Bitcoin (BTC) lost about $100 in value in the last week, and, while reasons behind the drop in crypto prices can often be hidden and unclear — this time, that is not the case. The reason for this drop is believed to be the celebration of the Chinese New Year.
The New Year celebration was over more than a month ago for most of the modern world. However, things are a bit different in China. This is a country which is considered to be one of the oldest ones in the world, with a long and complex history. The country’s traditions are fascinating to many around the world, as so many of them are different from western culture. One of these traditions is the Chinese New Year.
The New Year celebrations in China start on January 28th, which was a week ago. The New Year itself is today, February 5th, although the celebrations and festivities are going to last until February 19th. For the people of China, and all those around the world who follow the country’s tradition, this is the time to rela..
Tag: Bitcoin (BTC)
Binance Users Can Now Purchase Crypto Using Credit and Debit Cards
In an unprecedented move that has left many crypto traders excited, the crypto exchange known as Binance has announced a partnership with the leading payment processing firm of Simplex to allow users to purchase cryptocurrencies using their credit and debit cards on the trading platform.
This new feature is now available for Binance users and can be found on the ‘Funds’ tab. Once clicked, the user then selects ‘Buy with credit card’. The purchase amount in crypto is then keyed in and the users is redirected to Simplex’s checkout platform. Once on Simplex, the secure site asks for the regular personal information such as name, email, phone number and billing address. The user is then directed to key in their credit/debit card details that will enable Simplex to process the transaction.
Instant Bridge Between Credit Cards and Crypto Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, explained that the new partnership with Simplex will bridge the gap between crypto and credit card payments on the platform.
We want to provide Binance traders with fast and easy access to crypto, in the most secure way possible.
Partnering with Simplex allows us to instantly bridge the gap between credit card payments and crypto for traders globally. On Binance.com, you can now buy crypto with credit cards and start trading in minutes.
CZ also took to twitter to explain that the credit card payments were still in the initial stages of testing and that Simplex currently does not support all credit cards. His full tweet can be found below.
Buy crypto with your credit card!
In our testing, Simplex does not support all credit cards, but do have a decent coverage. Good luck! https://t.co/qM3LJrEKJd
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) January 31, 2019
A Boost to Crypto Adoption Co-Founder and CEO of Simplex, Nimrod Lehav, explained how this new feature was the right direction in crypto adoption.
Easy and fast credit card payments, for mainstream users, is a key factor in wider adoption of crypto in general. We’re thrilled to partner up with Binance and together enable a much better, fast and easy experience.
Buy BTC, ETH, LTC and XRP Efficiently The announcement by Binance went on to elaborate that the service currently supports the use of VISA and MasterCard for the purchase of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and XRP. The new service has the following benefits.
Fast: Average 10-30 mins for cryptocurrency to reach your wallet
Low Fees: only 3.5% per transaction or 10 USD, whichever is higher
Convenient: Visa and MasterCard accepted
About Simplex Headquartered in Israel with subsidiaries in the UK, US and Lithuania, Simplex is a fintech company that was founded in 2014. Its chief goal is to provide guaranteed fraudless payment processing solutions. The firm works wilt a variety of large crypto exchanges as well as wallets and other platforms.
What are your thoughts on Binance and Simplex partnering to offer credit and debit card payments on Binance.com? Will this change the game and attract more users to the platform? Please let us know in the comment section below.
[Image courtesy of Unspash.com]
Disclaimer: This article is not meant to give financial advice. Any additional opinion herein is purely the author’s and does not represent the opinion of Ethereum World News or any of its other writers. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the numerous cryptocurrencies available. Thank you.
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Lightning Network Achieves Record Capacity, Exceeding the Milestone of 600BTC
Lightning Network continues to grow at a steady but very promising rate, and despite the bad advertising from some rivals altcoins, every day more users are willing to try this technology, increasing not only the nodes and payment channels but the capacity to process transactions manageable by this network.
According to data from the monitoring website 1ML.com, a few hours ago, Lightning Network managed to surpass the capacity of 600 Bitcoins (a little more than 2 million dollars) and reach 614.32 BTC. These figures represent a considerable advance in capacity by more than 15 percent over last year.
It is important to note that due to its configuration, the more nodes the Lightning Network has, the faster it allows transactions to take place, and of course, as network capacity grows, operations can be of greater value.
The number of nodes also increased by more than 16% to 5777 active nodes, a number that is continuously growing. Likewise, real usability has increased considerably with 22920 payment channels open. This represents a 37% increase over last month.
Lightning Network and Similar Solutions May Be Crucial for the Whole Cryptoverse Lightning Network is a second layer solution created to solve Bitcoin’s own scalability problems. Despite being still being under development, it has already proved its success, registering a median fee rate of $0.000000000034707. Much less than the figures recorded by some altcoins that compete directly against Bitcoin, promoting as strong points the speed of transaction and low fees.
The use of Lightning Network has increased thanks to the support of various campaigns carried out by the community of Bitcoin enthusiasts. One of the most popular right now, Lightning Torch, accumulates with time more users interested in this technology. Also, the growing number of new Wallets with support for Lightning Network has allowed users to know first hand this type of technology.
As previously reported by Ethereum World News, just a few days ago, Lightning Network had registered a capacity of 557 Bitcoins; however, due to price volatility, the dollar equivalent is quite similar to the current one.
It seems that these type of solutions are the best way to approach the scalability problem for some of the most important blockchains. Just as an example, Ethereum is actively working on Raiden, an implementation of similar characteristics but adapted to this blockchain. As reported by partner website Crypto Crimson, Ethereum’s Raiden Alpha is now active and being tested
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Charlie Lee: Litecoin (LTC) To Soon Have Confidential Transactions for Fungibility
Charlie Lee, via twitter, announced that the Litecoin foundation has plans of implementing confidential transactions on the network to make LTC more fungible. He stated that fungibility was the only feature missing from both Litecoin and Bitcoin. The tweet making the announcement can be found below.
Fungibility is the only property of sound money that is missing from Bitcoin & Litecoin. Now that the scaling debate is behind us, the next battleground will be on fungibility and privacy.
I am now focused on making Litecoin more fungible by adding Confidential Transactions.
— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) January 28, 2019
Fungibility is defined as the ability of a good or asset to be interchanged with other individual goods or assets of the same type. Fungible assets are exchangeable for each other and simplify the exchange and trade processes, as fungibility implies equal value between the assets.
More on Implementing Confidential Transactions The addition of Confidential transactions will be implemented sometime this year through a full node implementation (soft fork). Confidential transactions obfuscate the amounts being transacted over the network but not where the coins are being sent.
The team at the Litecoin foundation further explained how Confidential Transactions (CT) will work on the LTC network.
While it’s not complete privacy, when spending coins parties no longer would have insights into how much the other owns, something very valuable for individual security as well as business operations.
CT is an optional parameter in transactions which means regulated bodies would still be able to deal in the asset so long as transactions made to and from them are clear and publicly viewable on the blockchain.
Downside of Implementing Confidential Transactions The drawbacks of implementing CTs according to the Litecoin Foundation are as follows:
Increase in the size of bandwidth requirement and the Unspent Transaction Output set due to the size increase of the output value to 33 bytes from 8 bytes An increment in validation/transaction costs If Pedersen commitment of range proofs is broken by quantum computing (QC) an attacker would be able to print new coins into existence without restriction. However, this can be fixed through a soft-fork in a quantum-safe range-proof algorithm before quantum computing becomes strong enough What are your thoughts on the LTC soon having confidential transactions? Will Bitcoin also adopt such a feature since Litecoin is usually the first to adopt new blockchain technology such as the Lightning network? Please let us know in the comment section below.
[Image courtesy of Unsplash.com]
Disclaimer: This article is not meant to give financial advice. Any additional opinion herein is purely the author’s and does not represent the opinion of Ethereum World News or any of its other writers. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the numerous cryptocurrencies available. Thank you.
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Ledger Launches Live App for iOS and Android Smartphones
The team behind the famous hardware wallet known as Ledger Nano S has announced the launch of the Ledger Live App for smartphones operating on iOS and Android. The app is currently compatible with devices running on iOS 9+ and Android Lollipop (5 and above) or higher. The smartphone software currently allows owners of the Ledger Nano S and the Ledger Blue to consult their balances and their real-time values. Owners of the Ledger Nano X have the added advantage of transacting wirelessly.
The announcement went on to explain how the mobile app will be synced with the hardware devices.
Ledger is excited to announce that the highly anticipated Ledger Live mobile phone application is now available. This allows Ledger Nano S and Ledger Blue users to view their balances by scanning a LiveQR code presented on the Ledger Live desktop version. Currently featured in consultation mode, the app enables you to check the value of your crypto assets anywhere you go.
App Supports Wireless Transactions As earlier mentioned, owners of the bluetooth capable Ledger Nano X can now be able to transact wirelessly using the mobile app as a convenient user interface. In the future, this feature will become available for Ledger Nano S owners who have android powered smartphones. Transactions will be facilitated by the OTG (On-The-Go) cable since the Nano S does not have bluetooth capabilities. Due to technical limitations, this function will not be available for iOS devices.
With time, the team at Ledger plans on having the mobile app working exactly like the desktop version.
More on the Ledger Live App The mobile app will allow owners of the hardware wallets to follow their portfolios in real-time wherever they are. The app enables investors to know the value of their holdings rather than going back to their hardware devices and desktop apps. It also offers a step-by-step on-boarding guide to take the users through the process of syncing to their hardware wallets. The Live app guarantees adequate security for the user with the added features of password protection and bio-metric authentification.
What are your thoughts on Ledger’s new Live App for owners of the hardware wallets to track their investments on the go through their smartphones? Please let us know in the comment section below.
Disclaimer: This article is not meant to give financial advice. Any additional opinion herein is purely the author’s and does not represent the opinion of Ethereum World News or any of its other writers. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the numerous cryptocurrencies available. Thank you.
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Are Over the Counter Crypto Trading Desks to Blame for the Declining Value of Bitcoin (BTC)?
Any observant crypto trader and/or analyst can easily identify September 5th as the date the crypto markets turned for the worst after the fake news that Goldman Sachs had abandoned plans for a crypto trading desk. Before this date, Bitcoin (BTC) was comfortably trading above $7,300. But since then, the King of Crypto has fallen continuously to current levels of $3,400. Current levels look set to retest last year’s low of $3,200 if the trading volume does not increase in the next few hours.
Over-the-Counter Trading Desks Start Appearing In the last six months or so, there has been a proliferation of crypto exchanges offering Over-the-Counter (OTC) trading desks for their Institutional clients, High Net Worth Individuals and the traditional whales willing to cash out or buy in using large amounts of capital. These services have provided a new avenue for large crypto transactions to happen that are hidden from the regular trader like you and I. If performed on regular exchanges, these transactions would grossly affect the price of Bitcoin and all our favorite cryptocurrencies.
OTC Trading Is Not Recorded on Public Order Books Unbeknownst to many crypto traders is that all the trading being down Over the counter, is not recorded on the public order books seen on exchanges. This fact can be found in the recent announcement by Binance when it opened its own OTC trading desk. The team at the exchange notified would-be customers that the service will keep their trades private:
Your trades are private because the order books will not be touched.
Reiterating the earlier observation, OTC trading desks have given an alternative avenue for large crypto transactions to take place away from the order books seen on regular crypto exchanges. Without the OTC trading desks, these trades would significantly boost the trade volume as recorded on Coinmarketcap.com and other tracking websites. High trade volume recorded on exchanges corresponds to a demand for BTC and other cryptocurrencies.
Crypto Trading Volume On the Decline In a recent tweet, veteran Bitcoin analyst, Willy Woo, noted that the trade volume of BTC has been on a constant decline for the past few months. More volume is needed to keep BTC and other cryptos at their current value. His tweet can be found below.
Today is D-Day for down-trend confirmation. We need to see more volume build upon yesterday. (Chart shows 2.5hrs of traded volume so far for today). Technically we broke the volume trend line yesterday, but I'd like to see one more day of higher volumes for confirmation. pic.twitter.com/dFE9KYEKXz
— Willy Woo (@woonomic) January 29, 2019
Conclusion The increase of crypto exchanges offering OTC trading desks has also coincided with the decline of BTC trade volume reported on public order books. By taking away ‘trading action’ from regular exchanges with public order books, OTC desks have contributed to the declining value of Bitcoin. Evidence of this can be seen in a recent report that crypto giant Circle, had traded $24 Billion in BTC and altcoins in 2018 through its Over the Counter services.
What are your thoughts on the theory that OTC trading desks have contributed to the depletion of trade volume as reported on public order books? Without trade volume, the value of BTC and other cryptos continue to fall. Does this theory hold water? Please let us know in the comment section below.
[Image courtesy of Unsplash.com]
Disclaimer: This article is not meant to give financial advice. Any additional opinion herein is purely the author’s and does not represent the opinion of Ethereum World News or any of its other writers. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the numerous cryptocurrencies available. Thank you.
The post Are Over the Counter Crypto Trading Desks to Blame for the Declining Value of Bitcoin (BTC)? appeared first on Ethereum World News.
Bitcoin (BTC), Top Cryptos Fall to Lowest Point in 2019
Bitcoin (BTC), Cryptocurrency–While the start of 2019 has brought about a wave of development for the interest and adoption of cryptocurrency, coin prices took a hit amidst market-wide selling.
Bitcoin, which had managed to trade with relatively low price volatility through the second half of January, fell nearly 4 percent on the day, bringing its price below $3500 and approaching the critical mark of $3,000. XRP likewise dropped during the massive selloff, with prices falling over 5 percent to $0.29. However, despite the drop in valuation, the XRP coin was able to widen the gap in market capitalization between itself and third-ranked Ethereum, with the latter experiencing the worst losses of the top 5 currencies. At one point, ETH was down over 8 percent, with the price dropping to $106 and threatening to go below $100 again if the sell-off persisted.
Rounding out the group of top cryptos, Bitcoin Cash sitting in the sixth position by market capitalization had the worst day, plunging 11 percent to a relative low in 2019 of $112. While Bitcoin Cash has managed to stay ahead of the next closest currency Litecoin as of writing, LTC and its investment base eagerly awaits the celebration of another “flappening” to lift their coin above a Bitcoin-derived rival.
BTC, which had looked to build price stability into the second month of the year after experiencing a price drop in early January, instead fell to its lowest valuation of 2019. Bitcoin losses amounted to their worst since December, with many pundits claiming that the investment pain of last year’s bear cycle is rearing its ugly head once again. As Bloomberg was careful to point out, the optimism of turning a new calendar year led many investors and cryptocurrency enthusiasts to hope for the best, despite the industry being down over $400 billion in the past twelve months.
With the most recent round of selling, the entire market capitalization of cryptocurrency approaches a precarious evaluation of $113 billion, down precipitously from a little over a year ago, when most analysts were predicting a trillion dollar market cap to be just around the corner. Bloomberg also reports that technical analysis for Bitcoin is looking equally grim, with the industry leading cryptocurrency entering a renewed selling trend for the first time since November 2018. The last time BTC experienced a sell signal, the coin plummeted nearly 50 percent in the span of two weeks–a price movement that was precipitated by the industry implosion over Bitcoin Cash’s contentious hard fork.
However, not all in cryptocurrency are dismayed by the state of the market. Despite conceding that the current price depression could persist for more than a decade, with coin prices taking 11 years or longer to return to their peak of December 2017, Cardano’s founder Charles Hoskinson remains highly optimistic about crypto and blockchain. As previously reported by EWN, the IOHK CEO believes industry maturation is a more pertinent focus than valuation,
It might take 11 years for us [the crypto industry] to recover back to where we were in 2017, but we will be a dramatically different ecosystem at that point. We’ll have millions, perhaps even billions of users. We will be in many consumer products, be easy to use, [even] grandma can use it. A lot of the hard stuff will have been figured out.
Hoskinson also went on to explain that industry maturation would be the surest route to enticing institutional investment, a move that would provide a huge windfall for cryptocurrency.
Title image courtesy of BeatingBetting.co.uk
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Celebrities Known for being Crypto Supporters and Investors
After years of low activity, during which cryptocurrencies were only ever talked about among developers and early investors, cryptocurrencies exploded in 2017. A large surge in prices has made them a new trend, which inspired thousands of new investors to join the crypto space.
Among them, there were even numerous celebrities who joined the trend in one way or another. While some of them may only be crypto enthusiasts, many have become investors with a firm belief that Bitcoin and some of the altcoins are the future. And, while the crypto world did experience a market crash only a few weeks after reaching its all-time high — this has not discouraged new investors from joining the space.
Thanks to its popularity, cryptocurrencies are still on their way to enter the mainstream, and numerous celebrities remain firm supporters even to this day. Here is a look at some of the best-known celebrity crypto supporters and investors, some of which may even own millions in crypto.
1) Ashton Kut..
This Crypto Ransomware is Targeting Bitcoin (BTC) Mining Rigs in China
Bitcoin (BTC) miners in China are in a bind after a ransomware by the name of ‘hAnt’ has been targeting specific mining rigs such as the Bitmain’s Antminer S9, T9 and L3. The ransomware has also found its way into Avalon rigs. The malicious code was first detected in August 2018. Up until now there is no clear source of origin. Some Chinese security experts suspect that hAnt comes hidden inside tainted versions of mining rig firmware that has been present online since last Summer.
hAnt functions like any other ransomware by encrypting the files belonging to the infected miner. This results in the rig halting mining operations for the files are inaccessible till the user abides by the demands of the code. When owners of the rig attempt to investigate the affected machines, the are presented by an image of an ant flanked by two pickaxes in green ASCII characters. The image is similar to the red skull screen displayed by the NotPetya ransomware.
When users click anywhere on the screen, a message in Mandarin and ‘imperfect’ English pops up. The English version of the message seen by BTC miners is as follows.
I am hAnt! I continue to attack your Antminer. As long as you spread the infected machine, my server verifies that there are 10 new IPs and the number of antminers reaches 1,000. I will stop attacking you! Otherwise I will turn off your antminer’s fan and overheat protection, which will cause you to burn your machine or will burn the house.
Click the ‘Diwnload firmware patch’ button to download the firmware patch with your specific ID. Just update it to your normal Antminer to get infected.
You can bring the machine that updated the patch to another computer room to complete the infection, or induce others to use the firmware patch in the network group.
Or support 10 BTCs, I will stop attacking.
Either Pay 10 BTC or Spread the Ransomware In a nutshell, the ransomware gives two options: pay up or spread the code. Otherwise, it will turn off the antminer’s fan causing overheating and subsequent destruction of the machine.
Incidents of hAnt Spreading on Its Own There has also been some incidents of the ransomware spreading on its own to mining equipment connected to the same network. An executive from BTC.com claimed that it infected 4,000 devices within minutes.
Current Solution The only solution that has been effective so far is to re-flash the infected mining equipment’s SD card and install clean firmware. Users are also being advised to download firmware directly from the original manufacturer of the rigs and not other download sites.
What are your thoughts on the hAnt ransomware targeting BTC mining rigs in China? Do you think it could cripple the Bitcoin network? Please let us know in the comment section below.
Disclaimer: This article is not meant to give financial advice. Any additional opinion herein is purely the author’s and does not represent the opinion of Ethereum World News or any of its other writers. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the numerous cryptocurrencies available. Thank you.
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Coinbase Integrates TurboTax to Help its US Customers File Crypto Taxes
The American tax season is an annual period between late January till around mid April. With the government shutdown temporarily suspended for three weeks, employees at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will soon be reporting to work to start this year’s tax return season. For many crypto traders, the process of cataloging and curating trades worth an entire year is a bit hectic. Coinbase has therefore made the process easier for its US clients to declare their earnings or losses from crypto trading, by integrating onto the famous tax preparation software known as TurboTax.
Resource Center for Tax Queries The team at Coinbase has announced a resource center to reduce the confusion many crypto traders have when filing taxes related to their crypto trading transactions. The exchange has gone on to clarify that Coinbase is required to provide a 1099-K form to any of its US clients who has engaged in at least 200 crypto transactions whose total value is equal or greater than $20,000. This amount varies from state to state in the US.
Coinbase Integrates TurboTax For its clients who meet the requirements for the 1099-K, TurboTax has a new crypto section in its TurboTax Premier product that lets users upload their Coinbase transactions and account details for gains and losses. Coinbase customers can upload up to 100 transactions at once.
The team at Coinbase explains the process of using TurboTax as follows.
First, download your Coinbase transaction history here.
Next, you’ll be guided as part of the TurboTax Premier experience to upload this transaction history directly into TurboTax Premier.
Please note that the TurboTax crypto import feature pulls in transactions from Coinbase (not Coinbase Pro) and the iOS and Android apps.
If you also use Coinbase Pro and want help compiling a single transaction history across exchanges, see below for information about using our partner CoinTracker.
Clients wishing to use TurboTax will get up to $20 off by using this link provided by Coinbase.
Additional Cointracker Integration For its expert customers, Coinbase has partnered with CoinTracker to assist in summarizing all transaction activity for the last year irrespective of the Coinbase platform used to trade. More on this service can be found on the CoinTracker website.
What are your thoughts on Coinbase integrating TurboTax services onto its platform for its US clients? Please let us know in the comment section below.
Disclaimer: This article is not meant to give financial advice. Any additional opinion herein is purely the author’s and does not represent the opinion of Ethereum World News or any of its other writers. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the numerous cryptocurrencies available. Thank you.
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