Bitcoin Price Crashes Anew
Bitcoin peaked on Tuesday at USD 12,067. But then it started falling. On Wednesday was the first major dive, when it fell from USD 11,726 to USD 11,395 in about two hours. The price went down from USD 11,259 to USD 10,849 on Thursday in just about an hour. By Friday, it plunged further to USD 10,463.
Simon Peters, a market analyst at crypto trading site eToro suggested a “number of potential causes.” One likely culprit, he said, is a dump from miners wanting to cash out for profit. Charles Bovaird, a researcher at crypto economic research Quantum Economics and Philip Gradwell, the chief economist of Chainalysis concurred.
Peters also postulated that the raid and seizure on Bithumb, South Korea’s largest crypto exchange has also contributed to the price meltdown. Another reason could be this week’s stock market wobble. Nasdaq and Dow which this summer has rebounded after the COVID-19 crash, fell.
Tenth Largest Bitcoin Wallet Moves 60K BTC
A big Bitcoin holder moved 60,000 BTC for a fee of USD 14.50 last September 4. The transaction was first sighted by Bitcoin Block Bot, which is an automated blockchain tracker.
According to the latest block explorer data, the whale is likely the crypto exchange Bitfinex moving funds in and out of cold storage. BitInfoCharts shows that the sending wallet, which was created in August 2019, began receiving and sending huge sums of Bitcoin in February 2020 en route to becoming the 10th largest Bitcoin wallet prior to the most recent transfer.
The wallet now sits as the 12th richest Bitcoin wallet on record. The big-time transaction occurred just as Bitcoin is going through a heavy correction.
PornHub Now Accepts Bitcoin and Litecoin
PornHub now accepts Bitcoin and Litecoin as payment for its premium services. Although the company has been accepting Verge since 2018, later adding several other cryptocurrencies, this is its first foray into the major leagues.
Cryptocurrency and porn have been forever commingled in society’s subconscious. This relation goes back to pre-Bitcoin days as many cypherpunks believed that porn would be an early adopter of non-governmental digital currencies.
Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s creator, voiced in 2010 that “Bitcoin would be convenient for people who don’t have a credit card or don’t want to use cards they have, either don’t want the spouse to see it on the bill or don’t trust giving their number to porn guys or afraid of recurring billing.”
Visa Exec Tells Investors to Opt-Out with Bitcoin
A Visa executive is encouraging investors to escape dollar inflation by opting out of the Federal Reserve’s money-printing tactics with Bitcoin.
In a tweet published on August 27, Visa’s Senior Director of Public Policy Andy Yee blasted the Chair of the United States Federal Reserve Jerome Powell for instituting policies that would devalue the dollar. Yee believes that money-printing tactic is a sure way to undervalue the dollar.
Yee also took a verbal jab against Powell’s announcement to allow dollar inflation to run higher than the standard two percent target before hiking interest. Yee called Powell’s speech one “for the history books” and borrowing Winston Churchill’s words said, “never in the history of mankind was so much stolen from so many by so few.”
More Than USD 500M Bitcoin Heads to Ethereum This Year
A researched published by cryptocurrency data firm Messari showed that more than half a billion dollar worth of Bitcoin, or 0.3 percent of its total supply has been sent to Ethereum this year owing to the indomitable rise of decentralized finance (DeFi).
The vast majority of the DeFi industry lives on Ethereum, thus, many Bitcoin holders are moving their Bitcoin into Ethereum to join the fun. This is done by locking their Bitcoin into smart contracts that give them Ethereum-based tokens representing their Bitcoin. These tokens then enable them to participate in various DeFi protocols.
However, these DeFi protocols are custodial, which means that Bitcoin holders need to let go of the full control of their Bitcoin. It is still a huge challenge in the DeFi industry to get blockchains to work with one another in a non-custodial manner.
Ethereum Smart Contract Activity at All-Time High
Data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode revealed that smart contract calls on the Ethereum blockchain have grown to never-before-seen volumes over the past few months. Such growth was pushed mainly by decentralized finance and decentralized exchanges.
External contract calls are up more than 80 percent in 2020, reaching an all-time high of more than 900,000 calls in a single day on August 10. This figure is about three times higher than the average call volume of approximately 300,000 per day during the late-2017 to early-2018 period, when Ethereum prices hit a record high of USD 1,382.00.
DeFi protocols have grown into some of the largest gas consumers on the Ethereum network, a measure closely linked to contract call volumes. Protocols like decentralized exchange Uniswap and exchange aggregator 1inch consume hundreds of thousands in gas fees each day according to data from Eth Gas Station.
Founder of SushiSwap Cashes Out Then Shifts Control to FTX CEO
Chef Nomi, the mysterious founder of SushiSwap, the latest DeFi protocol withdrew 2.5 million Sushis from the decentralized exchange in exchange for 18,000 Ethereum. He also removed 20,000 Ethereum, from the same liquidity pool.
The move, recorded on Etherscan, comes just after Chef Nomi was hit with mounting criticism that he controlled nearly half of the coins in the system. He later explained in a Twitter thread that he liquidated all of his Sushi because he cares about the community and wants to hand things over to the developers.
Following the condemnations, Chef Nomi handed control of Sushiswap to Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of crypto exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried then laid out his plan of devolving power to the community once more by transferring control to a multi-sig address controlled by leaders elected by the community.
(Welcome to Planet Crypto. We discuss necessary information and updates regarding the cryptocurrency market regularly. So if you want to get updated, do not forget to hit the follow button and smash the like button.
I am not a financial or investment advisor. The purpose of this channel is to raise awareness about blockchain, the technology which will make the greatest impact in the decades to come and help in the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. Please only consider this as educational or informational. This is never intended as a financial or investment advice.)
Sources:
Bitcoin Price Crashed for a Third Time This Week. Here’s Why, https://www.decrypt.co/40916/bitcoin-price-crash-third-time-this-week-experts-why
10th Largest Bitcoin Wallet in Existence Moves 60,000 BTC Worth USD 641,000,000, https://www.dailyhodl.com/2020/09/05/10th-largest-bitcoin-wallet-in-existence-moves-60000-btc-worth-641000000
PornHub Now Accepts Bitcoin and Litecoin, http://www.cointelegraph.com/news/pornhub-now-accepts-bitcoin-and-litecoin
Visa Exec tells Investors to ‘Opt-Out’ with Bitcoin as US Dollar Index Plummets, https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2020/08/visa-exec-tells-investors-to-opt-out-with-bitcoin-as-us-dollar-index-plummets; ‘Opt-Out’ with Bitcoin, Visa Exec tells Investors, https://www.kryptomoney.com/opt-out-with-bitcoin-visa-exec-tells-investors
Messari: USD500M in BTC Tokenized for DeFi is Just the Beginning, https://www.cointelegraph.com/news/messari-500m-in-btc-tokenized-for-defi-is-just-the-beginning; More Than USD500 Million Bitcoin Heads to Ethereum This Year, https://www.decrypt.co/40474/more-than-500-milliom-bitcoin-heads-to-ethereum-this-year
Ethereum Smart Contract Activity at All-Time High, https://www.decrypt.co/40760/ethereum-smatrt-contract-activity-all-time-high
Founder of SushiSwap DeFi Prootocol Cashes Out, https://www.decrypt.co/40976/founder-of-sushiswap-defi-protocol-cashes-out; SushiSwap Moved Up Its Massive Liquidity Withdrawal From Uniswap to This Weekend, https://www.coindesk.com/sushiswap-uniswap-launch; Sushi Price Double After Creator Shifts Control to FTX CEO, https://www.decrypt.co/41002/sushi-price-doubles-after-creator-shifts-control-to-ftx-ceo
Will Bitcoin cross its ATH this year?