Ether will face more volatility than bitcoin over the next six months, according to how options have been priced in recent weeks.

The spread between the six-month, at-the-money implied volatility for ether (ETH) and bitcoin (BTC) has increased to a six-month high of 22 percentage points, notes crypto-derivatives analytics firm Skew.

The recent spike in the ETH-BTC six-month implied volatility spread shows investors are expecting bigger percentage moves in ether (in either direction) than in bitcoin over the next 180 days.

The spread bottomed out at 4.7 percentage points at the end of October and has been on an upward trajectory ever since.

Interestingly, ether has consistently witnessed bigger percent moves than bitcoin over the last 3.5 months, validating the uptick in the implied volatility spread.

While bitcoin dropped by 21 percent in the final two months of 2019, ether shed nearly 30 percent. This year it's a different story: Ether is reporting 73 percent gains on a year-to-date basis compared to bitcoins 37 percent gains.

Implied volatility is the markets expectation of how risky an asset will be in the future. It is the standard deviation of returns traders are forecasting. Implied volatility is computed by taking an option and the underlying assets price. It also uses other inputs, such as time to expiration. One then backsolves for implied volatility by using such options pricing models as Black-Scholes-Merton.

Volatility has a positive impact on options price. The higher the volatility (uncertainty), the stronger the hedging demand is for both call (bullish bet) and put options (bearish bet).

Implied volatility doesnt give any certainty on directions, but only indicates a big bullish or bearish move could be in the offing. However, traders usually associate increased volatility with bear markets, as it is risky for most investors.

Ether is, relatively, not as risky as before versus bitcoin

Ether has been more volatile recently, yet in recent months it wasnt all that more risky an asset compared to bitcoin, according to historical volatility spread.

Realized or historical volatility is the standard deviation from the average price of the underlying asset, expressed in percentage terms. The higher the historical volatility, the riskier the asset.

The ETH-BTC six-month realized volatility spread jumped to 13 percentage points last week to hit the highest level since July 13.

The gauge has increased sharply from lows near 2.3 percentage points seen in early December, suggesting an increase in the risk inherent in ether relative to bitcoin.

That said, the average historical volatility spread over the last three years has been 29 percentage points, significantly higher than what was recently observed. Ether has relatively reduced its risk to a level closer to that of bitcoins.

Volatility and mean reversion

Mean reversion theory posits that over time a metric will move back to its average historical levels. If thats the case, the same is applicable for both implied and historical volatility.

Thus, with the historical volatility spread well below its lifetime average of 29 percentage points, traders may expect the spread to rise toward 29 percentage points over the next six months. Put simply, ether might just trade with more volatility than bitcoin in the near future.

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Options Market Sees More Risk in Ether Than Bitcoin in Coming Months - CoinDesk

The best nonprofits and charities are efficient, effective and engaging. They channel donations to where theyre most needed, they make significant improvements to peoples lives, and they inspire donors and supporters to continue giving. Achieving all of these goals is a challenge for even the largest organization, and thats why I founded my own Bitcoin charity, BitGive, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. I knew then and have grown even more confident that blockchain and cryptocurrency can improve charitable giving and, therefore, improve the world.

Because the Bitcoin blockchain is a public ledger, it offers unique opportunities for transparency in charity. Anyone can track the movement of cryptocurrency from wallet to wallet; and it makes auditing and accounting easier for nonprofits. In a more efficient, blockchain-powered world, funds once earmarked for fees and administration costs or lost in delays can be redirected toward fulfilling the nonprofits mission. Furthermore, end-to-end transparency incentivizes efficiency and honesty by making the charitable record universally auditable and rewarding those nonprofits that make efficient use of their resources.

BitGive created the donation tracking GiveTrack platform so that donors, potential donors and even cryptocurrency skeptics could see the power that blockchain can bring to charitable giving. Tracking makes a persuasive case for cryptocurrency and blockchain; it also makes the case for renewed giving. If you can see your donation has been put to good use, youre more likely to make further donations. Youve seen proof; you dont have to rely on hope and faith that your assets have been put to good use.

Even better, blockchain offers a vision of instant accountability. With blockchain accounting, theres no need for donors to wait for quarterly or biannual reports to see what their funds have accomplished since a real-time record is available.

Bitcoin travels faster than regular donations; it bypasses bureaucracies and moves swiftly around the world. Its the same everywhere, no matter what kind of government a country has or what currency it uses. In China, blockchain has already begun making charities more transparent and traceable. The anti-plastic Empower project makes individual impacts on the environment trackable. As its founders explain, You sponsor cleanups around the world, you leave a positive footprint, and help create paid work for the people who need it.

While weve made huge strides increasing the speed at which donations are funneled from donors to NGOs, the ease with which funds are contributed and the traceability of every gift, there remains growth opportunities for bitcoin-based charities. To reach their full potential, blockchain projects, including nonprofits, need to continue strengthening end-to-end transparency.

In the end, nonprofits will ensure transparency from the donor wallet to the last foot of the last mile. Existing technology gives us access to just about everywhere in the world, but theres still room for improvement. As we continue to grow mainstream adoption and continue to invest in ecosystem development and interface upgrades, access will grow easier everywhere but particularly in developing countries.

What do I think the future holds for blockchain charity? I believe that ease of use will continue to improve and that advances in mainstream bitcoin acceptance will smooth the way for many charities now forced to transact in fiat currency. The Bitcoin blockchain has incredible potential for making the world more efficient and for improving lives around the world. Our initial work with BitGive has proven this; the coming years work will prove it again.

Its important to remember the stated goals of Satoshi Nakamoto in the original Bitcoin white paper. Satoshi saw centralized institutions like the major banks fail the people they ostensibly served. Bitcoin was intended to help people making the world better is one of cryptos basic values. Thats why I think bitcoin charity will continue to grow, to expand, and to change the world.

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The Potential and the Reality of Bitcoin Charity - Bitcoin Magazine

BitPay is trying to finally bring bitcoin to the streets, inking a deal with point-of-sales terminal maker Poynt to enable cryptocurrency payments at more than 100,000 retailers around the world.

More than a decade after it arrived on the scene amidst claims it would take on fiat currencies and revolutionise payments, bitcoin has yet to make the jump into the mainstream.

BitPay is hoping to change this through the Poynt tie-up, which will see customers able to scan a QR code at checkout to pay merchants with bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and three stablecoins.

BitPay says its blockchain payment rails integrate seamlessly with Poynts smart terminals to make the checkout experience quicker, easier and more secure than paying with legacy methods like credit cards or cash.

Stephen Pair, CEO, BitPay, says: "Its a massive growth opportunity for BitPay and an important milestone in our now nine-year mission to make payments faster, more secure and less expensive for people and businesses."

Osama Bedier, CEO, Poynt, adds: "The addition of open-source, decentralized currencies like Bitcoin is a natural fit in our open-commerce environment.

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BitPay partners Poynt to bring bitcoin payments to the streets - Finextra

The Tony Hawk Foundation, dedicated to building skate parks for American youth, has added Bitcoin as a tool to offer wider donation options.

Bitcoin (BTC) has widened its acceptance, now into the world of skating, reported Bitcoin Magazine. The Tony Hawk foundation expanded into Bitcoin as it started receiving BTC donations in the summer of 2019.

The Tony Hawk foundation accepts BTC payments through both Bitpay and OpenNode, and reports state Hawk himself was a relatively early adopter, learning about BTC back in 2013. Hawk, legendary for his 900-degree mid-air revolution, is also aiming to become a legend in the Bitcoin space. He will be one of the key speakers at this years Bitcoin 2020 conference in San Francisco.

Hawks presence at the conference may boost the donations for the Foundation and its goals. In a Nasdaq article, Miki Vuckovich, the executive director of the Tony Hawk Foundation, was quoted saying,

Were excited to have Bitcoin donations as an option for our supporters

He continued,

As I said, we try to come to them as much as we can, and we know more and more of our supporters are using Bitcoin, so we want to stay ahead of the curve. Frankly, we didnt expect to see any Bitcoin donations for a long time, and they started coming in within days of launching the option in June 2019.

Vuckovich, who is a veteran skater with more than 40 years of experience, gave a glimpse into the donor demographics. The Foundation taps donors between 20 and 40 years of age, harnessing the preferences of Millenials and Gen Z supporters. The choice to add Bitcoin stemmed from the desire to offer more payment options, said Vukovich.

Bitcoin is another new option for donors because we know that the people who intuitively understand our work are much more likely to be using Bitcoin. We try to stay aware of where our supporters are and be aware of the methods of payments they plan to use

Bitcoin donations have taken off unexpectedly well, and have allowed a borderless, mostly anonymous tool to fund any organization. The Tony Hawk Foundation, however, has chosen options where large-scale usage may not be anonymous. Bitpay has required KYC verification for the past year.

Previous well-known donations in the crypto space have been collected to support the Australian bushfires. The Bitcoin community also donated more than 37 BTC to Andreas Antonopoulos as a sign of gratitude and has shown similar support for artist Pascal Boyart. WikiLeaks has also gathered a significant following of generous Bitcoiners.

But the Tony Hawk Foundation directly ties in the skating culture with the crypto space. Both are known for their niche origins off the beaten path. Yet both skating and Bitcoin have become tools for inclusion and positive changes through funding.

What do you think about the Tony Hawk Foundation offering BTC donations option? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images via TheTalks, Twitter @TonyHawk

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Tony Hawk Foundation Talks Bitcoin and Skateboarding - Bitcoinist

The Bitcoin SV China Conference revealed just how strong the BSV community in China is. While it was the first BSV conference in the country, the attendants flocked the venue and filled it to the brim. Ella Qiang believes that this is testament to the great love that China has for Bitcoin. Qiang attended the event and in an interview with CoinGeeks Stephanie Towers, she shared her views on what Bitcoin really means to the people of China.

Qiang, who is the founder of CambrianSV, stated, Im very impressed with the overall setup and the presentations for this event. The first official event put up by the Bitcoin Association [in China], and showcased the various Chinese applications that have been built on the Bitcoin SV chain.

Indeed, developers in China have been busy building applications on BSV. They include ShowPay, a payment system that enables merchants to accept payments in BSV and other BSV-powered tokens. ShowPay was one of the breakout stars from the Bitcoin Associations inaugural Pitch Day event in Seoul. Another standout application is Weiblock, a social media application built on the BSV blockchain that allows content creators to earn from their content.

The event also gave the audience the opportunity to hear directly from Jimmy and Craig Wright in terms of the recent developments of Bitcoin SV and future plans, she added.

China has in the past few decades established its place as a leader in technology, both with innovations and adoption. With Bitcoin, it was not any different. The people of China took to it early on, even before other Western countries. However, they have now come to realize that BSV is the only blockchain project that is delivering the Satoshi vision. This has led to a great exodus from other Bitcoin projects to BSV, Qiang shared.

She stated, China has been having deep-rooted crowds for Bitcoin in general from the very beginning. A large portion of that community realized that Bitcoin SVs big blocks is the true way to go for Bitcoin ecosystem. So, I think its quite natural that we have a sizable community for Bitcoin SV and Ive seen the crowd has been growing over time as well.

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeks Bitcoin for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

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Ella Qiang: China has realized BSV is the only true Bitcoin project - CoinGeek

Cryptocurrency exchange Altsbit is shutting down this May. The exchange made the announcement after reporting an alleged security breach earlier this month.

In a statement, Altsbit says a hack late last week led to the theft of nearly all of the exchanges Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC), VersusCoin (VRSC), Komodo (KMD) and Pirate Chain (ARRR) holdings.

Unfortunately, we have to notify you with the fact that our exchange was hacked during the night, and almost all funds from BTC, ETH, ARRR, and VRSC were stolen. A small part of the funds are safe on cold wallets.

Altsbit says the hackers took roughly 6.929 BTC, 2.321 ETH, 3,924,082 ARRR, 414,154 VRSC and 1,066 KMD. The total amount of ETH and BTC lost was less than $70,000 and reportedly dealt a lethal blow to the nascent exchange.

The cryptocurrency exchange says affected users should apply for partial refunds and that remaining funds will be used to refund users until May 8th.

The company further advises users to be wary of anyone pretending to be Altsbit employees who are allegedly distributing refunds.

Just last year, hackers bagged approximately $282,617,000 in leading cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash, from a wide variety of crypto exchanges.

Featured Image: Shutterstock/yGorodenkoff

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New Cryptocurrency Exchange Shutting Down After Hack Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Three Additional Altcoins Stolen - The Daily Hodl

2019 was an interesting year for darknet markets (DNMs) and a number of marketplaces closed for a variety of reasons. Despite the closures, crypto payments on DNMs doubled for the first time in five years. Moreover, statistics from the blockchain analytics provider 1000x Group show digital currencies like bitcoin cash (BCH) have joined BTCs dominant role within the deep web.

Also Read: BCH Merchant Directories Now List 4,300 Bitcoin Cash-Accepting Businesses

Theres been a number of reports on DNM usage last year and action on the invisible web continues to be interesting in 2020 as well. Just recently, the blockchain surveillance firm Chainalysis published a report that showed DNM payments doubled for the first time since 2015. Not only did the value of BTC sent to DNMs increased by 70%, but Chainalysis also noted that DNMs will likely accept cryptos with a focus on privacy like monero (XMR).

News.Bitcoin.com looked further into darknet payment statistics by leveraging analytics from the provider 1000x Group between January 7, and February 4, 2020. 1000x Groups dashboard shows data from 15 different markets and ten of them accept BTC only. This includes markets like Silk Road 3.1, Hydra, Wannabuy RDP, Sipulimarket, Escobay, and Jokers Stash. The DNM Monopoly accepts monero (XMR) only and during the four-week time span, there were four DNMs that accepted coins like BCH, LTC, and XMR in addition to BTC. The four DNMs included Cannazon, Empire, Darkbay, and Apollon. However, the darknet market Apollon allegedly exit scammed five days ago.

The four-week time span measured on 1000x Groups dashboard shows XMR, LTC, and BCH were used on Monopoly, Cannazon, Empire, Darkbay, and Apollon. Monero represented 56% of the payments on DNMs between that time. LTC captured 29% and BCH saw 12% of sales during the time frame ending on February 4. While Monopoly, Darkbay, Empire, and Cannazon all accepted XMR, Darkbay and Empire processed payments in litecoin (LTC) as well.

The marketplace Apollon accepted BTC, XMR, LTC, and BCH during the four-week time span and grew popular due to its multi-coin acceptance. In fact, before Apollons alleged departure, the DNM was probably one of the most active markets on the invisible web. Data scrapes from four researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) indicate that Apollon started small, but had since exponentially grown in size. Apollon grew larger after Dream Markets soft exit in the summer of 2019. The multi-currency DNM showed 4,500 listings and Apollon admins claimed it had more than 30,000 registered users.

One interesting fact about 1000x Groups payment data shows the increase of bitcoin cash (BCH) usage between January 7, and February 4. BCH development during the last year has seen a significant increase in privacy methods applied to the coin. Proponents of BCH believe that the peer-to-peer cryptocurrency has even better privacy enhancements than most coins that exist today. During the last year, the BCH ecosystem has seen the basics of Schnorr Signatures added to the chain and the Schnorr protocol was enhanced again during the last upgrade.

In March 2019, Electron Cash developers unleashed the official iteration of the Cashshuffle protocol and so far BCH users have shuffled 209,490 BCH to-date ($94 million). BCH users also saw privacy push in June, when Bitcoin.com launched its peer-to-peer BCH marketplace. Users from all around the world can trade bitcoin cash in a private manner and leverage encrypted chat and a secure blind escrow system.

Beyond all that, BCH has also seen the introduction of Cashfusion, which has given the decentralized asset a much higher set of anonymity. Not only are BCH proponents using Cashfusion, but the privacy-enhancing software is making waves with BTC proponents as well. The creator of Wasabi Wallet complimented Cashfusion after he listened to Mark Lundebergs recent interview with Naomi Brockwell and he made some positive remarks about the protocol in another tweet as well.

Typically, the publication Bitcoin Magazine doesnt cover Bitcoin Cash topics, but the news outlets Aaron van Wirdum wrote an objective article on the new privacy protocol for BCH. Not too long after that article, data analyst James Waugh also commended Cashfusions privacy advances in a recent Medium post. Waugh disclosed he queried a number of transaction inputs and outputs and realized that its not possible to establish a concrete link between them. Essentially, Cashfusion in Waughs opinion is far more practical than other Coinjoin protocols.

Its quite possible that the increased use of BCH on prevalent DNMs is attributed to the added privacy benefits BCH offers to everyday users. With 44,737 shuffles using Cashshuffle to-date and close to $100 million transactions shuffled, the protocol has gathered a lot of traction. Additionally, at 94,574 accounts on Local.Bitcoin.com since the peer-to-peer platforms launch, data indicates theres significant interest in trading privately. There have also been 2,250 fusions so far using the Cashfusion protocol since November 28, 2019, and theres been 10,103 BCH fused to-date ($4.5 million).

Its a shame that a DNM like Apollon is likely out of the picture, as it was the one marketplace that was popular for offering multi-currency support. As time progresses, its still quite probable that other DNMs will support BCH going forward, due to all the privacy-enhancing benefits that stem from recent BCH development.

What do you think about the data from DNMs from 1000x Groups blockchain analytics data between January 7, and February 4, 2020? Do you think the addition of things like Local.Bitcoin.com, Cashshuffle, Schnorr Signatures, and Cashfusion is the reason why BCH use on DNMs saw increased exposure? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any products, darknet markets, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, accounting or any advice. It has also been noted in the report above that the DNM Apollon is accused of exit scamming and readers should be aware of that situation. The data determined in this article reflects payments on February 4, 2020 and the four weeks prior. 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.

Image credits: Shutterstock, 1000x Group, stats.devzero.be/#/, Fair Use, and Pixabay.

Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here.

Jamie Redman is 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. Redman has written thousands of articles for news.Bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

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Bitcoin Cash Captured More Than 10% of Darknet Sales Last Month - Bitcoin News