Crypto Currency

The town of Wetzikon will be using blockchain tech for targeted local business aid On Friday the Swiss town of Wetzikon -- formerly best-known for its idyllic pastures and churches -- launched a blockchain-based program to support small and medium-sized local businesses affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. Valued at 250,000 Swiss francs ($280,000), the initial aid disbursement will be funded with a municipal credit line earmarked for the Coronavirus and will be distributed to the roughly 25,000 inhabitants of Wetzikon in the form of an eCoupon worth 10 Swiss francs.  Residents can access the disbursement through a smartphone app, “ecoo,” which will be using the aid program as a pilot trial for its platform.  According to their website, ecoo is designed to help entities such as governments and event organizers distribute earmarked funds in the form of coins and points, and was built on the Tezos blockchain through a collaboration between the Swiss firms Papers AG and mult...

Check out this week’s Bad Crypto podcast. It’s been another strong week for Bitcoin. The dollar price is up about 2.5 percent over the week, although that’s still something of a decline from its recent high above $13,400. At one point, Bitcoin fell 4 percent in 24 hours. But bulls remain optimistic and see the price advancing towards $20,000 , possibly as early as March. That future price movement will depend on a number of factors, including whether banks follow Paypal into cryptocurrency acceptance; the size of the stimulus expected to counter the new coronavirus outbreak; and the pattern of the hash rate, among other factors. One point of volatility could come at the end of the month: that’s when the BTC options market reaches a $750 million expiration . In the meantime, large amounts of Bitcoin are on the move . A whale has recently transferred a billion dollars’ worth of Bitcoin. It cost them $3.58. Despite that volatility, Anthony Pompliano, the co-founder of Morgan Creek Di...

The price of Bitcoin is on the verge of having its highest monthly close ever but bulls must still break through $14K for a shot at a new all-time high. Bitcoin ( BTC ) price is undoubtedly having an impressive year after crashing to $3,700 in March but then rallying to $14,000 in the following months. Now BTC has reached the highest point since January 2018 as the price touched $14,100 . Thus, the likelihood of the new bull cycle is heavily increasing as the price of Bitcoin continues to make new higher highs and higher lows. What's more, the strength is even seen while the U.S. Dollar Currency Index, with which it is typically inversely correlated, is also recovering amid coronavirus fears. Bitcoin yet to break the $13,700-14,250 area BTC/USD 1-week chart. Source: TradingView The weekly chart shows some crucial levels to be watched in order to continue the bullish momentum. One of them is the current resistance zone surrounding the $14,000 threshold. Breaking through this...

The interoperability protocol seeks to expand beyond Ethereum and create cross-chain functionality In a blog post on Friday, 0x Labs product manager Theo Gonella laid out the protocol’s ambitious plans to direct development towards a promising, if technically tricky horizon for permissionless exchange: seamlessly connecting the growing constellation of viable layer-1 blockchain platforms. The Ethereum-based protocol, designed to be an interoperability toolkit for decentralized exchanges of all stripes, has seen marked success this year in connecting a network 30+ projects building with their API.  Throughout 2020, as Decentralized Finance (DeFi) boomed, so too did 0x’s usage: the protocol facilitated nearly $4 billion in trades across dexes and aggregators like Tokenlon and 1inch, and generated nearly $400,000 in protocol fees, according to the 0xTracker.  Likewise, 0x’s native token, $ZRX, saw a rally of 280% from $.259 to $.73, before a 50% drop amid the wider DeFi mar...

Experts in the blockchain and crypto industry make their wishes for Bitcoin’s 12th birthday While the crypto community decides whether Bitcoin ( BTC ) was born — or merely  conceived  — 12 years ago, the fact is that Oct. 31, 2008, remains one of the most notable dates in humanity’s modern history. Exactly 12 years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto published what some have described as  “a new bible” — Bitcoin’s white paper . Designed as a brand new “purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash,” many see the creation of Bitcoin as a response to a global financial crisis . Related: Happy birthday dear Bitcoin: Crypto’s first white paper turns 12 Cointelegraph’s video team talked to Adam Back , co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, about the birth of Bitcoin. Check out the video here: Although Bitcoin  has recently become more appealing than both Jesus and sex , at least among Reddit users, let’s not forget that it’s only Bitcoin’s 12th anniversary and that many great ach...

Coinbase leads a growing list of crypto companies attracting top-tier legal talent On Friday Coinbase Inc. announced the appointment of former Google Senior Legal Director Milana McCullagh as deputy general counsel for product and commercial legal. McCullagh, who worked for more than 13 years at Google, will work across functions at Coinbase on product legal support, helping the firm to streamline legal compliance for new product launches. McCullagh's appointment is part of both a Coinbase campaign to attract legal talent that started last year, as well as a broader industry-wide movement of top-tier attorneys joining crypto firms.  Between August and October, Coinbase appointed former general counsel at Dyson Ltd., Katherine Minarik, as general deputy counsel for litigation; former senior legal counsel at Uber Technologies Inc. in London, Carly Nuzbach Lowery, as an associate general counsel; the former attorney at Fenwick Jade Clemons as a commercial counsel; and head of sup...

The lightchain-vs.-darkchain dichotomy is counterproductive, and a healthy graychain will produce more valuable crypto assets like Bitcoin. In the last month, we’ve seen the United States Federal Reserve come after BitMEX for failing to identify customers, crypto intelligence firm CipherTrace report that most crypto exchanges are not collecting enough user info , and the so-called “FinCEN Files” demonstrate that even large banks that collect and report vast troves of suspicious transactions are not doing enough to unbank the bad guys . Suffice to say, it’s a great time to be alive for compliance hardliners and a rough patch for privacy advocates, aside from a healthy recent boost in the price of Monero ( XMR ). Stepping back and looking at the larger trend, many in the crypto community are now imagining a world with two “Bitcoin blockchains” — or perhaps, two distinct networks of various blockchains. The first is a blessed white blockchain, or “lightchain,” akin to a friendly neig...

An assessment of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Oct. 31, 2008 paper that “set in motion a revolution in finance.” Has it only been a dozen years since Oct. 31, 2008, that Satoshi Nakamoto published a modest nine-page paper describing a new online payments system called “Bitcoin?” Depending on where one stands, that pseudonymous white paper — its author(s) remain unidentified — fostered either a fintech revolution or, as some believe , “the greatest scam in history.”  To mark the anniversary of the publication of “ Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System ,” Cointelegraph invited comments on the enduring vision of the paper’s author. Would Satoshi Nakamoto have been pleased with how Bitcoin and blockchain technology have developed and evolved over the past 12 years? James Angel, an associate professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, told Cointelegraph: “It has set in motion a revolution in finance with the rise of DeFi apps, smart contracts, and coin offering...

For all we don't know about Satoshi, we can tell he loved a touch of theatricality Satoshi Nakamoto announced the Bitcoin whitepaper on a cryptography mailing list on Halloween 2008. It could be the case that this was a meaningless coincidence, but when we take into account the meticulous planning behind Bitcoin’s launch party, the chosen date begins to look more meaningful. Halloween is the carnival time, a ritual day when one can pretend to be someone or something else, whether a comic book superhero like Batman or Superman, or another eternally popular choice for Halloween, a Ghost — a spirit, much like Satoshi, that is neither dead nor alive.  The carnival tradition goes back hundreds, even thousands of years, and there is no more apt day for the creator of Bitcoin to reveal the persona of Satoshi Nakamoto than Halloween. “The mystery and the paradox of it” Whoever created the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, they likely came from the cypherpunk community, a variegated bunch ...

The price of Bitcoin has surpassed the critical $14,000 mark, the highest level since January 2018. The price of Bitcoin ( BTC ) surpassed $14,000 on Oct. 31, the day Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008. Since then, the world's biggest cryptocurrency has seen remarkable and exponential growth across various areas. The daily price chart of Bitcoin. Source: TradingView.com Fast forward 12 years, since the October 31, 2008 release of the whitepaper, Bitcoin is in a different growth trajectory. An institutional craze is leading the BTC rally, major financial institutions are supporting crypto assets, and the market has become increasingly liquid. Post-halving bull cycle meets Bitcoin 12-year anniversary The 12-year anniversary of the Bitcoin whitepaper is particularly special for Bitcoin because it marks the third post-halving cycle. Every four years, Bitcoin undergoes a block reward halving , which cuts the rate at which new BTC is mined by half. This ha...

We are now starting to see the crossover of regulation in the digital asset market and digitalization of the traditional market. From what started as something of a “technological experiment” with Bitcoin ( BTC ) over a decade ago, the crypto asset industry has become a significant driver for change in global financial markets. Cryptocurrency exchanges started as a means to enable crypto enthusiasts to trade digital coins outside the traditional financial system on a decentralized and largely autonomous basis.  It is likely that combined with regulatory recognition and development of digital market infrastructures, acceptance of essential Anti-Money Laundering practices, investment in security protection systems, and recognition of investor protection measures will see these businesses continue to expand and potentially merge or compete on an even footing with existing regulated marketplaces. The success of these platforms in allowing an unregulated free-flow of value across bo...

Bitcoin broke out of the $13,000 resistance level merely a week ago, which means those expecting Ethereum and altcoin prices to rise may have to wait a few months. Bitcoin ( BTC ) is sucking up the volume from the entire cryptocurrency market as it continues to rally. This is causing the alternative cryptocurrency (altcoin) market to pullback, which has seen rising selling pressure and low buyer demand. On Oct. 30, researchers at Santiment pinpointed the growing volume and dominance of Bitcoin, while Chainlink ( LINK ), Ether ( ETH ) and Binance Coin ( BNB ) struggled. They wrote : “The dominance involving #Bitcoin is continuing to display itself, particularly via trading volume. When comparing other top blockchains in the past day, note the decline in $ETH, $XRP, $LINK, and $BNB trading volume, while BTC's levels stayed high.” At least in the foreseeable future, traders believe the so-called “altseason” is not returning, especially as Bitcoin outperforms altcoins. The tradi...

Consolidation from Bitcoin would allow Ethereum to double bottom in its BTC pair and possibly breakout from the ascending channel in its USDT pair. In the past week, altcoins prices received a significant haircut, and investors who were light on Bitcoin ( BTC ) saw their portfolio value take a hit.  Initially, Ether ( ETH ) price followed Bitcoin higher as the top-ranked digital asset rallied through the $12,000 resistance but as BTC continues to slowly push higher Ether struggled to flip $400 to support. Crypto market weekly price chart. Source: Coin360 Ether’s loss of momentum and the correction in altcoins has led to a number of crypto traders tweeting that altcoin season is done and many are citing the bearish price action in the ETH/BTC pair as evidence for this point of view. ETH/BTC 1-week chart. Source: TradingView Looking at the ETH/BTC weekly chart, traders will notice that the pair is on the verge of dropping below the ascending trendline and high volume VPV...

As NFTs gain traction, here are some of the top marketplaces for finding NFTs, as well as the future outlook of this industry. Currently worth $100 million, the nonfungible tokens industry is changing how the ownership and authenticity of digital assets are perceived. Leading entities in the gaming and blockchain world are already experimenting with NFTs in all sorts of ways. However, the primary goal is to prove the authenticity and ownership of digital items, which had proven difficult until the advent of blockchain technology. Through blockchain technology, digital assets can have unique identifiable attributes that make them rare and irreplaceable. On NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea, a multitude of projects are at work producing all sorts of creative and transferable NFT items. While the past decade has seen a lot of excitement around fungible digital assets like Bitcoin ( BTC ) and Ether ( ETH ), nonfungible tokens are just getting started, and already, there is a lot of pro...