Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from January 31, 2021

MLB Team Washington Nationals Partners With Terra Blockchain Community, Ballpark Plans to Accept UST

On February 9, the American professional baseball team based in Washington, D.C., the Washington Nationals, announced the team has partnered with Terra, the open-source blockchain platform and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The Washington Nationals detail that the team is a “leading innovator” and is “consistently introducing new technologies to enhance the fan experience.” Washington Nationals Ink Long-Term Deal With Terra Major League Baseball (MLB) team the Washington Nationals has partnered with the blockchain platform and DAO Terra, according to an announcement published by the team on Wednesday. The deal with Terra follows a slew of sports-related deals with crypto firms, but the MLB team will be the first to partner with an open-source blockchain project. In addition to the partnership, the algorithmic stablecoin UST that’s issued on the Terra blockchain will be “accepted as a payment method at Nationals Park as early as next season.” “The Nationals continue t...
Post a Comment
Read more

NFL Player Gets a Myriad of Celebrities to Add the Bitcoin Hashtag to Their Twitter Profiles

Following the day the Tesla founder, Elon Musk, added the Bitcoin hashtag to his Twitter profile, the popular Carolina Panthers offensive tackle, Russell Okung told his social media followers to put the Bitcoin hashtag in their bio. Okung has managed to get hundreds of people to do it, but more recently the NFL player started a decent train of celebrities with very large Twitter follower counts to join the bandwagon too. Russell Okung: ‘Plant the Flag to Declare You’re Ready for the Future’ Last week, Elon Musk put the Bitcoin hashtag in his Twitter bio, and after he did that, the price of bitcoin ( BTC ) coincidently saw significant gains. Musk also tweeted, “In retrospect, it was inevitable,” and a great number of crypto supporters celebrated the Tesla founder’s social media teases. After Musk did this on Twitter, the NFL player who plays offensive tackle for the Carolina Panthers, Russell Okung told his Twitter followers to follow Musk’s recent move. “Everyone put #Bitcoin in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

UBS: Crypto Has Fundamental Flaw, Bitcoin’s Fixed Supply Could Cause Its Value to Collapse

A chief economist at UBS, the largest bank in Switzerland, says cryptocurrency has a fundamental flaw. Bitcoin’s fixed supply could cause the collapse of its value and spending power, making it unattractive to use as a currency, he claims. A UBS Chief Economist Says Bitcoin’s Fixed Supply Is a ‘Fundamental Flaw’ Paul Donovan, Chief Economist of UBS Global Wealth Management, explained last week why people won’t want to use bitcoin as a currency. UBS is the largest bank in Switzerland. “The debate about bitcoin and other crypto tends to be very passionate. Crypto supporters say that economists are just dinosaurs, and economists say that crypto supporters are just selling a bubble.” He also pointed out that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been volatile in price terms. “If we look objectively at the issue, I think an important question is whether bitcoin and other crypto could be currencies,” the UBS chief economist continued, emphasizing, “And, I don’t think that they can.” ...
Post a Comment
Read more

85% Dogecoin rally shows Wall Street Bets aren’t done with DOGE yet

Dogecoin rallied by more than 85%, suggesting Wall Street Bet’s crypto wing may have decided that they weren’t done with DOGE yet. After gaining the spotlight due to a 980% pump on Jan. 28, Dogecoin ( DOGE ) briefly entered the top 10 ranking by market capitalization for the first time since 2015. Once the massive pump lost momentum and traders quickly took profits, it seemed that investors would move on past the meme-based cryptocurrency and find something else to invest in.  The pump initially started when exchanges prevented retail traders from buying more GameStop and AMC stock on Jan. 28. Fueled by the Reddit discussion group r/Wallstreetbets, the army of investors turned their attention to silver and a selection of ‘cheap’ cryptocurrenceis. On Jan.28, Twitter user "WSB Chairman" asked, "Has Doge ever been to a dollar?" to his 750,000 followers. That was enough to trigger the monster rally , despite Dogecoin having no protocol upgrades or developments sin...
Post a Comment
Read more

US Lawmaker Likes Bitcoin — Urges Policymakers to Embrace Innovation in Regulation

U.S. Representative Patrick McHenry is pro-bitcoin. He is now hosting the Bitcoin whitepaper on his official congressional website and has called on other lawmakers to embrace innovation like Bitcoin. He believes that the cryptocurrency is unstoppable and governments cannot kill it. Pro-Bitcoin US Lawmakers A growing number of U.S. lawmakers have recently spoken in support of Bitcoin. Among them is Congressman Patrick McHenry from the state of North Carolina. On Friday, he talked on CNBC’s Squawk Box about how to approach regulation after last week’s market swings. “You can’t put technology back in the box. Innovation is here. We have to embrace. We have to broaden access to our markets, we have to broaden access to our financial products,” he said. McHenry has long been a Bitcoin advocate. Last week, when the lawyer of the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright, threatened to sue a few website owners for hosting the open-source Bitcoin whitepaper on their websites, McHenr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bitcoin subreddit hits 2M subscribers following GameStop controversy

More than 200,000 Redditors joined the page last week. One of the most well-known online Bitcoin communities passed two million subscribers in a surge of activity on Friday, purportedly due to the media attention over the r/Wallstreetbets subreddit. According to the Metrics For Reddit analytics website, the subreddit r/Bitcoin has 2,184,941 subscribers at the time of publication, making it the 178th most popular subreddit among more than 100,000 active pages. The Bitcoin ( BTC ) subreddit hit the two million subscriber milestone on Friday, more than 18 months after reaching one million. Though much of the growth in the subreddit following the 2017 bull run was gradual, interest in r/Bitcoin exploded last week, with more than 200,000 accounts subscribing to the page between Jan. 26 and Jan. 30, from 1,982,681 to 2,184,941. Subscriber growth for r/Bitcoin. Source: Metrics for Reddit Many of the new subscribers may have been drawn to the subreddit following mainstream media outle...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hedge fund behind shorting GameStop reports 53% loss in January

A Melvin Capital client claims that the firm has "massively de-risked" its investment portfolio following the controversy involving short-selling GameStop stocks. Melvin Capital started 2021 with $12.5 billion in assets before retail investors from Reddit caused the firm to lose billions on its GameStop short positions. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the hedge fund has a little more than $8 billion in assets at the end of January, which includes a $2.75 billion investment from Citadel and Point72 Asset Management earlier this month. This represents a 53% loss, according to people familiar with the firm. In the report, a client claims that Melvin has "massively de-risked" its investment portfolio following the controversy involving short selling GameStop stocks. People familiar with the hedge fund said Melvin has restructured its portfolio to improve its ability to exit securities easily. The hedge firm, as well as Citron Capital — another firm invo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Top 5 cryptocurrencies to watch this week: BTC, ETH, UNI, ATOM, COMP

Bitcoin price fell back into the descending triangle but this dip may attract buyers to altcoins and DeFi tokens in the short term. Over the past seven days, the crypto market saw an uptick in volatility as Bitcoin ( BTC ) and Dogecoin ( DOGE ) price rallied higher simply because of social media activity. In situations like these, traders who make their investment decisions based on emotions tend to incur heavy losses and this is exactly what happened last week. Dogecoin’s ( DOGE ) recent pump and dump caused several new traders who bought due to FOMO to lose money within a short time and this scenario is likely to play out again as social media groups have decided that collective pumps of altcoins is a new method of investing. A similar trend currently seems to be developing in Bitcoin ( BTC ), which has retraced a large portion of the up-move that was caused due to the “Elon pump” on Jan. 29. This shows that barring a few emotional buyers, most professional traders may have use...
Post a Comment
Read more

Goldman and Interactive Brokers Execs Claim Wallstreetbets Trend Could ‘Take Down the System’

The heavy hitters in traditional finance have been concerned about the recent stock market action fueled by Redditors and a colossal number of retail investors. This week a Goldman Sachs executive warned that if these short squeezes continue it could “snowball through the market.” Moreover, Interactive Brokers founder Thomas Peterffy made similar comments this week saying these types of systemic risk can “take down the entire system, theoretically.” Wallstreetbets Trend Could ‘Snowball Through the Market’ 2021 has been an interesting year so far and this week a Reddit forum called r/wallstreetbets sparked a whole new hot topic. Four days ago, news.Bitcoin.com reported on the stock market fiasco that started with short squeezing Gamestop (GME) shares. But GME shares were not the only stocks that felt the push as the wallstreetbets (WSB) trend started leaking into a number of other types of shares. The stock market story and Wallstreetbets (WSB) trend has shaken financial markets t...
Post a Comment
Read more

‘When alt season?’ eToro may have some answers

In 2020, holding the top 100 altcoins equally was a more lucrative investment than Bitcoin up until Dec. 18, according to eToro. Investors who knew when to swap Bitcoin ( BTC ) and altcoins could have boosted their gains significantly in 2020, according to new research from eToro , the popular social trading platform. The challenge, of course, is pinpointing when the coveted alt season begins.  In its latest quarterly report, eToro breaks down various cryptocurrency investment themes related to the 2020 bull market. It also devotes an entire section to alt season – the part of the cryptocurrency market cycle where altcoins rally against the dollar and, possibly, outperform Bitcoin. The research found that the top 100 altcoins, when held equally, were “a more lucrative investment” than BTC for most of 2020 – until Dec. 18, to be precise. However, investors who knew when to cycle from BTC to altcoins and vice versa could have nearly doubled their gains for the year. As eToro ex...
Post a Comment
Read more

The future of crypto trading will be omni-chain

The only way for DeFi to realize its potential is through an omni-chain approach, enabling assets of any kind to flow freely through all platforms. It’s now virtually unarguable that decentralized finance is blockchain’s “killer use case.” Total value locked in DeFi grew by over 3,000% over the year leading up to January 2021. On the DApp Radar rankings , eight of the top 10 DApps on Ethereum are DeFi. Uniswap sees more users than any other application and is set to average $1 billion per day in trading volume for January. Given the challenges we see with centralized exchanges, the push toward DeFi is hardly surprising. Centralized platforms offer limited lending and staking opportunities, and those that do exist depend on users putting their trust in the exchange. They’re also subject to region blocking and trade censorship, suffer from fragmented liquidity due to a disparity in product offerings, and have a limited range of instruments. By comparison, DeFi users now have access...
Post a Comment
Read more

Indian government looking to crack down on crypto scams with proposed ban: Cashaa CEO

Kumar Gaurav said "there is no way any government" can outright ban crypto given its nature as a global and decentralized system. Kumar Gaurav, founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Cashaa, believes the Indian government’s latest efforts to regulate digital currencies are more of an attempt to prevent illicit activities in the industry rather than outright ban crypto. According to a bulletin released by the Parliament of India on Friday, the governing body will be considering a bill intended to "prohibit all private cryptocurrencies" while also creating a regulatory framework for a digital rupee issued by the Reserve Bank of India, or RBI. The central bank announced last week that it would be "exploring the possibility" of a digital currency. However, the bill also says it will allow for "certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses." In a statement from Gaurav shared with Cointelegraph, the Ca...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thanks Bitcoin, MicroStrategy stock is up 113% since being downgraded by Citigroup

MSTR stock has surged by roughly 113% since Dec. 8 when it was downgraded by a Citigroup analyst. On Dec. 8, 2020, Citigroup, one of the largest banks in the world, downgraded MicroStrategy'ss stock (MSTR). Since then, MSTR stock is up 113.27% from $289.45 to $617.31, as the price of Bitcoin ( BTC ) rallied. In the same period, the Citigroup stock has declined slightly by 0.63%, from $58.36 to $57.99. MicroStrategy stock vs. BTC and Nasdaq. Source: ecoinmetrics Why has MicroStrategy stock performed so strongly despite the downgrade? MicroStrategy has been investing its treasury holdings in Bitcoin, making BTC is treasury reserve asset. Currently, it is the biggest public company holder  with over 70K BTC worth roughly $2.4 billion at today's prices.  Moreover, on Dec. 9, 2020, MicroStrategy announced raising $550 million in capital from convertible bonds. In an official statement, MicroStrategy explicitly said that it intends to invest in Bitcoin with the proceeds of...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ripple Formally Responds to SEC Allegations — Claims SEC Picking Winners and Losers, Distorting Facts About XRP

Ripple Labs has officially responded to the complaint by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Besides explaining that the XRP cryptocurrency is not a security, Ripple accuses the securities regulator of being out of step, picking winners and losers, as well as distorting facts regarding the cryptocurrency. In the court document filed on Jan. 29, Ripple claims that XRP is not an “investment contract,” insisting that the crypto “is a virtual currency and thus, outside the SEC’s jurisdiction.” Furthermore, the company stated that it never held an initial coin offering (ICO), never offered future tokens to raise money, and has no relationship with the vast majority of XRP holders. The SEC, however, is “out of step domestically and globally,” claims Ripple. The company noted that no other regulators in the world have considered XRP to be a security. Ripple alleges that “Basically, on its way out, the Trump administration sought to undo the determination that XRP was...
Post a Comment
Read more

Decentralized identity is the way to fighting data and privacy theft

In the digitizing world, identity is everything and blockchain is to make it safe for everyone: users, businesses and governments. Decentralized identity is a function of blockchain technology that delivers real-world benefits to users quickly and easily, allowing them to benefit from things such as easier logins, faster credit checks and an overall smoother online experience. The proliferation of websites, e-commerce hubs and social media platforms means we can all have a huge database of logins, passwords and usernames to remember. As these increase, the use of password managers has become commonplace (as has the use of one-time passwords and two-factor authentication) to effectively allow websites and services to double-check our identity. The result is that the end-user now faces an almost overwhelming number of hoops to jump through if they lose their password or two-factor authentication application or access to their smartphone. The whole process of transacting online has b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bitcoin ‘ascendant’ as GameStop saga unfolds, Bitfinex CTO says

The GameStop short squeeze and Bitcoin have a lot more in common than appears at the surface, according to Paolo Ardoino. The sudden rise of stocks like GameStop (GME) have shined a positive light on Bitcoin ( BTC ), as more retail investors look to “rail against” the financial status quo, according to Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino. Bitcoin’s price peaked north of $38,500 on Friday, just as U.S. stocks concluded their worst week of trading since October. The divergence between BTC and stocks was partly due to a massive short squeeze of institutional investors by a Reddit group called r/WallStreetBets. The Reddit buying frenzy was centered around GameStop, the video game and consumer electronics retailer. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, also added the Bitcoin symbol to his Twitter page, possibly signaling his newfound support of the digital currency. Paolo Ardoino believes the GameStop saga is only the beginning of a mass revolt against the financial status quo and that Bitcoin...
Post a Comment
Read more