Cryptocurrency analysts have warned that early adopting Bitcoin BTC whales still have plenty of clout when it comes to dictating market prices.

Those behind Twitter-based transaction monitor @whale_alert have noted that an apparently dormant Bitcoin address houses almost 80,000 BTC ($750 million), and if the owner decides to sell them all, it could spell utter devastation for the industry.

That address alone if that is actually a whale whos been holding their coins for so long without doing anything with them if they decide, Okay, lets go sell them, it would crush the market completely, Whale Alert told crypto prime dealer SFOX in a recent interview.

But its really hard to say anything about the status of that address: Are those keys lost? Is that person even still alive? [] Its just waiting to see if anything happens with those addresses, they added.

A list of top dormant Bitcoin whale addresses (in which no outflowing Bitcoin has been detected in at least five years) can be found here.

Its plausible that the power of Bitcoin whales has been demonstrated recently. Whale Alert told SFOX that between August 29 and September 6 2018, a cryptocurrency whale unloaded around $1 billion worth of Bitcoinafter they moved the funds from a single wallet toexchanges.

When most of the Bitcoin from the wallet was sold, the price of Bitcoin dramatically dropped by almost 15 percent, and the 30-day rolling volatility increased by almost 25 percent.

Another example is the recent closure of a darknet child abuse imagery ring in South Korea. Police confiscated a massive amount of Bitcoin from the perpetrators, which were eventually auctioned.

Whale Alert managed to track 10,000 BTC ($94 million) during the auction, which were likely sent to cryptocurrency exchange Binance for selling.

Almost directly after that big transaction, the price of BTC dropped, said Whale Alert. This seems to be corroborated by Binances order book, which shows a rise in volume just a few hours after the auction.

An eventual BTC selloff drove the price of Bitcoin on Binance from $8062.56 to $7856.89.

Its worth noting, however, that these kinds of movements are often localized to one particular exchange in this case, Binance.

However, when such large, inactive Bitcoin addresses exist, one cant help but wonder what the markets would look like if dormant whales one day awoke with a sudden urge to capitulate.

You can read the rest of the Whale Alert interview here.

Published November 6, 2019 12:13 UTC

Read more:

Dormant Bitcoin whale holding 80K BTC could crush the market, analysts warn - The Next Web

The Bitcoin Rich List, or the number of addresses holding more than 1,000 BTC, has grown in the past 12 months, possibly reflecting an influx of high-net-worth investors.

The metric has registered growth of 30 percent since September 2018, according to Coin Metrics data. Even when adjusted to exclude addresses known to belong to exchanges, the figure shows a similar surge.

At press time, 2,148 addresses contain more than 1,000 bitcoins, amounting to just 0.01 percent of all bitcoin addresses, as per BitInfoCharts Bitcoin Rich List.

As seen in the fever line chart above, the list has witnessed a near 90-degree rise over the last 12 months.Investor and analyst Willy Woobelieves the list has expanded mainly due to increased investor participation in the market:

The two options are we have high-net-worth investors coming in or it could be cold storage practice at the exchanges and custody solutions. The latter explanation cannot be ruled out, but it does not coincide with other data we have on the timing of when supply increased at these entities. For now, Im going with the first explanation.

Note that BTC fell from $6,400 to $3,100 in the final quarter of 2018 and experienced investors may have taken advantage of the price dip to snap up the top cryptocurrency on the cheap, leading to the rise in the addresses with more than 1,000 bitcoins.

Other observers, however, are not convinced that the number of individuals with 1,000+ BTCs has increased.

After all, an individual can move 50,000 bitcoins from a single wallet to 50 different wallets for custody purposes.Also, a cryptocurrency exchange like Binance holds bitcoins belonging to millions of users and can store coins in different wallets.

Its mostly the exchanges both the amount of BTC held in exchanges and the number of exchanges/custodians have been growing, trader Alex Kruger told CoinDesk.

He noted that on-chain transaction volume in BTC terms has been relatively flat since September 2018 a sign the rich list is possibly increasing due to exchanges, which tend to have low on-chain transaction frequency. For instance, top addresses have fewer withdrawals compared to deposits and could, therefore, be exchanges cold, or offline wallets.

While trading volume is the lifeblood of exchanges, it is not necessarily reflected on-chain, since these companies may internally debit or credit client addresses without executing a transaction on the public ledger.

That said, it is not possible to know for sure whether a given address with infrequent transactions is an exchange or a whale.

Further, as shown in the chart below, if you take out known exchange addresses, the rich list still grew by almost 30 percent over the 12-month period, to more than 2,100addresses, pretty much the same rate as for all addresses.

This supports Woos interpretation that the influx of high-net-worth individuals was a primary reason for the rise in addresses with more than 1,000 bitcoins.

One more possible reason for the rise could be the distribution of ownership over time, according to Qiao Wang, director of product at crypto data source Messari.

In the beginning it was Satoshi, then a few early miners, who owned all the bitcoin. But over time their share decreased and other people entered the market,Wang said.

Looking forward, both wealthy investors and exchanges may continue to drive the rise in the number of rich addresses. With the next mining reward halving a historicallyprice-bullish event due in six months, new investors may enter the market.

Also, trading volumes at the Bakkt bitcoin futures exchange, which needs to store bitcoin for its physically delivered futures, are increasing. Recently, futures volume jumped by more than 250 percent to $11 million. The exchange, a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange, is set to launch options on futures on Dec. 8.

Disclosure:The author holds no cryptocurrency assetsat the time of writing.

Champagne glasses image viaShutterstock; exchange-adjustedchart via Glassnode

Read the original:

The 'Bitcoin Rich List' Has Grown 30% in the Last Year, But Why? - CoinDesk

Bitcoin's dramatic price surge in 2017 that saw it reach record highs was caused by a single cryptocurrency trader, according to a new study.

University of Texas Professor John Griffin and Ohio State Assistant Professor Amin Shams claim their latest research of bitcoin transactions between March 2017 and March 2018 shows that bitcoin was manipulatedthrough large-volume trades that drove the price up.

"This one large player or entity either exhibited clairvoyant market timing or exerted an extremely large price impact on bitcoin that is not observed in aggregate flows from other smaller traders," the academics wrote in a paper, which wasshared with Bloomberg ahead of its publication in the Journal of Finance.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

The price of bitcoin is notoriously volatile, susceptible to reacting strongly to geopolitical events andregulatory rulings concerning cryptocurrency.

In the wake of its record price high in 2017, which saw it reach close to $20,000, bitcoin experienced a series of crashes throughout 2018that saw its value eventually drop below $4,000.

On 3 January, 2009, the genesis block of bitcoin appeared. It came less than a year after the pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto detailed the cryptocurrency in a paper titled 'Bitcoin: A peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System'

Reuters

On 22 May, 2010, the first ever real-world bitcoin transaction took place. Lazlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins the equivalent of $90 million at today's prices

Lazlo Hanyecz

Bitcoin soon gained notoriety for its use on the dark web. The Silk Road marketplace, established in 2011, was the first of hundreds of sites to offer illegal drugs and services in exchange for bitcoin

On 29 October, 2013, the first ever bitcoin ATM was installed in a coffee shop in Vancouver, Canada. The machine allowed people to exchange bitcoins for cash

REUTERS/Dimitris Michalakis

The world's biggest bitcoin exchange, MtGox, filed for bankruptcy in February 2014 after losing almost 750,000 of its customers bitcoins. At the time, this was around 7 per cent of all bitcoins and the market inevitably crashed

Getty Images

In 2015, Australian police raided the home of Craig Wright after the entrepreneur claimed he was Satoshi Nakamoto. He later rescinded the claim

Getty Images

On 1 August, 2017, an unresolvable dispute within the bitcoin community saw the network split. The fork of bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology spawned a new cryptocurrency: Bitcoin cash

REUTERS

Towards the end of 2017, the price of bitcoin surged to almost $20,000. This represented a 1,300 per cent increase from its price at the start of the year

Reuters

On 3 January, 2009, the genesis block of bitcoin appeared. It came less than a year after the pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto detailed the cryptocurrency in a paper titled 'Bitcoin: A peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System'

Reuters

On 22 May, 2010, the first ever real-world bitcoin transaction took place. Lazlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins the equivalent of $90 million at today's prices

Lazlo Hanyecz

Bitcoin soon gained notoriety for its use on the dark web. The Silk Road marketplace, established in 2011, was the first of hundreds of sites to offer illegal drugs and services in exchange for bitcoin

On 29 October, 2013, the first ever bitcoin ATM was installed in a coffee shop in Vancouver, Canada. The machine allowed people to exchange bitcoins for cash

REUTERS/Dimitris Michalakis

The world's biggest bitcoin exchange, MtGox, filed for bankruptcy in February 2014 after losing almost 750,000 of its customers bitcoins. At the time, this was around 7 per cent of all bitcoins and the market inevitably crashed

Getty Images

In 2015, Australian police raided the home of Craig Wright after the entrepreneur claimed he was Satoshi Nakamoto. He later rescinded the claim

Getty Images

On 1 August, 2017, an unresolvable dispute within the bitcoin community saw the network split. The fork of bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology spawned a new cryptocurrency: Bitcoin cash

REUTERS

Towards the end of 2017, the price of bitcoin surged to almost $20,000. This represented a 1,300 per cent increase from its price at the start of the year

Reuters

This year bitcoin's price has risen steadily and it is currently trading at around $9,300, having briefly reached above $12,000 in June. It remains prone to sudden swings in price, which some attribute to market manipulation by so-called bitcoin whales that are able to influence the price through a single trade.

A flash crash that wiped $1,000 from bitcoin's value in less than an hour was triggered by the sale of 5,000 bitcoins - worth around $40 million at the time of the trade.

It remains a long way off its 2017 highs, though some market analysts believe its upward trajectory will likely continue in the long term.

Changpeng Zhao,CEO of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance,recently predicted bitcoin will reach $16,000 "soon-ish".

Study suggests bitcoin's volatile price history was fuelled by so-called cryptocurrency whales (CoinMarketCap)

Other cryptocurrency experts claim that despite the historical turmoil, bitcoin will continue to rise in price and could eventually recover to 2017 levels.

Some advocates even believe bitcoin is still a long way from reaching its full price potential, with figures like John McAfee and Tim Draper arguing that its scarcity means it could grow more than 25-fold in value over the next few years.

$250,000 means that bitcoin would then have about a 5 per cent market share of the currency world and I think that may be understating the power of bitcoin, Mr Draper said in September.

Mr McAfee, who founded the eponymous antivirus firm, is even more bullish in his forecast, having recently stood by his notorious predictionthat bitcoin would hit $1 million by the end of 2020.

A website set up to track his prediction shows that it is currently more than 90 per cent behind being on track.

Continue reading here:

Bitcoin's record price surge of 2017 'was caused by a single person' - The Independent

A forensic study on bitcoin's 2017 boom has found that nearly the entire rise of the digital currency at the time is attributable to "one large player," although the market manipulator remains unidentified.

Finance professors John Griffin and Amin Shams instructors at University of Texas and the Ohio State University, respectively analyzed over 200 gigabytes of data for the transaction history between bitcoin and tether, another digital currency. Tether is an asset known as a "stablecoin," which has its trading value connected to the dollar.

The professors' study found that tethers being traded for bitcoins revealed a pattern.

"We find that the identified patterns are not present on other flows, and almost the entire price impact can be attributed to this one large player," Griffin and Shams wrote. "We map this data across both blockchains and find that the one player or entity (labeled as 1LSg throughout the paper) is behind the majority of the patterns we document."

Griffin and Shams were able to follow the clusters of data to a source: "One large account at Bitfinex." The digital currency exchange Bitfinex is one of the largest in the world. The study found that, through Bitfinex, the single player was able to manipulate demand for bitcoin via "extreme" flows of tethers. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the updated study's results on Monday.

The manipulation occurred as bitcoin rose to an all-time high of nearly $20,000 in late 2017, the study found. Bitcoin traded at about $9,300 on Monday.

"One of the SEC's top worries is that crypto is subject to manipulation. This study appears to lend credibility to that argument," Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg said in a note on Monday.

The study comes after an analysis published in March found that 95% bitcoin spot trading is faked. The survey, created by cryptocurrency asset manager Bitwise for the SEC, found that only $273 million of about $6 billion in average daily bitcoin volume was legitimate.

Cowen said Griffin and Shams' study will likely add even more scrutiny of bitcoin and cryptocurrency at large, especially from regulators and lawmakers.

"We see this as further souring Washington on crypto and believe it is negative for efforts to launch crypto ETFs and for Facebook to launch Libra," Seiberg added.

Libra is Facebook's cryptocurrency project, which has seen several major backers drop out in the past month.

While the latest study doesn't identify the manipulator, the professors suggest those running Bitfinex either knew of the operation or were even possibly assisting the scheme. Bitfinex's general counsel Stuart Hoegner told the WSJ that the study "lacks academic rigor," saying that "it is the global rise of digital currency that has driven the market's demand for tether."

Both Bitfinex and Tether Ltd., the company that controls tether, are owned and operated by the same people. The WSJ noted that both companies are under investigations for alleged fraud by the Department of Justice and the New York Attorney General.

CNBC's Tom Franck contributed to this report.

Continued here:

A single anonymous market manipulator caused bitcoin to top $20,000 two years ago, study shows - CNBC

A mystery is playing out on the Bitcoin BTC subreddit: the infamous Bitcoin time traveller post has been edited, and nobody knows who did it.

In 2013,a Reddit user appeared to present a bleak outlook of the year 2025, where rampant inequality and parabolic Bitcoin value has pushed the world to the brink of collapse.

Thepost is absolutely ridiculous, but surprisingly, it appears someone has recently doctored it to read as if OP themselves returned to edit the post, despite their account being deleted years ago.

Strangely, its now prefaced with: Well gee, this blew up, Bitcoin should not be treated as an investment, it should be recognized as a speculative negative-sum game.

The editor then launches into scathing attacks on its mining infrastructure and the software developers that maintain its code.

As a self-professed time-traveler, OP claimed that on average, the value of Bitcoin would increase by about a factor ten every year: from $0.10 in 2010, to $1 in 2011, to $10 in 2012, and so on.

This trend would eventually lead a single Bitcoin to be worth $1 million by 2021. From then, there will be apparently no good way to express Bitcoins value in dollars, as the dollar is no longer used. In this version of the future, land and cryptocurrency will be the only relevant assets of value left.

In my world, soon to be your world, most governments no longer exist, as Bitcoin transactions are done anonymously and thus most governments can enforce no taxation on their citizens. Most of the success of Bitcoin is due to the fact that Bitcoin turned out to be an effective method to hide your wealth from the government. Whereas people entering rogue states like Luxemberg, Monaco, and Liechtenstein were followed by unmanned drones to ensure that governments know who is hiding wealth, no such option was available to stop people from hiding their money in Bitcoin.

OPs post is also the origin of Bitcoin Citidels, automated future-cities formed by the Bitcoin rich to protect themselves (as well as their worth) from no-coiners.

Bitcoin Citadels have evolved into a permanent part of the Bitcoin vernacular; a meme to help imagine what life would be like post-hyperbitcoinization.

The moral of the original post was to implore the reader to reconsider theirinvestment, as widespreadBitcoin adoption is tosupposedly ruin the world beyond repair.

Sadly, this piece of Bitcoin history now has an ironic problem with legitimacy. If the OPs account is deleted, how can they return to edit it something Redditors have been quick to highlight.

Hard Fork has reached out to thesubredditsmoderators to learn more and will update this piece should we receive a reply.

Still, its certainly possible to access the original post via archive links, but one must wonder: why the hell is this happening to one of the mostpopular Bitcoin shitposts of all time, and why now?

Update 07:31 UTC, November 5: A /r/Bitcoin moderator has since contacted Hard Fork to shed some light on the status of OPs account.

The post was originally made on August 31st, 2013 and was edited by the original account onOctober 27th, 2019, they said.

It is unclear when or why the original account became inactive. The account was never banned by moderators of ther/Bitcoinsubreddit, and such site-wide actions can only be performed by reddit site administrators, they added.

The moderator then went on to explain that there could be a number of reasons for the current status of OPs account.

Spam, malware, vote cheating, or ban evasion were listed as possibilities. It couldve also been flagged as compromised, and the site took action to disable it.

However, depending on the technique that Reddit admins used to disable the account, the account holder is not prevented from editing previously posted threads and comments, said the moderator.

It should be noted that there is no indication whatsoever that any time travel is involved, and that the original unedited post was held in high regard solely as an imaginative piece of fan-fiction. It is also unclear whether the original thread was intended to be an ominous warning about Bitcoin as the edit portrays, or if the account holders motive and outlook shifted since 2013. It also seems unlikely that one could contact the account holder directly since there is no way to send them a private message, they noted.

The moderator then concluded by highlighting that there are more exciting things happening in Bitcoin than a six-year-old post that had recently been edited.

Published November 4, 2019 17:00 UTC

Visit link:

The Bitcoin time-traveler Reddit post has been edited, but nobody knows who did it - The Next Web

The status of Bitcoin (BTC) in the cryptographic community is not under doubt. What had started as a rumoured disruptive currency after the debut of the whitepaper in 2009 has now blossomed into one of the most used cryptocurrencies of all time. With the value towering over many other cryptocurrencies in the crypto market, and with many values by market capitalization, the currency has been able to amass many investors and use cases.

On the flip side, the primary problem with the currency is when it comes to trading. Many investors are yet to figure out how to trade on Bitcoin and indeed, other cryptocurrencies. That is why you need to venture into the profitable and hassle-free model of cryptocurrency investments, as instituted by the Bitcoin Era Pro software.

You may be wondering about the importance of using the Bitcoin Era Pro App in the first place. The truth is that the cryptocurrency market has been struggling after the all-time high of 2017 when the bulls were very much active. Since the start of 2018 until now, it has been seasons of bearish markets. So, traders and cryptocurrency investors need to have some returns on their investments.

The first reason why you should use the app is the legislation it has in certain quarters. For instance, the Securities Authority of the US and Japan Stock Exchanges are currently reviewing the submitted application for acceptance into the trading table. Also, some lawyers and accountants are already keeping tabs on the app. Would all those have been possible if the Bitcoin Era Pro App doesnt have something good to offer? Moreover, the participation of the aforementioned parties is a signal that the Bitcoin Era Pro App is to a larger extent, going about the operations legally.

Besides the collaborations it has sought in the past, the Bitcoin Era Pro App also has a team of dedicated and experienced cryptocurrency traders. It was their experience and ability to maneuver the market even in bearish trends that triggered the inception of this automated cryptocurrency robot/software. It would interest you that despite the losses at intervals, the Bitcoin Era Pro software has been able to consistently scale the market to be ranked as one of the cryptocurrency trading software of the year 2019. That feat can only be possible for trading software that could clock up to 1,342 trading sessions per day, with only a few losses.

In the light of the circumstances and the features ascribed to the Bitcoin Era Pro software, its evident that the software has some of the auto trading tools you need to beat the bears in the crypto market. Worthy of note is that in the last couple of years, it has only lost a few of the trades. Others were on a winning streak!

You must be wondering about how possible it is to trade Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies without manual inputs. The point is that the Bitcoin Era Pro software is built in a way that the platform uses a network of fast computers to aggregate funds/assets from investors and investing the same into the financial markets.

Collating and investing/selling the assets/currencies in the financial markets is one side of the coin. The other is to monitor the market via a dedicated algorithm that surveys the market. The work of the algorithm is to evaluate the movement of the market to discover the best moments to trade and the moments to engage in distress sales. Whichever is the case, you can be confident that the Bitcoin Era Pro software would be in tune with the directions of the market. Moreover, the reliability, the commission-free, and the secure networks of the software make it the perfect one for cryptocurrency traders.

The Bitcoin Era Pro Investment Limited, which is the parent company of this software, is offering over 165 exhibitions in over 35 countries of the world. For that reason, the residents of those countries can participate in the automated cryptocurrency trading experience exclusive to the platform. Provided you have access to stable Internet, you can always invest and reap massive returns from the platform. The autopilot/auto-trading mode notwithstanding, the software also provides the opportunity for you to learn the ropes to become a successful trader.

Now, if youve seen the benefits of engaging in cryptocurrency trading via the Bitcoin Era Pro software, then the steps below would help you in signing up for the service.

Register

The impressive cryptocurrency trading tools offered by the software are exclusive to the registered members. So, you need to sign up or create an account to get started. All you need do is to visit the homepage and fill your First Name, Last Name, and Mail Address to sign up for a Bitcoin Era Pro account.

Create a Broker Account

The next step is to create a broker account from the member area. You can only get to this point after signing up and logging in. So, be sure the signup process was successful before continuing. Once you sign up for a broker account, you would be assigned a broker.

Fund Your Account

The second step is to add money to your account. Many payment options are available to help you in adding money to your newly-created Bitcoin Era Pro account. Worthy of note is that the minimum deposit is $50. However, this figure tends to differ by the brokers. So, be sure of the deposit range of your assigned broker before continuing.

You can now channel your crypto investments to the right place for onward investments and trading. On the average, you stand a chance to make as much as $2,734 each day. Note that this income range varies by the amount of investments. Therefore, the higher the investments, the higher the profits you make.

You can now see that cryptocurrency trading might not be an arduous task after all. Take advantage of this offer from the Bitcoin Era Pro software to get the most out of your crypto investments.

Read more:

Trade and Earn Huge Profits with the Bitcoin Era Pro Software - newsBTC

The European Union is considering the development of its own digital currency that could rival Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency.

Draft documents from the European Central bank urged the EU to come up with a consistent approach to all cryptocurrencies, which range from decentralised currencies like bitcoin, to state-backed efforts currently underway in China.

Until now, the bloc has failed to implement any significant regulationsurrounding cryptocurrencies but several European countries have implemented their own rules.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

"The ECB and other EU central banks could usefully explore the opportunities as well as challenges of issuing central bank digital currencies including by considering concrete steps to this effect," stated the document, which was seen by Reuters.

The draft could be discussed by finance ministers later this week, before potentially being adopted next month.

On 3 January, 2009, the genesis block of bitcoin appeared. It came less than a year after the pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto detailed the cryptocurrency in a paper titled 'Bitcoin: A peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System'

Reuters

On 22 May, 2010, the first ever real-world bitcoin transaction took place. Lazlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins the equivalent of $90 million at today's prices

Lazlo Hanyecz

Bitcoin soon gained notoriety for its use on the dark web. The Silk Road marketplace, established in 2011, was the first of hundreds of sites to offer illegal drugs and services in exchange for bitcoin

On 29 October, 2013, the first ever bitcoin ATM was installed in a coffee shop in Vancouver, Canada. The machine allowed people to exchange bitcoins for cash

REUTERS/Dimitris Michalakis

The world's biggest bitcoin exchange, MtGox, filed for bankruptcy in February 2014 after losing almost 750,000 of its customers bitcoins. At the time, this was around 7 per cent of all bitcoins and the market inevitably crashed

Getty Images

In 2015, Australian police raided the home of Craig Wright after the entrepreneur claimed he was Satoshi Nakamoto. He later rescinded the claim

Getty Images

On 1 August, 2017, an unresolvable dispute within the bitcoin community saw the network split. The fork of bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology spawned a new cryptocurrency: Bitcoin cash

REUTERS

Towards the end of 2017, the price of bitcoin surged to almost $20,000. This represented a 1,300 per cent increase from its price at the start of the year

Reuters

On 3 January, 2009, the genesis block of bitcoin appeared. It came less than a year after the pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto detailed the cryptocurrency in a paper titled 'Bitcoin: A peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System'

Reuters

On 22 May, 2010, the first ever real-world bitcoin transaction took place. Lazlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins the equivalent of $90 million at today's prices

Lazlo Hanyecz

Bitcoin soon gained notoriety for its use on the dark web. The Silk Road marketplace, established in 2011, was the first of hundreds of sites to offer illegal drugs and services in exchange for bitcoin

On 29 October, 2013, the first ever bitcoin ATM was installed in a coffee shop in Vancouver, Canada. The machine allowed people to exchange bitcoins for cash

REUTERS/Dimitris Michalakis

The world's biggest bitcoin exchange, MtGox, filed for bankruptcy in February 2014 after losing almost 750,000 of its customers bitcoins. At the time, this was around 7 per cent of all bitcoins and the market inevitably crashed

Getty Images

In 2015, Australian police raided the home of Craig Wright after the entrepreneur claimed he was Satoshi Nakamoto. He later rescinded the claim

Getty Images

On 1 August, 2017, an unresolvable dispute within the bitcoin community saw the network split. The fork of bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology spawned a new cryptocurrency: Bitcoin cash

REUTERS

Towards the end of 2017, the price of bitcoin surged to almost $20,000. This represented a 1,300 per cent increase from its price at the start of the year

Reuters

Facebook announced earlier this year that it plans to launch its Libra cryptocurrency at some point next year. It is designed to allow people to make and receive payments through Facebook-owned apps like Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, which are used by billions of people around the world.

Since its unveiling, however, Libra has faced significant resistance from financial regulators in the US and Europe. In September, French economy and finance minister Bruno Le Mairesaid that he would block the development of Libra and France as it posed a threat to "monetary sovereignty".

Politicians in the UK have expressed similar reservations, with Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee Chair Damian Collins claiming that Libra represents Facebook's attempt to "turn itself into its own country".

Several of the payments firms that Facebook worked with in the early stages of Libra's development, such as Mastercard and Visa, also recently dropped out.

In China, plans for a state-backed cryptocurrency appear to be moving forward as the country's central bank prepares for a launch expected in the coming months.

Last week, President Xi Jinping hailed bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology as an "important breakthrough", marking an about-turn in the country's official stance on cryptocurrency.

All negative sentiment towards the technology also appears to have been purged from Chinese social media, with cryptocurrency news resource CNLedgernoting that "articles saying blockchain technology is a scam are now banned".

A new law coming in to effect on 1 January will also serve to facilitate "the development of the cryptography business and ensuring the security of cyberspace and information".

Read the original post:

EU considers launching its own version of bitcoin - The Independent