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Category: Business Analysis

September 20th, 2020 – Weekly Recap

Weekly Recap

September 13th- September 20th, 2020

Welcome to our 4th weekly recap for September.

Overview 

Crypto News

  • As members of the U.S. Federal Reserve plan to convene this week, both gold and bitcoin (BTC) markets have started to climb in value ahead of the meeting. Bitcoin prices rose over 4% during the afternoon’s trading sessions and gold jumped 0.76% as well. The price of one ounce of fine gold is $1,956.24 at the time of publication.

    Meanwhile, after a brief upswing in value, the U.S. dollar has started to show signs of weakness again after losing massive amounts of value this year.

  • BitPay, the Atlanta-based cryptocurrency services provider, has recently released blockchain payment statistics that show how the market performed in 2020. Among other interesting points, the data signals strong support from U.S. consumers for the company that announced its first Mastercard branded card just a few months ago.

  • Regulators in 49 U.S. states have agreed to a single set of supervisory rules for money services businesses, including cryptocurrency service providers. State regulators supervise 79% of all U.S. banks.

  • The Indian government has not made any announcement regarding its plans for cryptocurrency, which has led to rumors and speculation. Several reports indicate that the government is planning to ban cryptocurrencies as outlined in the draft bill submitted by the Garg committee.

  • Kraken announced Wednesday that it has received a U.S. bank charter. “The state of Wyoming has approved Kraken’s application to form the world’s first Special Purpose Depository Institution (SPDI), tentatively called Kraken Financial.

September 13th, 2020 – Weekly Recap

Weekly Recap

September 6th- September 13th, 2020

Welcome to our 3rd weekly recap for September.

Overview 

Crypto News

  • Online food ordering platform Just Eat has begun accepting cryptocurrencies for over 15,000 restaurants in France. The Just Eat group operates in 13 countries. Its website for France has recently undergone a significant makeover following the acquisition of Just Eat Plc by Takeaway.com. The latter has been accepting bitcoin for quite some time.

  • Global payments company Mastercard announced Wednesday the launch of its “proprietary virtual testing environment” for central banks to evaluate use cases of their central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

  • According to the report, the regulation will seek to tackle bitcoin’s high volatility as well as “risks posed by systemic ones, like libra” by creating a “new college of supervisors” involving existing national and continental regulatory agencies – and one new additional body – all chaired by the European Banking Authority (EBA).

  • Bitcoin miners are finding it difficult to obtain next-generation application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) mining rigs after a number of firms have sold out. Semiconductor goliaths like Samsung and TSMC have been struggling to keep up with the demand that was sparked by the Covid-19 outbreak.

  • Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has been struggling to get some functionalities approved for its iOS app, CEO Brian Armstrong detailed his company’s experience dealing with Apple Inc. on Friday. “In the wake of other companies struggling with Apple’s App Store restrictions, I want to share a bit about Coinbase’s own struggle here,” he began, elaborating:

September 6th, 2020 – Weekly Recap

Weekly Recap

August 30th- September 6th, 2020

Welcome to our 1st weekly recap for September.

Overview 

Crypto News

August 30 2020 – Weekly Recap

Weekly Recap

August 23rd- August 30th, 2020

Welcome to our 4th weekly recap for August.

Overview 

Crypto News

August 23 2020 – Weekly Recap

Weekly Recap

August 16th- August 23rd, 2020

Welcome to our 3rd weekly recap for August.

Overview 

Crypto News

 

August 16 2020 – Weekly Recap

Weekly Recap

August 10th- August 16th, 2020

Welcome to our 2nd weekly recap for August.

Overview 

Crypto News

  • A single malicious entity controls nearly a quarter of all nodes used on the anonymous internet provider Tor Network and is using its position to steal bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

  • The Bolivarian Council of Mayors in Venezuela signed the so-called “National Tax Harmonization Agreement” for 305 municipalities in the country, including the Petro (PTR) as a means to collect payments of taxes and sanctions.

    The cryptocurrency is becoming increasingly widely used as the result of a new campaign.

  • Both bitcoin and gold have risen sharply throughout 2020, driven by relentless fiat money printing by governments and central banks, keen to keep their economies afloat in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

    BTC hit a yearly high of $12,000 just as gold soared to a record high of $2,000 per ounce.

  • In a blog post on August 13, Coinbase unveiled its new crypto lending business, which places it into competition with the likes of Nexo and Blockfi. The service charges an annualized interest rate of 8% for borrows that are one year or less.
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August 07 2020 – Weekly Recap

Weekly Recap

August 1st - August 7th, 2020

Welcome to our weekly recap for August.

Overview 

Crypto News

  • Digital currency derivatives have been on fire during the last two weeks as Ethereum futures volumes touched an all-time high on Sunday. The popular derivatives trading platform Deribit saw 1.9 million ETH contracts traded and CME Group is now the third-largest exchange in terms of bitcoin futures open interest.

  • The four congressmen are Bill Foster (D) of Illinois, Darren Soto (D) of Florida, Tom Emmer (R) of Minnesota, and David Schweikert (R) of Arizona.

    In their letter addressed to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, the quartet expressed concern that the “taxation of staking rewards as income may overstate taxpayers’ actual gains from participating in this new technology.”

  • Ethereum Classic has suffered its second 51% attack in a week after more than 4,000 blocks were reorganized Thursday morning.

    Mining pool Ethermine’s parent entity Bitfly and crypto exchange Binance reported the reorganization, announcing all Ethereum Classic payouts, withdrawals and deposits had been suspended due to the attack.

  • Matthew McDermott, Goldman’s new digital asset global head, confirmed the U.S. investment bank was exploring whether to launch its own digital asset, CNBC reported Thursday.
    “We are exploring the commercial viability of creating our own fiat digital token, but it’s early days as we continue to work through the potential use cases,” he said.
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July 31st 2020 – Weekly Recap

Weekly Recap

July 24th - July 31st, 2020

Welcome to our weekly recap for July.

Overview 

Crypto News

  • The Bank of England’s upcoming settlement service is being designed to support a possible central bank digital currency (CBDC). The new settlements system is being designed that the bank could incorporate a facility for digital currency transactions, should it decide to support a CBDC.

  • Instead of buying groceries or paying rent, many Americans opted to invest in the top cryptocurrency when they received their first stimulus checks in April. And the gamble paid off. Those that converted the free money to bitcoin have raked in up to 54% in profit in three months.

    Now, history may be about to repeat itself.

  • The United States has suffered its worst economic decline on record with the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) contracting by 32.9 percent in the second quarter. Most analysts expect the economy to manage a sharp bounce-back in the current July-September quarter. Yet with confirmed coronavirus cases elevated in a majority of states, the economy could worsen in the months ahead.

  • Around 2,500 stolen bitcoins ($28 million) from the 2016 Bitfinex breach were transferred from the hacker’s wallet on Monday.The last time the Bitfinex hackers moved funds from the hack four years ago, they moved around $5 million worth of coins on June 24. This time around, the top crypto asset by market capitalization touched new price highs for 2020 on July 27.
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June 2020 Weekly Recap #5

June Weekly Recap 5

June 23th - June 30nd, 2020

Welcome to our 5th weekly recap for June.

Overview 

 

 

Crypto News

  • Australians can now pay for Bitcoin (BTC) at national post offices, thanks to a new collaboration with local cryptocurrency exchange, Bitcoin.com.au. Customers will now be able to pay for BTC at more than 3,500 Australian Post offices.

  • The European Union’s Executive Vice President of the European Commission for An Economy that Works for People – said Europe had to seize the opportunity to become one of the main rule-makers for digital finance.

    The new regulatory regime for cryptocurrency will not only cover unregulated digital assets, but it will also consolidate and homogenize existing standards across the continent, Dombrovskis said.

  • In a research paper, titled “Flood & Loot: A Systemic Attack On The Lightning Network,” researchers Jona Harris and Aviv Zohar, both of Israel’s Hebrew University, found that attackers can exploit a bottleneck in the system to drain wallets of funds.

  • Fraudulent websites successfully have stolen the personal records of a number of individuals from the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, the United States, Singapore, Malaysia, Spain and more. The attack was executed as a targeted multistage Bitcoin (BTC) scam propagated by a number of fraudulent websites impersonating recognized media outlets and personalities.According to the Singapore-based intelligence company Group-IB, the attack exposed personal data for thousands of people.
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June 2020 Weekly Recap #4

June Weekly Recap 4

June 16th - June 22nd, 2020

Welcome to our 4th weekly recap for June.

Overview 

 

Crypto News

  • As of Tuesday, the number of bitcoin whales, as represented by the tally of unique entities holding at least 1,000 coins, was 1,840. That’s nearly 2% up from the level of 1,811 observed on May 1, according to data from blockchain analytics firm Glassnode. The metric clocked a recent high of 1,844 on Monday, a level last seen in November 2017.

  • Tom Kellermann, head of cybersecurity strategy at publicly traded software company VMWare, told lawmakers that virtual currencies need stronger oversight. There has been an increase in the number of security breaches and thefts at digital currency exchanges, which cybercriminals used to launder stolen money, he said.

  • This week the research firm the Tie tweeted about bitcoin’s (BTC) social activity to the company’s 6,300 Twitter followers. The company thinks that institutional interest and trading is a driving force right now. “Bitcoin is trading at an all-time high (ATH) relative to its social activity,” the Tie tweeted on Thursday.

  • The Center for Information and Industry Development (CCID), under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, published its 18th update of crypto project rankings on Thursday.
  • In the 18th ranking, BTC improved slightly from the April revision overall, rising from the 14th position to the 12th position. BCH fell slightly from the 31st position to the 34th spot. Meanwhile, EOS, Tron, and ETH continue to top the overall ranking.
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