Category Archives: Bitcoin

TOPSHOT - A woman buys in a store that accepts bitcoins in El Zonte, La Libertad, El Salvador on ... [+] September 4, 2021. - The Congress of El Salvador approved in June a law that will make bitcoin legal tender in the country from September 7, with the aim of boosting its economy although analysts warn of a negative impact. (Photo by MARVIN RECINOS / AFP) (Photo by MARVIN RECINOS/AFP via Getty Images)

A consistent thread about bitcoin has been that if it succeeds, it will inevitably invite government legislation and regulation to shut it down. This has been a backhanded critique of sorts advanced by investors like Ray Dalio who are on bitcoins side, but worry about its success attracting the attention of the state powers that be.

This isnt an altogether surprising or irrational fear. We live centuries after the establishment of the nation-state as all-powerful welfare state, military, and taxation hub. Its clear that state powers are often only reined in by political constraints (rather than physical or technical ones). Could governments shut down bitcoin if they wanted to?

This is probably a lot harder than one might think. Bitcoin is somewhat resilient to government crackdowns because of its origin, and the way the network is built. While states, if focused enough, could probably inflict some damage to bitcoin if it was a central state objective across the board, there are many factors for why a government crackdown on bitcoin is overrated for destroying the network.

Since bitcoin is internationalized, it would require consent and coordination among almost every nation-state in order to effectively crack down on bitcoin. While the major world powers (such as the United States and China) have a bloc-like effect, and whereas there has been more coordination (often US-led) on issues such as climate change and corporate tax rates, when you look at issues as diverse as COVID-19 and the tit-for-tats of strategic rivals and Olympic boycotts it is still difficult to see countries focusing on bitcoin in unison.

Large-scale coordination would be required to shut down the network in any meaningful way: otherwise, people could transact and support the bitcoin network in other nations or even in space. A slow nation-by-nation ban can affect the network: at an extreme, an unlikely state-led ban in the United States might choke off bitcoin from American-led financial systems and markets with near-total global reach. Yet, so long as bitcoin was trans-actable across other states, a global ban could not be accomplished nor a government crackdown.

One of the most unique points about bitcoin is that there is no central leader figure to pin down. Satoshis disappearance, and Hal Finneys untimely death, have led to a situation where there isnt a company CEO or some other central leader to go after. While there are pressure points nation-states can use to pursue their objectives (for example, physical concentration of miners, key technical contributors still constrained by borders), there isnt a central one, but rather a set of diffused ones. We saw this when the Chinese state banned bitcoin mining in its territory: did that spell the end of bitcoin? No: miners simply shifted their equipment elsewhere, and within a few months, hash rate was as high if not higher than what it was before.

States are not used to dealing with organizations like this: they are used to dealing with multinational corporations to a certain extent, but there are usually a set of central pressure points and leadership that a state can lean on to get that corporation to adhere to certain rules and regulations. That, due to bitcoins unique creation story, is very unlikely to happen with any attacks on the bitcoin network.

In the United States, code is regarded as protected speech software source code which powers bitcoin is protected by the First Amendment. In order to attack the distribution of code that powers bitcoin, countries like the United States would have to fundamentally change themselves and subvert long-held covenants of limited powers and the rule of law. This is not impossible (bitcoin, over a decades and even centuries long time horizon is a bet that (some) technical constraints are better than purely political ones for maintaining rule of law) but would be very out of character, and probably politically untenable.

The Internet may never have been encrypted at all export controls were initially placed on encryption, and commercial uses were seen skeptically. However, states partially relented when the commercial possibility of the Internet became clear. Now encryption powers communications as well as online banking and e-commerce sales. This is not something states like: the Five Eyes and allied countries want to subvert end-to-end encryption and authoritarian states like the Chinese state either have backdoors or other mechanisms to promote social control. Yet it shows that, when faced with something that might threaten national security, the need for states to show GDP outcomes and to deliver wealth to their peoples might override their preferences in other areas.

As more and more countries adapt bitcoin in some fashion, this pressure will become larger until perhaps one day, we might see a bitcoin-friendly bloc of nations emerge similar to the Cairns Group for agriculture. Some will find that their domestic power-generation is more efficiently parsed through open-source bitcoin rather than supporting the fractional reserves of other countries. The more states are turned over to supporting the bitcoin network, the harder it will be for other states to attack it.

The way bitcoin is implemented makes it (more) prohibitive for any centralized collection of computers to disrupt the system.

With more than 170,000 PH/s of hash rate securing the system (as of the date of writing) from a coordinated 51% attack (where an attacker could take over the system and propogate invalid spends in order to down the system for legitimate users, or to benefit monetarily from it), a projected security budget of around $45-60mn a day, and enough stakeholders (from investors, code contributors, analytics firms, miners and businesses and now governments that accept bitcoin) who have placed their financial livelihoods on monitoring the chain such that bitcoin could be secure beyond its fundamental dynamics bitcoin is large enough to warrant significant resources for any attack, resources that wouldnt be available for just any nation-state, and which would have to be continually deployed in a way that would make it hard to obscure who the attacker was.

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We live in a heady time where magic Internet money has suddenly become the concern of Clausewitz readers around the world. As bitcoin grows more prominent, the possibility that it attracts state powers to disrupt or fully coopt it grows yet those who play some part in the network, either from investing, transacting or supporting its infrastructure, can rest assured that the system has some inherent properties that make it more resilient than you might expect to even the strongest of attacks.

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Why Fears Of A 'Government Crackdown' On Bitcoin Are Overrated - Forbes

Cryptocurrency prices and investor sentiment reversed course on Dec. 15 after Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell confirmed the bank's plan to hike interest rates in 2022 and slow down the bond purchasing program that had been in play since the emergence of the coronavirus in March 2020.

Following the announcement, Bitcoin (BTC)price tacked on a 1.65% gain, bringing the price above $49,000 and Ether trekked back above the $4,000 mark. Altcoins followed suit with their usual double-digit gains and for the moment, it appears as if bulls have taken back control of the market.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the biggest gainers over the past 24-hours were ECOMI (OMI), Aragon (ANT) and RAMP.

ECOMI is a technology company focused on building a blockchain-based digital collectibles marketplace where users can buy and share nonfungible tokens (NFTs) across the social network service using the project's native OMI token as a medium of exchange.

VORTECS data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for OMI on Dec. 1, prior to the recent price rise.

The VORTECS Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historical and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS Score for OMI climbed into the green zone and reached a high of 81 on Dec. 1, around 96 hours before the price began to increase 39% over the next ten days.

The building momentum for OMI comes as the ECOMI ecosystem migrates to Immutable, an Ethereum (ETH) scaling solution specifically designed for NFT projects.

Aragon Ethereum network-based protocol that supports decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) developing governance structures to encourage community engagement.

VORTECS data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for ANT on Dec. 12, prior to the recent price rise.

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS Score for ANT began to pick up on Dec. 12 and reached a high of 70 around two hours before the price began to increase 60% over the next two days.

The rally in ANT price is taking place at the same time as a DAO global hackathon aims to attract developers to the Aragon ecosystem and there are rumors that the DAOpunks NFT project conduct an airdrop to ANT holders.

Related: Bitcoin sheds dumb money as retail buys most BTC since March 2020 crash

RAMP is a multi-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that helps investors become more capital efficient.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after hitting a low of $0.179 on Dec. 14, the price of RAMP spiked 52.56% to a daily high at $0.274 on Dec. 15 as its 24-hour trading volume surged 800% to $54.2 million.

The price spike for RAMP came after the launch of a liquidity mining incentive program resulted in a sharp uptick in the total value locked in the protocol. Currently there is $63.3 million invested across Ethereum, Polygon and Binance Smart Chain.

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $2.126 trillion and Bitcoins dominance rate is 41.7%.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

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ECOMI, Aragon and Ramp breakout after Bitcoin price pushes above $49K - Cointelegraph

Even with its otherworldly volatility,Bitcoin(CRYPTO: BTC) has been one of the best investments to own over the past several years. And in 2021, that theme continued, as the most valuablecryptocurrencyhas soared nearly 70%this year.

Risk-averse investors who avoid this burgeoning asset class might instead want to own actual businesses that give them the potential for outsized returns. In that case, look no further than The Joint Corp.(NASDAQ:JYNT). In fact, this nationwide franchisor of chiropractic clinics has even outperformed Bitcoin, up a remarkable 150% in 2021.

Does The Joint. Corp. stock look like anattractive opportunitytoday? Let's find out.

Image source: Getty Images.

As of Sept. 30, thebusinesshad666 total locations, of which 583 were franchised and 83 were corporate owned. What separates The Joint Corp. from traditional chiropractors is that the former only provides basic back adjustments. Sessions require no appointments and take just a few minutes to complete. There's no expensive equipment, and because patients don't need insurance, there's also no need for administrative staff.

While revenue won't soar going forward like it has historically (systemwide sales skyrocketed 70%annually from 2010 through 2020), investors can still expect serious gains as thecompany continues to gain scale. Thegross marginis just shy of 90%, as operating a capital-light franchise model is extremely lucrative.

There are some clear positive indicators that bode well for The Joint Corp.'s long-term prospects. Google Trendsdatashows that searches for "chiropractor near me" have trended higher over the past five years. Additionally, a 2020 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study revealed that 25%of U.S. adults had back pain within the prior three months.

As the country's vaccination rate ticks up and people feel comfortable seeing a chiropractor for their back pain, The Joint Corp. will be there to treat them. Not only does the chiropractic care market generate $18 billionin annual revenue, but 50%of Americans don't even know what the word "chiropractic" even means. Powerful momentum, supported by what I believe is the general public'srising interest in health and wellness, will propel thisbusinessin the coming year andbeyond.

By 2023, management expects to have 1,000 clinics open. And they see the potential for 1,800 locations in the U.S. one day. This means the company's profitability, which has been accelerating in recent years, could be multitudes higher in the not-too-distant future. That's a key ingredient when it comes to achieving market-crushing returns.

Since reporting third-quarter financial results on Nov. 4, the stock has fallen nearly 32% (as of Dec. 15). TheRussell 2000, asmall-cap index, is down just 9%during the same time period. Although The Joint Corp. posted a year-over-year revenue increase of 36% for Q3, it was down meaningfully from the 61% jump in the prior quarter. I think this sequential deceleration spooked investors.

And uncertainty regarding the ongoing pandemic and the omicron variant, mixed with the often-discussed topics of inflation and the Fed's next move, result in high-growth names getting unusually hammered. The Joint Corp. is not immune to the market's latest whims.

Will The Joint Corp. outperform Bitcoin again in 2022? Your guess is as good as mine. But I think investors would be smart to take advantage of the recent price decline and consider buying shares in this fast-growing business. I know I will be.

This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the official recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. Were motley! Questioning an investing thesis -- even one of our own -- helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.

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This Under-the-Radar Stock Outpaced Bitcoin in 2021 -- Is It a Smart Buy Right Now? - Motley Fool

AN unfortunate Reddit user has lost his entire life savings after investing in Bitcoin - and couldn't dare tell his wife.

Goingall-in on the digital cryptocurrency, userPrudent_Plum_7644posted a heart-wrenching account of his experience and a warning to others.

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Writing on the Bitcoin subreddit, he said: "I completely messed up guys, my life savings are gone for good, I have learned a devastating hard lesson."

He goes on to detail how he and his wife amassed 1.7 BTC which, at current rates, is around 58,400.

He said it took the two of them ten years to amass the money, saving as much as possible and taking on odd jobs wherever possible.

Then hebegan trading.

"I started future trades and managed to turn the 1.7 BTCs into 2.1 BTCs, the classic beginner luck," he wrote.

Unfortunately, he put all the funds into a type of trade called leverage futures betting that Bitcoins value would continue to rise.

When it fell, he says he lost it all.

He wrote, "Of course it didnt play out, BTC went from touching 50k $ down to 47k $ and our whole life savings have been wiped out.

"I still havent say anything to my wife, she doesnt know that and this is killing me from the inside. I just dont know what to say to her, Im simply devastated. I barely can watch myself in the mirror."

Ending with a plea to others not to fall into the same trap, the Redditor posted: "Please follow my advice, dont trade guys, dont fall into these marketing traps like I did."

He posted screenshots of his future trade being slowly liquidated as Bitcoin fell rather than rose in value.

Other Redditors took pity, but reinforced the notion that putting the entirety of ones funds into a single trade is not a smart move.

One commented: "That sh** is legit dangerous and the average investor shouldnt touch it with a 10m pole."

Another said: "Sorry to hear that man. Be honest with your wife. Tell her your heart and beg for forgiveness. Then come up with a plan and rebuild your stack.

"And dont ever attempt to surprise your spouse by making a move with your entire combined life savings again. She has a right to know and not be surprised, either good or bad."

Galina Stavskaya, Head of Investments atClaro Money, explained: "Future trade is when you agree to buy or sell an investment product at a certain date in the future at a certain price, with both future transaction date and price are being determined today.

"Its like going to a store today and saying I will buy this car in 2 months at 5000 and signing a contract to do so.

"If the price of the car in 2 months is above 5,000 you made money, if the price is less than 5,000 you lost. The trade involves no exchange of money today only signing of the contract to perform this pre-planned transaction in the future."

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I lost my entire life savings on risky Bitcoin trades I couldnt dare tell my wife and its been killing... - The Sun

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has consistently supported dogecoin, a meme-inspired cryptocurrency. He's invested in it, along with bitcoin and ether, he said in October.

But to Musk, dogecoin has an advantage over bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies: He sees dogecoin as the best cryptocurrency to transact with.

"Fundamentally, bitcoin is not a good substitute for transactional currency," Musk told Time Magazine after being named Time's 2021 Person of the Year. "Even though it was created as a silly joke, dogecoin is better suited for transactions."

"[T]he transaction volume of bitcoin is low, and the cost per transaction is high," he said. Musk added that bitcoin is more suitable as a store of value, which is why its investors want to hold onto it and not sell it or use it for transactions.

Dogecoin, on the other hand, is a currency that "encourages people to spend, rather than sort of hoard as a store of value," he said.

However, while bitcoin supporters would agree that the asset is a store of value, they'd also argue that it's designed to be a sound peer-to-peer financial system and could be used for transactions, citing situations like El Salvador making bitcoin legal tender.

And although Musk is clearly bullish on cryptocurrency, he doubts that it will replace fiat. "I'm not a huge hater of fiat currency like many in the crypto world are," Musk told Time.

But, according to Musk, "there are advantages with crypto relative to fiat, in that fiat currency tends to get diluted by whatever government it is. It ends up being a pernicious tax on people, especially those who have cash savings with dilution of the money supply."

Nonetheless, financial experts view cryptocurrency as a volatile, risky and speculative investment. In turn, it's recommended to only invest what you can afford to lose.

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Don't miss: Elon Musk on his crypto portfolio: I only own bitcoin, ether and dogecoin

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Elon Musk says dogecoin is better to buy things with than bitcoin - CNBC

It's fair to say that even people who don't invest in crypto have at least heard about Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC). They just might not be able to name any other digital currency.

It makes sense. Bitcoin's hefty market cap of roughly $900 billion makes it larger than the next 40 cryptocurrencies combined. It's an obvious path for an investor wanting some exposure to the world of digital currencies, but is it the best approach? Could a portfolio where that investment is divided evenly between Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH) and Shiba Inu (CRYPTO:SHIB) deliver greater returns? Let's check out the two portfolios to see which strategy makes the most sense for you.

Image source: Getty Images.

Keith Noonan (Bitcoin):While other high-flying cryptocurrencies have come and gone after posting exciting, flash-in-the-pan pricing growth, Bitcoin has remained the focal point of the overall cryptocurrency market since its inception. The market-leading cryptocurrency has a legion of devoted backers for whom the token has almost religious significance, and the digital currency's highly engaged community of supporters has helped it march to incredible gains and remain atop the market.

Even after substantial sell-offs, Bitcoin has a market capitalization of roughly $896 billion.Its market cap accounts for roughly 41.5% of the total cryptocurrency market and is roughly double the size of Ethereum's valuation.

Bitcoin was created in 2009 and has been the largest cryptocurrency ever since. Meanwhile, Ethereum debuted in 2015, and Shiba Inu's digital token was minted in 2020. The gulf between the respective points of origination may not seem like much, but five years is a veritable lifetime twice over in the fast-moving crypto space, and Bitcoin's longevity is incredibly impressive when viewed in context.

Shiba Inu may still have explosive potential, but it continues to look like an incredibly high-risk investment even by cryptocurrency standards. And while the Ethereum's application-building functionality positions the ether token to grow with the evolution of cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other applications on the network, there's also a significant downside to this dynamic. If the overall value or adoption of Ethereum-based altcoins or NFTs drops precipitously, there's a good chance that the ether token will see significant sell-offs as well.

Bitcoin is the top brand name in the cryptocurrency space and has managed to survive through crashes and periods of market turmoil and uncertainty. While the thesis that Bitcoin will function as an effective store of value over the next decade and beyond is still to be tested, the token still stands out as a top play for investors seeking long-term exposure to the crypto space.

Rick Munarriz (Ethereum and Shiba Inu): Bitcoin is great, and over time it has easily beaten the market. What if you could crush the market instead? Investing the same amount -- only allocating half to Ethereum and the other half to Shiba Inu -- will be riskier than just going all in on Bitcoin. The potential return makes it the better approach for risk-tolerant investors.

Past performance is no indicator of future performance, but have you charted these three cryptos? Bitcoin is up a respectable 153% over the past year. Ethereum has soared 583% in the same time. Shiba Inu is up -- checks notes -- more than 57,000,000% over the past year.

It's at this point where the orchestra takes it down a notch. I'm going to disappoint the Shiba Inu bulls by saying that I don't think the trendy meme coin is going to be a crypto leader in the year ahead. My argument here is that Ethereum has what it takes to more than double Bitcoin's gains in 2022, singlehandedly winning this battle even if Shiba Inu goes to zero.

Shiba Inu is not going to zero. I just don't want to get into the game of predicting how many zeroes will follow the decimal point in forecasting where Shiba Inu will be in a year. Ethereum's path to appreciate is far more clear. A year from now it should have completed the highly anticipated upgrade that will make it faster, allowing it to process more transactions. It will also be cheaper to use as well as more eco-friendly to produce. Ethereum already has several advantages to Bitcoin in terms of functional use in smart contracts, NFT marketplaces, gaming, and other online platforms. Within a year it wouldn't be a surprise to see Ethereum closing the gap with Bitcoin, and that should be enough to warrant choosing a portfolio that is 50% Ethereum and 50% Shiba Inu over one that is 100% in Bitcoin.

The obvious answer to some will be to stick to the top cryptocurrency, limiting the divesting into digital currencies to Bitcoin. Others will favor trying some of the faster moving denominations including Ethereum and Shiba Inu. Both approaches could beat the market in 2022.

This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the official recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. Were motley! Questioning an investing thesis -- even one of our own -- helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.

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Better Buy: Bitcoin or a 50/50 Split of Ethereum and Shiba Inu? - Motley Fool

While the crypto economy has tumbled in value during the last two weeks, the managing partner at Multicoin Capital, Kyle Samani, recently shared his views on why he thinks the next bear market will not be like the last one. In fact, Samani remarks that there may not even be a bear market at all.

One thing is for sure, cryptocurrency investors are fearful of a full-on bear market like the past two crypto winters that shaved digital currency prices by more than 80% in value after each top. Currently, anywhere between 25% to 30% of the value since the crypto price highs on November 10, have been lost and bearish sentiment has put pressure on the crypto economy as a whole. However, despite the 30% drawdown in market values, Multicoin Capitals managing partner Kyle Samani shared his thoughts in a recent Twitter thread published two days ago.

Why the next bear market will not be like the last one, Samani said. And in fact, we may not have a bear market at all. Or we may have half a bear market, depending on your perspective. Samani further says that broadly speaking, there are two types of people in crypto: money crypto and tech crypto. In recent times, or since 2017, Samani claims that the tech crypto group has dominated. Since 2017, tech crypto has come to dominate the zeitgeist, Samani stressed.

Samani remarked that these days, it is clearly evident that tech crypto dominates and he says there are still lots of people who just think about BTC as an inflation hedge, but they represent an increasingly small [percentage] of press, social media, conference speaking, etc. The Multicoin Capital executive added:

Money crypto people think primarily about interest rates, the politicization of central banks, etc. Tech people care about building. Inevitably, politicians/CBs will do stuff that is bad for BTC as an inflation hedge. Whether thats banning it (or trying to), or just raising rates, or whatever. There is a natural ebb and flow to the actions of these institutions, and BTC-USD will naturally respond to it.

Samani further stated that tech people dont care about those types of things and that they just want to build cool new things. If bitcoin dropped by 50% because of government enforcements, Samani claims tech people will continue to build and investors will invest in tech crypto.

Its possible that crypto is still a few years too early from truly breaking into the mainstream, Samani noted on Sunday. But I think at this point, that no longer matters. The train has left the station: all of the tech builders and investors have underwritten tech crypto as having a meaningful probability of reshaping commerce, finance, and the fabric of society at large. And they are comfortable meeting on that and holding for years, the Multicoin Capital executive said.

Samani insists that there is a vast amount of capital out there that will never believe in BTC because they dont believe in owning non-productive assets. The crypto advocate believes that if there is a bear market, he expects solana (SOL) and ethereum (ETH) to outperform bitcoin (BTC) significantly. The tech money doesnt care about macro, Samani opined. They just want to be long [on] the stuff that they think is going to change the world.

Because everyone knows that software is eating the world, Samani predicts SOL and ETH demand will rise. He highlighted that everyone wants to be a part of the next big tech wave, and crypto is credibly one of those waves. The managing partner at Multicoin Capital further added that he believes BTC will get flipped in the medium term. He thinks as a tidal wave of tech money comes into the crypto economy, that it will crowd out the macro money group of people. Samani added:

Once BTC is flipped, its pretty much game over for BTC. A large part of the value prop of BTC is that its the largest and most liquid. Once those stop being true, it has even less to offer. As people recognize that this is becoming true, a lot of the money in BTC will rotate out and into SOL and ETH and other more productive names.

Following those statements, Samani surmised his theory by adding that the next bear market will not look like the last and stressed that the decoupling is real. When BTC gets flipped, things get *really* interesting, the Multicoin Capital executive concluded.

What do you think about the Multicoin Capital executive Kyle Samanis opinions about the bear market and certain cryptos outperforming bitcoin? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 4,900 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Multicoin Capital Exec Says There 'May Not Be a Crypto Bear Market at All,' Claims 'Bitcoin Will Get Flipped' News Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

As a systems engineer, he knew how to organize a project, and through the years he assembled an increasingly sophisticated strategy for finding the hard drive. He met with potential investors, and eventually made arrangements with two European businessmen who agreed to support a recovery operation. Howells would get only about a third of the proceeds. He had hoped for a much higher sum; the money was his, after all. He recalls being told, James, thats not how it works. He also consulted with companies that could perform targeted landfill removals. He became increasingly convinced that this was a realistic path. (They probably move more dirt in one season of Gold Rush: Alaska than would be required for this operation, he told me.) This past January, he obtained a letter from Ontrack testifying that the drive was likely recoverable, and, after the Newport dump manager whod explained to him the architecture of the landfill retired,Howells enlisted him as an expert.

Earlier this year, as the value of each bitcoin passed thirty-five thousand dollars, and Howellss holdings exceeded two hundred and eighty million dollars, he made a public offer to give Newport a twenty-five-per-cent cut of the proceeds, which could be earmarked for a COVID-19 relief fund. The city did not accept his offer. The attitude of the council does not compute, it just does not make sense, Howells complained to the Guardian. Across the Internet, commenters generally did not take a sympathetic view of Howellss situation. Your loss fool, a poster on the Web site WalesOnline declared. This is the ultimate definition of a Loser, another wrote, adding, Wondering how this guy even survived into adulthood.

For Howells, it was a particularly cruel twist that he could not get a serious meeting with Newport officials despite having become arguably the citys most famous resident. He had thought that he was striking a blow for the little guy by mining bitcoin; now it was clear that, in Newport at least, little guys still had no power. Its my own local team who are screwing me over! he told me. Its not bankers, its not somebody from a far distanceits the people Ive grown up with and lived with.

This past May, Howells finally was granted a Zoom meeting with two city officials, one of whom was responsible for Newports waste and sanitation services. She listened politely to his proposal to recover the bitcoin, at no cost to the city, but was not persuaded. As he recalls it, she informed him, You know, Mr.Howells, there is absolutely zero appetite for this project to go ahead within Newport City Council. When the meeting ended, she said that she would call him if the situation changed. Months of silence followed. (A spokesperson for the city council told me that the official permit for the site does not allow excavation work.)

Earlier this fall, I went to see Howells in Newport. We had been talking and texting for nearly a year, mostly on the messaging app Telegram. He had been by turns evasive and defensive, often coming across as an unyielding cyber libertarian. Tech shaped his world view. At one point, I asked him what he thought about the still novel COVID-19 vaccines. He replied, Something Ive learnt from IT world... dont ever get the first version. This past January, when online brokerage companies restricted trading in GameStop stock in order to limit its price rise, Howells wrote to me, It shows once and for all, in plain view of everyone watching, that the game (life) is completely and utterly rigged against the little guy. While we affably fenced, the value of a bitcoin rose to sixty-three thousand dollars in April, then slumped to thirty thousand dollars in July, then rose again.

On October 21st, the day I arrived in Newport, the value of a bitcoin had just hit a new peak: nearly sixty-seven thousand dollars. Howells met me by the train station, wearing jeans and a crisp sweatshirt from Lonsdale. He drives a twenty-year-old BMW convertible that he bought before his bitcoin days. He is small and fit, with a skin-fade haircut and a light-brown half beard. The over-all effect was of concision and capability.

Moments after we sat down in a coffee shop, he pulled out his phone and showed me an app that he uses to track his holdings. Under the rubric Unspent Coins was the current value of his bitcoin: $533,963,174. The previous day, he noted, hed made twenty million dollars. We had Welsh pancakes, and he paid with cash. He explained, Using credit cards is kind of enabling the opposition, if you see what I mean.

We next went on a tour of Newport, and he told me about the citys history of finding lost objects, a topic on which he was very well informed. As we drove across the River Usk, he mentioned that, in 2002, while the city was building a new arts center along its banks, workers had dug up a fifteenth-century Iberian sailing ship. The next day, we visited the local antiquities museum, where he showed me a cooking pot, likely belonging to a Roman soldier, that had been buried in a nearby field. From the shattered remains trickled a trail of coins. Howells compared them to his buried hard drive, then corrected himself: the coins were not like bitcoin at all. Sometimes, he explained, messengers and go-betweens had clipped off a bit of precious metal to repay themselves for the trouble of handling transactions. People stole from the coins, he said. The percentage of silver in Roman coins kept declining, setting off runaway inflation. Its similar to what the central banks are doing today, he said. The widespread use of bitcoin, he assured me, would prevent a similar economic collapse.

We went to the dump. It was a bucolic site between an estuary and docks where, many years ago, ships had been loaded with Welsh coal. Derricks stood idle. To get to the landfill, we had to drive past some city officesthe enemy, Howells joked. Newport felt rickety: faded signs on small businesses, empty land where factories had once stood. As he drove, Howells mused on why the local officials had refused to allow him to dig up his hoard. He theorized that the dump had not been following environmental regulations, and that unearthing a section of landfill could embarrass the city and make it vulnerable to lawsuits. Who knows how many dirty baby nappies are buried out there? he asked.

He drove to the area where he had estimated that his hard drive would likely be. We passed through an open gate and stopped in a paved lot. This large, empty space looked like it was destined for some sort of industrial development by the city, but Howells wanted it to serve first as the command headquarters for his excavation project. We got out. This plot of land is called B-21, he saida propitious number. How many bitcoins exist? Twenty-one million!

The sun was shining, an unusual occurrence in Wales in the fall. He pointed at an incline about a hundred feet away: at the top was a tufted hill with gauges inserted in it, to measure gas release. The total area we want to dig is two hundred and fifty metres by two hundred and fifty metres by fifteen metres deep, he told me, with excitement. Its forty thousand tons of waste. Its not impossible, is it?

After our visit to the dump, Howells invited me to his house, so that I could see a PowerPoint presentation hed delivered, on Zoom, to the Newport officials. His project, he told me, was budgeted at five million pounds, but there is scope for additional funding. He calculated that a crew of twenty-five could complete the job in nine months to a year. As he spoke, his dog, Ruby, ran back and forth at our feet. Before he showed me the slides, we went down the street to buy beer and crisps at the nearest convenience store. He had equipped the cashier to accept bitcoin a few years ago, but it had not proved a success. No one used it but me, Howells said, shrugging. He gave the proprietor two pounds, and a pound that he owed from an earlier visit.

We returned to his house. On a wall of the living room, above his computer, was a gold-and-black Bitcoin clock. Its hands were stopped. Howells checked his holdings. He was down twenty-two million dollars that day, but he was unperturbed. I expected this, he said. Whenever it shoots up so fast, you always have to expect it to come down a little. In fact, I expect it to come down a lot more.

He loaded the PowerPoint presentation and pulled up a slide titled Consortium Members. An avatar of Howells was at the center, with a pickaxe and a bag of gold. Another slide depicted a flowchart of the process by which his hard drive would be returned to him: dump trucks would carry items from the pit to a hopper, which would feed them onto a conveyor belt, from which the material would pass under a large 3-D object detection system to identify all hard drive objects for manual retrieval. The object detector was an X-ray machine outfitted with artificial-intelligence software. It can spot a gun inside a truck! Howells told me. All detritus would be loaded onto forty-ton trucks and then, according to Newports preference, would be reburied, incinerated, or sent to China.

I said that surely there was an easier way. The whole point of bitcoin was that it was immaterial. It was the eight thousand bitcoins that he was after, and they were the product of a computer algorithm. It was a matter of public record that someone owned them. Why not just run the system backward to the day that Howells mined his coins, and let him re-mine them?

Howells recoiled. My proposal reminded him, he said, of the worst moment in cryptocurrency history. In 2016, the managers of a competing cryptocurrency platform, Ethereum, agreed to restore the equivalent of sixty million dollars to one of the currencys holders, after the money was stolen through a vulnerability in the systems code. Howells had publicly disagreed with this decision at the timehe has been very active on crypto social-media sitesand when Ethereums holders split into two camps he sided with those who refused to acknowledge the rollback. Howells told me, with considerable passion, Just for the record, if somebody came along and said, We can get your five hundred million by doing it this way, Id say, No, thank you. Because if they can do it that way for my coins, then they can do it that way for anyones coins. And then, if the government asked them to seize someones coins, guess what? They could do that as well.

Read the rest here:
Half a Billion in Bitcoin, Lost in the Dump - The New Yorker

Jack Dorsey is resigning from Twitter to spend more time with his other company, Square. In some ways, the choice between Twitter and Square is a straight choice between political clout and profit. Square, a payments platform co-founded by Dorsey in 2009, is worth almost three times Twitters current value at about $97bn (73bn). But Square will never be credited with the equivalent of the Twitter revolution, or make headlines by banning a former president.

Venture capital is pouring money into cryptocurrencies and payment platforms. Twitter, by contrast, having only started to become profitable since 2018, has always been more notable for its political impact than its commercial pull. However, Twitter, like the wider social industry of which it is a part, may be experiencing the limits of its growth. In terms of commercial reach, Twitter is no competition for industry giants such as Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram and TikTok, which each have well over a billion users. But even Facebook and Instagram are slowing down.

Generation Z is turning off the major platforms. Downloads of Facebook and Instagram have been declining, according to a Bank of America report published in 2019. Both Twitter and Facebook have been losing ground with businesses due to this demographic shift in demand. By capitalising on the rise of video-sharing, TikTok has captured a much younger audience than Facebook or Twitter. Some businesses are also abandoning social media entirely, from fashion house Bottega Veneta, to Tesla, Lush and JD Wetherspoon.

It makes sense that investors are looking for the next big thing from tech, and that social media bosses would be searching for ways to profit from the cryptocurrency bubble. Before he left, Dorsey had been trying to expand Twitter into offering crypto-based payments and non-fungible token services. His replacement as CEO, Parag Agrawal, was tasked with developing Twitters crypto strategy, and it seems likely that Twitter will continue to plough that field.

Twitter is not the only social media firm attempting to exploit such opportunities. Facebooks parent company, Meta, has been trying to launch a cryptocurrency that could be sent worldwide via Facebook products, so far to no avail. This move makes more sense for a platform like Facebook, given that it has always offered a patchwork of services, such as video, photo, fan pages, gaming, buying and selling, and so on, compared with Twitters straightforward microblogging service.

However, this isnt just about profitability. It is about the economic power of belief. Dorsey is also a cryptocurrency fanatic. A particular champion of bitcoin, he claims it will one day unite a deeply divided country behind it, and eventually become the worlds single currency. Square accepts payments on its cash app from bitcoin, but no other cryptocurrency. Recently, Square released a white paper for a decentralised bitcoin exchange platform that would appear to freeze out competing cryptocurrencies.

Dorsey is also a doom-monger about fiat currencies those issued by governments. Hyperinflation, he oracularly warns, is going to change everything. Its happening. This is baseless. Recent inflationary pressures due to the increased costs of production and transit caused by Covid and extreme weather patterns are real. But there is no hyperinflation in the global economy. Given Dorseys profile and potential impact on investors, it could be considered a reckless thing to say; but it also reflects the strange ideology of all bitcoin enthusiasts.

According to its devotees, bitcoin is a deflationary force that routes around the inefficiencies and tyrannies of central banks and fiat currencies. It is deflationary because it is designed to mimic the supply of a real-world commodity, gold. This means that the number of coins that it is possible to mine is restricted: the supply will eventually hit a ceiling with 21m bitcoins. So even though, as the Peoples Bank of China recently noted, the digital coin is not backed up by any real value, it operates as its own virtual gold standard. Moreover, bitcoins apologists say, decentralised blockchain technology cuts out all middle men, a principle that can be deployed in gaming, finance and social networks. It makes transactions cheaper and faster and keeps efficient records without the oversight of a big state.

The advantage of this upstart libertarian ideology is that it chimes directly with the commercial interests of bitcoin investors. Currently, one bitcoin will trade for 42,973. But it wouldnt be worth a dime if enough investors hadnt decided to treat it as though it were gold. It is a hyperstition: a fiction that makes itself true because enough people believe in it. All currencies rely on what Michel de Certeau called a secret network of believers. We all must believe, not only in the value of the currency we exchange, but that others believe in it too. We look to a higher power, typically the central bank, to guarantee this belief. In the case of cryptocurrencies, the tech itself is supposed to eliminate the need for all these elaborate systems. This is typical of the California ideology, which blends the values of the libertarian right with the countercultural ethos of some of the internets pioneers.

Yet, far from driving any great disruption, the value of cryptocurrencies is mainly a byproduct of developments in fiat currencies. The latter benefited from a glut of spare investment capital caused by the institutionalisation of quantitative easing. The crypto boom since Covid has therefore been made possible by central banks sending money supply through the roof. Ironically, the cryptocurrencies have benefited from precisely the sort of central bank policies that the libertarian right tends to complain about.

Dorseys belief in a single global cryptocurrency is not likely to happen. And, as the economist Yanis Varoufakis has pointed out, it would actually be disastrous if bitcoin did replace fiat currencies. The bitcoin community would have no incentive to expand the money supply in the event of a crisis. That scenario would benefit the rich holders of the coin, such as tech monopolists, investment bankers and energy oligarchs, while wrecking the lives of everyone else.

Nonetheless, we would be fools to underestimate belief backed up by spare investment capital. Since at least 2017, when a bitcoin was trading at less than $1,000 (750), there have been a glut of articles explaining why the bitcoin bubble is unsustainable. But, far from falling apart, it continues to surge. Even after Elon Musk dropped the coin earlier this year, and China banned traders from offering bitcoin prices, its tradeable value climbed. The total value of cryptocurrencies today is close to $3tn. With Amazon looking to accept payment in bitcoins, there is space for further growth. Dorseys messianic belief in the power of crypto will probably be rewarded with profit for some time, in a way that the hype around Twitter never was.

If we underestimate the economic value of belief, we will underestimate how large the bubble can grow.

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Jack Dorseys ditched Twitter for bitcoin. Has the social media bubble burst? - The Guardian

New Delhi: The cryptocurrency market was back in the green on Tuesday as investors picked quality tokens at lower prices. Bitcoin hit the $50,000 mark as concerns over the Omicron variant eased across the globe and investors lapped up riskier assets.

Barring the dollar pegged USD Coin, all other nine out of the top 10 digital tokens were trading higher at 9.30 IST. Binance Coin led the gainers with a 8 per cent rally, followed by Ethereum and Cardano which gained 5 per cent each.

The global crypto market cap jumped about 5 per cent to $2.37 trillion compared to the last day. Meanwhile, the total crypto market volume advanced 14 per cent to $137.77 billion.

India could see apps like Robinhood emerge in the next few years if cryptocurrencies are classified as an asset class. Nasdaq-listed Robinhood is a mobile app that allows users to conduct commission-free trades of stocks, exchange-traded funds and cryptocurrencies. While there are similar discount brokers in India, none of them currently allows trading in crypto.

Expert's TakeSince kicking off the week on a weak start, Bitcoins price recovered slightly, pulling up other top cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Binance Coin, said CoinDCX Research Team.

"Especially with the global spread of Omicron, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects that the evolving pandemic will further dent global economic growth and recovery," it added. "With the bleak outlook of the pandemic and the economy, gold prices are gaining as investors hedge in the traditional safe-haven metal."

Global UpdateA Bitcoin mining operation is opening northeast of Niagara Falls this month on the site of the last working coal plant in the state of New York.

Across the state, a former aluminum plant in Massena, already one of the biggest cryptocurrency sites in the United States, is expanding.

Tech View by Giottus Cryptocurrency ExchangeArguably the most popular Layer-2 blockchain in the crypto market, Polygon (MATIC) has been on quite a run lately. It is already supporting other major crypto projects such as Aave (thanks to its inexpensive fees and rapid settlement times) and has surged in value post its implementation of Miden, a zero knowledge (ZK) rollup solution that helps scale the Polygon Network.

Despite the crypto market crash over the weekend, it continues to trade above $2.2, indicating further strength and signs of more upside.

Should a correction arrive, its previously well-tested support levels of $1.97 and $1.88, both based off the fibonacci pulls of its recent drop, should come to the rescue once again. Over the mid-term, MATIC looks exceedingly bullish and has the potential to set new highs soon.

Major LevelsSupport: $1.97, $1.88, $1.73Resistance: $2.31, $2.4

Time is in UTC and the daily time frame is 12:00 AM - 12:00 PM UTC

(Views and recommendations given in this section are the analysts' own and do not represent those of ETMarkets.com. Please consult your financial adviser before taking any position in the asset/s mentioned.)

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Top cryptocurrency prices today: Bitcoin hits $50,000; Ethereum, Binance coin jump up to 8% - Economic Times