United States cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase will soon hold a million Bitcoins (BTC) in its cold wallets in a controversial first for the industry.

According to data from news and information resource Longhash released on Jan. 23, Coinbases cold wallets contained around 970,000 BTC ($8 billion) as of Jan. 1.

If current growth continues, the company will reach the 1,000,000 BTC mark by February.

Coinbase cold wallet balance, 2019-present. Source: Longhash

The trend underscores growing tendencies to interact with Bitcoin via exchanges, with the Coinbase figures including both private and institutional investors.

As Cointelegraph reported, recent attempts to assess institutional habits when it comes to Bitcoin storage already firmly pointed to exchanges being investors chosen method.

Now, despite the myriad exchange hacks and other dangers of trusting third parties with their cryptocurrency wealth, it appears that consumers in general still prefer not to control their coins themselves.

More individuals and institutions need to learn how to self custody, Tales from the Crypt Podcast host Marty Bent summarized in an analysis of the Coinbase figures on Thursday.

With 30 million users registered since launch, Longhash notes that Coinbase is by far the exchange with the largest Bitcoin holdings, but the majority of major trading platforms are seeing their balances increase.

Cryptocurrency proponents have long been irked by the phenomenon, which flies in the face of Bitcoin as sovereign money trusting someone else with ones wealth is the equivalent of endorsing central banking.

A dedicated effort to inspire Bitcoin holders to remove their coins from exchanges and place them in wallets to which they control the private keys is now in its second year.

Despite the publicity effort behind Proof of Keys, however, analysis of exchange wallets, which form several of the richest Bitcoin addresses in the world, shows that the most recent event on Jan. 3 did not spark mass withdrawals.

Coinbases apparent dominance and steady growth may be because it attracts a large share of long-term/institutional investors, who are less concerned with short term price swings, Longhash added in a suggestion that institutions trust exchanges with custody.

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Exchanges Hold More Bitcoin Than Ever as Coinbase Wallet Nears 1M BTC - Cointelegraph

After a long and cryptic series of tweets on Bitcoin (BTC), SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk elaborated his stance on cryptocurrencies in a Jan. 20 podcast. Noting that hes neither here nor there on Bitcoin, Musk focused on its use for illegal transactions.

The billionaire has recently been in the spotlight for several short and cryptic tweets related to cryptocurrency. On Jan. 10 he published a tweet saying Bitcoin is *not* my safe word.

This follows an equally cryptic tweet from April 2019, saying Cryptocurrency is my safe word.

But while they were generally considered to be jokes, especially in light of previous tweets where he pledged to take Tesla private at $420, Musks early history is deeply tied to the financial technology industry.

In 1999, Elon Musk founded X.com, an online bank that through later mergers became PayPal. He mentioned the company in the podcast, noting:

If PayPal had executed the plan that I wanted to execute on, I think it would probably be the most valuable company in the world.

The interviewers then asked what Musk thought about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, given their spiritual similarity to X.com. Musk replied that hes neither here nor there on Bitcoin.

While referring to Satoshis white paper as pretty clever, he prefaced by saying that his stance on cryptocurrencies gets the crypto people angry. He continued:

There are transactions that are not within the bounds of the law there are obviously many laws in different countries and normally cash is used for these transactions. But in order for illegal transactions to occur, the cash must also be used for legal transactions. You need an illegal-to-legal bridge. That's where crypto comes in.

Musk noted that cash is increasingly harder to use, but any alternative would have to be usable for both legal and illegal purposes, as it doesnt count otherwise.

Even though he may not be entirely sold on cryptocurrencies, Musk sees a clear purpose for them:

You must have a legal to illegal bridge. So where I see crypto is effectively as a replacement for cash. I do not see crypto being the primary database [for transactions].

Despite the negative connotation from being used for illegal purposes, he emphasized that hes not being judgmental about crypto. In Musks view, the governments overreach in certain aspects:

I think there's a lot of things that are illegal that shouldn't be illegal. I think that sometimes governments just have too many laws about the missions that they should have, and shouldn't have so many things that are illegal.

While not a full endorsement, Musk is not exactly opposite to cryptocurrencies. In an earlier part of the interview, he said that banks are in trouble though he primarily referred to competitors such as Stripe.

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Elon Musk Reveals His True Opinion on Bitcoin and Crypto - Cointelegraph

Over the last 10 years, the Bitcoin ecosystem has attracted developers to dedicate thousands of hours to improve and revamp most of its underlying codebase. Yet, Bitcoin (BTC) is largely the same. The reason for this is that its core set of consensus rules that define its monetary properties, such as its algorithmic inflation and hard-coded supply, remain unchanged.

Time and time again, factions have attempted to change these core properties, but all hostile takeovers thus far have failed. Its often a painful process but one that highlights and solidifies two of Bitcoins biggest virtues: No single party can dictate how Bitcoin evolves; and the absence of centralized control protects Bitcoins monetary properties.

The values that make Bitcoin a popular phenomenon are also those that make developing software atop Bitcoin more challenging than any other digital asset. Developers are limited to what theyre able to transform in order to not undermine its apparatus as a store of value.

Nonetheless, as well see from the examples below, innovation in Bitcoin is possible. It requires creativity and patience.

Since changing Bitcoins core layer requires a quasi-political process that may infringe upon its monetary properties, innovation is often implemented as modules. This development is similar to that of the internet's protocol suite, where layers of different protocols specialize in specific functions. Emails were handled by SMTP, files by FTP, web pages by HTTP, user addressing by IP and packet routing by TCP. Each of these protocols has evolved over time to create the experience we have today.

Spencer Bogart of Blockchain Capital has captured this development succinctly: We are now witnessing the beginning of Bitcoins own protocol suite. The inflexibility of Bitcoins core layer has birthed several additional protocols that specialize in various applications, like Lightnings BOLT standard for payment channels. Innovation is both vibrant and relatively safe, as this layered approach minimizes potential risks.

The diagram below is an attempt to map all relatively new initiatives and showcases a more complete representation of Bitcoins technology stack. It is not exhaustive and does not signal any endorsement for specific initiatives. It is, nevertheless, impressive to see that innovation being pushed on all fronts from Layer 2 technologies to emerging smart contract solutions.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the rate of adoption of the Lightning Network, Bitcoins most prominent Layer 2 technology. Critics often point to an apparent decline in the number of channels and total BTC locked when evaluating Lightnings user adoption. Yet, these metrics arent the most definitive measurement of adoption.

Related: What Is Lightning Network And How It Works

One of the most underrated virtues of the Lightning Network is its straightforward privacy properties. Since Lightning does not rely on global state reconciliation i.e., its own blockchain users can transact privately over using additional techniques and network overlays, like Tor. Activity happening within private channels is not captured by popular Lightning explorers. As such, an increase in private usage of Lightning has resulted in a decrease in what can be publicly measured, leading observers to erroneously conclude that adoption is down. While it is true that Lightning must overcome substantial usability barriers before it can enjoy wide adoption, using misleading metrics to make assertions about the current state of the network serves few.

Another recent development in the field of Layer 2 privacy was the creation of WhatSat, a private messaging system atop Lightning. This project is a modification of the Lightning Network Daemon (LND) that allows the relayers of private messages, who connect the entities communicating, to be compensated for their services via micropayments. This decentralized, censorship-and-spam-resistant chat was enabled by innovations in the LND itself, such as recent improvements in the lightning-onion, Lightnings own onion routing protocol.

There are several other projects leveraging Lightnings private micropayment capabilities for numerous applications from a Lightning-powered cloud computing VPS to an image hosting service that shares ad revenue via microtransactions. More generally, we define Layer 2 as a suite of applications that can use Bitcoins base layer as a court where exogenous events are reconciled and disputes are settled. As such, the theme of data anchoring on Bitcoins blockchain goes beyond Lightning, with companies like Microsoft pioneering a decentralized ID system atop Bitcoin.

There are projects attempting to bring back expressive smart contract functionality to Bitcoin in a safe and responsible way. This is a significant development because, starting in 2010, several of the original Bitcoin opcodes the operations that determine what Bitcoin is able to compute were removed from the protocol. This came after a series of bugs were revealed, which led Satoshi to disable some of the functionality of Script, Bitcoins programming language.

Over the years, it became clear that there are non-trivial security risks that accompany highly-expressive smart contracts. The common rule of thumb is that the more functionality is introduced to a virtual machine the collective verification mechanism that processes opcodes the more unpredictable its programs will be. More recently, however, we have seen new approaches to smart contract architecture that can minimize unpredictability and also provide vast functionality.

The devise of a new approach to Bitcoin smart contracts called Merklized Abstract Syntax Trees (MAST) has since triggered a new wave of supporting technologies for Bitcoin smart contracts. Taproot is one of the most prominent implementations of the MAST structure that enables an entire application to be expressed as a Merkle Tree, whereby each branch of the tree represents a different execution outcome.

Another interesting innovation that has recently resurfaced is a new architecture for the implementation of covenants, or spend conditions, on Bitcoin transactions. Originally proposed as a thought experiment by Greg Maxwell back in 2013, covenants are an approach to limit the way balances can be spent, even as their custody changes. Although the idea has existed for nearly six years, covenants were impractical to be implemented before the advent of Taproot. Currently, a new opcode called OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY formerly known as OP_SECURETHEBAG is leveraging this new technology to potentially enable covenants to be safely implemented in Bitcoin.

At first glance, covenants are incredibly useful in the context of lending and perhaps Bitcoin-based derivatives as they enable the creation of policies, like clawbacks, to be implemented on specific BTC balances. But their potential impact on the usability of Bitcoin goes vastly beyond lending. Covenants can allow for the implementation of things like Bitcoin Vaults, which, in the context of custody, provide the equivalent of a second private key that allows someone that has been hacked to freeze stolen funds.

In essence, Schnorr signatures are the technological primitive that make all of these new approaches to smart contracts possible. And there are even edgier techniques being currently theorized, such as Scriptless Scripts, which could enable fully private and scalable Bitcoin smart contracts to be represented as digital signatures as opposed to opcodes. These new approaches may enable novel smart contract applications to be built atop Bitcoin.

There have also been some interesting developments in mining protocols, especially those used by mining pool constituents. Even though the issue of centralization in Bitcoin mining is often wildly exaggerated, it is true that there are power structures retained by mining pool operators that can be further decentralized.

Namely, pool operators can decide what transactions will be mined by all pool constituents, which grants them considerable power. Over time, some operators have abused this power by censoring transactions, mining empty blocks and reallocating hashing without the authorization of constituents.

Changes to mining protocols have aimed to subvert the control that mining pool operators can have on deciding what transactions are mined. One of the most substantial changes coming to Bitcoin mining is the second version of Stratum, the most popular protocol used in mining pools. Stratum V2 is a complete overhaul that implements BetterHash, a secondary protocol that enables mining pool constituents to decide the composition of the block they will mine not the other way around.

Another development that should contribute to more stability is reignited interest in hash rates and difficulty derivatives. These can be particularly useful for mining operations that wish to hedge against hash rate fluctuations and difficulty readjustments.

Contrary to some arguments out there, there are a host of emerging protocols that can bring optional privacy into Bitcoin. That being said, it is likely that privacy in Bitcoin will continue to be more of an art than a science for years to come.

More generally, the biggest impediment to private transactions across digital assets is that most solutions are half-baked. Privacy assets that focus on transaction-graph privacy often neglect network-level privacy, and vice versa. Both vectors suffer from a lack of maturity and usage, which makes transactions easier to de-shield via statistical traceability analysis at either the peer-to-peer (P2P) network layer or the blockchain layer.

Thankfully, there are several projects that are pushing boundaries on both fronts.

When it comes to transaction-graph privacy, solutions like P2EP and CheckTemplateVerify are interesting because privacy becomes a by-product of efficiency. As these are novel additions to CoinJoin, such solutions can increase the adoption of private transactions by users who are solely motivated by lower transaction fees. Under CoinJoin, their privacy guarantees are still suboptimal, but unshielded sent amounts can be beneficial, as they preserve the auditability of Bitcoins supply.

If lower transaction fees become a motivator and lead to an increase in Bitcoins anonymity set the percentage of UTXOs that are CoinJoin outputs de-anonymization via statistical analysis will be even more subjective than it already is.

There has also been considerable progress in the privacy of P2P communications, with protocols like Dandelion being tested across crypto networks. Another notable development is Erlay, an alternative transaction relay protocol that increases the efficiency of private communications and reduces the overhead of running a node. Erlay is an important improvement since its efficiency gains enable more users to more easily complete IBD and continuously validate the chain, especially in countries where ISPs impose caps on bandwidth.

These examples are only a handful of initiatives in play to transform the Bitcoin framework. Bitcoin, in its totality, is a constantly evolving suite of protocols.

While evolution within a relatively strict set of rules and values can be challenging for developers, the layered approach that weve seen unfold is what makes gradual, effective change possible. Minimizing politicism within Bitcoin and protecting its fundamental monetary properties are necessary parts of the process. Developers are learning how to work within these bounds in a meaningful fashion.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Lucas Nuzzi, director of technology of Digital Asset Research. He heads up DARs research arm, developing original reports and insights on all areas of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Widely regarded throughout the digital asset community as an expert on blockchain and distributed systems, Lucas has contributed to several major publications. Prior to co-founding DAR in 2017, he was a blockchain researcher and consultant for a handful of years.

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The Evolution of Bitcoin's Technology Stack - Cointelegraph

The average budget deficit of the United States will never be less than $1 trillion per year in the future or 4.5% of GDP, worrying data on the fiat economy shows.

Compiled by the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and shared by crypto hedge fund manager Travis Kling on Jan. 21, statistics reveal that the annual deficit is set to hit $12.2 trillion for the entire 2020s.

Such deficits would be significantly larger than the 2.9 percent of GDP that deficits averaged over the past 50 years, the CBO itself commented when it released the projections last September.

U.S. average budget deficit 1969-2029. Source: CBO

$1 trillion is more than six times the market cap of Bitcoin (BTC) and four times the market cap of all cryptocurrencies combined.

The data concerned Kling, who like other Bitcoin proponents has drawn clear distinctions between the cryptocurrency and fiat currency.

As Cointelegraph reported, the deficit is not the only worrying aspect of U.S. economic policy to surface in numbers in recent months. Late last year, it emerged that the countrys total debt is now higher than ever at $23 trillion, while the worlds total debt is $255 trillion or $12.1 million for each Bitcoin.

In simple terms, budget deficits occur when the value of a countrys spending exceeds the value of its revenues. As Kling notes, governments can use fiat to plug the difference, allowing them to increase the money supply which they can then direct as desired.

Over the New Year period, the Federal Reserve added $425 billion to the dollar supply.

The process has its roots in Keynesian economics, which calls for states and central banks to manage the money supply instead of allowing the market to decide prices for goods and services.

Such a setup creates a problem known as the Impossible Trinity attempting to achieve free capital flows, a fixed exchange rate between currencies and independent monetary policy.

Imagine the allure as a politician of promising your constituents all the spending they want, w/o ever having to raise taxes. Spend more AND cut taxes! There's no inflation! Kling wrote on Twitter.

He concluded:

This has been tried many times before in monetary history and there is no example where it ended well.

As Saifedean Ammous explains in his book, The Bitcoin Standard, preventing meddling by governments and central banks would reverse the processes which lead to phenomena such as deficits. This is because fiat would cease to be money by decree as its name implies, and would instead operate without a central authority, similar to Bitcoin.

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US Deficit Will Be at Least 6 Times Bitcoin Market Cap Every Year - Cointelegraph

Bitcoin SV (BSV) is currently trading at around $257 after a huge 19% drop since last week.

BSV has fallen significantly over the last 24 hours, losing around 9% in value.

From September to October 2019, BSV pumped close to 80% before dropping around 45% towards the end of the year.

However, the price of BSV spiked to a new all-time high this month after pumping over 300% since the start of 2020.

Last week, at the peak of its most recent rally, BSV was worth $425 per coin.

Will Bitcoin SV recover from its recent slump or continue to fall? Lets take a look at the chart.

Despite the recent drop, Bitcoin SVs price chart is still extremely bullish. Not only are all the EMAs pointing upwards, but BSV is currently well above target volume levels.

Currently, the altcoin is holding support above $250, a key volume level according to the profile.

Last week, I mentioned if the altcoin were to drop, the next support level would be around $225. Although price hasnt currently reached this target level, its definitely heading in that direction.

Below that, strong support can be found at $194 and $135. Finally, the most support is currently found between $90 and $110.

At the time of writing, BSV is sitting well above all its EMAs. The next big resistance levels are virtually non-existent, so we could see Bitcoin SV pumping towards $400 soon.

Since the start of January, volume has grown massively, pumping around 500% to over $2.5 billion, where it currently sits.

As discussed in the article above, BSV is one of the top performers vs BTC over the past year.

The recent pump in BSV price has been going on since early 2019. A great deal of altcoins mooned due to the BTC pump that took the worlds largest cryptocurrency back to the $14,000 range.

Added to that, news from the ongoing Wright vs Kleiman case has caused a great deal of FOMO among investors, which has no doubt provided some thrust to the recent spike.

Safe trades!

Current live BCH pricing information and interactive charts are available on our site 24 hours a day. The ticker bar at the bottom of every page on our site has the latest BCH price. Pricing is also available in a range of different currency equivalents:

US Dollar BSVtoUSD

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Euro BSVtoEUR

Australian Dollar BSVtoAUD

Russian Rouble BSVtoRUB

Bitcoin BSVtoBTC

Bitcoin SV came into existence following the Bitcoin Cash chain split on November 15 2018. It is currently the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, with each coin now worth over $300 despite trading below $100 at the turn of the year.

If you want to find out more information about Bitcoin SV or cryptocurrencies in general, then use the search box at the top of this page.

As with any investment, it pays to do some homework before you part with your money. The prices of cryptocurrencies are volatile and go up and down quickly. This page is not recommending a particular currency or whether you should invest or not.

You may be interested in our range of cryptocurrency guides along with the latest cryptocurrency news.

The post Latest Bitcoin SV price and analysis (BSV to USD) appeared first on Coin Rivet.

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Latest Bitcoin SV price and analysis (BSV to USD) - Yahoo Finance

Bitcoin opened 2020 with a bang, rising by as much as 32 percent in January as investors appetite for safe-haven assets grew. However, the price rally is now looking to fizzle.

The bitcoin-to-dollar exchange rate has dipped by circa 9 percent after registering a local top near $9,200. The pair on Friday tested $8,216 as intraday support, hinting risks of an extended downside move that could push the price into a medium-term bearish channel.

The BTC/USD exchange rate eyes a crash towards $6,000 | Source: TradingView.com, Coinbase

The Descending Channel, as shown in the chart below, could gravitate bitcoin towards the redded support area having a baseline near $6,000.

A top market analyst believes bitcoin is less likely to hit the $6,000 level.

YouTuber Sunny Decree explained in one of his latest reports that the cryptocurrency, at best, would fall in the range defined by $7,239 and $7,957. From there, it could rebound towards its prevalent resistance levels, mainly the blacked 200-daily moving average wave in the chart above.

Mr. Decree cited the range after testing it against Volume Profile Visible Range (VPVR) an indicator that finds support/resistance levels based on the trading activity around them over a specific period of time. The analyst noted higher volumes near the $7,957-support, showing traders became highly active around the level.

VPVR ranges serving as a crucial support level for bitcoin | Source: Sunny Decree

Similarly, the $7,239-support showed slightly lesser but yet higher trade activity, allowing Mr. Decree to rule the area between it and $7,957 a potential pullback range.

I would personally, strongly that bitcoin is going to bounce somewhere between the [said levels] to the upside, he said, adding that it could push the price towards $10,500.

The prediction left a lot of burden on VPVR to prove itself as a reliable tool. A quick search across TradingView.com showed that many leading traders have used the proprietary indicator to predict support/resistance based on high and low volumes zones/nodes.

Fractal analysts have a different say when it comes to predicting the next bounce back. They have long analyzed the cryptocurrencys price behavior based on its historical performances. Renowned trader Haejin, for instance, sees a lot of similarity between bitcoins current downside actions and the ones noted during the 2018s crypto winter.

The analyst thinks bitcoin would not only fall towards $6,000 but would extend its plunge to as low as $3,300.

Bulls, on the other hand, have Halving as a contradictory historical indicator to refute Haeijins bearish prediction. They believe the supply shock alone could send bitcoin back to its glorious all-time high of $20,000.

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Less Chance that Bitcoin Will Crash Towards $6K, Top Analyst Explains Why - newsBTC

Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio attends China Development Forum 2019 at the Diaoyutai State ... [+] Guesthouse on March 23, 2019 in Beijing, China.

Billionaire investor and Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio was interviewed by CNBC as part of their coverage of the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday morning. During the interview, Dalio painted a picture of the global economy that sounds quite similar to the supporting evidence Bitcoin investors often provide in terms of their bullish scenarios for the cryptocurrency.

While his general thesis on what will happen with the economy in the coming years matches up with what many Bitcoin holders think, Dalios advice for those worried about tough economic times ahead is to turn to gold, rather than Bitcoin, as a safe haven asset.

According to Dalio, the global economy is facing a serious issue in that an economic downturn would be an especially problematic situation for central bankers due to the lack of tools that are available to use, with interest rates already at or near historical lows in many places around the world.

Were in a spot in monetary policy where you can no longer stimulate the same way you did before, said Dalio.

Additionally, Dalio sees larger budget deficits on the way. In his view, newly-printed money will be used to pay for this increased spending. Dalio added that this scenario does not necessarily mean there will be an acceleration of inflation, as the new money could be funneled into financial assets.

The way it works is: They print money, they buy a bond, they give it to the seller of the bond, and they buy other financial assets, said Dalio.

However, Dalio stated that the attractiveness of government bonds to investors could decline in the coming years, creating new questions regarding what works best as a store of value.

When you get negative-yielding bonds or something, youre approaching a limit, said Dalio. We are approaching a limit that will be a paradigm shift, I think.

In terms of the possibility of an economic downturn during the next U.S. Presidential term, Dalio claimed, Its going to happen.

When this economic downturn occurs, Dalio is of the belief that turning to cash wont be the best option.

You cant jump into cash, said Dalio. Cash is trash . . . because theyre going to print money.

This same sentiment is behind many of the bullish Bitcoin price scenarios that have been espoused over the past couple of years.

While Dalio agrees with Bitcoin proponents in terms of the potential issues with holding cash in the near future, the billionaire investor disagrees that the cryptocurrency would be a proper alternative as a store of value.

In Dalios view, a global portfolio with a certain amount of money put into gold as an additional diversifier will be the best option for investors to deal with the economic downturn that he foresees happening in the coming years.

If you want to oversimplify a portfolio, you probably want stock in the technology, disrupting companies and some gold, said Dalio.

When asked if Bitcoin should also be included in this portfolio, Dalio said no.

There are two purposes of money: a medium of exchange and a store-hold of wealth, explained Dalio. And Bitcoin is not effective in either of those cases now.

In Dalios view, Bitcoin is simply too volatile to act as a proper store of value, and over the long term, he sees more potential in something like Facebooks Libra project. That said, there is reason to believe the level of centralization found in Libra and various central bank digital currency projects would actually have a positive effect on Bitcoin.

But also: Who is going to do the buying? added Dalio. Central bankers and others. What are they going to hold as reserves? What has been tried and true? Are they going to hold digital Bitcoin? Theyre going to hold gold. That is a reserve currency, and its been a reserve currency for a thousand years.

Despite Dalios comments, data from the second half of 2019 appears to show Bitcoin has made progress in terms of becoming viewed as a digital gold by market participants. A potential continuation of this trend is one of the five key Bitcoin stories to watch in 2020.

That said, while a survey from last week indicated more financial advisors are looking to add Bitcoin and other crypto assets to client portfolios in 2020, this is still a rare point of view among institutional investors. However, an improving regulatory environment around Bitcoin is one of the reasons an analyst has stated theres a 60% chance for a Bitcoin ETF approval to occur in 2020.

Additionally, a variety of factors have already led one industry executive to predict a $50,000 Bitcoin price by the end of the year.

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Billionaire Investor Sees Major Flaw In Bitcoin Investment Thesis - Forbes

Bitcoin prices on Friday are plunging after marking their highest levels in over two months, hurt by an improving outlook of the eurozone economy, the stronger dollar, and none the least the Coronavirusoutbreak in China.

The benchmark cryptocurrencys spot rate fell by 1.66 percent to $8,246.14 as of 11:20 UTC today. At the same time, its futures listed on Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) slipped 1.49 percent to trade at $8,245. The moves downhill put bitcoin at the risk of closing this week in red, its first negative session since January 6.

Bitcoin ends winning streak as demand fades at local top | Source: TradingView.com, Coinbase

Bitcoins losses appeared as investors appetite in risk-on markets improved on Friday, for they brushed aside fears of the economic impact of the Coronavirus and embraced more-than-expected manufacturing data from Germany and France.

The European stocks rose higher, with the Stoxx Europe 600 surging 0.9 percent. Chinese markets were closed due to the Lunar year celebrations, but Hong Kongs Hang Seng jumped 0.2 percent ahead of the afternoon trade.

Futures linked to the US three key markets also surged after the World Health Organization (WHO) refused to recognize Coronavirus as a global epidemic.

Concerns over a potential outbreak earlier this week had prompted Chinese equities to register their worst daily session in near-eight months. It had further sent the three leading risk-on markets in the US down.

As global equities fell against the fears of a Coronavirus outbreak, investors didnt look at so-called safe-havens as hedges.

Gold, for instance, remained marginally stronger this week after registering 0.12 percent gains. Nevertheless, the yellow metals spot rate was down 3.36 percent from its local top of $1,611.34 an ounce. Analysts at the Wall Street Journal said that Gold is due to end its winning streak owing to favorable economic data and strengthening the US dollar.

Bitcoin, whose correlation with Goldtouched four-year high after an escalationin the US-Iran conflict, remained down for the very same reasons. The cryptocurrency failed to behave as a safe-haven asset against Coronavirus, partially because investors remained glued to risk-on markets.

The S&P Global Ratings, on the other hand, has warned a potential virus outbreak could erase 1.2 percent off from Chinas GDP this year. The move could increase investors appetite for havens like Gold, which, more or less, could also prompt some to speculate on Bitcoin.

The cryptocurrency has started 2020 on a gaining note and is now looking to undergo a supply cut in May 2020. Analysts believe scarcity alone could send it up to as much as $100,000.

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Bitcoin is Tanking Despite Coronavirus Fears, Showing Lack of Characteristics as Safe Haven - newsBTC

With its 2.1 bitcoin (BTC) puzzle still unsolved, a Phemex co-founder has offered a few clues to help in cracking the code. The crypto derivatives trading platform is one of the new entrants in the market, going live late last year with an operational presence in Singapore.

In a letter published on the Phemex website on Thurday (January 23, 2020), Max Wong, co-founder of the crypto derivatives exchange platform offered a few clues for the 2.1 BTC puzzle put out earlier in the week.

The hints provided by Wong are:

The first 21-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e is: 957496696762772407663

The private key you derive from Satoshis portrait is a big integer, not Wallet Import Format (WIF)

The filename of the picture is irrelevant

The next step involves converting some words from the portrait, without I/O, into a 27-digit number

Go back to step 4) again if you cant figure it out.

Wong also provided further clarification for the bitcoin puzzle. The actual wallet address tied to the puzzle contains 1.1 BTC. The person or persons able to crack the code will receive this prize plus an additional 1 BTC bonus deposited in a Phemex trading account.

The Phemex co-founder also confirmed that participants in the retweet thread that leads to the solving of the puzzle get a $100 trading bonus deposit in a Phemex account. Wongs letter also mentioned the companys wish to reveal either the name or Twitter identity of the eventual winner for the sake of transparency.

As at press time, the bitcoin puzzle remains unsolved. Previous crypto puzzles have taken various time intervals before being cracked.

For Wong, Phemex hopes that participating in solving the bitcoin puzzle will help to foster greater cooperation within the crypto community. As part of the letter, Wong noted that in trying to crack the code, people are exploring fundamental Bitcoin concepts like cryptographic encryption which helps to broaden the appeal of cryptos in general.

Wongs letter also stated that the company hopes that the solver of the puzzle will be open to representing the company as a brand ambassador.

Do you think you have what it takes to crack the Phemex 2.1 BTC puzzle? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, Phemex.

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Bitcoin Puzzle Worth 2.1 BTC STILL Unsolved, Find New Clues Here - Bitcoinist