said they had to pay a bribe.

Studies have shown that the poor pay the highest percentage of their income in bribes. In Paraguay, the poor pay 12.6 percent of their income to bribes while high-income households pay 6.4 percent. The lack of anonymity and the traceability of blockchain makes corruption more difficult than with traditional money. For example, if a government decides to construct a road, it could track how each dollar is being spent, identify all the users of the funds, and ensure that only those authorized to spend money do so on originally intended expenses. Fraud and corruption investigations that normally take months could be performed instantaneously. This type of financial tracking could be a deterrent for bribes in the public sector, in turn increasing development impact.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, only half of adults have access to banking services, however 90% of unbanked adults have a mobile phone. As smartphone penetration continues to grow, the popularity of virtual currencies is also growing. In Brazil, some companies and retail stores are accepting virtual currencies as payment. Colombia is also growing its presence in the cryptocurrency market in Latin America, as is Peru.

Chile also has a very active cryptocurrency community, but banks have been rejecting services to crypto-related companies and users. Both Chile and Argentina have been hosting cryptocurrency events and meetings. In Chile,LaBitConfhas attracted thousands of participants from all over the world interested in digital assets. In Argentina, Bitcoin continues to grow as well, and there are no major regulations threatening the industry. However, Bolivia and Ecuador are two of a few countries in the world in which Bitcoin is strictly banned.

The World Bank Group is working to ensure that economies in developing countries can harness these kinds of innovation to eliminate extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity. In August of 2018, the World Bank launchedbond-i, a blockchain operated new debt instrument, the worlds first bond to be created, allocated, transferred and managed through its life cycle using blockchain.

In Colombia, where low-resource and at-risk youth lack access to quality education and are often disincentivized to stay in school to complete a formal curriculum, the World Bank is exploring the opportunity to support youth education through social gaming, where they can earn tokens by solving global challenges.

The World Bank is also working on using blockchain to bring more transparency to supply chains. For example, blockchain could encourage farmers and the intermediaries who stand between farms and mills to enter more data about produce as it moves through the chain.

This Fourth Industrial Revolution can help accelerate progress towards development by helping prevent fraud and corruption.Yet the technology is in its early stages of development and serious challenges and risks, both technical and regulatory, will need to be addressed before it achieves widespread adoption. But the road is wide open.

Last Updated:Feb 07, 2019

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Blockchain: How the Fourth Industrial Revolution can help ...

Bitcoin is indeed a rather surprising mix of frightfully clever ideas and frightfully simplistic mechanisms, as I argue in a recent paper. You can dismiss bitcoin as a doomed monetary experiment, but you must not pass over the opportunity to let your imagination run with it as it can shake some basic assumptions you have on how financial systems must work. Might there be some lessons in there for how to 'fix'what's broken in our financial system? Take it as an invitation to dream about the following three questions, which are based around the three basic design premises of bitcoin.

First: What if digital money was something that I could hold for myself and pass onto others, without necessarily having to go through a licensed financial institution? You can't do that now: you cannot hold digital money without becoming a customer of Citibank, PayPal or M-PESA. We've been delivered into their hands, and yet they do not necessarily see it their business to serve everyone. It didn't use to be that way: you can hold coins and bank notes by yourself, there is decentralized management of that. What if we held the option to serve ourselves financially with electronic payments, on a peer-to-peer basis, even if only as a countervailing power or last resort?

Second: What if we could build an entire digital money network which did not require any specialized infrastructure? Modern finance is burdened by ever more complex core banking platforms. Most other forms of digital content have gotten off specialized networks and converged onto the internet, simply by layering higher-level protocols on top of the basic internet protocol which take account of the unique technical needs of different applications. Bitcoin is just that: a set of higher-level protocols (not hardware!) which ensure that the digital value carried over the ubiquitous internet is uniquely and securely owned by someone and cannot be freely copied or double-spent by their owner.

Third: What if the digital money implemented through such mechanisms was actually an alternative or private currency? OK, to me this is the least interesting part of bitcoin, but unfortunately it's the one that has galvanized most attention. I think there will always be a need for some discretion in the management of money supply to accommodate economic shocks, and I don't see us trusting private entities with that power, much less foregoing it entirely and operating our money supply on a hard rule. Price volatility is inherent in such rudimentary treatment of money supply.

So take the first two ingredients only, and what we have is fiat (i.e. government-issued) money which can be held and passed on in a peer-to-peer fashion and operates over the open internet, resulting in a much more open, interconnected, contestable and lower-cost ecosystems for the delivery of payment and financial services. Centralized issuance but decentralized management of money once it'sout there. That takes out the traditional banking gatekeepers (per the first point) and massively reduces the cost of moving money around (per the second point).

It also opens up the floodgates of innovation, because financial services could then be implemented at the customer wallet application level, without necessarily having to touch or even consult any central services or centralized providers. (A crude example: you could set up a time deposit by telling your wallet rather than your bank to not give you access to your money.) Some call it the rise of programmable money. And indeed the most powerful lesson of the internet has been the blossoming of innovation brought on by a great centripetal force which pushes intelligence to the edge of the network.

So what would be the benefits of such a system? The cost of achieving financial inclusion would be vastly reduced, as people could gain financial access simply by downloading a secure application on their smartphone (which are coming for all) without requiring any provider's consent. We could economically extend electronic transactions down to very small transaction sizes, as sending money need not cost much more than sending an email.

We would also go in the direction of giving us more options to prevent or deal with financial crises, by increasing market discipline on banks. There would be a much more credible flight-to-safety option for people if they smelled a weak bank or a bubble. And in the event of banking distress, there would be a more credible let-it-fail option for regulators since our economy need not be so dependent on them.

I'm not saying we should do away with banks, they will still have a huge role to play intermediating funds. They can seduce me with attractive deposit interest rates and on-demand loans which my wallet may not be able to negotiate on a peer-to-peer basis. All I am saying is that we should be able to opt for a self-service option whenever we like or when banks are failing to include us. This is the same service-versus-application dichotomy which has played out between telecoms providers and Skype to such advantage to end-users.

We are a long ways from being able to implement this sort of solution, from a technical, regulatory and customer acceptance point of view. But shouldn't these issues be at the heart of the ongoing financial architecture debate? We need to think of financial systems much more as a seamless fabric and less as a restricted collection of connected institutions.

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Why you Should Care about Bitcoin Even if you don't ...

Barry Silbert, founder and chief executive officer of Digital Currency Group Inc. (DCG), speaks ... [+] during the Skybridge Alternatives (SALT) conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, in May 2019. DCG subsidiary Grayscale is working to convert all ten of its crypto products to SEC reporting companies.

Institutional adoption of bitcoin is here, you just have to know where to look. While cryptocurrency advocates have long worked to build an ecosystem deemed credible enough for more than just mom and pop investors, nearly 20 institutions already filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last quarter, showing they invested in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), a product of Barry Silberts New York-based Grayscale Investments, LLC.

While many of the names are well-known mutual funds like Ark Invest with $4.5 billion in assets under management and Horizon Kinetic, managing $5.3 billion, according to their investor disclosure forms, the latest filings are also rife with relative newbies to the space including Rothschild Investment Corporation, Addison Capital and Corriente Advisor. It's very difficult to have a clean one-to-one signal on who's entering and exiting the space, says Ark Invest crypto analyst Yassine Elmandjra. But there are some very interesting proxies that can gauge institutional interest.

The problem is, the vast majority of the institutional investors who filed the paperwork, called a 13F filing, will no longer need to do so if the SEC gets its way and raises the threshold to report from $100 million to $3.5 billion. Though bitcoin represents only a tiny fraction of the total assets that will no longer have to be disclosed if the change is implemented, the nascent industry stands to be disproportionately impacted.

Of the 27 GBTC disclosures Forbes found only nine were more than the new $3.5 billion projection. Only three companies managed those nine funds, meaning much of the diversity of the space, the smaller institutional investors who are just starting to experiment with the new asset, would disappear. The changes are bad timing for the nascent bitcoin industry, which is just now starting to see broad institutional interest in the asset that many see as a hedge against more traditional investments, and a possible safe haven for investors as central banks around the world seem to be printing endless amounts of money.

But as often happens in crypto, every one step back the industry takes, theres two steps forward. In January, the same Grayscale Bitcoin Trust whose clients had already been filing 13Fs became an SEC reporting company, making it the first bitcoin firm to file quarterly 10-Qs and annual 10-Ks with the regulator, shedding new light on the internal structure of institutional bitcoin adoption.

Today, Grayscale took it up a notch, starting the same process with the SEC for its second crypto fund, the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE), and revealing exclusively to Forbes its plans to turn each of its 10 productsalso including XRP, stellar lumens, ethereum classic, litecoin, zcash, bitcoin cash, zen, and a fund for large cap cryptocurrenciesinto SEC reporting companies.

The model we have is working, says Grayscale managing director Michael Sonnenshein, 34. It also continues to hold our team to an even higher standard in how we operate our business and how we diligence our partners and can really serve as a model for other asset managers. Therell be a 60-day comment period starting today, before, the trust could also start filing its 10-Ks. If all goes as planned, Grayscale will next work to convert all ten of its cryptocurrency investment vehicles into publicly traded assets, then turn each of those into SEC reporting companies.

The price of bitcoin has increased by 56% since January, according to cryptocurrency data site Messari, reaching its high for the year, $11,809, earlier this month before dropping slightly to $11,657 at the time of publication. The most recent Grayscale quarterly report saw the trust growing at a rate of $57.8 million a week, reaching a record $751.1 million in the quarter. As of yesterday, assets in GBTC totaled $4.5 billion and Grayscales total assets under management have increased 37.5% since the June report to $5.5 billion today.

Due to the dearth of publicly traded investment opportunities for bitcoin, investments in GBTC can serve as a useful proxy for institutional interest in crypto-assets. But it is far from a perfect metric. The highly private New York private equity giant Fortress Investment Group has $41 billion in assets under management for 1,700 institutional investors, and earlier this year offered to buy out the creditor claims in the now defunct MtGox bitcoin exchange. $30 billion pension and endowment advisor Cambridge Associates, has been advocating for its clients to invest in bitcoin since at least 2019.

Famed Hedge Funders Mark Yusko and Mike Novogratz serve institutional bitcoin investors at their firms, Morgan Creek and Galaxy Digital, respectively, and Forbes 30 Under 30 member Hunter Horsley founded Bitwise Asset Management to serve institutional investors. In May Canadian firm 3iQ started trading a bitcoin fund on the Toronto Stock Exchange, joining London-based Coinshares and Switzerland-based Amun, which offer exchange-traded notes similar to Grayscales products in other jurisdictions.

The massive inflow of funds to Grayscale sister company Genesis Capital, which added over $2.2B in new loan originations in Q2, is also evidence of institutional interest. But for the most part, the clients of these firms remain incredibly private, making the soon-to-be changed 13F reports on GBTC investment activity a crucial source of investor data.

Earlier this year U.S. attorney general William Barr announced that President Trump intended to nominate SEC Chairman Jay Clayton as the next U.S. attorney for the influential southern district of New York. One of the last things Clayton did as he prepared to step down as the nations top regulator was publish a plan that would raise the minimum assets. You lose a lot of transparency in the market, says Daniel Collins, founder of WhaleWisdom, a data provider that specializes in analyzing 13F forms. That's why people look to the U.S. market, to establish confidence in the market for potential investors, foreign investors. And all of a sudden you're hiding all these assets every quarter that used to be disclosed.

The SEC adopted the 13F form in 1978 as a way to track the investment behaviors of Americas largest investors. At the time, the value of U.S. public corporate equities was $1.1 trillion, according to an SEC statement, and the minimum size of a company deemed influential enough to track was $100 million. Between then and the announcement of the proposed changes earlier this year, the total number of those equities grew to about $35 trillion. The proposed $3.5 billion minimum is designed to be proportionately the same to the total public corporate equities as when the form was first adopted.

Clayton was nominated by Trump to be chairman of the SEC in January 2017 and is known in the cryptocurrency community for cracking down on several initial coin offerings (ICOs) where tokens issued on a blockchain were sold in a manner similar to traditional securities. Given Trumps cozy relationships with private companies, its perhaps no surprise that the presumptive nominee to be U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York would seek to make such a business-friendly change to regulation on his way out. However, retail investors stand to lose a lot of valuable data as 5,200 13F filers last quarter are reduced to an estimated 500 if the regulatory change goes into effect, according to Collins. You're looking at $2.3 trillion in assets, no longer being disclosed, he says.

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20 Institutional Bitcoin Investors Revealed, But Soon The List May Vanish - Forbes

CEO and founder of Real Vision Raoul Pal says his conviction levels in Bitcoin are rising on a daily basis as he compares the crypto asset to traditional investments on various timescales.

Applying economic cycle theory in a series of charts posted to Twitter on Aug. 6, the former Goldman Sachs fund manager stated that although many investors choose gold as an alternative to fiat, Bitcoin (BTC) has been the only asset in the world to offset the growth of the G4 balance sheet. The G4 refers to the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Federal Reserve, and the European Central Bank.

Its not stocks, not bonds, not commodities, not credit, not precious metals, not miners. Only one asset massively outperformed over almost any time horizon: Bitcoin.

G4 central bank balance sheet in Bitcoin terms. Source: RaoulGMI

The CEO continued:

My conviction levels in Bitcoin rise every day. Im already irresponsibly long. I am now thinking it may not be even worth owning any other asset as a long-term asset allocation, but that's a story for another day.

Pal told Cointelegraph in May that the devaluation of world currencies will cause the price of Bitcoin to rise 50x to 100x in the next five years. He interpreted economic cycle theory charts to mean the cryptocurrency could eventually reach $1 million.

As of this writing, the price of Bitcoin is approaching $11,800, having risen 6% in the last seven days.

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Raoul Pal: It May Not Be Worth Owning Any Asset Other Than Bitcoin - Cointelegraph

Recent data shows that Sunday evening is the best time to buy Bitcoin (BTC) according to Capriole digital asset manager Charles Edwards. As shown below, historically, BTC saw higher returns on Sunday evenings into early Monday morning.

Bitcoin shows higher returns on Sunday evenings. Source: Charles Edwards

Edwards said:

Bored on Sunday at midnight? It just so happens to be the best time to buy Bitcoin.

There are several reasons Bitcoin might perform better as the weekend comes to an end. First, the weekend typically records a lower volume, which raises the chances of high volatility.

Second, traditional markets that facilitate Bitcoin trades, like CME, close during weekends. As they open, it could cause a spike in volatility.

During the weekend, as traditional markets close, trading volume at Bitcoin exchanges also tends to drop off. When there are fewer active traders in the market, it leaves the market vulnerable to more volatile price action.

As an example, on July 25 and 26, the BTC/USDT pair on Binance recorded a daily volume of 40,000 BTC and 65,000 BTC respectively. Then, on July 27, which was a Monday, the volume abruptly surged to 150,000 BTC. Coincidentally, the price of Bitcoin also rose by 11%.

BTC-USD price and volume surge on Monday, July 27. Source: TradingView.com

Due to low Bitcoin trading volume during the weekend, BTC also tends to see sudden pullbacks. For instance, on Sunday, Aug 2, the price of BTC abruptly dropped by 6% overnight. This led to a volume spike, countering the above mentioned data.

The CME Bitcoin futures market and its closure during the weekend could also be impacting Bitcoins strong performances on Mondays. Similar to the U.S. stock market, CME closes its markets over the weekend and on national holidays.

Accredited and institutional investors that use the CME Bitcoin futures market have to wait until the market opens on Monday.

Unlike traditional assets, BTC is traded through the weekend and holidays on exchanges. Hence, when CME closes and opens on a Monday, there is usually a gap in price.

The CME gap fill is a theory that is widely recognized within the cryptocurrency market. Data shows that the Bitcoin exchange market usually moves to fill the gap between CME and the rest of the market. Consequently, following a weekend, Bitcoin often sees a major price action.

On Aug 2, when BTC declined by 6% within hours, more than $1 billion worth of futures contracts were wiped out. This coincidentally happened in the closing weekend of July, which is when the CME Bitcoin futures contract closes. The CME futures contract specification reads:

Trading terminates at 4:00 p.m. London time on the last Friday of the contract month. If this is not both a London and U.S. business day, trading terminates on the prior London and the U.S. business day.

In recent weeks, the open interest of the CME Bitcoin futures market has significantly increased and this could possibly be a reflection of how CME is increasing its influence over the global Bitcoin market.

Its also possible that the data is purely coincidental and reduced trading volume on weekends is the primary reason for Sundays offering discounted Bitcoin prices.

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Sundays Are the Perfect Time to Buy the Bitcoin Dip, Data Shows - Cointelegraph

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have attracted the attention of Wall Street in recent years, with some of the biggest bitcoin and crypto asset managers reporting massive inflows.

The bitcoin price, after struggling through a prolonged so-called "crypto winter" in 2018, has found relative stability around the $10,000 level over the last 12 months.

Now, research from bitcoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain data company Chainalysis has revealed institutional investors on Wall Street are increasingly moving even larger transfers of bitcoin and cryptocurrencywith the trend "only just beginning."

Institutional investors in the U.S. are moving even larger transfers of cryptocurrency than ... [+] professional traders, bitcoin and blockchain data company Chainalysis has revealed.

"As of June, approximately 90% of North America's cryptocurrency transfer volume came from professional-sized transfers, which we categorize as those above $10,000 worth of cryptocurrency," the Chainalysis team wrote in a blog post detailing the findings of its 2020 geography of cryptocurrency report.

"However, over the last two years in North America, were seeing the impact of a growing class of institutional investors whose transfers account for the growing dominance of professionals in the North American market since December 2019."

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency transfers in North America above $1 million rose from 46% of the total value transferred in late 2019 to a high of 57% in May 2020, Chainalysis found.

The overall professional market share of professional-sized bitcoin and crypto transfers in North America rose from 87% to 92% over the same period.

"In other words, the increasing dominance of North Americas professional market since December 2019 appears to be almost entirely driven by transfers of $1 million or more worth of cryptocurrency, many of which we believe are coming from institutional investors," the researchers wrote.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency transactions worth over $1 million have soared over the last year, ... [+] climbing as bitcoin and crypto transactions worth between $100,000 and $1 million have fallen.

Meanwhile, despite the likes of multi-billion dollar bitcoin and crypto-asset manager Grayscale declaring institutional investors "have now arrived" in the crypto market, the trend could be just getting started.

"Institutional money is only just beginning to enter the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and so the market is still relatively immature and fragmented," Kim Grauer, Chainalysis' Senior Economist, said via email, pointing to exchanges listing different prices and exchanges being able to handle different amounts of liquidity for big buyers resulting in "liquidity constraints contributing to a higher potential for price volatility and market manipulation."

However, Wall Street's increasing involvement in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency market "will help cryptocurrency mature in terms of greater transparency and price stability," according to Grauer.

"We anticipate arbitrage opportunities closing up, better solutions for combining liquidity across exchanges, and greater price stability and price discovery," Grauer said, adding: "We expect that as regulators and financial institutions better understand the benefits of cryptocurrencys transparency, they will start to trust the space more."

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Wall Street Revealed To Be Edging Out Bitcoin Traders With $1 Million+ Transactions - Forbes

Bitcoin prices surged 5% on Wednesday, outpacing stocks and gold amid calls for more government stimulus, as the economic toll of the coronavirus mounts.

The oldest and largest cryptocurrency rose to $11,755. The price is now approaching $12,000 for the second time in a week, a level that bitcoin hasnt sustainably traded above for more than a year.

Youre readingFirst Mover, CoinDesks daily markets newsletter. Assembled by the CoinDesk Markets Team, First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets, which of course never close, putting in context every wild swing in bitcoin and more. We follow the money so you dont have to. You cansubscribe here.

Bloomberg News went so far as to declare in an article Wednesday that bitcoin mania appears to be almost back in full bloom.

Bitcoin is seen by many digital-asset investors as a hedge against inflation, and the bets are growing that governments and central banks will have to pump trillions of dollars more into the financial system to stimulate the economy out of the worst recession since the 1930s.

Gold, historically seen as a reliable inflation hedge, surged this week to a new record above $2,000.

Yet, even golds 35% gain this year is no match for bitcoins 63% price increase. The Standard & Poors 500 Index is now up 3% on the year, with some traditional investors arguing that stocks have become detached from reality, merely propped up by the roughly $3 trillion of freshly created money that the Federal Reserve has pumped into the global financial system this year.

Bitcoin and the crypto markets are once again able to claim independence from the traditional markets, Mati Greenspan, co-founder of the foreign-exchange and cryptocurrency analysis firm Quantum Economics, wrote Wednesday in a newsletter.

The U.S. governments budget deficit this fiscal year is projected to soar to $3.7 trillion, far surpassing the previous record of $1.4 trillion in 2009, according to the Associated Press.

An extra $600-per-week federal benefit for laid-off workers lapsed last week, threatening the economic recovery, and U.S. lawmakers arewrangling over the details of a newspending measure that could range from $1 trillion to more than $3 trillion.

Bitcoins long-term value proposition as a hedge against fiat currency debasement only grows stronger,Anil Lulla, of cryptocurrency research firm Delphi Digital, noted Wednesday in an op-ed for CoinDesk.

The International Monetary Fund warned this week in a blog post that another bout of global financial stress could trigger more capital flow reversals, currency pressures and further raise the risk of an external crisis for economies with preexisting vulnerabilities, such as large current account deficits.

All that just plays to bitcoins strengths, as more investors start to extrapolate the likely stimulus needed to recover from a protracted economic downturn. According Bloomberg News, analysts for the U.S. bank JPMorgan wrote Tuesday that while older investors are buying gold, younger investors are buying bitcoin.

The analysis firm Coin Metrics noted thatover the past week bitcoin had averaged over 1 million daily active addresses for the first time since January 2018. That was in the wake of the cryptocurrencyhitting an all-time high around $20,000 in 2017.

And Norwegian cryptocurrency-analysis firm Arcane Research noted in a report this week that bitcoin daily trading volumes have been growing strongly, with several days topping $2 billion. The number of openbitcoin futures contracts on the CME exchange has jumped to a new record around $850 million.

The strong momentum in the market continues, Arcane wrote. The sharp rise in open interest at CME is a clear indication of increased institutional demand for bitcoin.

Chris Thomas, head of digital assets for broker Swissquote, told CoinDesks Daniel Cawreyon Wednesdaythat bitcoin could break past $12,000 by Friday.

The signs certainly appear to be pointing in that direction.

Tweet of the day

Bitcoin watch

BTC: Price: $11,700 (BPI) | 24-Hr High: $11,807 | 24-Hr Low: $11,380

Trend:Bitcoin is looking north after twin bullish cues were activated by a 5% rally Wednesday.

Firstly, with the UTC close at $11,755, bitcoin marked an upside break of a narrowing price range witnessed Monday and Tuesday.

In addition, Wednesdays UTC close established a strong foothold above $11,400. The bulls had repeatedly failed to keep gains above that level on Monday and Tuesday.

The combination of range breakout and convincing move above a key hurdle has opened the doors for a re-test of recent highs above $12,100.

Still, the case for a rally to recent highs would only weaken if prices fall back below the former hurdle-turned-support of $11,400. At press time, bitcoin is changing hands near $11,700.

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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First Mover: Bitcoin Rises More in One Day Than Stocks Have Gained All Year - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

Announced Thursday, exchange OKCoin is awarding its largest individual grant so far to Bitcoin Core maintainer Marco Falke, the second-most prolific contributor to Bitcoin Core in the softwares history.

OKCoin is awarding Falke an Independent Developer Grant, which is the equivalent of a developer salary for the year, though Falke requested that the exact amount not be disclosed for the sake of his financial privacy.

With his grant, Falke will continue his work as maintainer of Bitcoin Core, the key software underpinning Bitcoin, which hes been heads-down on since 2016. His work helps to ensure that changes to Bitcoin Core are merged, helps to organize developers that are spread out over the globe, and runs tests to ensure the code is working properly, among other tasks.

When asked about his personal accomplishments, Falke emphasized that Bitcoin Core is a team effort, with developers from around the world making it what it is. I am proud to see what Bitcoin Core is today and how everyones contributions shaped Bitcoin Core for the future, Falke told CoinDesk.

'Maintenance' work

Falke is one of a handful of Bitcoin Core maintainers. Maintainers are sometimes described as the leaders of sorts of Bitcoins code. But, while maintainers are crucial to Bitcoin, the role isnt as authoritative as has been painted.

Some of my days are surprisingly unexciting maintenance work, as Falke put it.

Testing ensures code works as intended. He spends a lot of time keeping tests of the code in line, ensuring that any issues they expose will be fixed. On top of that, I am running my own nightly test runs, code coverage runs, benchmarks and fuzzers, Falke said.

In addition, he reviews proposed code changes and merges them into Bitcoin Core when they have been sufficiently vetted.

Helping to speed up this maintenance process is what he believes is his most useful contribution to Bitcoin Core.

DrahtBot

He created a little bot for GitHub, where Bitcoin Cores code is stored, and where developers propose code changes, and discuss them. The bot, called DrahtBot, does all the automatable things that I used to do, Falke said.

Many Bitcoin Core developers are working on the code at the same time. Its easy for little code clashes to arise. Once a change is approved and merged into the code base, it might impact other peoples code. DrahtBot notifies developers of these conflicts. The bot will also list all future conflicts, assuming a pull request was merged, to aid maintainers planning ahead, Falke added.

DrahtBot also builds the Bitcoin Core code into binaries that bitcoiners can run on their devices, among other tasks.

This bot frees up a lot more time for Falke to focus on other more difficult tasks, which cant be automated and taken over by a robot.

Fleeing COVID-19

One reason Falke is happy to be receiving this grant is that he is leaving Chaincode, a startup in New York City that funds developers and researchers dedicated to improving Bitcoin.

He decided to move back to his farm in Germany. Given that I grew up on a remote farm, away from big cities, NYC was definitely a new, lasting and exciting experience. Nonetheless, I couldnt see myself settle down in NYC long-term, Falke said.

Then, coronavirus hit, making New York City an even less attractive place to live for Falke.

Even before COVID, I saw many of my friends and colleagues leave NYC. Then with the COVID situation happening, and seeing politics and immigration policy becoming increasingly hostile towards immigrants and visa holders, it convinced me to move back to Germany, he said.

Chaincode only employs people who live in New York City. When Falke decided to depart, Chaincodes head of special projects Adam Jonas helped him find new funding at OKCoin.

Id like to thank Adam Jonas from Chaincode for reaching out to various companies in the space and showing them the importance of supporting Bitcoin developers, Falke said.

OKCoin: Funding Bitcoin Development

With a global health crisis thats far from over and a feeble world economy, 2020 has been a disaster of a year. The sliver of a silver lining, though, is that 2020 has been the best ever in terms of funding developers tinkering to make bitcoin better after a long dearth of funding.

These sorts of grants have been growing in popularity. Many open source Bitcoin developers work on the code as a side project, essentially improving the digital currency for free, despite their contributions helping everyone in the industry, including the companies profiting from it. But now, more exchanges and other bitcoin organizations are beginning to support this work financially.

We are inherently incentivized to invest in Bitcoin, which is fundamental to the growth of our industry, said OKCoin CEO Hong Fang in a statement. Supporting Marcos work on strengthening the testing framework in addition to his general responsibilities as a maintainer is important to continuing quality development.

OKCoin has awarded a number of grants this summer, including to Bitcoin Core contributor Amiti Uttarwar and to open-source payment processor BTCPay.

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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OKCoin Exchange Awards Grant to One of Bitcoin Core's Most Active Developers - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

Quick take:

Many crypto traders and investors across the world are becoming more bullish with the markets as Bitcoin (BTC) maintains its resilience after breaking $10k and $11k in quick succession. Usually, a rapid increment in the value of Bitcoin usually has a detrimental effect of altcoin pairs denominated in BTC. However, some altcoin such as VeChain (VET) seem not to be affected as much by Bitcoins positive gains as shall be illustrated.

Compared to other altcoins such as Ethereum and Litecoin, VeChains (VET) correlation to Bitcoin is relatively low. According to the team at Coinpredictor, the VeChain correlation to Bitcoin stands at 0.37 as compared to 0.68 for Ethereum and 0.83 for Litecoin. They go on to explain the relationship between VET and BTC as follows.

According to the correlation analysis, BTC and VEN have a moderate positive relationship.The correlation coefficient of their prices is 0.37, which was estimated based on the previous 100-days price dynamics of both assets.

This Correlation value from Coinpredictor may vary from -1 to 1 where -1 is the strongest negative correlation and 1 as the strongest positive correlation. Furthermore, a value of 0 indicates that there is no correlation at all. In the case of VeChain, a value of 0.37 points to VET not being as affected by Bitcoins sudden price movement when compared to other altcoins.

A good way of validating VeChains (VET) relatively low correlation to Bitcoin, is the analyses of the VET/BTC chart. If the two digital assets were highly correlated, the chart would be less exciting as it would indicate that with every pump or dump of Bitcoin, VeChain would follow a similar path. As a result, the value of VET denominated in BTC would not fluctuate as much.

Further dissecting the daily VET/BTC chart courtesy of Tradingview, the following can be observed.

Summing it up, during bullish periods in the crypto markets, some altcoins start to display patterns that are different from the rest. In the case of VeChain, the digital asset seems to have a relatively low correlation to Bitcoin when compared to other altcoins.

Furthermore, a quick analysis of the VET/BTC chart reveals that VeChain could be gearing up for another push up.

As with all analyses of altcoins such as VeChain, traders and investors are advised to use stop losses and low leverage to protect trading capital.

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VeChain (VET) Has a Relatively Low Correlation to Bitcoin - Ethereum World News