BTCManager’s Week in Review February 11, 2019 – BTCMANAGER Date: in: Bitcoin 0 Views
The price of bitcoin rallied by five percent week-on-week after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, once again, spoke highly of the world’s leading digital currency and even held “the Lightning torch” on Twitter before passing it on to Lightning Labs co-founder Elizabeth Stark.
Endorsement from a billionaire tech CEO is generally well-received by bitcoin investors as events like these can bring buyers, especially first-timers, back onto the exchanges. Moreover, Dorsey said that he would love to see bitcoin payments on Twitter. Sponsored Links
Additionally, Coinbase announced its new PayPal cash out options in the European market, which will make exchanging crypto into fiat currency easier for European crypto asset investors, and it turns out that almost half of the most successful U.S. fintech companies are involved in cryptocurrencies, according to Forbes .
The two biggest stories in the altcoin market in the past week have been the Litecoin Foundation partnering with Beam to implement WimbleMimble for LTC and Bitcoin Satoshi Vision’s child abuse blockchain scandal that involved illegal pornography ending up on the BSV blockchain.
As a result, the price of LTC rallied by over 35 percent while BSV remained effectively unchanged week-on-week, despite a strong altcoin rally driven by a boost in the prices of bitcoin and litecoin.
This week’s contributions have been provided by Aisshwarya Tiwari , Neil Matthew , Priyeshu Garg , Ogwu Osaemezu Emmanuel , and Tokoni Uti .
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey claimed he only owns bitcoin in a tweet posted on February 5, 2018, which occurred when he was prompted by a follower to list all cryptocurrencies he holds. Following the answer, an interesting discussion on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies was sparked.
Dorsey said that he is only holding bitcoins at first, but then additional questions from other followers started rolling in.
In the thread, Dorsey explained that he prefers using bitcoin as this is the most stable and well-established among the cryptocurrencies. He also stated his preferences were influenced by the fact that Bitcoin is a “great brand.” Regarding the number of bitcoins Dorsey is currently holding, the tech billionaire remained laconic by simply replying “Enough.”
Another important revelation came from the thread, as Dorsey claimed he would love to have bitcoin payments incorporated on the Twitter platform.
This whole conversation was inspired by Dorsey’s tweet on the experimental tryout of the Lightning Network, which aims to improve micropayments by eliminating the need to record every transaction on the blockchain. Dorsey successfully received the “torch,” which he later passed to Elizabeth Stark .
On February 7, 2019, The Litecoin Foundation announced that it was in cooperation with Beam to implement the MimbleWimble protocol for increased privacy. The announcement did not come as a complete surprise, as Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin, had hinted at talks between the two teams earlier.
The Litecoin Foundation has approached Beam about “possible cooperation,” per reports from the Foundation. Beam is one of the first cryptocurrencies to utilize the “Mimblewimble” protocol, a name that came from the famous Harry Potter book series. The protocol is advantageous in that only a final summary of all blockchain transactions is kept, and Beam aims to compete with other privacy-focused coins, such as Zcash and Monero .
Charlie Lee tweeted about wanting to add confidential transactions (CT) to Litecoin on February 2, 2019, only days before the cooperation announcement.
The tweets have received praise within the cryptocurrency community, which values privacy as a principle. On February 5, 2019, he tweeted that they were “talking” with Beam.
Lee was praised on Twitter for his efforts. For some evidence that the Litecoin community believed in the move, a prominent Twitter account, Litecoindotcom, posted a poll in late January on Twitter regarding confidential transactions. Over 7,000 users voted, with an overwhelming 72 percent in favor of confidential transactions.
Money Button, a Bitcoin Cash SV (BSV) specific payment app which recently made news rounds for child abuse image distribution on the network’s blockchain ledger, has addressed the abhorrent crime in a blog post published on February 7, 2019.
For all the perks that blockchain technology has brought to the table for world commerce and society at large, some mischievous elements, staying true to their heinous nature, have continually tried to smear the idea behind the technology in a nefarious pitch-black ink.
On February 6, 2019, news broke out regarding a sinister act which resulted in the uploading of child abuse pictures on BSV’s blockchain.
As the images were uploaded on a ledger network, it was near impossible to take them down without a hard fork. Thankfully, the team at BSV somehow managed to make the particular transaction “invisible” from the general public. However, the condemnable incident has rekindled the question of cost-versus-benefit, a typical argument surrounding blockchain technology.
Addressing the issue in their blog post, Money Button gave a thorough and fitting reply to the critics of the technology.
Voyager Digital , a cryptoassets broker for both retail and institutional investors, has announced the completion of a deal with UC Resources aimed at making it possible for Voyager to begin public trading on the TSX Venture Exchange in Canada, reported Benzinga on February 8, 2019.
Per sources close to the matter, following the successful acquisition of all the outstanding shares of Voyager Digital earlier in June 2018 by UC Resources , a Canadian exploration, development, and production firm, the latter has now been renamed Voyager Digital (Canada) Ltd. and the stock will be listed as a TSX Venture Tier 2 Company as of February 11, 2019.
Reportedly, since May 2018, Voyager Digital (Canada) Ltd.
has undergone a series of three private placement financings at prices ranging from 30 to 60 cents USD per subscription receipt and the firm now has 47,935,112 shares issued and outstanding.
According to the team, once the change of business is complete, the entire subscription receipts will be converted to shares of stock.
German police have arrested six members of a mining ring who were making use of stolen electricity to mine currency since 2017, as reported by Freie Presse , February 6, 2019.
While people around the world enjoy using cryptocurrency, the actual process of mining crypto is quite tedious and more importantly, expensive, particularly in terms of energy cost.
This has seemingly resulted in many stealing electricity in order to engage in mining operations.
This was the case of five men and a woman in Klingenthal, Germany, who were arrested after running a mining farm using stolen electricity.
The farm was located at PGH Elektro, a former electrical services company and housed about 49 individual computers. Thirty of the computers were equipped with mining hardware such as GPUs (graphics processing units.
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According to the police force that discovered the illegal operation, the farm had been in operation since around 2017 and had made use of up to $250,053 worth of stolen electricity, enough to power 30 households. The exact cryptocurrencies that were being mined weren’t stated in the report.
According to MakerDAO’s report on February 7, 2019, Dai, a stablecoin that runs on the Ethereum blockchain, has recorded a 20 percent average monthly growth in its number of users based on the number of active addresses, funds transferred within a specific period, and use cases for the altcoin.
Per the report, the Dai blockchain project, which was launched over a year ago, has recorded a number of successes in terms of its active addresses, use cases, and the amount being transferred by new and existing users.
Dai currently has nearly 8,200 unique addresses which are either holding the virtual currency or trading with it. According to the team, the data is based on those who have at least one Dai in their wallet.
Alternatively, 19,600 unique addresses either have or once had more than one Dai from the time the cryptocurrency was launched which is a 42 percent retention rate, considering the lifetime of Dai.
Furthermore, the team claims there has been a 20 percent monthly growth in the number of addresses that are either holding or trading the stablecoin given that 7,300 active addresses, of which 4,400 addresses are new, have sent or received Dai in January alone.
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