Bitcoin and crypto markets have been on a downward trend since bitcoin hit a year-to-date high of over $13,000 per bitcoin set in late June.

The bitcoin price, which has this morning dipped below $8,000, has bounced wildly over recent months as crypto traders and investors search for direction, try to guess the mood of regulators, and struggle with "dismal" bitcoin trading volumes.

However, bitcoin's biggest bulls have come out in force to reassure investors bitcoin is far from dead (though that could change)and all point to different reasons for why they see bitcoin going higher.

Draper Associates founder Tim Draper thinks adoption of bitcoin's lightning network will eventually ... [+] push the bitcoin price sharply higher.

Bitcoin investor and venture capitalist Tim Draper, who has previously called a bitcoin price prediction of $250,000 per bitcoin "conservative," has predicted that the likes of the bitcoin Lightning Network, designed to make smaller bitcoin transactions quicker and cheaper, will be the catalyst for the next bitcoin bull run.

"I think bitcoin payment processors are really going to open the floodgates," Draper said, speaking during a Q&A session at theMalta AI & Blockchain Summit earlier this month and reiterating he expects the bitcoin price will reach a quarter of million dollars by 2022 or 2023.

"Its because of Lightning Network and OpenNode and maybe others that are allowing us to spend bitcoin very freely and quickly, so that its not just a store of value but it can be used for micro-payments; it can be used for retail, it can be used all over."

Bitcoin's Lightning Network has long been touted by some as a potential game changer for bitcoin and crypto payments, though adoption has not come as quickly as some had hoped.

Elsewhere, Changpeng Zhao, the chief executive of the world's largest bitcoin and crypto exchange by volume Binance, said he expects the bitcoin price to rise simply as the bitcoin industry grows.

"If you look at the fundamental technology and a longer term view, across a five year or ten year horizon, we're very confident the industry will get bigger and when the industry gets bigger the prices will go higher," Changpeng Zhao, who's often known simply as CZ, told Bloomberg, a financial newswire.

"If you look at the short term view, bitcoin and cryptocurrency is a smaller market cap instrument so there will be higher volatility," CZ added, attempting to explain away bitcoin's recent downward trend.

The bitcoin price, after a strong start to the year, has fallen steadily over the last few months.

Meanwhile, bitcoin and cryptocurrency analyst Tom Lee has said bitcoin will need to pass $150,000 per bitcoin, a rise of over 1,600% from current prices, before a long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) could work.

Lee, who founded strategy research boutique Fundstrat Global Advisors, thinks that though "demand for an ETF is monstrous," the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) "needs to punt the ETF until crypto becomes bigger."

According to Lee, a significant increase in the bitcoin price will increase investor confidence in bitcoin and cryptobut proper regulation and oversight will be needed.

"Institutions aren't going to touch crypto if they think the SEC isn't doing a good job," Lee reportedly said, speaking at the Blockshow conference in Singapore last week.

Read more here:

As Bitcoin Plummets Below $8,000, Crypto Heavyweights See The Price Going Sharply HigherHeres Why - Forbes

Rainn Wilson has a message for Bitcoin BTC holders: give your worthless cryptocurrency to the Mona Foundation, a non-profitthat supports worldwide initiatives in education and equality.

The organization opened up its donation channels to accept a raft ofcryptocurrencies earlier this week. It now accepts Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, as well as the USDC stablecoin, via a web app operated by major exchange Coinbase.

Wilson, widely recognized for his portrayal of Dwight Schrute in the US version of The Office, appears in a promotional video to encourage Bitcoin owners, cryptocurrency fanatics, and alternative financing fans to donate.

I hope youll consider giving your worthless cryptocurrency to the Mona Foundation, says Wilson. As you know, Mark Cuban said that cryptocurrency that hed rather have bananas than Bitcoin, so please, give your bananas to the Mona Foundation.

The Mona Foundations website explains that any cryptocurrency donations it receives will be valued at the time of donation at its fair market value, which presumably means that donations will be sold for fiat almost immediately.

In 2017, philanthropic experiment Pineapple Fund donated $1 million worth of Bitcoin to the Mona Foundation.

Hard Fork has reached out to the Mona Foundation to confirm its process for handling donations in cryptocurrency, as well as how it handled the $1 million in BTC from Pineapple Fund. Well update this piece should we receive a reply.

Published November 21, 2019 17:11 UTC

Read this article:

Dwight Schrute tells Bitcoin holders to give their worthless cryptocurrency to a non-profit - The Next Web

Dan Schulman, CEO of payment processor PayPal, revealed during an interview that he does indeed own Bitcoin (BTC).

On Nov. 20, Fortune reported that PayPal CEO Dan Schulman stopped by its offices where he discussed a variety of topics, including the reason for PayPals withdrawal from the Libra Association and whether he is the proud owner of any cryptocurrencies.

Schulman explained that PayPal withdrew from Libra because the company decided to put its attention elsewhere. According to the CEO it was a question of where do we want to put our attention, and what do we want to do today to advance our mission? He added:

You know, we think if we focus on our own roadmap, wed be able to advance financial inclusion faster than if we put all these resources against Libra.

Schulman added that Libra will start going down a road that his company remains very interested in looking at, and once Libra starts to figure things out, well take another look at where they are.

At the beginning of October, a PayPal spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the company had officially left the association, adding that they remain supportive of Libras aspirations and continue to look forward to dialogue on ways to work together in the future.

PayPals CFO John Rainey said in May that the firm has teams that are working on blockchain and cryptocurrency, and that they wish to participate in that technology in whatever form it takes in the future.

In the Fortune interview, Schulman was reluctant to share any significant details as to what exactly PayPal is working on in the sphere, although he was quick to point out that it is not necessarily competitive with Libra, adding:

We think theres a lot of promise to blockchain technology. Its intriguing to us, but it really needs to do something that the traditional rails cant do. Most people think that blockchain is about efficiency, but the system today is pretty efficient.

Regarding cryptocurrencies, the CEO said that it is still very volatile, and that they do not have much demand for it by merchants because merchants operate on very small margins. He said:

Until it becomes less volatile, it wont be a currency that is widely accepted by merchants on the web not the dark web, but the web.

As to whether he owns any cryptocurrencies himself, Schulmans answer was short and straightforward:

Yes, Bitcoin. [...] Only.

Continue reading here:

PayPal CEO Holds Bitcoin and Only Bitcoin - Cointelegraph

smiling family with turkey celebrating thanksgiving day at home

Last Thanksgiving a lot of crypto enthusiasts were forced to eat crow instead of turkey.

After all, many friends and relatives bought bitcoin or ether after first hearing about it over dinner in 2017. While most were not expecting to retire on these investments overnight, they also did not foresee the bitcoin price dropping 80% (from $20,000 to below $4,000) in the next twelve months.

This years conversations might still turn acrimonious, but they will likely have more to do with President Trumps impeachment hearings, the 2020 election, or the perilous state of the global economy.

That said, there is still much to discuss regarding crypto. Here is what everyone should know before they sit down for that 2:30 pm dinner.

The Price of Bitcoin, Ether, and other Crypto Assets Are Rebounding

If your Uncle Charlie was unfortunate enough to buy into the market in late December 2017, he is probably still licking his wounds. However, most people probably do not realize that the prices of bitcoin and ether have at least doubled since their nadirs at the end of 2018.

The bitcoin price has risen from slightly above $3,000 to $8,300 today

Ethereum has moved from $84 to just above $175

These gains may not make everyone whole, but they are encouraging.

Additionally, there is a significant increase in institutional interest in the space, lending platforms continue to expand, and financial markets are diversifying into products such as derivatives. All of this will add transparency, reduce fraud and arbitrage opportunities, and make regulators happy.

Crypto is in the Spotlight like Never Before

In what was probably beyond Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamotos wildest dreams, bitcoin entered the presidentialtwittersphere. On July 11th President Trumpdirected a series of tweetsat bitcoin, libra (Facebooks coin i.e. Zuck buck), and cryptocurrencies writ large, dismissing them as unregulated assets with no innate value or use cases other than to support illicit activity.

The president has almost 67 million followers on Twitter, and the reach of these quotes is far higher when one takes into account press reports and shares. To people who avoided the 2017 hype, this was bitcoins coming out party.

It is almost irrelevant that the posts cast crypto in a negative light because:

Crypto represents a threat to the U.S. dollars global dominance, which has been a driver of U.S. economic prosperity for decades. It is also useful when it comes to sanctions. If President Trump made a statement, it was likely going to be negative.

Most observers recognize that governments are risk adverse, especially when it comes to money

If President Trump felt it necessary to tweet about bitcoin, Libra, and crypto he must feel that there is more substance than smoke

And now 67 million people are curious.

Mark Zuckerberg Became the Hero Crypto Deserved, but not the One It Wanted

If the presidential spotlight wasnt bright enough, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg brought it into solar-eclipse territory when the company announced its stablecoin initiative, Libra, in June. (For readers unfamiliar with stablecoins, they are a novel form of crypto asset that is designed to maintain a constant peg to an asset such as the U.S. dollar. Libra will actually be pegged to a basket of global reserve currencies).

The announcement was widely criticized amongst regulators and populations around the world for a couple of reasons.

The Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, testified before the House Financial Services Committee on ... [+] Wednesday, October 23, 2019 Washington, D.C. (Photo by Aurora Samperio/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

There remain multiple legitimate questions about how Libra will operate as an open platform yet remain secure and compliant with global sanctions and relevant regulations

Facebooks reputation is at an all-time low, much of it stemming from incidents such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal and growing concerns about the companys privacy policies. So why would anyone want to now give the company access to their financial data?

Mark Zuckerberg actually acknowledged the irony of the Libra announcement when he testified in front of Congress this fall. In his opening statement he said, Im sure people wish it was anyone but Facebook putting this idea forward.

It remains to be seen when or if Libra ever gets off the ground, but regardless Facebook did crypto a favor. It again highlighted how the current financial system has failed to onboard the 1.7 billion people who are unbanked, underscoring one of cryptos main value propositions.

Now More than Ever, Crypto Represents a Port in the Storm

Though U.S. markets may seem a bit erratic, the global economy is teetering on the brink of another recession. Citizens in the European Union and other countries around the world such as Japan, with negative interest rates are actuallypayingbanks to hold their money and lock-in their losses rather than watch their wealth wither away.

Dovish monetary policy from banks around the world, such as quantitative easing programs and further interest rate reductions may prevent a global recession, but they are unlikely to lead to create a thriving global economy. At least in the near term.

Although bitcoin, ether, and other forms of crypto have some correlation to global markets, they represent the building blocks of a new global economy and model of wealth creation that is decoupled from central banks and monolithic companies.

This suggests that they will clear their own path, one which is more equitable and transparent than the world in which we live today.

To 2020 and Beyond

Even though crypto has been around for 10 years, it is fair to say that we are still in the second inning. Or as Winston Churchill once put it, Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

The industry is recovering from the 2018 bear market, and trends are looking up.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Read more from the original source:

Why Its Safe To Discuss Bitcoin And Crypto At This Years Thanksgiving - Forbes

Bitcoin (BTC) is currently trading at just above $8,440 following a 3% drop in price since last Monday.

Additionally, BTC has also managed to drop below its 200-day EMA not a great sign for the bulls.

Bitcoin has been consolidating since last month after price spiked from $7,500 to over $10,000, before retracing to the $9,000 range.

Will BTC recover back to $10,000 and above soon?

Lets take a look at Bitcoins chart.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin has been making a number of lower highs.

Since the massive bull market that took Bitcoin close to $14,000 earlier in the year, the coin has been dropping in value following a downtrend that was only broken in late October when price broke through a number of key resistance levels (around the 200-day, 50-day, and 20-day EMAs).

Following the late-October pump, where the price of BTC rose over 40% in the space of 24 hours, it seems the market has now stabilised.

Last week, I said I expected BTC to find a bottom near its 200-day EMA and that Bitcoin would bounce to around $10,000 soon. It has instead broken below its 200-day EMA, but crucially BTC has managed to stabilise since then and minimise any losses.

History shows us that BTC is prone to huge drops between 30% and 40% during bull seasons. Therefore, I dont advise that you fight the trend, but surf it for as long as possible.

Last week, I underlined that within the next three to five weeks, we could see a major reversal after a period of serious accumulation by hodlers.

However, for the time being, not only has Bitcoin reversed its downwards trend, I argue BTC will reach $12,000 by the end of 2019 if we continue to see strong gains.

Volume, which had dropped from a peak of $27 billion earlier in the year to just over $15 billion last month, is now back to the $20 billion range. At the time of writing, it is about $21 billion. The volume profile also shows that BTC is near a key support level close to $8,100.

Bitcoins market dominance has also slightly increased about 1% since early November, from 65% to 66%.

As veteran traders and investors usually say, smart money buys when theres blood on the streets. Currently, Im waiting for another minor drop in price to make new entries. These drops wont last forever, and if you think traditional markets are currently on a massive bull run, I wouldnt be so sure the trend wont reverse.

How can the markets continue to push higher throughout the year after the ECBs recent rate cuts, the continuous share buybacks from huge corporations, or the inverted bond yield shoving investors away towards riskier assets?

In addition, repo market activity as in loans from central banks to commercial and investment banks has spiked to new monthly records. That adds up to another signal of weakness among most banks.

Safe trades!

Current live Bitcoin 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 Bitcoin price. Pricing is also available in a range of different currency equivalents:

US Dollar BTCtoUSD

British Pound Sterling BTCtoGBP

Japanese Yen BTCtoJPY

Euro BTCtoEUR

Australian Dollar BTCtoAUD

Russian Rouble BTCtoRUB

In August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.orgwas registered. On 31st October 2008, a paper was published called Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. This was authored by Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. To date, no one knows who this person, or people, are.

The paper outlined a method of using a P2P network for electronic transactions without relying on trust. On 3rd January 2009, the Bitcoin network came into existence. Nakamoto mined block number 0 (or the genesis block), which had a reward of 50 Bitcoins.

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

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.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice.

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

Original post:

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

Late last month, Bitcoin (BTC) saw a jaw-dropping trading session, with the cryptocurrencys price gaining 42% in a 24-hour time frame; this was BTCs best daily performance in over six years. This move, which brought the asset from $7,300 to $10,500, shocked many, with many seeing the surge as entirely non-sensical.

Though, retrospective analysis has shown that $7,300 was the price of the 200-day moving average on the CME futures market at that time, making the 42% bounce extremely peculiar.

While there is no guarantee a bounce will happen again, Bitcoin is yet again knocking on the door of the 200-day moving average on the CMEs chart. What do analysts expect to happen this time around?

For those unaware, the 200-day moving average of any asset is seen by technical analysts as a level indicative of macro trends; trading above the level implies a macro bull trend, trading below the level implies a macro bear trend. As this excerpt from an Investopedia entry reads:

The 200-day simple moving average (SMA) is considered a key indicator by traders and market analysts for determining the overall long-term market trend As long as a stocks price remains above the 200 SMA on the daily time frame, the stock is generally considered to be in an overalluptrend.

As pointed out by analyst Mexbt and as mentioned earlier, Bitcoin tapped the 200-day moving average on the CME. This time, this price hasnt reacted, with BTC flatlining just a smidgen above $8,000.

While a 42% rally off the 200-day moving average is highly improbable, there are some signs that bulls may be ready to take over the cryptocurrency market yet again.

Per previous reports from NewsBTC, the Tom Demark Sequential indicator, which uses time and prices to determine trends and reversal points, has just printed two buy nine candles on the CME and Grayscales Bitcoin Trust charts. Also, just today, the actual spot BTC chart just printed a buy nine.

Thats far from the end of the bull narrative. Trader Coiner Yadoxrecently notedthat Bitcoins price action from the long-term bottom of $3,150 established in December of 2018 until now looks much like a textbook Richard Wyckoff pattern, which is marked by a strong surge upward after a bear market, a double-top pattern, an accumulation throwback, and then a bullish continuation after a bullish breakout.

Yadox suggested that should his interpretation of this Wyckoff pattern be correct, Bitcoin found a medium-term bottom at $7,400, and will soon see a strong breakout to the upside.

Sure, the aforementioned is all well and good, though a key bear signal just appeared. The signal in question, the Hash Ribbons crossing bearish. As this outlet explained in a recent report, this signal implies that miners are capitulating, selling their coins to keep the lights on, cash out, or to upgrade their systems for the future.

The Hash Ribbons inverted literal days before Bitcoin began its 50% decline from $6,000 to $3,000. Also, this signal was seen just days before a 30% drop in 2016.

Link:

Bitcoin Price Jumped 42% Last Time It Hit This Level, and BTC Has Tapped It Again - newsBTC

By Adam Vaughan

Getty Images

Bitcoin mining consumed enough electricity last year to release carbon emissions on a par with Estonia, according to a study that suggests the climate change impact of the cryptocurrency isnt as bad as previously thought.

Past research has suggested that the emissions from mining bitcoin where computing power is used to solve mathematical problems to create new currency may be as high as 63 megatonnes of CO2 per year. Some researchers have even claimed the cryptocurrency alone could bust global climate goals.

Susanne Kohler and Massimo Pizzol at Aalborg University in Denmark found that earlier estimates had made blanket assumptions that carbon emissions from electricity generation were uniform across China, where they estimate just over half of all bitcoin mining takes place.

Advertisement

But breaking down the emissions within China to a more regional level produced a much lower global footprint for the crytpocurrency, of 17.29 megatonnes of CO2 in 2018. While coal-heavy Inner Mongolia accounted for just 12.3 per cent of bitcoin mining, it resulted in more than a quarter of the total emissions. The reverse effect was seen in the hydropower-rich Chinese province of Sichuan.

The researchers also found that it is overwhelmingly the electricity use of bitcoin mining that contributes to the cryptocurrencys carbon emissions, not the production and disposal of the computers doing the mining, which accounted for just 1 per cent of the emissions.

Kohler says the findings dont mean we can stop worrying about bitcoin especially given electricity use per new bitcoin is growing but we should put it in perspective. On the one hand we have these alarmist voices saying we wont hit the Paris agreement because of bitcoin only. But on the other hand there are a lot of voices from the bitcoin community saying that most of the mining is done with green energy and that its not high impact, she says.

Getting a better handle on bitcoins carbon footprint will remain tricky until we have more accurate data on where mining takes place information which Kohler and Pizzol say is scarce today.

Camilo Mora at the University of Hawaii, who wasnt involved in the work, says the results show the need for more transparency on the location and equipment used in bitcoin mining. Even though the new estimate of the cryptocurrencys climate contribution is smaller, he says it is hard to believe the impacts from mining are trivial, given many countries, including China, are considering regulating the activity because of its large electricity consumption.

Journal reference: Environmental Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.9b05687

More on these topics:

Go here to read the rest:

Bitcoins climate change impact may be much smaller than we thought - New Scientist News

On Nov. 18, Big Four auditing firm KPMG released its 2019 Fintech100 ranking, which lists the top 100 fintech firms in the world. The list saw a drop in Bitcoin-related companies but reinforced innovation in the payments industry.

As was the case in 2018, AntFinancial owned by Jack Ma of Alibaba led the ranking. AntFinancial controls Alipay, one of China's leading payment systems, and is valued at $83 billion.

Among the companies that offer innovation through blockchain and cryptocurrency, JD Finance was best placed in third place, surpassed by Grab, an Uber-like rideshare app that also functions as a payment system in Singapore.

Robinhood dropped from 8th place in 2018 to 14th in 2019. However, crypto innovation remains strong according to KPMGs rankings, which featured blockchain-focused OneConnect (18th), Revolut (26th), Coinbase (34th), Liquid (38th) and Banketa (42th).

Commenting on the strength of Chinese companies on the list, Chris Wang, partner and head of fintech at KPMG China said:

"As fintech development continues to go strong in China, we are seeing some changes in China's fintech landscape. Aligned with trends we observe globally, we see an increasing number of wealth, insurance and multi-sector companies in China on the list, which indicates that technologies and innovations have spread into more financial services sectors."

The report also named Binance, MemaPay, Moin, Silot and Tokeny among emerging companies in the top 100.

KPMG further points out that Fintech100 companies raised over $18 billion in the last 12 months and more than $70 billion in their lifetimes. The report identifies these companies as changing the world with their respective innovations, serving over 2.5 billion customers globally.

Although fintech firms have emerged as a financial services option, KPMG points out that many companies on the Fintech100 list have benefited from open banking, allowing them to access customer banking to create more personalized experience and services. Early fintech innovators with single product propositions are now diversifying to fulfill customer needs, often through banking licenses and supported by favorable regulatory developments.

View original post here:

Bitcoin Slips in KPMG Rankings, But Cryptocurrency Innovation Has Strong Showing - Cointelegraph

Bitcoin detractors seem to be spending more ways thinking of how it could be shut down. It is true that decentralized money is a huge threat to governments and the central banks that keep them in power, but that was entirely the point of it. Looking at some of the largest BTC transactions shows how difficult it would be to shut down.

Earlier this week, Bitcoinist ran an article on the theoretical possibility of the bitcoin network being shut down. It was theorized that governments could just keep shorting the asset until price dumps below $1,000, all of the hodlers get burnt, and interest dies out like the last of the dinosaurs.

Industry observer Rhythm Trader took a more cynical approach stating there would not be a need for decentralized money if the worlds governments did this:

Just stop the financial surveillance, inflation, artificial interest rates, deficit spending, fractional reserve banking and capital controls.

Because bitcoin is so clearly speculative at the moment, the huge financial power of bankers still influences its price, but not its ethos. Destroying the fiat on-ramps could effectively put a big hole in that speculative bubble that has induced bitcoins wild swings over the past couple of years.

Looking at previous transactions, however, emphasizes why governments are so afraid of it and possibly why it cannot be shut down.

The first in the big three was in 2011 when a transaction of half a million BTC was worth $1.32 million at the time. Today that would equate to a whopping $4 billion. There is no bank in the world that would allow an individual to transfer so much money, unless of course they owned the bank.

The second big bitcoin movement came in 2013 when 195,000 BTC worth around $150 million at the time was moved for pretty much zero fees. More recently in September this year, 94,500 BTC was sent totaling around a billion dollars at the time.

The fee for sending such a stupendous amount of money was just 6.5 million satoshis or a little under $700. This is another reason that banks hate bitcoin, it destroys their profits.

There will always be the whales that have access to such epic amounts of bitcoin and they will always be using it to move money around without getting stung by governments or banks. Authoritarian states (which is pretty much all of them) do not like people doing what they please with their own money and this is why BTC is here to stay.

Even with a total internet failure, which will wipe out the banks and stock markets anyway, there are ways to transfer bitcoin.

Can bitcoin ever be shut down? Add your thoughts below

Images via Shutterstock, Blockonomics

Go here to read the rest:

3 Bitcoin Transactions Worth $5.5B Show Why BTC Isn't Going Anywhere - Bitcoinist

Bitcoin-cautious Germany has seen its first bank demand that ordinary savers pay it to hold their money even as little as 1.

According to multiple local press outlets including the Sddeutsche Zeitung on Nov. 19, the Volksbank Raiffeisenbank Frstenfeldbruck (VRF) in Northern Bavaria is now charging 0.5% negative interest rates on the smallest deposits.

We had to do it, the publication quoted the banks management as saying.

The reason, they said, was the cost of parking money at the European Central Bank (ECB).

In Germany, negative interest rates previously impacted only deposits above 100,000, which constituted an interest-free allowance. VRFs move makes it the first lender in the country to target savings below that level.

Recently, more clients have been coming to us from other banks where theyve already used up their allowance, the management continued.

As Cointelegraph reported, negative interest rates are beginning to form part of the ECBs monetary policy. The phenomenon ultimately means that some portion of savers must pay banks to hold their money.

Critics have warned that such moves would incentivize the public to move into cash, while alternatives such as Bitcoin (BTC) also stand to benefit.

By contrast, Bitcoin does not suffer from the inflationary meddling in its supply and associated destruction of its value, meaning HODLers would never be forced to pay to own it.

Last month, entrepreneur Cameron Winklevoss noted the cryptocurrency was the ideal method of escaping negative rates on bonds, which account for investments worth $17 trillion.

Speaking to Sddeutsche Zeitung meanwhile, the CEO of a German consumer portal warned that VRF could open the floodgates.

Were seeing a lot of movement on the market at present, Oliver Maier said. He noted that the ECBs decision to cut its benchmark interest rate for banks to -0.5% from -0.4% was the cause of the upset.

Original post:

German Bank Boosts Bitcoin Negative Interest Rates Hit Every Account - Cointelegraph