Bitcoin price could drop again ahead of Chinese New Year. According to a number of experts, this time the price of the main coin will be affected by the actions of small investors who will begin to transfer crypto assets to fiat to buy New Year's gifts.
Currently, it is in China that the bulk of the owners of bitcoin wallets with savings of up to 10 thousand dollars are concentrated. “Even if institutional investors do not react to the possible strengthening of the dollar and stock markets, small investors will definitely start withdrawing funds before the holidays. The New Year is usually celebrated very lavishly in China. In addition, the charts for the past few years show that exactly on the eve of the holidays, the capitalization of bitcoin is greatly decreasing, the specialists of the investment company Stack Funds explain the situation.
- According to Cryptofeed.news, a bug was found in Apple devices, due to which attackers can gain access to cryptocurrency wallets. Pete Kim, chief engineer of the Coinbase trading platform, noted that the bug represents the ability to activate remote access mode from other devices. This means that criminals who can enable this option will be able to get to banking apps or wallets.
“So far there is no evidence that the bug could have been used to steal digital assets, but it’s better just not to bring it up,” explained Kim. Apple has not yet commented on this software flaw.
- The first cryptocurrency is on the cusp of widespread adoption by the traditional market. This was stated by the founder of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk during a conversation on the Clubhouse media platform. According to him, many friends urged him to buy bitcoin. And today he has to admit that he was "late to appear at the party."
“I'm a bitcoin supporter. I believe the financial world is close to its wide acceptance. But I have no opinion about other cryptocurrencies, "- Forbes quotes the words of the billionaire.
Elon Musk also promised that he would be more careful with his comments because of the great impact they have on the market. Recall that he has recently changed his Twitter profile description to "#bitcoin" with the cryptocurrency logo, after which the coin's price jumped sharply, exceeding $37,000.
- On February 2, MicroStrategy, an analytical software company, bought an additional 295 BTC for a total of $10 million. The average purchase price was $33,808. In total, the company acquired 71,079 BTC starting from August 2020, spending $1.145 billion on it. At the time of writing, the total value of bitcoins in MicroStrategy's reserves is $ 2.55 billion, that is, its return on investment (ROI) in six months was about 120%.
- The US authorities have accused a California resident of running an illegal cryptocurrency exchange and money laundering. Hugo Mejia, 49, from Ontario reportedly launched his service in May 2018. He advertised the platform on the Internet and met with clients in person in a cafe and corresponded with them using encrypted messages. During this period, Mejia's clients exchanged more than $13m worth of assets with his help.
From May 2019 to March 2020, the manager communicated several times with a front buyer who informed him he was an Australian drug dealer. In total, the front client conducted five transactions worth more than $250,000, after which Mejia was arrested. He will appear in the U.S. District Court in March and faces up to 25 years in prison.
- The number of unique active BTC addresses reached 22.3 million in January amid growth in network activity and the rate of the first cryptocurrency, which rose to $42,000 on January 8. “This is the highest rate in the history of bitcoin to date,” say analysts at Glassnode. The January surge in activity surpasses the previous record of 21 million active addresses in December 2017, their number has not fallen below 10 million per month since then.
- Specialists of the analytical platform CryptoQuant noted in recent days the movement of large volumes of bitcoins. 15,200 BTC was withdrawn from the Coinbase exchange alone at a cost of about $500 million. Coins were withdrawn in batches from 1,100 BTC to 4,400 BTC, which is a rare occurrence. Usually, crypto exchanges do not split transfers in this way when moving coins between their own wallets, as this leads to an increase in overhead costs.
According to the founder of CryptoQuant, Ki Yong Joo, bitcoins went to custodian wallets, on which only incoming transactions were noticed. “These are probably over-the-counter deals of institutional investors. And I consider this to be the strongest bullish signal,” he wrote.
- Visa CEO Alfred Kelly spoke about plans for cryptocurrency payments during a teleconference on the company's financial activities. He noted that the company is ready to make such payments more secure. Visa plans to work with wallets and exchanges so that users can not only buy crypto assets, but also cash them in and make purchases in fiat currency without prior conversions.
Visa currently distinguishes between two classes of cryptoassets: assets like bitcoin - digital gold, and assets backed by fiat currencies, including stablecoins and central bank digital currencies. “It goes without saying that if a particular digital currency becomes a recognized means of exchange, there is no reason why we cannot add it to our network, which already supports over 160 currencies today,” concluded Kelly.
- According to a report from research firm Binance Research, bitcoin remains the leading cryptocurrency as 65% of users have it in their investment portfolio. This figure was obtained by a survey of 61,000 users from 178 countries. The document, called the 2021 Global Cryptocurrency User Index, says that 52% of users consider cryptocurrency to be a source of current income, while the rest own digital assets, considering them part of a long-term investment strategy.
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