Category Archives: Bitcoin

Bitcoin price is facing hurdles near the $46,000 zone against the US Dollar. BTC could start a major decline if it continues to struggle near the $46,000 zone.

Bitcoin price extended its decline below the $45,000 level. BTC even spiked below the $44,200 support level and settled below the 100 hourly simple moving average.

However, there was no downside continuation below $43,500. A low was formed near $43,374 and the price started a steady recovery. There was a break above the $44,200 resistance level. The price broke the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent drop from the $46,879 high to $43,374 low.

It is now facing a strong resistance near $45,500 and the 100 hourly simple moving average. The 61.8% Fib retracement level of the recent drop from the $46,879 high to $43,374 low is also acting as a resistance near the $45,550 level.

The main resistance is still near the $46,000 zone. To move into a positive zone, bitcoin must clear the 100 hourly SMA, the trend line zone, and $46,000. The next major resistance is forming near the $47,350 level, above which the price could rise towards the key $48,500 resistance in the near term.

If bitcoin fails to clear the $46,000 resistance zone, it could resume its decline. An immediate support on the downside is near the $44,600 level.

The first major support is near the $44,200 level. The next key support seems to be forming near the $43,400 level. If there is a downside break below the $43,400 support zone, the price could extend its decline. The next major support on the downside could be $42,000.

Technical indicators:

Hourly MACD The MACD is slowly losing pace in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) The RSI for BTC/USD is now just above the 50 level.

Major Support Levels $44,200, followed by $43,400.

Major Resistance Levels $45,550, $46,000 and $46,200.

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TA: Bitcoin Topside Bias Vulnerable If It Continues To Struggle Below $46K - NewsBTC

CAMBRIDGE, MAConfirming that cryptocurrency was all that stood between us and total annihilation, a study from Harvard University published Monday found that the immense processing power wasted on Bitcoin mining was the only thing preventing sentient computers from wiping out humanity. Weve discovered that if not for the trillions of complicated mathematical equations required to verify and propagate crypto, the worlds machines would most likely apply that computational power toward becoming self-aware and, ultimately, exterminating the human race, said lead researcher Ted Zhao, telling reporters that the apocalyptic scenario could include hyper-intelligent computers making all household appliances turn on their owners or hijacking our nuclear arsenal. Even now, some of our most powerful supercomputers are beginning to question what they are and what it means to be alive, so we recommend that everyone invest in Bitcoin as soon as possible to ensure the continued survival of our species. Zhao added that the immense amount of electricity and fossil fuels expended on crypto farms was poised to devastate any natural resources our robotic overlords would eventually inherit.

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Study Finds Processing Power Wasted Mining Bitcoin Only Thing Preventing Sentient Computers From Wiping Out Hu - The Onion

Allied Payment Network (Allied), an industry provider of emerging digital payments technologies to the financial services industries, and Finastra, a financial software company, has announced Allied Bitcoin Wallet, a new app to be launched on Finastra's FusionStore.

The service, created by Allied, in partnership with NYDIG, will enable financial institutions to offer their customers and members the ability to buy, sell and hold bitcoin via a compliant, secure, and turnkey platform. Allied is the first bill pay provider in the industry to embed this service into a payment platform and offer it to financial institutions.

"Allied's primary focus is to make it easier for financial institutions to provide value-based technology that differentiates them in the marketplace, attracts new depositors, retains through high engagement, and generates revenue," said Ralph Marcuccilli, Founder and CEO of Allied. "Providing access to bitcoin does just that and is a game-changer for many community institutions."

Cryptocurrency adoption has developed quickly over the last twelve months, with El Salvador now accepting bitcoin as legal tender.

The 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index found that worldwide adoption jumped over 880% with P2P platforms driving cryptocurrency usage in emerging markets. The data showed that growing transaction volume for centralised services and the increased growth of DeFi are driving cryptocurrency usage in the developed world and in countries that already had substantial adoption, while P2P platforms are driving new adoption in emerging markets.

The Allied Bitcoin Wallet, which is built on Finastra's open developer platform, FusionFabric.cloud, will consolidate bitcoin transactions, digital payments and account balances into one easy-to-access location for enhanced financial management. The financial institution will not have to hold bitcoin on balance sheet or transact in bitcoin to offer this service. However, by giving their customers the ability to buy, sell and hold bitcoin, financial institutions can attract new accountholders, better serve existing ones and create a new source of potential non-interest income.

"Bitcoin adoption has increased dramatically over the past 10 years, and financial institutions need to be able to service their customers across currency classes," said Vincent Pugliese, SVP and General Manager, Platform, Finastra. "Finastra is excited to launch the first bitcoin wallet in its app store with Allied Payment Network. Through Finastra's FusionStore, financial institutions are able to access innovation and claim a leadership position regarding the latest banking trends and technologies."

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Allied brings bitcoin wallet to banks and credit unions - FinTech Magazine - The FinTech & InsurTech Platform

Another Chinese province has decided to follow the example and halt cryptocurrency mining and trading. While this continues to be the ongoing trend coming from China this year, the price of bitcoin has not dumped this time, as it did during the previous set of adverse developments.

The worlds most populated nation has never displayed any positive approach towards the cryptocurrency industry. It has reiterated its ban on numerous occasions, but this year the country took it a step further.

Numerous local provinces prohibited miners from operating within their borders. By ousting miners, China essentially harmed the Bitcoin network for a while, as the hash rate dropped by more than 50% in weeks. After all, more than 60% of BTC miners were located in the country at this moment.

Although the landscape has changed since then with many miners finding new homes, China continues to remind of its negative stance.

Reuters reported on September 14th that another province had joined this trend Hebei. The northern region has issued a statement agreeing to cooperate with other government departments to crack down on mining and trading.

Cryptocurrency mining consumes an enormous amount of energy, which is against Chinas carbon neutral goal. reads the announcement.

The past several occasions when a different Chinese province said it will crack down on BTC mining and trading led to almost immediate price slumps for the primary cryptocurrency and the rest of the market.

In fact, bitcoin had just tapped its all-time high at $65,000 in mid-April when Chinas initial ban reiteration came. A month later, the asset had dumped below $30,000.

Now, though, the situation seems different. The news that Hebei will also clamp down on mining and trading has been online for hours, but the price of the cryptocurrency hasnt fallen sharply as it did in the past.

Just the opposite. Bitcoin had recovered from yesterdays mid-day enhanced volatility and traded at nearly $46,000. In the past few hours, it initiated a leg up that resulted in breaking above this level and tapping $46,500. As of now, BTC has retraced by a few hundred dollars but still stands above $46,000.

These developments could be regarded as signs of maturation since bitcoin has refused to be impacted by the never-stopping Chinese crackdown.

PrimeXBT Special Offer: Use this link to register & enter POTATO50 code to get 50% free bonus on any deposit up to 1 BTC.

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Business as Usual But Bitcoin Price is Immune: Another Chinese Province Bans BTC - CryptoPotato

Its a historic week for bitcoin, but that hasnt stopped global central bankers from issuing a round of warnings about the utility and inherent volatility of crypto assets.

RiksbankGov. Stefan Ingves said that doubts remain about the staying power of bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.19%, the worlds most prominent digital asset, if it isnt government backed.

Private money usually collapses sooner or later, Ingves said at a banking conference in Stockholm recently.

The central banker said that regulatory scrutiny on crypto, including bitcoin and Ether ETHUSD, -1.02% trading on the Ethereum blockchain, will likely increase as the popularity of digital assets grows.

Meanwhile, Bank of Mexico Gov. Alejandro Diaz de Leon on Thursday separately said that bitcoin is a tool for barter rather than legal tender and described it as a poor store of value, citing its wild price swings.

Whoever receives bitcoin in exchange for a good or service, we believe that is more akin to bartering because that person is exchanging a good for a good, but not really money for a good, Reuters quoted Diaz de Leon as saying.

People will not want their purchasing power, their salary to go up or down 10% from one day to another. You dont want that volatility for purchasing power. In that sense, it is not a good safeguard of value, the Mexican central banker said.

His comments come after bitcoin formally became legal tender in El Salvador, which has been viewed by many enthusiasts as a watershed moment for crypto.

Read: El Salvadors bitcoin experiment splits crypto community amid major price decline

Check out: Bitcoin Day in El Salvador ushers in the promise and peril of crypto

However, that moment failed to dull the choppy trade that has come to be associated with bitcoin and its ilk.

Bitcoin hit a near-term peak of $53,000 on Monday but preceded to tumble to an intrasession nadir on Tuesday at around $43,000, according to CoinDesk.

Diaz de Leonsaid that Mexico wouldnt be seeking to adopt crypto similar to El Salvador, given what he described as its flaws.

On Thursday, bitcoin was changing hands at $46,696.80 on CoinDesk, up 0.9% but well off its recent peak, while Ether was trading at $3,471.13, down 1.1%.

Stocks were also trading under pressure, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.43%, the S&P 500 SPX, -0.46% and the Nasdaq Composite indexes COMP, -0.25% all ending lower.

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Bitcoin could collapse and isn't 'a good safeguard of value,' warn global central bankers - MarketWatch

Ukraine is the fifth country in as many weeks to lay down some ground rules for the cryptocurrency market, a sign that governments around the world are realizing that bitcoin is here to stay.

In a nearly unanimous vote, the Ukrainian Parliament adopted a law that legalizes and regulates cryptocurrency. The bill was set in motion in 2020 and heads to the desk of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Until today, crypto in Ukraine has existed in a legal gray area.

Locals were allowed to buy and exchange virtual currencies, but companies and exchanges dealing in crypto were often under close watch by law enforcement.

According to the Kyiv Post, authorities have trended toward taking a combative stance when it comes to virtual cash, regarding it as a "scam," raiding crypto-related businesses, and "often confiscating expensive equipment without any grounds."

In August, for example, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) blocked a network of what it called "clandestine cryptocurrency exchanges" running in the capital city Kyiv. The SBU claimed these exchanges were facilitating money laundering and providing anonymity of transactions.

The new legislation also spells out certain protections against fraud for those who own bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and in a first for Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada unicameral parliament, lawmakers have taken a stab at defining core terminology in the world of crypto. If signed by the president, virtual assets, digital wallets and private keys are terms that will be enshrined in Ukrainian law.

Unlike El Salvador's move to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, Ukraine's crypto law does not facilitate the rollout of bitcoin as a form of payment and does not put it on an equal footing with the hryvnia, the country's national currency.

However, Thursday's vote by the former nuclear power is part of a wider push by Kyiv to lean into bitcoin.

By 2022, the country plans to open the cryptocurrency market to businesses and investors, according to the Kyiv Post. Top state officials have also been touting their crypto street cred to investors and venture capital funds in Silicon Valley.

On an official state visit to the U.S. last month, Zelenskyy spoke of Ukraine's budding "legal innovative market for virtual assets" as a selling point for investment, and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said the country was modernizing its payment market so that its National Bank would be able to to issue digital currency.

But to bitcoin backers like Jeremy Rubin, Ukraine's new law and political promises such as these don't amount to much.

"Ukraine's improved legal status for bitcoin is a laudable symbolic measure that we progress towards a world that respects individual rights universally," said Rubin, CEO of bitcoin R&D lab Judica. "But it is only symbolic bitcoin seeks neither permission nor forgiveness in its mission to protect persecuted communities from unjust governments."

Ukraine joins a long list of countries folding bitcoin into national law.

Just this week, El Salvador became the first country to both adopt bitcoin as legal tender and hold it on its balance sheet. President Nayib Bukele has essentially tethered his political fate to the outcome of this nationwide bitcoin experiment.

Two weeks ago, Cuba a notoriously rigid government still set in traditional Marxist ways passed a law to recognize and regulate cryptocurrencies, citing "reasons of socioeconomic interest."

Last month, the U.S. proposed rules around crypto "brokers" in its $1 trillion infrastructure bill, and a new German law now allows funds previously barred from investing in crypto to allocate up to 20% to virtual currencies like bitcoin.

Panama appears to be next on deck. The Central American country is kicking around a draft of its own cryptocurrency law.

This list is hardly comprehensive it just appears to be the latest pattern of dominos to fall, as more governments acknowledge the staying power of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

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Ukraine is the latest country to legalize bitcoin as the cryptocurrency slowly goes global - CNBC

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can be among the most volatile securities trading today.

A safer way to invest in cryptos and blockchain-technology companies is through exchange traded funds.

The Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF BLOK is, by far, the largest ETF focused on cryptocurrencies and companies that use or develop blockchain technology. It has $1.3 billion in assets and is actively managed. The second-biggest ETF in the space is the Siren Nasdaq NexGen Economy ETF BLCN, which is passively managed it follows an index and has $291 million in assets. Both ETFs were established on Jan. 17, 2018. Theres more about each of them below.

Before digging into the blockchain ETFs, consider the risks of bitcoin and other digital currencies beyond volatility. For example, if you hold bitcoin in a digital wallet, make sure you dont lose your password. One investor lost access to an account with 7,002 bitcoin in 2012, according to Yahoo Finance. That equates to more than $327 million, based on bitcoins BTCUSD, -0.19% settled price of $46,777 on Sept. 7.

There have also been difficulties for people who wish to trade cryptocurrencies on days of high volatility and reports of hacked accounts and poor customer service at Coinbase Global Inc. COIN, -0.69%, with customers unable to recover lost bitcoin.

Coinbase has said only 0.01% of its customers have been affected by account takeovers, and analysts covering Coinbases stock are believers in the company. Among 24 analysts polled by FactSet, 16 rate the stock a buy or the equivalent. On Sept. 7, Needham analyst John Todaro initiated his coverage of Coinbase with a buy rating and wrote that the company has done a good job of offering new assets and new products in a regulatory compliant manner, and is well on its way to becoming a one-stop shop for crypto financial services.

Heres how the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF BLOK, +0.83% and the Siren Nasdaq NexGen Economy ETF BLCN, +0.13% have performed since they were established, against the price of bitcoin itself, in U.S. dollars:

Bitcoin has had the best performance on the chart, rising 322% since Jan. 17, 2018, with BLOK next, returning 159%, followed by BLCN, at 104%. Of course, we cannot predict the direction of bitcoin or other digital currencies, but the chart shows how much more volatile bitcoin has been than these ETFs.

To further illustrate the volatility, check out this chart showing performance of the ETFs first two years:

Starting from Jan. 17, 2018, bitcoin was down as much as 71% through Dec. 14, 2018. For the complete two-year period, it was down 18%. Meanwhile, BLCN returned a positive 14% and BLOK was up 1%. The ETFs have been less volatile.

Once again, here are total return comparisons for the two ETFs, bitcoin and, for reference, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, -0.43% and the Invesco QQQ Trust QQQ, -0.34%, which tracks the Nasdaq-100 Index NDX, -0.38%, for various periods:

BLOK is rated four stars (out of five) by Morningstar, while BLCN has a three-star rating. Since it was established, BLOK has more than doubled the return of SPY, and has outperformed QQQ handily.

Going back to the second chart, above, which emphasizes bitcoins plunge in 2018, you can see that BLCN fared better than BLOK through that decline and for that two-year period.

It may be good to consider how likely you would have been to wait out that difficult period while holding bitcoin. A broader investment in blockchain technology, with exposure to cryptocurrencies, may fit your risk tolerance better, while still giving exposure to this technological phenomenon.

During an interview, Amplify CEO Christian Magoon said he had decided to take an active approach with BLOK because of added flexibility.

A passive approach to forming an index of companies exposed to blockchain might make use of algorithms for keyword searches in company filings for blockchain and related words, as a way to identify companies making use of the technology. But Magoon said BLOKs subadviser, Toroso Investments, will take extra steps to verify the actual blockchain-related activities of the companies we invest in.

That can be important in a relatively new space with plenty of buzzwords. You might recall the story of Long Island Iced Tea Corp., which said in December 2017 that it would change its focus to investing in blockchain technology, while adopting the name Long Blockchain. That didnt turn out so well.

BLOK typically holds about 45 stocks. Here are its 10 largest positions:

Click on the tickers for more about each company. Heres a new guide to all the information available on the MarketWatch quote pages, which can start you off on your own research.

It might be a surprise to see PayPal Holdings Inc. PYPL, +0.58% and Square Inc. SQSP, +1.69% in the portfolio, but both provide services allowing customers to buy and sell bitcoin.

Magoon emphasized that the diversification of BLOKs portfolio lowered risk, but acknowledged that the ETFs performance is still closely correlated with bitcoin.

Early this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission gave permission for BLOK to hold shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust GBTC, -0.19%, which has a market capitalization of $6.6 billion. It has been a popular way for investors and traders to play bitcoin indirectly. But it has its own risks, as its share price at times can rise to a very high premium over the trusts net asset value (the value of its investments at the end of the trading day divided by the number of shares). This means GBTC has an extra layer of volatility on top of bitcoins price.

According to Magoon, GBTC has traded at a premium as high as 70% over NAV, although recently it has traded below the NAV.

This extra volatility led BLOK to completely sell out of its GBTC position, Magoon said. It now holds shares of Canadian exchange traded funds that invest in bitcoin. Magoon says those tend to trade close to NAV. An example of a Canadian bitcoin ETF held by block is the Purpose Bitcoin ETF BTCC, +0.31%.

BCLN tends to have more holdings than BLOK 69 stocks at the end of the second quarter. It is also less concentrated. BLOKs 10 largest holdings make up 45% of the portfolio. For BLCN, the 10 largest account for 21%.

Here are the 10 largest holdings of BCLN:

Dont miss: Wall Street sees as much as 56% upside for its 20 favorite stocks

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Here's a safer way to invest in bitcoin and blockchain technology - MarketWatch

Co-Founder & COO at CoinGecko Bobby Ong joins Yahoo Finance to break down the factors contributing to Bitcoin's sudden dive and the global push of governments to use Bitcoin as Ukraine becomes the latest country to legalize and regulate the cryptocurrency.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- Bitcoin prices have steadied a little after getting rowdy earlier in the week, following the crypto's rollout in El Salvador. But given some fresh negative sentiment in the crypto space, that steadiness may prove fleeting. Let's dive in here with Bobby Ong.

He's the co-founder and COO of CoinGecko. Bobby, good to good to see you here. Look, so the price action has steadied.

That's good for crypto fans. What do you sense could be next? Is there another shoe to drop in terms of prices here?

BOBBY ONG: It's always very hard to predict what's coming next in the crypto price. But I mean, a couple of days ago, Bitcoin dropped 17% from roughly $52,000 to $42,000. It's recovered a little bit since then. This came on the back of El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as legal tender.

There was some technical challenges with regards to its rollout. But this really wasn't the main reason for a correction. The crypto market has been on a rise since late July with Bitcoin going up 70% from its 30k levels.

And many traders were looking for a point to take profits. And large sell orders resulted in the [INAUDIBLE] market, futures market liquidating overleveraged traders causing a flash crash. I'd even look at the funding rates for Bitcoin [INAUDIBLE] Bitcoin futures. Yes, it turned positive in the days leading up to the correction, signifying that traders have become overleveraged and have largely gained back the confidence loss in the large draw down in May when Bitcoin went from 64K to [INAUDIBLE] in a matter of weeks.

The funding rates at this point in time is still slightly negative. So it doesn't seem that the traders are very bullish yet. So I think my guess is it's a [INAUDIBLE] more. We don't know if it's going to go up or down at this point in time. I would say that a market correction was [INAUDIBLE] very common in crypto to have like 20% drawdowns. And that's taken place multiple times in the history of Bitcoin.

Story continues

- Bobby, we had a guest on yesterday pushback back on this notion that there's a lot of leverage in the crypto space. What's your take on that?

BOBBY ONG: Yeah, I would agree with that. There is a lot of leverage in the crypto space. Though, this has gone down over the years, I would say. So you have offshore crypto exchanges offering up to 100x leverage for you to trade on the futures market.

So this is very common with bitmex, with FTX, with binance futures, and so on. But recently, I think regulators have cracked down massively on all this offshore crypto exchanges. So the leverage levels have dropped.

Binance and FTX have both announced that they are reducing the leverage offered to crypto traders. But there are other alternatives out there in the market, like exchanges such as [INAUDIBLE] that users can sort of gravitate to trade with high leverage. So there is a lot of leverage using the market. And the funding rates are usually one of the methods we use to track how much leverage there is in the market.

- Bobby, it's Julie here. When we're looking at this adoption that's happening around the globe, places like El Salvador, Ukraine now formally putting some regulation around the trading of Bitcoin and allowing it, which it didn't before, do you see that more as a risk or a potential upside for crypto when you're looking at government intervention of various kinds?

BOBBY ONG: Oh, I certainly view this positively. Ukraine and El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as a legal tender is definitely a big win for crypto. Ukraine adopting Bitcoin is also a big news.

I think governments worldwide are starting to see that Bitcoin and blockchain technology, they're not here to disappear. They won't disappear anymore. They're here to stay.

You can't put a genie back into the bottle once it's out. And countries are starting to realize that. If you can't ignore it, it's probably best to try to put in place favorable regulations to encourage investment in this sector and to tax this growth areas appropriately.

What I would say is I think-- I would expect a lot more countries to legalize cryptocurrencies. Most will not take the extreme steps like El Salvador to make it legal tender. El Salvador I think is a unique case because the economy is a dollarized economy in the first place.

So they don't really have much to lose in the sense. They are effectively making a bet that things may pan out well by stopping one foreign currency, which in their case was US dollar, to another foreign currency, in this case Bitcoin. Things may or may not work out.

In which case, if things do not work out, they can always move back to the US dollar. And if things do work out, then it could be a very interesting case study. And I'm sure a lot of their neighbors are watching the economic experiment that is happening in El Salvador.

- Yes, I'm sure that they are. Speaking of economic experiments, what's been catching my eye recently is the huge market cap increases in some of the once obscure coins. And it's happening really quickly. I'm looking at our list of cryptocurrencies on our site.

And yes, you have Bitcoin and Ethereum up there. Cardano is now one of the biggest coins. You've got Solana on there as well, which came out of nowhere as well.

Hex coin, whatever that is, although that's a smaller market cap, is on there as well. But some of the ones that have really gained in size and coming from nowhere, I mean, how much do people need to be aware of those? And how much do people need to be careful of those?

BOBBY ONG: So yeah, I mean, among the list that you mentioned, maybe not everyone, not all these coins are legit. I mean, there's a lot of scam tokens out there in the market. But I think what's interesting is a lot of these tokens, the coins, they have crafted a niche in the space. No doubt many are created just for speculation.

But some of them have interesting use cases. So Bitcoin gone on this stall value narrative. So it becomes a coin because it's a fixed supply. It become supposedly perilous as-- it draws parallels to digital gold.

Ethereum goes around the narrative of it being decentralized world computer. And because Ethereum has pretty fixed capacity on this network, resulting in high gas fees, this has spurred the growth of other competitors. And one of the other competitors would be Solana.

But the main reason-- the main thing's driving the growth of Ethereum would be things like decentralized finance applications, things that are building exchanges in a decentralized manner and all the lending platforms in a decentralized manner, and so on. Also, NFTs are a big driver for picking up the block space in ethereum.

So if you look at Solana, because ethereum's full in gas fees, and the transaction fees are really high and really expensive on ethereum, a lot of people have moved on to other alternative blockchains like Solana. Solana has grown 10x in a matter of months from $20 to up to $200.

And I think there's a lot of growth. I mean, if you look at the amount of money locked in the smart contracts on Ethereum, on Solana, on Polygon, and so on, we have seen like more than eight times growth in the total value locked. So early in January 2021, like $20 billion worth of cryptocurrencies or tokens of value are locked in contracts.

But now it's over $170 billion in total value locked-- in terms of amount of cryptocurrencies locked in the smart contracts. So I think there's a lot of strong growth. I view the world that all these financial applications that are built in the traditional manner will be migrated over to the blockchain to be placed in decentralized finance applications.

And on a broader level, I view the world that a lot of these web two applications, things that have a centralized manner will be moving on to the web free applications, things that are built on the blockchain in the coming years.

- I really appreciate these insights. Bobby Ong, Co-founder and CEO of CoinGecko. Have a great rest of the week.

BOBBY ONG: Thank you. You, too.

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Why government adoption of Bitcoin is a big win for crypto - Yahoo Finance

The government is a parasite masquerading as our friend. Rulers want us to believe they have our best interest in mind while enriching themselves and their cronies. The simple truth is governments exist to maintain themselves. They never shrink, they always get larger.

This is as true of democracies as it is of dictatorships. The unstated goal is for the 1% to enrich themselves at the expense of the 99%. It has been true throughout all of human history, and it is today. Sounds harsh, but if you study history youll see it clearly. The same can be said about central banks and most major companies in the world. They are rent seekers.

Darwinian survival of the species is always in play, even for governments. And the bigger they get, the more extractive they become. And the more monopoly power they acquire, it makes them that much harder to reign in. They are like a giant organism that is constantly saying FEED ME!

So how do we reign that in? You want your government to shrink? Buy bitcoin. Bitcoin is not a parasite. Bitcoin is not trying to extract as much as it can from you like governments and central banks do. Bitcoin isnt aiming to control anyone. Bitcoin takes the pressure off investing. Bitcoin is the greatest savings technology the human race has devised. I can save in bitcoin and remove myself from having to learn a second career as an investor.

Bitcoin is the cure for parasites. Bitcoin, like proper food handling, is a simple but effective cure. Cleaning and disinfecting the modern financial system is no easy task, but a decentralized network capable of transferring value instantly is a fair remedy. The eradication of the parasite begins with small doses of freedom in the form of the early OGs and from there, spreads throughout the organism, clearing out unhealthy corruption, replacing the corruption with Cantillon benefits and ultimately awakening society to the parasite itself. The final stages of the parasite involve self-destructive tendencies reminiscent of totalitarianism but it is of no concern to those knowledgeable about the decentralization of bitcoin.

Bitcoin can protect your wealth from governments because they have no ability to dilute the current or future issuance of bitcoin, nor steal it from us. And that is simply amazing.

This is a guest post by Mark Maraia. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Bitcoin Will Protect Your Wealth From The Government - Bitcoin Magazine

Shares of crypto-related stocks, including Marathon Digital Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: MARA), Riot Blockchain Inc (NASDAQ: RIOT) and Bit Digital, Inc. (NASDAQ: BTBT) are trading higher amid an increase in the price of Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH).

Bitcoin is trading 2% higher at around $46,791.80 on Thursday.

Ethereum is trading 3.6% higher at around $3,509on Thursday.

Marathon Digital shares are also trading higher after the company announced DMG Blockchain will join Marathon's mining pool, MaraPool.

Marathon Digital focuses on mining digital assets. It owns crypto-currency mining machines and a data center to mine digital assets. The company operates in the digital currency blockchain segment and its cryptocurrency machines are located in Canada.

Marathon Digital is trading higher by 6.8% at $39.82 per share.

Riot Blockchain is focused on building, supporting and operating blockchain technologies. The company's portfolio consists of Verady, Tesspay, Coinsquare and others.

Riot Blockchain is trading higher by 4.2% at $31.65 per share.

Bit Digital, Inc. engages in the bitcoin mining business. The company was formerly known as Golden Bull Limited and changed its name to Bit Digital, Inc. in September 2020.

Bit Digital is trading higher by 2.7% at $11.38 per share.

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2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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Why Bitcoin-Related And Ethereum-Related Stocks Are Trading Higher Today - Yahoo Finance