CryptoNews of the Week by NordFX

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- The strategist of the JPMorgan financial holding Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou has not ruled out a further decrease in the price of the first cryptocurrency, Yahoo Finance writes. “We stated previously that the failure of bitcoin to break the $60,000 barrier will automatically lead to bearish momentum and further exits. This has probably become a significant driver of the current correction," the expert says.
In the medium-term perspective, Panigirtzoglou is confident that the fundamentally justified value of bitcoin is in the range of $24,000- $36,000. He has also expressed the opinion that the market crash in May has greatly weakened institutional demand, which is why the price of BTC cannot recover to its former levels.
“There is no doubt that the recent boom-and-bust dynamics is an obstacle to institutional acceptance of the cryptocurrency markets and, in particular, bitcoin and Ethereum,” the expert explains. - The rise in volatility, especially in relation to gold, presents a barrier for large investors. It makes digital gold less attractive than traditional gold. "

- Footage on the 16th film from the black-and-white film "Alien Autopsy", which allegedly depicts the corpse of an alien on the operating table, will be sold at the Rarible online auction. The starting price of the lot is 450 WETH (over $1,215,000 at the time of writing).
The 17-minute film focuses on the Roswell Incident, an alleged UFO crash near the American city of Roswell in New Mexico in July 1947. Conspiracy theorists believe that the US government then captured an alien on board the UFO.
The author of the film, a London entrepreneur Ray Santilli, stated that the film used real footage of an alien autopsy, which was allegedly provided to him by a retired military operator on terms of anonymity. However, there are also those who consider this film to be fake.
For reference: the WETH cryptocurrency is an Ethereum conversion and cannot be mined. The WETH rate is pegged to the ETH rate at a 1 to 1 ratio.  

- Paypal is going to allow its clients to withdraw cryptocurrencies to external wallets. “The stored coins cannot be transferred to other users or withdrawn from Paypal accounts at the moment, but we are working to ensure that the corresponding option appears. The demand for cryptocurrency transactions has shown that the industry has a huge number of adherents who are ready to settle in digital assets or just buy them. Because of this, the appropriate option has become a necessity,” Paypal representatives say.

- The creator of the Cardano cryptocurrency and former Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson has named central banks slow, inefficient and thoroughly corrupt. In his opinion, traditional finance is a "frustration industry" and cryptocurrencies are the "antidote" to "this broken financial network."
The specialist emphasized that the growth of the world's population made the markets large and unmanageable, and innovations too difficult to implement. In his opinion, it is only cryptocurrencies that can cope with these problems.

- Max Kaiser, aTV presenter and founder of Heisenberg Capital, expects the bitcoin price to rise 500% in the second half of 2021 to reach $220,000. "This is an aggressive price target, which is explained by the serious problems of the US dollar," the TV host said. In his opinion, the policy pursued by the US Federal Reserve and the inflation of the US dollar stimulate the strengthening of the first cryptocurrency.
Kaiser also stressed that the price of bitcoin is not as important as the hash rate and other fundamental metrics of the network. According to him, the price only reflects the state of the dollar: when the dollar weakens, the rate of the first cryptocurrency rises, and vice versa. “I don't look at the price, I watch the hash rate. And this indicator has been in a very predictable and stable bull market for the last 10 years,” he explains.

- While searching for a marijuana farm, police in the West Midlands County in Western England, discovered another farm, for mining cryptocurrencies, which had stolen electricity "worth thousands of pounds."
With the help of a drone, law enforcement officers noticed increased thermal activity near the local industrial zone. The police also found out that the territory is regularly visited by "suspicious persons". Assuming they had found a marijuana plantation, they received a search warrant, but instead of drugs, they found about a hundred computers. “This is not at all what we expected,” Police Sergeant Jennifer Griffin admitted.

- The founder of the Binance exchange, Changpeng Zhao, believes that no amount of regulatory action can destroy bitcoin and the blockchain. "You can't destroy bitcoin anyway, because it's in the heads of 500 million people," he said.
According to Zhao, the fight against cryptocurrencies is reminiscent of the situation when the trading giant Amazon went online, and many were reluctant to embrace its business model. Cryptocurrencies were not created to "kill" traditional finance and government currencies. This is just a new tool for expanding financial freedom around the world. Therefore, it is much more effective to work out a clear regulation of cryptocurrencies, rather than trying to "erase" them.
This statement, according to a number of observers, is due to the fact that regulators began to pay increased attention to Binance.

- Despite the fall in May, the bitcoin rate may return to the $50,000 mark in the near future. Analysts of the American company Fundstrat have come to this conclusion, having studied the chart of the first cryptocurrency. In their opinion, the “inverted head and shoulders” pattern may indicate a further recovery in quotes.
Earlier, Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee said that the rate of the first cryptocurrency could exceed $100,000 this year, and of Ethereum - $10,000.

- The team of analytical company Glassnode has noted that the number of Ethereum wallets containing 0.01 ETH or more reached a record level of 15.71 million addresses. Such a large number is indicative of two things. First, the Ethereum ecosystem is growing and more users are joining the network to operate on various DeFi platforms or using ETH to pay in transactions with ERC-20 tokens. Second, it could mean that more retail investors are hoarding Ethereum on a long-term basis. They have blocked more than $12 billion tokens in the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract so far. 
Experts note that, despite the current price correction, the share of Ethereum in the total crypto market capitalization continues to increase, confidently moving towards 18%.

- A well-known cryptanalyst known as PlanB, known for applying the Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model to bitcoin, told his 517,300 subscribers that he considers his investment in BTC as a call option. "I will either bring it to zero or to $1 million," - he defined his position, noting that the upside potential of bitcoin exceeds the risks of a move in the opposite direction.
PlanB did not ignore the sale of bitcoins last month. “So what happened in May? Weak hands sold about 1 million BTC at between $30,000 and $ 35,000, which they bought in April at between $55,000 and $60,000, and suffered a staggering loss of tens of billions of dollars. The good news is that this 1 million bitcoin is in strong hands right now." 


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- A representative of the international environmental organization Greenpeace told the Financial Times about the suspension of accepting donations in bitcoin due to the high energy consumption when mining cryptocurrency. “The amounts of energy required to run bitcoin are becoming more evident over time, so this policy no longer seems reasonable,” he said.
The organization began accepting bitcoin in 2014. Greenpeace then noted the environmental benefits of digital gold in the form of lower transaction processing fees compared to banks.

- Mining companies in North America will form the Bitcoin Mining Council, which aims to reduce the industry's greenhouse gas emissions. This decision was made by leading miners at a meeting with Elon Musk.
The meeting was organized by the head of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor. Leaders of Argo Blockchain, Blockcap, Core Scientific, Galaxy Digital, HIVE Blockchain, Hut8 Mining, Marathon and Riot Blockchain participated in the conversation with the Tesla founder.
According to Musk, the companies agreed to disclose data on the use of renewable energy in their activities, as well as share their plans in this area. The billionaire added that they agreed to encourage other miners to do the same.
Against this background, according to data from the CoinGecko service, the crypto market capitalization has grown by about 14%, while bitcoin has risen in price by almost 12%, and returned to the $40,000 zone on Wednesday, May 26.

- One of the first bitcoin miners, Marshal Long, said that Musk spoke with representatives of companies that control "a very, very small network hashrate." “Don't expect any changes, that's what I'm saying,” he concluded. According to Long, if the billionaire wants to change the situation, he should negotiate with Coinmint and members of the non-profit Texas Blockchain Association, which control about 15% of the hashrate.

- The investment company Ark Invest General Director of Katie Wood confirms her forecast once again. She is confident that, no matter what, bitcoin will still reach $500,000.
Wood says the recent correction has raised the chances of SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission) approval for bitcoin funds. The point is a product with a lower price tag is more likely to get the green light.
In addition, Katie Wood spoke about the statements by Elon Musk that caused the collapse of the crypto market. She suggested that he was pressured by shareholders such as BlackRock to drop the BTC price. However, the head of Ark Invest expects Musk to return to the crypto investor community.

- Professor of NYU Stern Business School Aswath Damodaran believes that Ethereum is better suited for trading on exchanges than bitcoin. According to the expert, the ETH ecosystem is more flexible, which makes it easier to work with it in trades, especially in an environment of increased volatility.
Damodaran noted that many small assets on exchanges are trading better than bitcoin, as transactions with them are faster. The BTC network is much more involved, which means that transfers can take a fairly long period of time, even by the standards of fiat transactions. 
“This is the main commercial feature of bitcoin. It is quite difficult to make money on trading with it if you do not catch the moment. The main coin is practically unpredictable, which is why traders often have to rely on good luck. " Therefore, bitcoin is more suitable as a global asset for investment, the specialist believes.

- More than 1000 employees of 16 Domino's Pizza restaurants in the Netherlands will be able to choose between salary in euros or in bitcoins. “We are a modern company, and we work with a large number of young employees,” said the co-owners of the chain. "We hear them talk about bitcoin and want to offer them the opportunity to own cryptocurrency."
The announcement coincided with the 11th anniversary of the first documented commercial bitcoin transaction in which two pizzas were purchased from Papa John's. At current prices, the then paid 10,000 BTC is worth more than $380 million. Years later, this day was named Bitcoin Pizza Day.

- According to billionaire and Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubinstein, bitcoin has almost no chance of disappearing completely. Even if the asset loses most of its value, it will still be in demand in its own infrastructure. If the coin continues to rise in price, then even the central banks of the states that opposed cryptocurrencies will begin to consider it.
“New asset types are not just a fleeting craze that quickly ceases to be interesting. We are already talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. The coin, which was originally a means for digital payments, has become a full-fledged asset,” the billionaire believes.

- Matthew McDermott, head of the digital assets department of the American bank Goldman Sachs, confirmed the growing demand for cryptocurrencies among institutional investors and asset managers. He also noted in his letter to Global Marco Research that cryptocurrency storage solutions have become safer, however inconsistent actions of regulators can have a negative impact on the development of this market.

- The Development and Reform Commission in China's Inner Mongolia region has published a list of 8 points, in which it describes measures to "combat the mining of virtual currencies" in its territory. The authorities of the region note that they have developed this plan in pursuance of the order of the State Council of China on combating financial risks arising in the process of mining and trading cryptocurrencies.
Industrial parks and data centers are ordered to reduce energy consumption, and telecommunications companies are prohibited from working with miners under the threat of license revocation. The authorities also promise to prosecute illegal miners. The same applies to money laundering attempts and illegal fundraising using cryptocurrencies. In addition, the list mentions Internet cafes that will be closed if mining on their territory is revealed.
Companies whose activities are related to cryptocurrencies mining, and their senior employees are subject to inclusion in the list of unreliable persons, and officials supporting the miners will be subject to disciplinary responsibility.
According to the University of Cambridge, the Inner Mongolia region is currently the third largest bitcoin computing power in China after Xinjiang and Sichuan. They are expected to release similar documents soon.

- According to Reuters, the largest mining companies BTC.TOP and HashCow are winding down their activities in China amid tightening legislation. HashCow, has not yet stopped the current capacity, but has refused to buy new farms.
As for BTC.TOP, this company announced a complete cessation of work in the PRC.

- The Russian authorities may partially reconsider their position on the use of digital currencies. Now bitcoin and the rest of the coins are recognized in fact as property. Such tools are prohibited to use when paying for goods and services. However, there is talk that the State Duma (Parliament) of Russia is already ready to amend the legislation. Cryptocurrency payments can be legalized if they take place under a contractual agreement between the parties.

- The Dogecoin meme cryptocurrency has turned out to be more recognizable among US citizens than Ethereum. This is evidenced by the results of a joint survey conducted by Harris Poll and CouponCabin.
The study involved more than 2,000 American adults, most of whom (89%) had heard of cryptocurrency at least once. It turned out that 71% of respondents know about bitcoin, 29% about Dogecoin and 21% about Ethereum. The USD Coin stablecoin has the same number, 21%. About 18% of survey participants said they are familiar with Litecoin, 10% have heard about the existence of Stellar.
Almost a third of respondents (31%) are confident that cryptocurrencies can become the future of money. Digital assets are seen as a get-rich-quick scheme by 23%. On the other hand, 19% called it a “questionable” technology. Almost half of the survey participants (44%) said they agree to receive cryptocurrency through incentive programs or cashback. 


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- The crypto market has already experienced three serious falls the in first two decades of May. The first two collapses were associated with Elon Musk. Tesla first announced that it would no longer sell its electric cars for Bitcoin. “We are concerned about the use of fossil fuels for mining,” it said in a press release. - The future of our planet depends on the amount of gas emissions into the atmosphere. And we're not going to stand aside from addressing environmental issues. '
The second blow to the market was struck by a tweet from Elon Musk that, perhaps, Tesla will still sell the previously acquired bitcoin tokens. Recall that BTC quotes jumped 22% just three months ago on the news that Tesla had invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin. It may get rid of them now..

- The third major drop in the crypto market was experienced since Tuesday, May 18, to Wednesday, May 19. This time it comes after Chinese financial organizations were banned from providing services related to digital assets.
According to Reuters, a statement was issued by three financial regulators overseeing online financial transactions, the payments market and clearing.
Financial institutions in China are now unable to provide services for the storage and management of cryptocurrency, as well as release products related to digital assets. It is also forbidden to use them as a payment instrument. The three regulators said in a joint statement that virtual currencies are "not supported by real value," their prices are easy to manipulate, and trade contracts are not protected by Chinese law.

- Crypto enthusiasts have developed a new Fuck Elon Tweet (FUCKELON) token. By doing this, they want to demonstrate contempt for Elon Musk's tweets, which affect the digital asset market. The token is based on the Binance Smart Chain. According to the statement, the maximum offer will be 1 billion coins. More than 9,000 addresses became FUCKELON holders.
The coin has already risen by 2000% and the token is trading at the level of $0.005260 at the time of writing.

¬- LMAX institutional platform strategist Joel Kruger considers Elon Musk's statements about high energy consumption of bitcoin as only a catalyst for a long-overdue correction. “There is too much buzz around Tesla and Elon Musk,” he writes. "The pullback is caused by this to a much lesser extent, and by technical overheating after the parabolic movement of the course to a much greater extent."
Another expert and veteran trading veteran, Peter Brandt, said earlier this month that bitcoin would have to "come back to Jesus." And now he confirmed that the current fall fits the description of the moment he had indicated.

- Popular cryptocurrency analyst Lark Davis believes that bitcoin traders shouldn't worry about Elon Musk's comments or bitcoin's depreciation. Davis advises taking a look at the 2017 bull rally and seeing that bitcoin can survive multiple declines. The trader noted that there were 4 different corrections in the range of 30-45% then. The analyst is confident that the current growth is only at an early stage, and believes that the rates will soar much higher by the end of this year:
“You should look more broadly. The current Bitcoin situation is not a cause for concern. This is a fairly common situation that happens in the cryptocurrency market. The situation is likely to become mega-bullish again after a few weeks. Everyone will start to say again that BTC is a new concept of money and stuff like that. Now is not the time to panic and sell cryptocurrency, but it is high time to buy it in panic. We have excellent buying opportunities."

- Analysts at Glassnode confirm Davis' words. According to them, many new investors panicked out of their positions during the rollback, while long-term investors continued to increase their investments.
For example, business analytics company MicroStrategy took advantage of the decline in bitcoin and bought an additional 229 BTC worth $10 million. The acquisition was made at an average price of $43,663. To date, MicroStrategy has 92,079 BTC at its disposal, acquired for a total of $2.251 billion at an average price of about $ 24,450 per coin.
Investor Robert Kiyosaki, the author of the popular book "Rich Dad Poor Dad," is planning to buy on the current fall in bitcoin.

- The oil and petroleum pool, supported by the U.S. military, threatens the environment more than bitcoin mining. This was announced by Alex Gladstein, Strategy Director of the Human Rights Foundation, and James McGinnis, co-founder of David Energy. According to Forbes, the US military used up to 1 million barrels of oil daily in 2017. If the Ministry of Defence were a country, this level of consumption would make it the 55th most carbon dioxide-emitted country in the world.

- The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recorded a tenfold increase in cryptocurrency investment fraud. According to the report, the agency received 6,792 allegations of attackers from October 2020 to March 2021. The total amount of damage from their actions exceeded $80 million. The FTC says this figure was 10 times lower a year earlier: 570 appeals with losses totaling $7.5 million.
Scam organizers usually target investors aged between 20 and 49. Most scams operate on a pyramid basis. The most popular methods of finding victims are advertising "investment advice from experienced traders" and "distribution of cryptocurrency on behalf of celebrities." The attackers earned over $2 million on the name of Elon Musk alone.

- Bitcoin is not as popular among criminal groups as it might seem. This is the conclusion reached by blockchain analysts at CipherTrace in their monthly report, where they found that only 1% of all transactions on the bitcoin network are associated with illegal activities. According to them, in 2020, only 1.2% of transactions on the BTC blockchain were made between crypto exchanges and high-risk organizations. 
In their sample, CipherTrace classify the following as a high-risk organization: sites with blockchain games, mixers, darknet, hype scam campaigns, ransomware; malware, high-risk exchanges.
Moreover, analysts have found out the volume of transactions used for money laundering. They concluded that the share of such transactions fell from more than 1% to 0.11% in 2020.

- Founded in 1932, American furniture chain Ethan Allen's is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Since the beginning of 2021, the company's shares have risen by 50% due to the inattention of some investors who confuse securities under the ticker ETH with the second most capitalized cryptocurrency.
According to The Wall Street Journal, economic recovery was not the only reason for the growth. Some investors hear the call “Buy ETH” and buy Ethan Allen's stock instead of Ethereum. According to the publication, in the last month alone, the turnover of ETH shares increased by 56%.

- The founder of the cryptobank Galaxy Digital, Mike Novogratz, predicted in an interview with New York Magazine an increase in the price of Ethereum to $5000. This is facilitated by a combination of three factors: payment apps and stablecoins, decentralized finance, and non-fungible tokens (NFT), he said. “I'm almost 100% sure that the price will rise - it's just mathematics,” Novogratz explained.


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- SpaceX Corporation has entered into a partnership with Dogecoin developers. The launch of the new satellite will be fully paid in this cryptocurrency. The satellite itself in the form of a cube will be delivered to the Moon as part of the Falcon 9 mission in early 2022.
SpaceX Vice President Tom Ochinero said the collaboration "will demonstrate the use of cryptocurrency outside of Earth orbit and lay the foundation for interplanetary commerce." The information was also confirmed by Elon Musk, who has recently received the nickname "dogefather" for his love for this meme cryptocurrency.

- Morgan Creek Capital CEO Mark Yusko believes that bitcoin could reach the value of $250,000 within five years. According to the expert, the rapid adoption of the main cryptocurrency will resemble the popularization of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google. Also, the growth in the value of bitcoin may be affected by the situation in the fiat market, which is now going through hard times.
“At one time, many large companies increased their capitalization to a trillion dollars in 10-20 years. The main cryptocurrency managed to do this much faster. Bitcoin is likely to become the main competitor to gold within a few years, although it is already, says Yusko. - I do not think that cryptocurrencies will start to sink sharply in the near future. The market has many investors already who will not leave it until the last minute. "
“However, not all assets are useful and promising,” the financier continued. - Dogecoin, for example, is a joke and a marketing thing for me. It is naturl that it is rapidly becoming more expensive after references from Elon Musk. I think this can happen with any coin, even if it has no real value."

- Scammers took advantage of the hype surrounding Elon Musk's performance on Saturday Night Live (SNL) to lure over $100,000 in cryptocurrency from users. According to the MalwareHunterTeam project team, the scammers have created more than 30 fake Tesla, SpaceX and SNL accounts. Some of them received a verification mark. To receive a "reward", the attackers asked users to send a small amount of bitcoins, Ethereum, or Dogecoin to their wallets. MalwareHunterTeam noted that this type of scam has been around for a long time, but Twitter still hasn't solved the problem.

- As for Elon Musk himself, he urged to invest in digital assets with caution. “Digital assets continue to be promising. But it is possible that the market will return to bearish sentiments at any moment. At one time, I thought that investing in cryptocurrencies was a dubious business, but everything has changed over the years,” Musk said. At the same time, the billionaire noted that Tesla bought bitcoins at the beginning of the year for the so-called "free funds", which do not affect the company's activities in any way.

- According to the BBC, the US authorities have arrested a resident of Tennessee, suspected of organizing the contract murder of his wife. According to British media reports, a customer unknown at that time told the killer the make of the car, as well as the date and time when the woman would take the pet to the veterinarian. The payment for the murder was done in bitcoins.
"The FBI headquarters provided blockchain analysis of the transaction and was able to determine that the wallets of the Coinbase crypto exchange were used for payment," the court record says. The exchange, at the request of the authorities, revealed not only the transactions history, but also the name of the owner of the wallets: it was the husband of the alleged victim. He used his home computer and personal bank accounts to buy cryptocurrency. The man was arrested and faces up to 10 years in prison. The identity of the killer has not yet been established.

- Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also continues to influence cryptocurrency quotes; he shared a photo of two goats named Max and Bitcoin. Social media users saw a secret message in this. Some of the commentators called him Bitcoin MAXimalist. And economist Alex Kruger said that the photo of the goats is a great reason for another pump of the first cryptocurrency. “This is quite in the spirit of 2021. If the market was growing when Elon Musk tweeted about Bitcoin, then surely it should grow when Zuk calls the goats Max and Bitcoin, ”he said and... he was wrong. The price of bitcoin dropped by about $5,000 after the post was published. 

- Another interesting event concerning Zukreberg took place in the capital of Russia. The Moscow court officially declared a citizen Mark Elliot Zuckerberg bankrupt. The reason for the litigation was his debt to two Russian banks in the amount of 669 thousand rubles (about $9,000).
This news could become a worldwide sensation. But the fact is that this citizen's name was Yuri Shishlyannikov until December 2018. He was born in Ukraine, and after moving to Russia, he changed his first and last name to Mark Zuckerberg, which is quite easy to do under Russian law.

- The attackers spread an interview allegedly given by Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen to the Kronen Zeitung. He "talks" about his investments in cryptocurrencies there and allegedly admits that he easily earns tens of thousands of euros a day.
According to the Watchlist Internet Internet fraud tracking service, under the guise of an interview with the Austrian President, scammers are promoting the Bitcoin Era, Bitcoin Prime and Crypto Revolt cryptocurrency trading platforms. To start trading, you need to deposit a minimum amount of €250. Then some consultants contact the investors, and the first profit is displayed on the accounts. This motivates people to invest more. However, neither deposits nor possible profits are paid out to users, Watchlist Internet stresses.

- Analysts of the research service Whalemap presented an analysis of the price dynamics of the main cryptocurrency. According to their findings, large investors, including classic companies from the world of finance, continue to buy bitcoins actively. The largest buying volumes were recorded when the price of the coin was in the range from $54,000 to $58,000.
Whalemap believes that the $52,000 price level represents the point below which it will be difficult for the cryptocurrency to leave for a long time. Moreover, as analysts predict, bitcoin can gain a foothold above $60,000 in the foreseeable future.

- PlanB, the author of the famous S2FX prediction model for the price of bitcoin, agrees that the coin will continue to rise in price. That is why he replenished his crypto wallet by purchasing BTC on May 8 at the rate of $58,776.
Among the arguments in favor of further growth in the price of bitcoin is the growth of reserves of crypto exchanges in dollar stablecoins, which has now reached an absolute maximum of $11.5 billion. Interest in bitcoin is also observed on the part of miners: the hash rate for this cryptocurrency has once again turned out to be at levels that are close to absolute highs.

- Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said at the Ethereal virtual summit that he bought Bitcoin and Ethereum in early March. He made the decision after the country's Senate approved the $1.9 trillion economic bailout plan. It is noteworthy that the United States plan to adopt another aid package, due to the high level of unemployment.
According to Suarez, people will not want to store currency in USD, so cryptocurrencies will continue to grow. The official added that bitcoin has reached a level of acceptance too high to fall under a regulatory ban.
Suarez has previously said he is exploring the possibility of transferring some of Miami's city budget reserves into digital gold. 

- The police detained two suspects of fraud in a Russian small town under the pretext of selling mining equipment. According to the investigation, the detainees posted an advertisement on the Internet about the sale of the mining farm. One of the villagers responded and transferred 1,000 rubles (about $13) as an advance. After the attackers sent a photo of the package, the future crypto-miner sent them the remaining amount. However, taking the parcel from the post office, he found two plastic water bottles and an old fire extinguisher in it, hardly suitable for cryptocurrency mining. It should be noted that this is not the first case of selling counterfeit equipment to those who wish to make money in this way.


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- Experts at JPMorgan believe that Ethereum may become more efficient than Bitcoin in the future. Many DeFi application developers are already using the Ethereum blockchain more than the main net.
Experts note that this altcoin is more resistant to external factors. Bitcoin, on the other hand, reacts to almost every major fluctuation in the market, which leads to its correction straight away. Investors in the main cryptocurrency are not very worried about minor jumps, however, with a long negative trend, they start to withdraw assets quickly. During the recent correction, it was Bitcoin that lost most of its capitalization.
“Bitcoin, on the other hand, is very narrow in its application, which is evident from a variety of factors. It is Most often used as an asset for investment. All new major projects are developed on the basis of Ethereum. It has more liquidity, and ETH has recently substantially increased its position in the spot market. Another advantage of Ethereum is its rather large and developed ecosystem,” JPMorgan analysts note.

- Founded in 1744, Sotheby's will auction the work of street art genius Banksy, Love is in the Air. They plan to accept bets in US dollars, bitcoins and ethereums. The work has been initially estimated at $3-5 million. The auction will take place on May 12 and will be the first experience for Sotheby's in selling works of art for cryptocurrency.
 
- S&P Dow Jones Indices, a division of US financial data provider S&P Global, has launched indices based on Bitcoin, Ethereum and a basket of these cryptocurrencies. The S&P Bitcoin Index received the ticker SPBTC, the S&P Ethereum Index - SPETH, which tracks the dynamics of these two assets, the S&P Crypto Mega Cap Index - SPCMC.
Indices are calculated in points, not in US dollars. According to a S&P spokesman, instead of the actual cost, they reflect price changes, and should compete with counterparts from Bloomberg and Galaxy. 
The data is calculated on weekdays and will be available by subscription for service customers. Rebalancing is carried out on a quarterly basis.

- Back in May 2019, crypto enthusiasts noticed an advertisement for the American online trading giant eBay with the words “Virtual Currency. It's happening on eBay. " Later, representatives of the site denied rumors about adding support for cryptocurrencies. And now, two years later, on CNBC, the head of the company, Jamie Iannone, said that eBay is still considering the possibility of accepting payments in digital assets.

- Renowned crypto trader and strategist Mikael van de Poppe has shared a bold prediction for the future of bitcoin. “I am quite confident that we are in a bullish cycle and it is really difficult to rely on a bear market, especially given the inflation of the US dollar,” he said.
“Given the fact that institutional money is flowing in, bitcoin is becoming more widespread. This means that there is now a large demand and a relatively small supply, which will lead to an increase in the price, continues Van de Poppe. - Will Bitcoin get to $300,000 or $500,000? I think so. If we carry out simple calculations, the peak of the BTC rate should be $500,000. Given the data on the top of the cycle, it can be assumed that the average rate will be above $250,000. And it can get to $350,000 - $450,000 within a year.”
“But besides, we will have long sideways,” added the specialist.

- Ethereum continues to rise in price amid the growing popularity of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications designed to replace banks and insurance companies. The price of the leading altcoin surpassed $3,000 on May 3, for the first time in history. As a result, the fortune of Ethereum creator Vitaly Buterin, who owns 333,520 coins, reached $1.09 billion.
Thus, 27-year-old Buterin has become the youngest billionaire in the world who made his fortune on cryptocurrency. His fortune has grown almost 25 times since the beginning of 2020, according to Forbes.

- A startup employee told a story about how the employer demanded that the salary paid in cryptocurrency be returned after its rate increased by 700%.
According to him, the CEO of the company offered him a settlement in cryptocurrency at the signing of the contract in the spring of 2020. The contract contained a clause that the employer could have him being paid in dollars, but the employee refused to do so.
And just recently, he received a message from his employer demanding the return of all the cryptocurrency. “In return, you can bill the company for hours worked in dollars,” the letter read.
The MarketWatch portal, on which the story was published, advised him not to return the cryptocurrency, since the employer would hardly want to pay extra if the rate collapsed.
Although the author does not specify the name of the cryptocurrency, Ethereum fits the description, the rate of which has grown by 790% since August 1.

- Bitcoin is less volatile than stocks of companies such as Apple and Tesla, said the head of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance Changpeng Zhao in an interview with Bloomberg TV. According to Zhao, significant price fluctuations are observed not only in the cryptocurrency, but also in the stock market. At the same time, Bitcoin is less volatile than shares of companies with comparable market capitalization. 
According to him, “profit hunters” are often to blame for this. They do not analyze the market but invest money in assets against the backdrop of positive news. “There are always more people driven by herd instinct than those who really do serious research. When negative news appears, they leave the market, when positive news appears, they try to enter again. This causes a lot of volatility,” explained the CEO of Binance.
Earlier, Zhao advised traders who are stressed by every price drop to change their strategy to buy and hold. In his opinion, this is not the best recommendation for professionals, but good advice for beginners.

- Bitcoin is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization, said fellow Warren Buffett, 97-year-old billionaire Charles Munger. “Of course, I hate Bitcoin's success. I do not welcome currency, which is created out of thin air and is so useful for kidnappers and extortionists,” Munger emphasized.
At the same time, another critic of cryptocurrency, billionaire Warren Buffett, this time declined to comment on Bitcoin. The legendary investor emphasized that digital money is now supported by "hundreds of thousands against two people." “We have a choice: to make 400 thousand people angry and upset, or to make two happy,” he noted ironically.

- American financial services giant Mastercard has presented the results of its research conducted in 18 countries in various regions of the world. According to its data, 40% of consumers plan to use crypto assets for their payments next year. Among millennials, the figure is even higher, reaching 67%.


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- The Cuban authorities have decided that cryptocurrencies are necessary for building socialism and have included them in the program for the country's economic development until 2026. The document is titled "Guiding Principles of the Party's Economic and Socialist Policy." 
The idea of introducing cryptocurrencies into the domestic economy of the country was first voiced in 2019. The authorities announced then that they were going to use the assets for external payments, since operations with the dollar became unavailable for them due to the sanctions imposed by the United States against Cuba. The new set of measures includes support for cryptocurrency initiatives. We are also talking about currency liberalization, which should allow citizens and companies to use any type of assets for settlements.
The Cuban authorities want to build on the experience of Venezuela, which was able to introduce its own cryptocurrency called El Petro and made possible the use of bitcoin and other digital assets. Several national payment platforms have appeared in the country, designed to work with cryptocurrencies.

- Bill Miller, legendary investor and founder of hedge fund Miller Value Partners, said it was no longer possible to ignore bitcoin. According to him, cryptocurrencies are gradually becoming mainstream, which is why they will be fully adopted within a few years. The financier did not rule out that central banks will try to control the situation, but they will still have to give up sooner or later.
“If bitcoin was considered a kind of internal network asset earlier, and the overwhelming majority of citizens were sure that it would soon collapse, everyone is now waiting for a new wave of bullish sentiment to buy as many coins as possible at a bargain price. Investors have everything under control now, because of which exchanges can no longer move the asset to drawdowns or growth so simply,” Miller believes.
The financier recalled that he first invested in BTC in 2014 or 2015 at an average price of $350 per coin. Now such amounts seem so distant past that no investor believes in returning to them.

- Tesla sold part of its bitcoins for $272 million, generating a profit of $101 million from this transaction. This is stated in the report for the first quarter of 2021. According to Elon Musk, the electric car maker sold 10% of its crypto assets solely to test the liquidity of the market.
Recall that the company invested $1.5 billion in BTC just in early February. And according to Tesla's management, the company is satisfied with the liquidity of the market for the first cryptocurrency and will continue to accumulate digital assets, selling part of its electric vehicles for bitcoins.

- The growing interest in cryptocurrencies threatens the South Korean labor market with a shortage of young workers. According to a number of employers, their employees aged between 20 and 30 are distracted by tracking bitcoin price fluctuations or quit their jobs to devote themselves entirely to trading. In this regard, some companies are looking for ways to block access to cryptocurrency exchanges during business hours.
The 20-year-old Chosun interviewee left the credit card company after three years as he earned 3 billion wons ($2.7 million) in cryptocurrency revenues. “I loved the job,” he says, “but I realized that financially it would be wiser to focus on investing, taking into account the income from the time I spend.”

- The creator of the sports media platform Barstool Sports Dave Portnoy announced the investment of a "seven-figure" amount in the first cryptocurrency in August 2020. He did this after he met with the founders of the Gemini exchange, the Winklevoss brothers. Later, the investor sold all his bitcoins at a price of about $11,600. He said that he lost a decent amount on the market drawdown and was disappointed in cryptocurrencies.
And now Dave Portnoy has reacquired digital gold in the amount of... 1 bitcoin. “This is all I could afford at $48,000. 50 thousand, and now I have one bitcoin,” stated the creator of Barstool Sports.

- In 1581, the Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible killed his son, in anger. And now, 440 years later, one of the residents of Moscow filed a complaint with the police against his son, in anger. He did this after he failed to receive over 100 million rubles (approx. $1.35 million) from the family's cryptocurrency mining farm. The Russian created a mining company in 2017 and appointed his 23-year-old son its CEO, while he continued to periodically invest in the business. In April 2021, the company started having problems and the head of the family fired his son. According to his father's calculations, at least 137 million rubles should have been on the company's account, but he found only 18 million, after which he reported to the police.

- New York-based wine distributor Acker, Merrall & Condit has announced that it has begun accepting digital currencies as payment at its auctions and retail stores. Acker, Merrall & Condit is the world's largest fine wine auction house, founded back in 1820. After the pandemic, the company found itself in the same boat as other retailers as most of its offline stores were closed. 
To offset the impact of COVID-19, the organization has placed a bid on its own online auction. Prices for some of the best wines it has to offer are around $1000 a bottle. And according to the company's management, it is very fortunate that now they can be paid for with such cryptocurrencies as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Dogecoin.

- One of the JPMorgan top managers, Daniel Pinto, announced back in February 2021 that his bank was ready to launch a service for operations with bitcoin if the bank's clients needed it. And this week, the Coin Desk portal reported that the American giant decided to launch a fund focused on BTC. The journalists found out that the JPMorgan bitcoin fund will be available only to private clients and will start operating this summer.
Note that the head of this investment bank, Jamie Dimon, had previously repeatedly criticized BTC, stating that the cryptocurrency is a common fraudulent scheme. Daimon even threatened his traders with firing if they tried to invest in bitcoin. But as you can see, the position of Dimon and the policy of JPMorgan have changed significantly now.

- Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donated 100 ETH and 100 MKR totaling over $600,000 to a fund to fight the coronavirus pandemic in India. Following Buterin, the former CTO of the Coinbase crypto exchange Balaji Srinivasan joined the campaign, donating 21.7463 ETH (almost $550,000 at the time of payment).

- The creator of the stock-to-flow model, a popular cryptocurrency analyst aka PlanB, believes that the current decline in bitcoin is quite normal and expected, and only confirms the bullish trend. The analyst stressed that one should not expect constant growth, sometimes pullbacks should also occur: “Nothing grows without pullbacks. Bitcoin has already been growing for 6 months in a row. This is similar to the mid-cycle correction we saw in 2013 and 2017.”
At the same time, the expert noted that he even “calmed down to some extent”: the market was too overheated, and now a small “cooling” phase awaits it. In addition, the rate of the first cryptocurrency turned out to be lower currently than the expectations of the S2F model, which means it may well continue to grow.

- The bitcoin rate will reach $200,000 in 2022. This forecast was recently announced by Dan Morehead, CEO of venture capital firm Pantera Capital. According to the businessman, BTC is doomed to further growth, as more and more investors begin to understand that storing capital in cryptocurrency is much more efficient than in traditional instruments.
The value of BTC adds $200 every time 1 million new users register on its network. If such dynamics persist, the price of cryptocurrency in 2022 will approach or even exceed the $200,000 mark.
According to Dan Morehead, the spread of bitcoin is a result of, among other things, the growth in the number of smartphone users. There are now about 3.5 billion people in the world who own such devices, making bitcoin available anywhere and at any time.


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- PayPal's Venmo mobile payment app now allows users to buy, store and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. The minimum investment in cryptocurrency is just $1. In addition, you can now share the purchased cryptocurrency with friends through the Venmo social feed.
Thus, PayPal continues to expand the functionality associated with digital assets. As a reminder, more recently, this payment giant has allowed users to buy cryptocurrency through its main platform and use their crypto wallets to pay for purchases in online stores around the world.

- Popular cryptocurrency analyst Willy Woo said that Bitcoin's drawdown on April 18 below $51,000 was triggered by massive power outages in China. Due to the fact that most of the miners were temporarily out of order, the hash rate of the asset began to decline. According to Woo, the situation should stabilize soon, which will lead to further increases in the value of bitcoin.
“This is a power outage in Xinjiang province. It is one of the largest regions in China where the mining power of bitcoin is concentrated. According to the BTC Cambridge Energy Consumption Index, Xinjiang accounts for about 25% of the coin's total hashrate. It becomes clear straight away that the entire cryptocurrency market has dropped significantly precisely because of the Chinese incident,” Woo said.
According to the expert, if his theory is confirmed, then the situation with the hash rate of the asset should stabilize quickly. When the main network starts processing the same number of transactions, the value of the coin will start to rise again.

- An unknown attacker allegedly stole phone numbers and credit card details of Domino's Pizza India customers and put them up for sale for 10 bitcoins (about $550,000 at the time of writing). In parallel, the hacker demanded 50 BTC ($2.75 million) from Domino's to prevent the information from getting publicly available.
Representatives of the management company confirmed the hack but denied the leak. "In accordance with our policy, we do not store financial information or credit card information of our customers, so such information has not been compromised," said Domino's Pizza.

- Candidate for the post of New York City Treasurer Reshma Patel presented an urban development plan based on investments in blockchain businesses and cryptocurrencies.
According to her plan, this should play an important role in the restoration of the city. “My intention to run for office is due to my concerns about the financial health of New York, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is clear that cryptocurrencies have a future in finance and a future in financial planning in New York,” Patel said. Among other things, she plans to invest in funds focused on blockchain, create a working group to explore options for direct investment in technology, and also transfer part of the city's pension fund reserves to digital assets.

- The world-famous American magazine TIME followed the path of Tesla, and in addition to investing in bitcoin, it also began to accept cryptocurrency for subscription payments. To this end, TIME has started to cooperate with the crypto payment platform Crypto.com, offering an additional reward of 10% for those who pay for the service in native Crypto.com CRO tokens.
The service is currently available in the US and Canada, but a global expansion is planned in the coming months. TIME's rapid digital transformation is the result of our commitment to new technologies and working closely with innovative companies like Crypto.com to bring our vision to life, said TIME CTO Bharat Krish.

- Bitcoin trend remains bullish. This is the conclusion reached by analysts of the Santiment resource, who analyzed the frequency of tweets with the phrase "buy the dip" and "bought the dip". With the bitcoin price dipping below $51,000 on April 18, the number of low buy posts hit a weekly record of 2,108 tweets. This allowed Santiment analysts to conclude that this correction is nothing more than a "bump in the road."
This is not the first time Santiment has used Twitter stats to gauge the market. For example, earlier the analysts used the mention of Binance coin (BNB) to determine the peak price of this cryptocurrency.

- Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin need to be considered as alternative investments. This was stated by the deputy governor of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) Li Bo. “Bitcoin and stablecoins are encrypted assets. It is an investment asset, an alternative investment, not a currency. They should play an important role in the future,” explained Li Bo. However, he stressed the associated regulatory uncertainty. According to the official, "current practices" in the form of banning the operation of bitcoin exchanges and holding ICOs will remain in force until the development of new regulation is completed, which should become similar to the regulation of the banking system.

- Former hedge fund manager and host of CNBC's Mad Money Jim Cramer called himself a "renegade" and announced the sale of his assets in the first cryptocurrency. “I know people will be mad at me, but I paid off my mortgage with bitcoin yesterday,” Kramer said on TV. The host did not elaborate on how many coins he sold. But, he said, it was half of his digital gold reserves.
Twitter users likened Kramer's move to Laszlo Hanyecz's famous 10,000 BTC purchase of pizza in May 2010.

- The Swiss giant AXA was the first of the insurance companies of this country to start accepting bitcoin for payment. To accept digital payments, the company entered into a partnership agreement with the cryptocurrency broker Bitcoin Suisse. AXA customers will be able to pay with bitcoin for all of the company's products, with the exception of life insurance. This is due to legal restrictions.
AXA has not ruled out that in the future its products can be purchased using other cryptocurrencies, but for now the company will test working with digital assets using BTC only.


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- The new episode of the cult animated series "The Simpsons" broadcast on of April 11 predicted an increase in the value of the first cryptocurrency to infinity. This was noticed by Reddit users. A running line with quotes of financial assets appears on the TV screen in the 18th episode of season 32. The bitcoin exchange rate is marked with a green sign of infinity.
Recall that in February 2020, the creators of "The Simpsons" released an episode called Frinkcoin, dedicated to cryptocurrencies and how blockchain technology works. They also mentioned bitcoin in a joint episode with The Griffins and in the mobile game The Simpsons: Tapped Out.

- The emulator of a vintage computer Commodore-64 produced in 1982 was used to mine cryptocurrency. The developer Maciej Vitkoviak has created the C64 Bitcoin Miner software specifically for this PC. He demonstrated a 0.2 H/s hashrate on the VICE emulator. “It will take 337 years and 10 months for the C64 to mine a block,” the developer said.

- Ethereum may surpass Bitcoin in terms of profitability in 2021, and the price of the coin may rise to $10,000. Such a forecast was given by the famous crypto trader and host of the podcast The Wolf of All Streets Scott Melker.
He revealed In an interview with Cointelegraph that he has largely switched his strategy from the first cryptocurrency to this leading altcoin in recent months. “It reminds me of investing in the Internet in the early 1990s,” Melker said. “I don’t understand why this is crazy. In fact, this is just an increase of less than five times the current price. Bitcoin almost tripled last year."

- Analysts of the Kraken exchange admitted the possibility of growth of bitcoin to $90,000. This is stated in the company's latest monthly state-of-the-industry report. Experts noted that March was one of the most successful months for the largest cryptocurrencies in terms of capitalization. 
Based on historical data, analysts allowed Bitcoin to rise by 50% in April. Considering that the month began at $59,000, the target of the movement could be the $90,000 mark. However, before the rally resumes, the first cryptocurrency can expect a correction of at least $10,000.
As for Ethereum, Kraken predicts it could rise to $15,000. Exchange analysts noted the important, in their opinion, support and resistance levels for this altcoin: $1,462 and $2,695. Plotting historical patterns of ETH price movement on logarithmic curves, they concluded that the peak of the bullish cycle is still far away. The experts are confident that the price of Ethereum could rise by 700% from the levels of the end of March and reach a high at $15,238.

- The fortune of the bitcoin creator under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, who, according to various estimates, owns from 750 thousand to 1.1 million BTC coins, has exceeded $60 billion. Thanks to this, according to the Forbes rating, Nakamoto got into the top 20 richest people in the world.
Nakamoto's fortune assessment does not include bitcoin forks belonging to him. For example, the creator of the first cryptocurrency could have over $650 million in Bitcoin Cash, $250 million in Bitcoin SV, $1.1 million in Bitcoin Gold, and a host of other forks.

- According to the analytical service Santiment, large investors, or the so-called "whales", continue to accumulate bitcoins. Analysts found that they have accumulated up to 2.2% of the total cryptocurrency market supply so far, reaching an 11-month high. A similar situation was observed at the beginning of May last year.
These are investors who control 100,000 or more BTC, according to the Santiment report. At the same time, the volume of cryptocurrency on addresses containing from 1,000 to 100,000 coins, on the contrary, decreased from 42.5% to 39.5%.

- An Italian citizen was arrested on suspicion of trying to pay with cryptocurrency for the murder of his ex-girlfriend. According to Europol, the suspect found a website on the darknet that offers such services. After there appeared a contractor ready to fulfill the order, the suspect transferred about 10 thousand euros in bitcoins to him. However, Europol and the Italian police uncovered the criminal plan in time.
Europol also tracked the cryptocurrency transfer. To this end, law enforcement agencies turned to the crypto exchange, where the suspect's virtual currency was originally purchased, and it provided the authorities with the requested information. The name of the exchange is not disclosed.

- Los Angeles-based real estate agency Caruso has partnered with the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange to accept bitcoins in residential and commercial transactions. This fact is interesting because Caruso's long list of tenants includes Tesla CEO Elon Musk. He sells his cars at the large Americana at Brand shopping and entertainment center in Glendale.
Even though Caruso has never discussed bitcoin payments with the well-known entrepreneur, it is believed that Musk may be the very first tenant to pay rent in cryptocurrency. “I didn't tell Elon about this, but he might be a trailblazer who pays rent in bitcoin,” said the company's founder and CEO Rick Caruso.

- Bitcoin miners are accumulating coins for the first time since December 2020, thus containing the downward pressure on the market. The number of bitcoins in miners' wallets has increased to 1.806 million BTC over the past two weeks.
“Miners have switched to accumulating liquid assets, because they have enough cash reserves to support their activities, which they raised during the rise of bitcoin from $20,000 to $40,000. Or, most of them are holding coins in anticipation of further appreciation,” Flex Young, CEO of Hong Kong-based Babel Finance, told CoinDesk.
Miners receive income in cryptocurrency, but they pay fiat to service providers, so they are forced to sell part of the mined coins. The volumes of such sales depend on current market conditions and expectations of the bitcoin price behavior.
Starting from March 31, miners started accumulating BTC reserves again. Whereas for four months before that, they reduced their positions, converting bitcoins to fiat. The largest volumes of cryptocurrency, from 17,000 to 24,000 BTC per day, were sold by them in January 2021.

- CNBC TV presenter Jim Kramer would switch entirely to cryptocurrency, and it would take him several years. He has already reached the point of demanding that his salary be paid in bitcoins. Apparently, he was influenced by the news that the MicroStrategy company began to pay remuneration in bitcoins to its members of the Board of Directors. Kramer named MicroStrategy a leader in Bitcoin adoption in his Mad Money program, predicting that other companies would follow suit.


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- Attackers demanded 5 BTC (about $275,000), threatening to detonate bombs in two business centers of St. Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia. According to local media reports, the Fort Tower and Renaissance Park business centers received ransom threats by e-mail. However, no explosive devices were found after people were evacuated and buildings were inspected. The police are looking for extortionists.

- Investor and TV star Kevin O'Leary said in a comment to CNBC that he would only buy eco-friendly digital gold. According to him, within a year or two, the crypto community will divide bitcoin into two types: "clean", that is, mined using renewable energy, and "dirty" or "bloody" - mined using "dirty energy."
O'Leary added that environmental concerns were coming to the fore with regard to digital gold. “I don’t buy coins if I don’t know where and when they were mined. Not from China. No “bloody” coins,” the investor said. However, he did not specify where he buys "clean" bitcoin and how he determines its origin.
According to analysts' calculations, the annual emissions into the atmosphere from cryptocurrency mining are about 60 million tons of carbon dioxide. In other words, $1 billion worth of bitcoin mining is equivalent to annual carbon emissions from 1.2 million cars.

- According to CoinDesk, the Sacramento Kings NBA basketball club will provide an opportunity for the team and support staff to get paid in the first cryptocurrency. This was stated by its owner. The club plans to give official confirmation this week. The publication believes that such a move will secure the Kings a status as the most crypto-friendly professional sports team in the United States.

- Experts of the JPMorgan bank called the rate of $130,000 as the long-term goal for the first cryptocurrency, having lowered the bar from $146,000 due to the fall in gold quotes, Business Insider reports.
The bank's analysts made such a forecast based on the calculation of the theoretical capitalization of the first cryptocurrency in the event of an inflow of funds from the gold market, for which the cryptocurrency is becoming a digital alternative. According to JPMorgan, the precious metal has outflowed $20 billion since mid-October, while companies have poured $7 billion in bitcoin.
The long-term target for the cryptocurrency rate is based on the idea that its volatility and the volatility of gold will converge. But the bank recalled that this is a long-term process: the realized three-month asset volatility is 86% and 16%, respectively so far.

- The famous American rapper Snoop Dogg said that he is a big bitcoin supporter. “I believe in bitcoin and the technology that makes global interaction possible,” he said.
The rapper has already become familiar with the volatility of the crypto market and understands that the fall in price does not reflect the initial value of the asset. Price is not the main determinant of the reliability of the leading cryptocurrency for him. “I don't follow the coin rate too much, because I've been on the market for a long time and got used to rate jumps. I am sure that bitcoin is for a long time, ”says Snoop Dogg. “The future is happening right before our eyes. I don't think bitcoin is just a consequence of the pandemic. It only adds fuel to the fire. "

- Many "bitcoin bulls" in the expert environment say that the largest digital currency will be able to bypass gold in terms of capitalization in the future. In this case, the value of all bitcoins should grow 10 times and exceed the $11 trillion mark. The authors of the study conducted by Ark Invest, stress that this could happen over the next few years. "We believe that bitcoin is better than gold and it's safe to say that it will capture gold market share or even more."
Commenting on a recent speech by the US Treasury Secretary in which she criticized bitcoin, Ark Invest experts say Janet Yellen used outdated arguments when she said that criminals were using cryptocurrency for money laundering.

- Billionaire and founder of the crypto bank Galaxy Digital Mike Novogratz agrees with the forecast of Ark Invest. He stated In a comment for CNBC that he was shocked by the pace of digital asset adoption. The investor also admitted his previous forecast of the price of the first cryptocurrency of $60,000 too conservative. “Bitcoin is on the inevitable path to reaching and exceeding the capitalization of gold,” said Novogratz.
According to CompaniesMarketCap, the total market value of gold at the time of writing is $10.8 trillion. According to CoinGecko, the capitalization of the first cryptocurrency is around $1.1 trillion.

- Domain name registrar GoDaddy put up Roger Ver's Bitcoin.com domain for sale for $100 million earlier this week. Upon discovering the ad, the owner said it was “100% fake” and contacted GoDaddy with a demand to remove the domain from sale. And that was done. At the same time, there were no official comments and explanations from GoDaddy representatives.

- Rich Dad Poor Dad author, investor and entrepreneur Robert Kiyosaki has suggested in a recent interview that bitcoin could reach a value of $1.2 million over the next five years. Kiyosaki first bought the cryptocurrency last year when it was trading at $9,000 after the pandemic actually shackled the global economy. “I wish I could buy it for 10 cents, like many people did, but I still look like a genius because today it costs about $55,000. I think that in another five years it will grow to $1.2 million,” the entrepreneur announced.
At the same time, even though Kiyosaki has turned into a defender of bitcoin, he still prefers gold and silver for main investments, explaining this by the fact that the cryptocurrency is outside the regulatory field.

- Large investment bank Morgan Stanley has filed an application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to which 12 funds of the bank will be able to invest in BTC. Each of the funds indicated in the application will be able to place up to 25% of the capital in the first cryptocurrency. “Certain funds can indirectly invest in bitcoin through fiat-settled bitcoin futures or through investments in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). The investments will go through a subsidiary registered in the Cayman Islands. At the same time, the fund may not have investments in bitcoin at a certain point,” the application says.

- Billionaire Mark Cuban revealed that he has concentrated 60% of his cryptocurrency investment portfolio in bitcoin, 30% in Ethereum, and 10% in other digital assets. Cuban called bitcoin the best alternative to gold, and Ethereum - the most similar to a real currency. “I wish I had bought Ethereum earlier. I started doing this only four years ago,” added Cuban, and compared the growth of Ethereum to the development of the Internet in the late 90s.
According to him, it is this altcoin that matches his ideas about the correct form of money due to its decentralized economy based on smart contracts.


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- The capitalization of bitcoin for the first time exceeded $1 trillion in mid-February. And, although many analysts doubt the continued growth, ARK Invest CEO Catherine Wood believes that the first trillion in the capitalization of the first cryptocurrency is only the first step.
“If we calculate the potential demand for bitcoin, given the limited supply of coins, we get huge numbers in the long run. Now is just the beginning, and the capitalization of $1 trillion is nothing compared to the indicators of the future, "- said the CEO of ARK Invest at a conference held by the Chicago Board Options Exchange.
The demand for bitcoin from institutional investors who are trying to hedge inflation risks with cryptocurrencies has become one of the most important things. At the same time, they buy bitcoin for a very long time and increase the number of coins withdrawn from circulation.
“We see Square, Tesla, MicroStrategy and others buying bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies dominate the business of these companies now. And the announcement of the sale of Tesla for BTC will allow you to do business in any region without wasting time and money on exchanging fiat currencies." So, the current position is only the beginning of a bullish cycle, Catherine Wood emphasized.

- The PayPal payment system is going to provide its customers with the opportunity to pay in bitcoins in all stores that are partners of the company in the near future. We are talking about approximately 29 million retail outlets around the world. According to Reuters, in addition to the main cryptocurrency, PayPal also plans to introduce support for payments in Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin. Reuters noted that it is not about direct payment of goods and services with the help of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. All assets will be automatically converted to fiat in real time. This will make the option available in all countries where PayPal operates. 
It will also be possible to transfer funds in real time to debit or credit cards. PayPal CEO Dan Shulman noted that there will be no fees for cryptocurrency transactions.

- Miami Mayor Francis Suarez wants to make the city the hub of bitcoin mining. According to him, 90% of miners extract the first cryptocurrency using "dirty energy" outside the United States. “This is the reason why bitcoin mining is considered a dirty business,” said Suarez.
According to him, the United States is ready to provide large bitcoin miners with access to renewable energy sources. He is confident that America should mine more digital gold, including for reasons of national security and environmental protection. “We have nuclear, which means clean energy, which is practically unlimited,” added Suarez.
According to the bitcoin energy consumption index Digiconomist, the indicator renewed its all-time high on March 28: the annual consumption reached 89.9 TWh.

- Enthusiasts used the Game Boy handheld gaming system to mine cryptocurrency. A video about this was released on a YouTube channel. Only the 4 MHz Sharp processor installed in this game console was used directly for mining. The system issued a 0.8 H/s hashrate. However, the result is not very encouraging: with a bitcoin rate of about $55,000, it will take 50 thousand years to mine $1.

- Latvian airBaltic was the first airline in the world to add bitcoin as a way to pay for its flights. According to the company, about 1000 customers have used this option since its integration. And now airBaltic has added the ability to buy tickets with Ethereum, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash, USD Coin, Binance Dollar, Gemini Dollar and Paxos. Airline prices are denominated in euros. The BitPay payment service automatically converts cryptocurrencies into fiat upon purchase.

- Popular cryptocurrency analyst Willy Woo said that we will see the final stage of the explosive growth of the first cryptocurrency this year, which will be the last for a three-year "bullish cycle". Now the bitcoin rate is at a local bottom and there is no point in selling your BTC reserves. On the contrary, this is a good time to develop the position.
“You have to be crazy to sell right now. At the bottom, bitcoin is now being bought up in huge volumes,” the analyst noted. In support of his statement that bitcoin is unlikely to decline anytime soon, Woo recalled large-scale transfers of BTC from the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange to cold wallets - this suggests that the "whales" are buying and are waiting for the growth of the first cryptocurrency.

- Canadian mortgage broker Mogo with a capitalization of $435 million has launched a new program: the users will be able to receive cashback up to $2,460 when applying for a mortgage and use it to buy bitcoins. The program works both when applying for a new mortgage, and when refinancing an existing one.
“Given the volatility and speculative nature of bitcoin, more Canadians are looking for an opportunity to participate in BTC trading without investing their own money. Our program is designed for just such customers,” explained David Feller, CEO of Mogo.

- During the current cycle, the price of the cryptocurrency has risen by almost 500% since October and has updated highs above $60,000. Bitcoin rallied during the first two months of 2021 but ran into a hurdle in March. Historical data shows that bitcoin may continue to rise in April after the March rollback.
“The season may be the determining factor. - Danny Scott, head of CoinCorner exchange, said in a conversation with Forbes. - April always stands out because it marks the end of the UK and US tax period. If we start from historical information, April may well end with an upswing."
So, the data shows that bitcoin has risen by an average of 51% in April over the past 10 years. If this scenario is repeated, its price may be around of $80,000 by the end of the month.
There were only two negative months of April: in 2014 (minus 6%) and in 2015 (minus 4%). But both of these times happened on bearish cycles, and therefore it is worth taking into account the "current sentiment in the industry." “Now we are, by and large, experiencing a bullish period, and momentum is consistently forming every week,” said Scott.

- Norwegian billionaire and investor Oystein Stray Spetalen was actively criticizing bitcoin on March 18. “The only conclusion I came to in the course of my analysis is that bitcoin consumes as much electricity today as the whole of Norway. This is extremely harmful to the environment. - he was indignant at the DNB conference. - The authorities and the EU should immediately ban it. This is just nonsense. The existing payment systems are doing an excellent job with their tasks."
And now, just a few days later, Spetalen unexpectedly announced during an interview with Finansavisen that he had become an investor in the Norwegian crypto exchange Miraiex. “When facts change, so do I. I met with the founders of Miraiex and realized I was wrong. And when I read that Kjell Inge Rokke also joined bitcoin, the choice became obvious. I can’t allow him to make money, but me not,” Spetalen said.
For reference: Norwegian industrial tycoon and billionaire Kjell Inge Rokke opened a 500 million kroner ($ 58.6 million) Seetee company to invest in bitcoin in early March.


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- The head of the now defunct brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont, Jordan Belfort, who was a prototype for the protagonist of the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street", admitted that he held the wrong position in relation to the bitcoin. This is reported by the Fortune magazine. Digital gold seemed to be the perfect tool for money laundering, and the former broker was sure that regulators would destroy it.
Belfort remembered predicting the fall of the first cryptocurrency on a TV show in 2017. At that time, the asset was rising to the $ 19,000 mark. “I turned out to be right then,” he recalls. “But I also thought bitcoin would go away forever. It was difficult to sell and easy to buy: these are all signs of manipulation." Now, according to Jordan Belfort, the coin could rise to $100,000.

- An anonymous user fell for a trick of scammers and sent 10 bitcoins to "Elon Musk". According to the BBC, the victim saw a link to Musk's alleged resource in the comments under one of his Twitter posts. After clicking on the link, he began a dialogue with the "manager." And the latter offered to invest a certain amount in "Musk's new project", which guaranteed huge profits.
The “manager” promised that funds would double and return to the owner about 20 minutes after the investment. But even such a short period did not embarrass the victim, and he transferred 10 bitcoins to the scammers (more than half a million dollars at the current exchange rate). And only after the “manager” stopped communicating and the funds were never returned, the “investor” realized that he had become a victim of criminals. 

- The price of bitcoin can rise to $300,000, after which the growth will be replaced by a long-term decline. Bobby Lee, co-founder and former CEO of BTCC cryptocurrency exchange, said this in an interview with CNBC.
“Bitcoin bull market cycles occur every four years, and the current one is a big cycle. I think that bitcoin may rise to $100,000 this summer,” he said. However, after reaching an all-time high of $300,000, even a small price decrease will cause the bubble to collapse. Lee suggested that the new crypto winter will last between two and three years. “Investors should be prepared for the fact that the value of bitcoin could fall 80-90% from its historical peak,” the entrepreneur added.

- Entrepreneur John McAfee said that the US authorities are using the case against him to crack down on cryptocurrencies. “The charges against me are absolutely ridiculous. The US is using me as a scapegoat to crack down on all cryptocurrencies. This is a simple and understandable truth,” he wrote from prison.
McAfee's lawyer Andrew Gordon noted that the digital asset regulation is still an emerging area for the IRS and the US Department of Justice, and McAfee's criminal tax evasion case is one of the first to involve cryptocurrencies. "It marks a turning point in the enforcement of cryptocurrency reporting," Gordon said, adding that "Mr. McAfee is firm in his innocence and we stand ready to convince the US federal courts."

- The head of the US Federal Reserve System Jerome Powell questioned the qualities of the first cryptocurrency as a tool for savings and payments. During his speech at the virtual summit of the Bank for International Settlements, Powell noted the high volatility of digital assets, because of which, in his opinion, they are useless as a means of accumulation. “They are not backed by anything and are used more for speculation, so they are not particularly popular as a means of payment. Crypto assets are more likely to replace gold rather than the dollar,” Powell said.

- According to a new study by analytical company Elliptic, the largest darknet market, Hydra, has a new way of exchanging cryptocurrency for fiat money. The vacuum-packed treasure with money is buried "5-20 cm underground", and the exact GPS coordinates are communicated to the buyer. The service fee is high - about 7% of the exchanged amount.
“This is an interesting way to cash out, but it requires you to be in Russia. This is where many Hydra users are based,” said Elliptic CEO Tom Robinson.
This same method has long been used to sell illegal substances such as drugs. And, as analysts point out, this is a rather risky way, since bandits sometimes pursue customers who are digging up the treasure and take away the "parcels". 

- Bitcoin has proven itself once again to be the best rescuer from the ineffective state financial system. The Turkish lira has fallen in relation to the US dollar by another 14% over the past week, as a result of which the residents of Turkey have begun to actively buy bitcoins. This is confirmed by the number of relevant requests in the Turkish segment of Google: it has almost doubled over the last weekend.

- WiseMining introduced the Sato boiler based on ASIC miners, which allows you to mine bitcoins and heat water. The intermediate coolant of the boiler is a special dielectric coolant. The liquid boils and evaporates in the ASIC cooling unit, the vapor rises into the tank coil and condenses, giving off heat to the water. Condensation flows back into the cooling unit of the miner.
The developers provided the possibility of connecting this water heater to the main heating system of the room. The Sato will go on sale in April 2021 and will cost $ 8,990.

- Skybridge Capital CEO and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci claims Elon Musk owns more than $5 billion in bitcoin through Tesla, SpaceX and personally.
Scaramucci gave his comment in the context of discussing the negative impact of mining on the environment. “No other living person has done more to protect the planet from climate change than Elon Musk. And the idea that he would invest in a “dirty asset” is absurd. The future of bitcoin mining is renewable energy sources,” he wrote.


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- Co-founder of Oaktree Capital investment company Howard Marks, with a fortune of $2.1 billion, has dramatically changed his attitude towards bitcoin. Marks called crypto currencies "unfounded fads" in 2017 The investor said that there are many things in the world that have no intrinsic value, but people want to possess them. And bitcoin is one of those things. Now the billionaire has admitted that those words were an “knee-jerk reaction” to innovation about which he had not yet had a clear idea.
Now the head of Oaktree Capital realized that bitcoin really has a lot of potential and even described the advantages of the first cryptocurrency. The most important advantage of Bitcoin according to Marks is the ability to trade it 24 hours a day while maintaining confidentiality. In addition, bitcoin has a limited supply of 21 million coins, which increases demand for them and contributes to a rise in prices. The same cannot be said for the US dollar and other fiat currencies, which are printed in huge quantities by central banks, Marks noted.

- A 38-year-old hairdresser was arrested in Romania on suspicion of stealing about $620,000 in cryptocurrency. Law enforcers found out that the detainee not only worked as a hairdresser, but also was engaged in the creation of malicious software. He hacked a large money transfer operator with its help and transferred $620 thousand to his own account in several dozen transactions.

- "Hyperinflationary collapse" of national currencies will lead to the growth of bitcoin to $220,000 this year. This is the opinion of Max Kaiser, a former trader, TV presenter and founder of the investment company Heisenberg Capital. Among other things, Kaiser is a longtime supporter of bitcoin and is known for his criticism of American economic and political models. Last summer, when the cryptocurrency was trading for about $10 thousand, he predicted its growth to $100 thousand. And, as it turned out, this was not the most daring prediction of the TV presenter.
Kaiser believes that the advantages of bitcoin in global payments make banks useless. “$5 trillion a day in the foreign exchange market can be completely replaced by bitcoin. We have realized that now it is possible to send currency from country to country instantly and practically free of charge," Kaiser said.

- Digital currencies have reached the world of sports. US fans of the Oakland Athletics California baseball team can now pay for private lodges in bitcoin. The 2021 Home Team Six-Seater Lodge Pass can be purchased for $64,800 or 1 BTC. Given the fact that at the time of writing the review, bitcoin is trading at around $55,000, it is more profitable to pay for a ticket in cryptocurrency.
The president of the club said in a comment to Sportico that the management of Oakland Athletics took such a step due to the growing popularity of cryptocurrency in California. “It is also a kind of check to see if we want to do this in other areas of our business,” he said.

- The Indian authorities will consider a bill prohibiting operations with cryptocurrencies and introducing criminal and administrative liability for miners and traders. This is reported by Reuters with reference to an unnamed high-ranking official.
The document instructs citizens to liquidate their digital assets within six months. After this period, it is proposed to levy fines from the owners. In the future, prison terms are provided for the possession, release, production, trading and transfer of crypto assets. The official refused to disclose the amount of the fines and the terms of imprisonment. However, according to him, the discussion of the document is at the final stage.
There is no official data, but according to industry estimates, about 8 million investors in India own digital assets totaling $1.4 billion at the moment.

- The author of the famous book Rich Dad Poor Dad Robert Kiyosaki has called to buy gold and bitcoin. He made this statement after the decision of the US government to allocate another $1.9 trillion to support the economy.  The economist does not exclude that the dollar will be in a state of devaluation after such large-scale injections, as a result of which many investors will begin to switch to digital assets.
At the end of last year, the author of the bestselling book stated that the cost of bitcoin would soon reach $50 thousand. And it happened about a month later. A year earlier, Kiyosaki predicted that the US currency would face serious problems amid the pandemic. As a result, the dollar did accelerate the drawdown, and many stock market indices fell to lows.

- According to JPMorgan, the volume of retail investment in bitcoin in the first quarter of 2021 exceeded the investment of institutional investors, who reduced the volume of cryptocurrency purchases. Thus, retail investors purchased over 187,000 BTC tokens, while institutional purchases amounted to approximately 172,684 BTC.
According to JPMorgan strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, the decline in institutional investment may be one of the reasons bitcoin has not been able to gain a foothold above $60,000 so far. All the attention is focused on the growth of retail investment now, especially given the new round of direct payments to US citizens as part of the economic stimulus program.

- According to a study by Mizuho Securities, of the $380 billion that US citizens will receive in the form of economic assistance, about 10% can be spent on the purchase of two types of assets: bitcoin and stocks. The study found that two out of five Americans who expect to receive checks in the coming days intend to use some of these funds for investment. According to Dan Dolev, Managing Director of Mizuho Securities, bitcoin is expected to account for 60% of the total investment, which could add about 3% to the market capitalization of the cryptocurrency.

- Bitcoin has become the most profitable investment in the last 10 years and surpassed all asset classes by at least 10 times, providing an average annual return of 230%. Charlie Bilello, founder and CEO of Compound Capital Advisors wrote about this achievement.
The Nasdaq 100 came in second with an annualized return of 20%, followed by US stocks with a market capitalization of more than $10 billion with an annualized return of 14%.
Also, studies have shown that gold has shown a meager return of 1.5% per annum since 2011, and five of the last 11 years have brought losses to this asset. The precious metal has dropped 8.5% since early 2021, according to Gold Price, much to the chagrin of an implacable bitcoin critic and gold investor, President of Euro Pacific Capital, Peter Schiff.
Since 2011, BTC's combined profit has been a whopping 20 million percent. 2013 was the most successful year for bitcoin as it grew by 5507%. In addition, it is important to note that BTC has shown an annualized loss in just two years of its history: it fell 58% in 2014 and 73% in 2018.

- Spencer Schiff has decided to move his entire portfolio to bitcoin. His father, the aforementioned Peter Schiff, shared this with his Twitter readers. He expressed concern about the manipulation of fragile minds during a bull rally in the cryptocurrency market.
The famous bitcoin critic clarified that his son sold the remaining silver to buy the first cryptocurrency. “My son went for broke the last time bitcoin dropped below $50,000. 100% of his portfolio is now in Bitcoin. If my son has been so brainwashed, imagine how vulnerable most children are. He will "hodl" bitcoin indefinitely or go broke. "
The crypto community has responded positively to the complaints of the "golden beetle", expressing confidence that investing in bitcoin will make Schiff's son richer than his father. “At least someone in your family will increase their wealth this year,” wrote Anthony Pompliano, co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital.


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- The price of bitcoin at the moment is most correlated with real estate prices, and in the future, bitcoin will become similar to low-risk instruments like bonds and will enter the recommended portfolio of investors. This was announced by the head of ARK Investment Cathie Wood on CNBC. “I think the first cryptocurrency will behave like fixed income markets,” Wood said. “We have survived a 40-year bond bull market. And we won't be surprised if this new asset class becomes part of the investment portfolio. Perhaps it will be 60% stocks, 20% bonds and 20% cryptocurrency.” Renowned bitcoin critic Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, called Wood's predictions "outrageous."

- The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sent out letters to cryptocurrency holders demanding to pay off large debts to the state. And now, according to Forbes, this agency has launched Hidden Treasure operation to search for residents who hide their income from transactions with digital assets. According to IRS legal counsel Carolyn Shank, the agency is working with private contractors to identify clear signs of violations. "We see you," Shank added menacingly.

- One of the oldest private banks in Germany, Donner & Reuschel, headquartered in Hamburg, is going to add services for the purchase and storage of crypto assets for its clients. Due to high demand, it is planned to launch these services “as soon as possible,” the bank said in a statement.
Donner & Reuschel was founded in 1798 and manages assets worth about $10.7 billion. The bank plans to "intensively engage" in asset tokenization in the future in order to keep up with changes in the financial industry. “We are observing the digital asset market and are convinced of the potential of blockchain, including in relation to traditional securities transactions,” said Marcus Vitt, spokesman for the bank's board.

- The entrepreneur and creator of the famous antivirus, John McAfee, has been charged with fraud and money laundering, and now faces up to 100 years in prison. The case will be considered by the Court of the Southern District of New York. Recall that McAfee was arrested in Spain in October 2020, and now he is awaiting extradition to the United States. Another person involved in the process will be the executive advisor of the cryptocurrency team of the entrepreneur Jimmy Gail Watson Jr., who has been recently taken into custody.
The first charge concerns the manipulative appreciation of altcoins using the Pump&Dump scheme on Twitter. McAfee posted tweets advertising certain coins, leading to an active increase in their price. When quotes peaked, members of McAfee's team sold these altcoins and took profits. Another issue concerns undisclosed fees for participating in the ICO promotion.
“McAfee and Watson made nearly $2 million by using social media to perform Pump&Dump schemes. They also used the same platform to promote tokens without disclosing information about the reward received from the ICO organizers. This brought them another $11 million,” the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

- Bitcoin is becoming an increasingly popular asset among a wide variety of categories of investors and is gradually replacing gold in their portfolios. This is stated in the February report of analysts from Bloomberg.
“The process of replacing gold in [investors'] portfolios with bitcoin is accelerating and we are seeing the risks decrease. In 2020, the cryptocurrency became attractive because of the decrease in its volatility compared to the previous year,” the authors of the report emphasize. The shrinking range of price fluctuations signals that bitcoin has actually become an alternative to traditional investment assets.
Bloomberg team is also positive about the further rate of the main cryptocurrency. After the coin broke above $50,000, it got the opportunity to test higher values. Demand for this asset is increasing, and its macroeconomic indicators are improving. According to Bloomberg analysts' forecasts, bitcoin could reach $100,000 this year. In the long term, the growth of its value will also continue, according to the authors of the study.

- According to venture capital pioneer Tim Draper, Netflix could be the next big company to invest in bitcoin. Since bitcoin can provide a hedge against the inflationary risks associated with dollar, Draper doesn't rule out cryptocurrencies as the perfect solution for someone like Netflix founder Reed Hastings.
Hastings is a great innovator with a lot of creative ideas, and since he has power in the company, he may decide to invest some of his funds in bitcoin. According to Draper, Google may follow suit, but it is more likely that companies like Google, Facebook or Apple will want to issue their own cryptocurrencies without being tied to bitcoin.

- The forecast, according to which the bitcoin rate may reach $1 million or more in the next 10 years, was announced by the CEO of the Kraken crypto exchange Jesse Powell. In a dialogue with Bloomberg reporters, he also said that bitcoin could eventually replace all major fiat currencies that are not backed by gold and other precious metals.
“Right now we are only guessing, but if you value bitcoin in dollars, then you must understand that its value tends to infinity. True "believers" will tell you that it will reach the Moon, Mars and eventually become the world's currency," said the head of Kraken. However, he agreed that there is a risk of sharp market fluctuations, and that prices could "rise or fall by 50% any day." Therefore, the term of an investment in bitcoin, according to Powell, should be at least five years.

- According to a number of futuristic experts, bitcoin will continue to grow, but due to its architecture, it will eventually burst and depreciate.
The rise in the cost of bitcoin is hardwired into its mathematics, according to Singularity University expert Evgeny Kuznetsov, and the cost of electricity required for mining is constantly growing. Already, this process consumes energy comparable to that of the Netherlands. At some point, it will require the energy of the whole world to generate just one unit. That is, there is a limitation for the growth of bitcoin: it is blocked by the amount of energy consumption. But this will not happen soon, not in a year or two, and until that moment it will be possible to make huge capital on it, the futurologist believes.


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- The trading volume on cryptocurrency exchanges in February exceeded $1 trillion. Such numbers were achieved for the first time in history, according to experts. Even during the first bitcoin rally, the trading volume reached only $650 billion. According to experts of the analytical platform Block Research, large investors prefer to carry out transactions from one account to another through third-party services in order to maintain complete anonymity. Therefore, the real number of transactions can even be twice the official amount.

- Users of the Opera browser will be able to carry out transactions with many popular cryptocurrencies directly in the browser. “We have added fundamentally new algorithms. We are talking about the Simplex payment processor, which is used in many reliable and reputable cryptocurrency wallets. We are ready to provide services on competitive terms. This is especially true of transaction fees, which we will have as low as possible,” Opera says in a press release. Another benefit would be creating a digital wallet without going to third-party sites.

- A proponent of gold, President of Euro Pacific Capital Peter Schiff congratulated those who managed to buy the first cryptocurrency before take-off and made Wall Street succumb to "this mania." It was just recently, that this bitcoin sceptic called bitcoin the largest bubble in history and unflatteringly spoke about the mental abilities of cryptocurrency investors. And now he has admitted his mistake. “When I first heard about bitcoin, I didn't think that smart investors would be stupid enough to buy bitcoin. I was wrong," Schiff wrote.

- The Google Finance platform has added a tab for monitoring digital asset prices. The new section provides real-time information on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash prices. This block has been added to the sections on the markets of the US, Asia, Europe and "Currencies", and makes it possible to compare the performance of cryptocurrencies with other financial instruments.

- The amount of damage from fraud with digital currencies could double in 2021 and reach $4.5 billion. This This assumption was made by specialists of Kaspersky Lab. Other popular fraudulent schemes include the closure of bitcoin exchanges under the pretext of technical problems or hacker attacks, gaining access to user data using fake applications or websites, and sending out fraudulent emails.

- The head of Galaxy Digital, Mike Novogratz, has dramatically changed the forecast for the BTC rate for the end of 2021 upwards. “We are watching one group of investors after another,” he writes. “They were Square, MicroStrategy and Tesla corporations. These were insurance companies Mass Financial and others. These are wealthy people. This is ETF. Suddenly, buying bitcoin is no longer insignificant or risky. On the contrary, it has become risky not to have BTC in the portfolio when central banks continue to print money. Our business at Galaxy is booming. We don't have enough time to hire sales managers to reach all the institutional clients who want to understand and participate in the market."
“It feels like,” says Novogratz, “we’ll stay for a bit between $42,000 and $60,000, and then the next big jump to $100,000. I will not be surprised if we reach this mark by the end of this year."

- MicroStrategy bought another 328 BTC for $15 million. It is the first purchase of crypto assets in March, following its February acquisitions worth billions of dollars. And now MicroStrategy has about 90,859 BTC purchased for $2.186 billion at an average price of $24,063 per coin.
Earlier, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor said the company will continue to buy digital currency: "We are focusing on two corporate strategies: expanding the enterprise analytics software business and buying and storing bitcoin." Saylor predicts that 7-8 billion people on the planet will have a “bullion of digital gold” in the phone in the long run, which they will use as family savings.

- The Visa payment system is interested in changing the views of bank card holders due to the coronavirus pandemic. For example, a survey it conducted showed that 25% of all credit card holders in South America would like their banks to add the ability of settlements in cryptocurrency. One in four Hispanics expressed a desire to experiment with digital assets and try them out in everyday life.

- Despite the technical limitations for cryptocurrency mining, set in the Sony PlayStation 5 game console, it is quite suitable for this process at the hardware level. This was taken advantage of by a gamer and crypto enthusiast from China named Yifan Gu, who managed to bypass the restrictions and adapted the console for Ethereum mining, gaining a profit of about $50 per week. This is reported by the Gizchina edition.
Earlier, Yifan Gu adapted MacBook Air with Apple M1 chip for mining Ethereum. However, at the current rate of this altcoin, you can earn only $0.14 in one day on the MacBook Air.

- One of the experts in the field of competitive intelligence has suggested that creating and maintaining the long-term hype around bitcoin is not accidental. According to him, in case the American financial elite manages to convince its creditors that having bitcoins is better than dollars, it can transfer all external debt of the US to this cryptocurrency over time. "As soon as this happens, the cryptocurrency will only have to collapse, and America's gigantic debt will actually be zeroed," the expert reflects.

- Cryptocurrency mining requires more and more electricity, which poses a threat to humanity's path to “zero emissions.” This is reported by the Guardian, citing alarming research findings by American scientists. Thus, the amount of energy used to extract bitcoins exceeds the annual energy consumption of entire countries. “We're talking about a few terawatts, tens of terawatts of electricity per year that are used for bitcoin alone,” notes University of New Mexico economics professor Benjamin Jones, calling for measures to regulate cryptocurrency mining to reduce the carbon footprint.

- Financial industry veteran and Fidelity Investments director of macro markets Jurrien Timmer believes that bitcoin has reached the point where it can be considered for investment and hedging inflation risks. “I think gold and bitcoin are great for replacing some of the bonds,” Timmer writes in a paper titled Understanding Bitcoin.
In his opinion, the limit on the maximum number of bitcoins makes this asset very similar to gold. Moreover, the appearance of new bitcoins on the market is constantly slowing down, but the volume of gold production has remained at the same level for half a century.
Timmer's views are in line with those of SkyBridge Capital founders Anthony Scaramucci and Brett Messing. They released an article in January in which they described bitcoin as a mature investment asset, comparable in reliability to gold and bonds.


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- After bitcoin hit an all-time high of $58,275 on February 21, investors were looking forward to taking the $60,000 high. However, there was a sudden reversal and a sharp drop of 23% to $44,985. According to many experts, the trigger of the massive profit fixation by "whales" was the statement of the former head of the Fed and now the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on the speculative nature of cryptocurrency and the possibility of using it for money laundering. According to analyst Sven Henrich, the head of the Ministry of Finance has actually declared war on bitcoin.
“Digital currencies can provide faster and cheaper payments. But there are many issues to be explored, including consumer protection and money laundering,” Janet Yelen said, also mentioning the possibility of launching the Central Bank's own digital currency (CBDC).
The fall in bitcoin could also have been facilitated by the fall in global indices of technology companies, as well as the beginning of a large-scale vaccination against coronavirus.

- According to Bloomberg, against the background of the decline in the bitcoin rate, the head of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, lost the first place in the ranking of the richest people on the planet. Tesla shares fell 8.6%, causing Musk to lose $15.2 billion. Shortly before the decline, the company announced that it had added $1.5 billion in bitcoin to its balance sheet. At the same time, the fall in bitcoin, according to Bloomberg, may be partly related to the statement of Musk himself, who called the prices of cryptocurrencies too high.

- Due to technical failures, some customers of the Philippine crypto exchange PDAX were able to buy bitcoin almost 10 times cheaper than the market price, Bitpinas reports. One of the users admitted that he bought bitcoins for 300,000 pesos ($6,150), while the average market price of BTC was about $50,000, after which he transferred the cryptocurrency to his wallet.
A day later, PDAX sent him a letter demanding the return of the bitcoins, but the buyer's lawyer claims that "the transaction was legitimate, in accordance with applicable laws, and PDAX cannot withdraw transactions unilaterally."
Another client of this crypto exchange unexpectedly found 40 billion Philippine pesos or about 820 million dollars in his account. It is not reported whether he was able to withdraw this "gift" from PDAX.

- Three platforms - Binance, Huobi and OKEx - account for 75% of the total trading volume on crypto exchanges, according to BDCenter Digital. The safest exchanges were Kraken, Coinbase and Binance. 
The study showed that the number of cryptocurrency users has almost tripled since 2018 and reached 191 million users from over 150 countries in the third quarter of 2020. At the same time, the researchers emphasize that the availability of an exchange in a country does not mean the actual availability of all its products and functionality. So the purchase of cryptocurrencies using a credit card is supported only by 65% of sites.

- One of the world's largest money transfer services, MoneyGram, refused to use the product based on the XRP token due to the claims of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Ripple. This is stated in a report by the company.
Against the backdrop of SEC claims, in addition to MoneyGram, Coinbase and OKCoin, Galaxy Digital, Bitstamp, B2C2, eToro and Kraken have already refused to support the XRP token. Asset management company Grayscale Investments announced the liquidation of an XRP-based investment trust, and 21Shares has excluded the Ripple token from its traded exchange products.

- Australian authorities have charged a Sydney resident suspected of drug trafficking, money laundering and bitcoin money laundering for a total of $4.3 million. The police found two bags with $1 million in cash in his car, and seized mobile phones, a laptop and a batch of illegal substances from his home.
Recall that in January 2021, the owner of the RG Coins cryptocurrency exchange Rossen Iosifov already received 121 months in prison for laundering about $5 million using digital assets.

- Analysts reviewed publications about cryptocurrency exchanges in various media. Cointelegraph was the leading media outlet by the number of articles. The first place in popularity was taken by English, the second - Russian.
According to BDCenter Digital, 12 out of 100 Twitter posts are about cryptocurrency. In just the week of February 7-14, Twitter users mentioned bitcoin over 675,000 times. The last record was set on January 10, when the weekly number of posts mentioning bitcoin reached 576,000.

- According to a responsible representative of the Russian Orthodox Church, it does not plan to create its own cryptocurrency to accept donations. The church has also refused to accept bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. At the same time, according to Metropolitan Hilarion, believers may well make donations to the church using the phone.

- According to the co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital Assets Anthony Pompliano, the main cryptocurrency may reach $500 thousand by the end of this decade, and even $1 million in the long term.
However, the growth of cryptocurrency quotes may stop due to the rapid recovery of the global economy after the recession caused by the coronavirus epidemic. In this case, central banks will begin to roll back their quantitative easing programs, raise interest rates, stop buying assets and printing cheap money. As a result, investment flows into bitcoin, as one of the most attractive safe havens, can dry up very quickly.

- The largest developer of graphics processors, the American technology company Nvidia has announced plans to release a series of video cards specifically for mining the Ethereum cryptocurrency, which is the second after bitcoin. According to CNBC, the new type of GPU is called CMP (Crypto Mining Processor) and can appear in the market already in March 2021.


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- Kiss bassist Gene Simmons invested a seven-figure sum in bitcoin. According to him, he bought the cryptocurrency several months ago at a time when it was almost twice as cheap as it is now. Simmons did not name the exact amount of the investment but noted that he had already managed to seriously increase his capital.
“Many people wonder if I believe in a further growth in the value of bitcoin. Of course, I do. Otherwise, I would not have spent money on a dubious asset. The future has already arrived, and new tools for earning and storing savings are appearing in our lives,” Simmons explained.

- Lisa Edwards, sister of self-proclaimed bitcoin creator Craig Wright, predicted that the first cryptocurrency would rise to $142,000. Based on Elliott Wave Theory, she suggested that digital gold would rise to $90,000 by May 2021, decline to $55,000 by January 2022, and skyrocketing to $142,000 in March 2023. After that, according to Edwards, the cryptocurrency market expects a bearish trend.
“Satoshi Nakamoto did not consider supply and demand. In a closed market with high demand and limited supply, the price can increase in large leaps, leading to significant increases in short periods,” she wrote.

- As the CoinDesk publication reports, the income of bitcoin miners over the past week reached a new maximum of $354 million against the background of the movement of the first cryptocurrency to the $50,000 mark. The previous record figure in seven days was $340 million and was recorded in December 2017.

- BNY Mellon, the oldest bank in the United States, announced the start of work with bitcoin and other digital assets through the launch of a new cryptocurrency storage service. According to CNBC, the bank will allow cryptocurrencies to pass through the same financial network that it currently uses for traditional assets like treasuries and stocks. 
Roman Regelman, head of digital at BNY Mellon, said the financial institution is proud to be the first global bank to announce plans to provide integrated services for crypto assets. He noted that the bank will be able to start offering these services to clients this year.

- Another major US bank, JPMorgan Chase is ready to support bitcoin trading if clients are interested in it, announced the bank's co-president and chief operating officer Daniel Pinto. “If, over time, an asset class develops that will be used by various managers and investors, we will have to get involved,” he told CNBC. "There is no demand yet, but I'm sure it will appear at some point."
It became known that JPMorgan Chase organized a virtual meeting in January with the participation of thousands of traders and sales professionals from different parts of the world, during which it inquired about their interest in trading BTC. 
Last week, according to CNBC, another bank, Goldman Sachs, convened a closed forum for employees and clients with the participation of Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz, where he spoke about bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital assets.

- The owner of the Vietnamese Internet cafe Star Computer has redesigned the business to mine Ethereum. The idea came to the entrepreneur after the number of visitors to the computer club dropped markedly due to restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. “I am changing the business model: the profit is higher than from the main activity,” he announced.

- Bloomberg said that the founder of Telegram Pavel Durov bought $750 worth of bitcoins about four years ago. According to the publication, after the sale of a stake in the social network VKontakte he founded, the entrepreneur left Russia, owning $300 million and 2,000 BTC. At the moment, the cost of his initial investment in the leading cryptocurrency has reached $100 million.

- Another piece of news regarding Telegram. Telecommunications company T-Mobile has become a defendant in the lawsuit. California resident Calvin Cheng has filed a lawsuit in New York City after losing $450,000 as a result of SIM swapping - an account hack through SIM swapping.
According to Cheng, he acquired the cryptocurrency by negotiating via the Telegram messenger and using a crypto exchange operated by Iterative Capital. A few months later, in May 2020, he received a message, also via Telegram, from the phone number of Iterative Capital co-founder Brandon Buchanan. He offered a higher price for 15 bitcoins. Cheng transferred the cryptocurrency to the specified wallet, but the money for bitcoins never arrived. A few days later, Buchanan notified customers that his accounts had been hacked using SIM swapping.
The co-founder of Iterative Capital used the services of T-Mobile, and Cheng believes that the company violated obligations to protect the personal and financial information of customers, and, in addition, was negligent in hiring and training support staff, and therefore it is obliged to reimburse him for the losses incurred. 

- UK police, with the support of Europol, have arrested eight suspects in SIM card fraud. According to law enforcement officers, fraudsters have stolen money and crypto assets worth $100 million. The attacks were carried out throughout 2020 from the UK, and the victims of the scammers living in the United States were "famous influencers, sports stars, musicians and their families."
Fraudsters uploaded identification information from SIM cards of victims' phones to their cards, thus gaining control over their crypto wallets and bank accounts.

- It became known that the Mayor of Miami (USA) Francis Suarez has already taken a number of steps to legalize cryptocurrency as an investment and payment instrument. “We have made bitcoin an available currency for potential investors. In addition, employees can receive salaries in cryptocurrency, which is a huge step forward,” he wrote on Twitter.
New York Mayor and former presidential candidate Andrew Young and Reno, Nevada Mayor Hillary Shiv supported Suarez's decision.  And Andrew Young said that he would try to make the financial centre of the world become a centre for cryptocurrencies.
According to a number of experts, such steps and statements by US politicians and officials have a positive impact on the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.


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- Forbes compiled a list of the wealthiest representatives of business in the field of cryptocurrency, following the results of 2020. It is headed by the CEO of the Coinbase crypto-exchange Brian Armstrong with $6.5 billion, followed by the head of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange Sam Bankman-Freed with $4.5 billion and the co-founder of Ripple Chris Larsen - $2.9 billion.
The ranking  also includes: the head of MicroStrategy Michael Saylor - $ 2 billion, CEO of the Binance exchange Changpeng "CZ" Zhao - $1.9 billion, the founders of the Gemini exchange, the Winklevoss brothers - $1.6 billion each, founder of the venture capital company Digital Currency Group Barry Silbert - $1.5 billion , co-founder and former CTO of Ripple Jed McCaleb - $1.4 billion, venture capitalist Tim Draper - $1.1 billion and co-founder of blockchain startup Bloq Matthew Roszak - $1 billion.
When preparing the rating, the Forbes magazine took into account not only the value of the digital assets of the persons involved, but also their traditional assets, including the shares of various companies.

- According to Reuters, the German prosecutor's office is unable to access a wallet with more than 1,700 bitcoins with a total value of about $75 million. The account holder, who was found to be a fraud, refuses to testify against himself and provide access keys. Currently, law enforcement officers are looking for ways to "get close" to these assets through exchanges and wallet operators in order to return them to the victims of the criminal.
The fraudster was sentenced to two years in prison for installing phishing software on third-party computers, with which he deducted funds from the victims' accounts and transferred them to his own wallet. The prosecutor explained that the offender was offered mitigation of punishment if he provided data on the whereabouts of the coins, but he refused. The size of the criminal's assets has significantly increased against the background of the latest bitcoin rally, and it is possible that he is going to use them after his release.

- American children's charity Songs of Love created Superhero Billy Bitcoin to boost interest in their work. Crypto donations to such non-profit organizations in the United States are tax-free. “Donating in a cryptocurrency like bitcoin is even more efficient than cash. You don't have to pay capital gains tax and can deduct that amount from your taxes,” said Songs of Love. The fund accepts donations in 22 digital assets, and the Superhero Billy Bitcoin is dedicated to supporting children with serious illnesses.

- The price of bitcoin could rise to $100,000 as early as the end of 2021 if other companies follow Tesla's lead, the founder of cryptobank Galaxy Digital Mike Novogratz said in an interview to Bloomberg . Elon Musk's company announced the investment of $1.5 billion in Bitcoin on Monday, February 8. Tesla admitted that in the future they will integrate the first cryptocurrency as a means of payment for their products.
Novogratz called Elon Musk a genius in his decision to listen to people and evaluate the interests of young people. According to the billionaire, other companies will invest in the first cryptocurrency to hedge inflation risks. “You'll see that every company in America will soon start doing the same,” stated Mike Novogratz.

- Due to the shortage of discrete graphics cards in the market, gaming laptops have become popular among Chinese Ethereum miners. As calculated by the Techarp portal, the payback period for such a computer costing from $1000 is approximately three and a half months.
One laptop with a RTX 3060 video card is able to get 0.00053 ETH ($0.92 at the moment) within two hours. That is, the mining will amount to 2.3 ETH (over $4000) for the year, and a farm of 20 laptops at current prices and taking into account the cost of electricity in China will bring more than $76,800 in profit.

- North Korea has been able to upgrade its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles by using funds stolen in cyberattacks, to finance. According to the Associated Press citing UN experts, these attacks mainly targeted financial institutions and cryptocurrency platforms, and the total amount of the digital assets stolen in the period from 2019 to November 2020 is more than $316 million. Experts say North Korea continues to launder cryptocurrencies stolen by its hackers mostly through Chinese over-the-counter platforms. 

- The authorities arrested a 37-year-old Wisconsin resident on charges of attempting to arrange a bespoke homicide. This is stated in the message of the US Department of Justice. The woman found the killer on the darknet, offering to pay for his "work" in cryptocurrency, and provided him with a phone number, place of work and a description of the alleged victim.
Journalists of one of the media learned about the upcoming crime while working on material about transactions in the darknet. They found evidence of a Bitcoin transaction, as well as a screenshot of a wallet with $5,633 in cryptocurrency, after which the reporters contacted the law enforcement. Now the alleged customer faces up to 10 years in prison.

- One of Mexico's richest people (the fortune of $11.7 billion) and founder of Grupo Salinas group of companies Ricardo Salinas Pliego added a Bitcoin hashtag to his Twitter account description. Recall that the founder of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk did the same in January, after which the asset rose to $38,000.
Earlier Pliego admitted in a Cointelegraph commentary that he first bought digital gold in 2013. He sold the asset at $17,000 during a bull rally in 2017 and called the bitcoin “the best investment of all time.”

- Specialists of financial and investment company Guggenheim Partners said that the value of bitcoin could reach $600,000. According to the company's investment director, Scott Minerd, everything will depend on the number of coins in the public domain. “Cryptocurrency can rise to very high values. It is possible that we are talking about 400 or even $600,000 per coin. We have been studying the asset for almost ten years, so we understand how it will behave. Bitcoin used to be unjustified for institutional investors, but now everything has changed,” Minerd said.
According to the specialist, the concern is caused by the rapid growth of the asset in the past few weeks. It is possible that we are talking about speculation, in which institutional investors capable of large investments to manage the value of the coin are involved. At present, bitcoin is in a difficult situation, as the departure of large investors will lead to a return of the negative trend. According to Minerd, such a development is unlikely, but it should definitely be taken into account.


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- 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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- Bank of Singapore, one of the largest Asian financial institutions, has once again called bitcoin a promising instrument. According to experts, the main cryptocurrency has proven that it can remain a profitable asset even in times of crisis. A new report by the Bank of Singapore says that bitcoin has lost its status as a “risky” financial instrument over the years, becoming “relatively stable”, and may not only compete with gold, but also displace it from the first place in terms of investment safety.
At the same time, the bank's experts believe that "we are unlikely to see widespread adoption of bitcoin soon, since regulators simply will not allow users to independently decide how transactions with millions or even billions will be performed."

- The majority of cryptocurrency investors are currently people aged 45+, we are talking about residents of almost 80 countries. The research was carried out by experts of the Wirex platform in conjunction with the Stellar Development Foundation, who studied the income in the cryptocurrency industry in 24 months. As a result, it turned out that only 22% of investors are between 25 and 45 years old. Back in 2018, the situation was fundamentally the opposite. Then, many experts noted that cryptocurrencies are assets of the so-called millennials who are ready to invest in new instruments. However, over the past two years, many middle-aged people have joined the industry, deciding to convert some of their assets to bitcoin or other coins.

- Experts from the Weiss rating agency believe that bitcoin could reach the $50,000 level in 2021. “The entry of institutional capital into the cryptocurrency industry has become one of the fundamental events. Grayscale and MicroStrategy have already invested in digital assets. Other large companies and funds are thinking about investing in bitcoin. If the inflow of investments continues to increase, then we will see the main coin at 50 thousand dollars and even more expensive very soon, " according to Weiss.

- The head of the ARK Investment Management investment company, Katie Wood, believes that more and more companies will store part of their reserves in bitcoin in the future, hedging their risks in this way. She stated this in an interview with Yahoo Finance. “This is especially true of technology companies that understand this and are comfortable with cryptocurrencies,” added the head of ARK Investment.

- Former head of the Federal Reserve System (FRS) Janet Yellen became the first woman in history to serve as US Treasury Secretary. When heading the Fed from 2014-2018, Yellen called the first cryptocurrency a speculative asset. However, following her nomination as finance minister in November 2020, she changed her rhetoric, promising to closely monitor the industry and consider ways to encourage the legitimate use of digital assets. According to her, regulators can use the advantages of cryptocurrencies to improve the efficiency of the financial system.
 
- US resident Simon Berne created a mining farm of six Nvidia RTX 3080 video cards and placed it in the trunk of his BMW i8 sports car. (The price of such a car is about $147,500). According to Berne, this is a great way for him to make money even while traveling. He made the assembly of the farm himself to annoy gamers. The farm receives energy from the car battery, to which it is connected using a DC inverter. The battery power of the BMW i8 is 3500W, while the mining plant only consumes 1500W.

- Crypto bank Galaxy Digital by Mike Novogratz will launch new funds based on Ethereum in February. We are talking about the Galaxy Ethereum Fund targeted at institutional investors and two funds for retail clients. As for the Galaxy Ethereum Fund, 1% will be charged for management there on investments from 100 thousand dollars and 1.25% for smaller investments. The threshold for participation will be $25,000. In the other two funds, the fee would be 0.75% for Class A shares and 1% for Class B shares. The launch of Galaxy Digital funds coincides with the start of Ethereum futures trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).

- Most of the cryptocurrency supporters are familiar with the idiom "to the moon". And now, 22-year-old American Jimmy Donaldson known for his crazy antics, such as giving away $1 million and building the world's largest Lego tower, decided to turn that expression into reality. (Donaldson is also known as YouTuber MrBeast with over 50 million subscribers.)  
“Astrobotics and NASA are sending a lander to the moon at the end of this year, we were able to find a place on it to install a hard drive. And I thought it would be great to let you guys put whatever you want there,” wrote MrBeast. He announced that for $10, anyone could send him a photo, which he would save on this hard drive. With the money received, Donaldson plans to purchase about 30 bitcoins (about $1 million), which will also be sent to the moon. The Youtuber called this project "The first digital time capsule in the Universe."


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- Bitcoin has proven to be the most profitable asset in the past nine years due to constant fluctuations in value. According to experts, in this case it is not only about a direct increase in the price of cryptocurrency. Even when the coin sinks, it benefits traders who buy it at the price lowest for a certain period.
“Currently, the base coin is trading at $35,000. If everything develops in about the same direction, then in February it will be possible to see bitcoin for $45,000 or even more,” predicted the head of Pantera Capital investment company Dan Morehead, and at the same time he advised traders and other industry participants to be reasonable, since bitcoin has always been unstable. Even against the backdrop of the rally that began in December last year, the asset continues to remain risky, which is well understood by all experienced coin holders.

- JPMorgan Chase strategists, led by Nicholas Panigirtzoglou, believe that bitcoin could lose ground in the short term if it fails to break above $40,000. This month, the flagship cryptocurrency has twice broken through this key level, and then rolled back.
The key to the short-term outlook for bitcoin's price is the world's largest digital asset management company Grayscale Investments, with a crypto portfolio currently valued at $23 billion, analysts say. "For such a breakthrough to occur, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust will likely need to maintain an inflow rate of $100 million per day over the coming days and weeks." However, if BTC still fails to hit the $40,000 mark, a deep correction can be expected.

- After a deal to sell cryptocurrency, a Hong Kong resident was robbed of $448,700. This is reported by news agency South China Morning Post. The buyer of the digital currency invited the trader to the office of ashopping center to carry out the transaction. She transferred USDT tokens and received HK $3.5 million in cash. After the transaction, three men ran out of a nearby room and, threatening with a knife, took away the victim's money and the smartphone. The woman was locked up, and all four "buyers" fled.
Interestingly, the victim had already conducted several successful transactions with this buyer. According to police, in this way the criminals won the trust of the victim.

- Billionaire Howard Marks, co-founder of Oaktree Capital Group, has significantly changed his attitude towards bitcoin. Earlier, Marks stated that investing in cryptocurrency is a very dangerous operation that can cause huge losses for large investors. In 2017, during the bitcoin rally, he advised to refrain from buying coins. In addition, he called cryptocurrencies "fake" and said they had no real value.
And now the billionaire says that his "skeptical views on cryptocurrency assets have not been confirmed." “Let's hope,” Marx wrote, “that events will continue to develop as actively as they are now. The cryptocurrency market is gradually emerging from the shadow sector, as evidenced by a large number of major investors. I think it still has real value. My family owns an impressive number of bitcoins, which I support at this stage.”

- According to the online edition Forklog, a "biblical message" was found in the bitcoin block No.666666. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good,” says the Epistle to the Romans of the Apostle Paul, chapter 12, verse 21. An unknown person added this quote from the sixth book of the New Testament to block # 666666 of the bitcoin network and sent two equal amounts in the first cryptocurrency to two addresses, the first characters of which contain the words "God" and "Bible" in English.

- The former CEO of the now defunct South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Coinnest was sentenced to 18 months in prison. It is reported by Bitcoin.com with reference to local media.
According to the case file, ex-director Kim Ik Hwang received a bribe of 110 BTC ($770 thousand at that time) in February 2018 for listing the S-coin, which was issued by K Group. Subsequently, 2 million S-coins with a total value of $125,500 were also credited to his account.
Although the defendant pleaded not guilty, the Supreme Court sentenced Kim to one and a half years in prison for commercial bribery and fined him over $61,000. “Hwang manipulated market prices and gained unreasonable profit for it. Such actions undermine confidence in the crypto industry, which means they are unacceptable," the prosecutor said.

- 2020 has turned out much better for long-term investors than the previous year. The market capitalization of 30 key assets of the cryptocurrency market grew by 308% (versus 62% in 2019), according to a report from CoinGecko. Among the five largest coins, bitcoin has shown the best results, having risen in price by about four times (in 2019 - by 95%). Ethereum looked even better, its price rose by 472% after near-zero dynamics over the previous 365 days. Portfolios with DeFi protocol tokens gained 718% on average.

- Scott Meinerd, investment director at Guggenheim Partners, compared the current situation with what happened to the economy after the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918. At the same time, he confirmed his forecast for the bitcoin rate at $400,000 but warned of a possible correction.
According to the specialist, the latest rise in the BTC rate could have been caused by retail investors. “I think it's about them. There is some speculative frenzy in the market. It may be worth withdrawing some of the funds from cryptocurrencies,” Minerd said.

- A startup in the field of cybersecurity Red Balloon Security from New York (USA) as a test task sends applicants to vacant places a hard drive with locked bitcoins worth about $5 thousand and several boxes of chocolates.
In a week, the applicant needs to get access to the cryptocurrency wallet. If successful, part of the funds must be spent on buying a ticket to New York in order to meet with a representative of Red Balloon Security. Anyway, one can keep the chocolates.
The company sends such packages to almost everyone, but at the same time it regularly changes the content of the test so that applicants cannot share their results on the Internet. Statistics show that for 150-200 people there is only one applicant who has successfully completed the task.

- One of the world's largest investment banks, Goldman Sachs, is exploring the possibility of launching a custodian service for digital assets. This is reported by CoinDesk with reference to its own source within the bank. “Like JPMorgan,” the source said, “we have released an RFI for digital storage. We are studying the issue extensively and deciding what to do next. " Regarding the timing of the launch of services related to cryptocurrencies, the source replied that the bank's plans "will become apparent in the near future."


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- Mike McGlone, crypto analyst at Bloomberg, believes that bitcoin could hit the $50,000 mark in the near future. He gave a forecast a few months ago, according to which BTC was supposed to grow to a new historical high in December 2020, which eventually did happen.
“The main cryptocurrency already hit the $40,000 mark in early January but pulled back slightly due to a number of external factors,” Mike McGlone commented on his forecast. - There is an opinion that the general situation in the financial market affected the value of the main coin. The United States is currently not in the best position due to fluctuations in the dollar, which is why investors are switching to cryptocurrency from fiat. The capitalization of the main coin is tending to record values. I think the asset will take the 50k barrier soon.” Moreover, according to еру Bloomberg specialist, the chances for growth are much greater than for further weakening of the exchange rate. According to him, a rollback to $20,000 is now practically impossible.

- According to Bitcoin Treasures, large public companies acquired more than 1 million BTC (5.57% of the cryptocurrency market supply) last year, with a current value of about $40 billion. One of the most active institutional investors in 2020 is the world's largest crypto fund, Grayscale Investments, which manages about 600 thousand BTC, and the total value of its crypto assets is estimated at $24.5 billion (as of January 11, 2021).
Another major institutional investor is Nasdaq-listed mobile software company MicroStrategy. It has invested $1.12 billion in bitcoin over the past six months as a risk hedge and now it owns more than 70 thousand BTC.

- We wrote in the previous CryptoNews that it was 12 years ago, on January 12, 2009, that the creator of Bitcoin, known by the nickname Satoshi Nakamoto, sent the first transaction on the bitcoin network to the developer Hal Finney. Unlike Satoshi, much more is known about this recipient of the cryptocurrency.
Hal Finney partnered with PGP Corporation for many years, developing encryption products. Six months before his death in August 2014, Finney described his first experience with bitcoin:
“When Satoshi released the software, I immediately connected. I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to launch bitcoin. In total, I mined 70-odd blocks and became the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction. " At that time, Satoshi sent ten coins for the test. Over the next few days, Finney corresponded with the creator of bitcoin by email, helping to troubleshoot errors. 
Describing his experience, the developer regretted his initially low interest in bitcoin. After helping with network testing and his first mining experience, Finney simply turned off the computer "because it was warming up and ha was annoyed by the fan noise."
The next time the developer returned to Bitcoin was in 2010, when Laszlo Heinitz bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC and the cryptocurrency was first exchanged for dollars. 'I blew the dust off my old wallet and was relieved to find that my bitcoins were still in place. My children are technically savvy enough for me to leave cryptocurrency to them inherit,” the developer wrote.
According to Finney, the identity of Satoshi remained a mystery to him, although he assumed that he was dealing with "a young man of Japanese descent, very intelligent and sincere."

- Forbes magazine has compiled a list of people whose fortunes have grown significantly due to the rise in the price of cryptocurrencies. In first place are the founders of the bitcoin exchange Gemini, the Winklevoss brothers. The estimated value of their cryptocurrency assets, according to Forbes, is about $1.4 billion each.
Bloq co-founder Matthew Roszak with $1.2 billion in digital assets ranks second, followed by venture capitalist Tim Draper. According to Forbes, the value of his assets is estimated at $1.1 billion.
In fourth place is the head of MicroStrategy, Michael Sailor, with assets worth $600 million, in fifthis the founder of the crypto bank Galaxy Digital Mike Novogratz. Forbes valued his cryptocurrency assets at $478 million.
The last on the list is the co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin with assets worth $360 million.

- A discussion broke out online between billionaire Mark Cuban and the president of Euro Pacific Capital, Peter Schiff. The former expressed confidence in the ability of bitcoin and some altcoins to pass the “market bubble” similar to the way Amazon, eBay and Priceline experienced the dotcom boom.
Gold supporter Peter Schiff replied to this that “internet companies had real value, while no cryptocurrency has it.”
Cuban countered that the price of cryptocurrency, like gold, is determined only by supply and demand. “This is a means of saving value. There is no real use in bitcoin. All the talk of fiat and depreciation is advertising fiction. Bitcoin is not meant for transactions,” added the billionaire.

- Bitcoin trading on the PayPal platform is gaining popularity: trade volumes have increased by 950% since the beginning of January, that is, almost 10 times. According to the analytical service Nomics, platform users made transactions with BTC for just $22.8 million on January 01, 2021, and their volume amounted to $242 million on January 11, which indicates an increase in interest from retail investors.
While many praise PayPal for providing access to cryptocurrencies, others criticize the platform for not supporting cryptocurrency withdrawal functionality. That is, PayPal users who buy bitcoin on the platform can only sell it there. 
As a reminder, the ability to trade cryptocurrencies on PayPal appeared in November 2020. While the function is only available to users from the United States, in the future the company plans to provide access to it to residents of other countries.

- Ethereum is poised for further growth, said Dan Tapiero, founder of the DTAP Capital investment fund. This is evidenced by the interest on the part of institutional clients of the American financial holding Northern Trust. In partnership with Standard Chartered bank, the holding company launches a service for storing cryptocurrencies. And "if Northern Trust stores bitcoin and ethereum, then they have buyers for both assets," Tapiero substantiated his point of view.

- Changpeng Zhao, CEO and founder of the largest crypto exchange by trading volume, Binance, said that at one time he had sold his apartment to buy the first bitcoins. “It was 2013. I sold my apartment to buy bitcoins. The price of BTC at that point was something around $200,” he recalls. “Now I do not use fiat money at all and do not transfer cryptocurrency to fiat. For me personally, fiat is no longer relevant. I pay for food, taxi, and in general I pay for everything exclusively with cryptocurrency, "added the head of Binance.

- Seventy-year-old investor Bill Miller expressed the opinion that the first cryptocurrency has far from exhausted its growth potential. Firms like Square and PayPal buy freshly mined bitcoins every day, he said. Demand from retail investors is also growing. At the same time, in contrast to demand, the supply of digital gold increases slowly. This situation creates the prerequisites for the increase in the price of bitcoin to new heights.
Miller added that while people speculate about where the price peak is, the Fed's zero interest rate policy puts cash in a "guaranteed losing position." This means that holding 1–2% of a portfolio in bitcoin is a good hedge against risk, even if the cryptocurrency eventually crashes. “I think that owning a small number of bitcoins is more of a risk management strategy than anything else,” the American investor emphasized.


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- The rise in the bitcoin price in recent months has shown that the first cryptocurrency can rise in price to $100,000 per coin, said the head of the American division of Binance Catherine Coley. In her opinion, this growth can be “accelerated” compared to what happened after the second halving in 2016. “We thought the $50,000 price was reasonable, but that number will definitely be slightly higher. I think that by the end of 2021 we will reach $75,000 - $100,000 per bitcoin,” the CEO of Binance.US believes.
More daring predictions for the BTC rate were made by Insider co-founder Henry Blodget and the CEO of the Kraken bitcoin exchange Jesse Powell: both named $1 million per coin. However, the former believes that this will happen thanks to speculators, while the latter relies on the growth of institutional investments in cryptocurrency.

- Investment bank JPMorgan has named a theoretical long-term target for the bitcoin price of $146,000. The millennial generation will drive adoption, JPMorgan says.
Experts believe that the image of an alternative to gold will make the first cryptocurrency even more popular. But this requires convergence of the volatility indicators of bitcoin and gold, and this is a "multi-year process."
JPMorgan's forecast is based on calculating the possible capitalization of bitcoin in the event of an inflow of funds, which are now in ETFs based on gold and in bullions. At the same time, analysts noted that already in October 2020, some outflow of funds from such ETFs and an inflow into Grayscale funds were recorded.

- Popular analyst Willie Woo believes that bitcoin is firmly entrenched above $20,000. In his opinion, we will no longer see the pullback of the cryptocurrency below this psychological mark. 
Of particular importance is also the level of $24,000. After bitcoin crossed this milestone, it became clear that the market finally came under the control of investors who are inclined to long-term storage of cryptocurrency. If the coin keeps above $24,000, the number of its buyers will continue to grow.

- Analytics of Twitter posts show that as bitcoin sets new highs, social media interest in the digital currency is also setting new records. So, the number of unique messages about Bitcoin has reached 66,832, exceeding the previous high of 64,652 set during the 2017 bull run.

- The rise of bitcoin to $35,000 in recent days has led to the re-formation of the so-called "kimchi premium", which consists in the excess of the price of cryptocurrencies over the world ones on Korean exchanges. The overpayment rate on January 4 reached 5.5%.
Such an excess of prices on some exchanges over others was especially typical for the first half of 2018, when the difference reached 54%.
According to a number of analysts, the current price dynamics indicates an increased interest in cryptocurrency among South Koreans. This is due not only to expectations of further growth in BTC, but also to the fact that the Korean won is a restricted currency that is difficult to convert and move across the border.

- Luxurious and exclusive sports cars are increasingly being bought for bitcoins, which indicates an increase in the number of crypto millionaires. For example, the Vegas Auto Gallery in Nevada, whose sells aming other makes Aston Martin, Bentley, Ferrari and Lamborghini brands, has recently sold two first-class sport cars to customers, at over $6 million worth in BTC.

- December 2020 has proven to be the most successful for bitcoin miners in the past three years. They earned $ 692 million last month, according to a report from analytical service Block Research. Of this amount, about $63 million were transaction fees. But many miners are willing to pay so much high fees, if only their operations were processed as a priority.

- Chinese online game operator The9 announced its intention to join the cryptocurrency mining industry. To this end, it entered into agreements with several investors, including former executives of the Chinese mining company Canaan Inc.
The9 is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange and expects to raise new capital by issuing and selling common Class A shares to investors, as well as coupons for their purchase. “Our goal is to collect enough mining devices to provide 8-10% of the global bitcoin hash rate, 10% of the global Ethereum hash rate and 10% of the global Grin hash rate,” said Jun Zhu, CEO of The9. - We intend to become one of the largest companies in the world in terms of hash rate. This will accelerate the development of other areas of our business related to cryptocurrencies.”

- On January 3, 2009, a person or group of people under the nickname Satoshi Nakamoto launched the main Bitcoin network, mining a genesis block with 50 BTC. Shortly before that, on October 31, 2008, the white paper of the first cryptocurrency was published. The first bitcoin transaction took place on January 12, 2009: Satoshi Nakamoto then sent 10 BTC to Hal Finney. A version of Bitcoin_0.1 software was published three days earlier.
Satoshi Nakamoto's identity and the motives for creating bitcoin still remain a mystery. It is possible that one of the incentives for this was the global financial crisis that broke out in 2007-2008.
In July 2020, the Whale Alert Twitter account showed information that well before Nakamoto left the crypto community more than ten years ago, he managed to mine 1,125,150 BTC. Now the cost of these coins would be about $40 billion.


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- Many experts agree that the value of bitcoin may reach $30,000 in the very near future. According to experts, the reason for this is the increased activity of "whales", who continue to make impressive investments in the cryptocurrency industry.
Experts from the analytical company CryptoQuant say that large investors are trying to keep funds in hardware wallets or distribute them between different platforms. The head of CryptoQuant, Ki-Young Joo, noted that this practice is being applied in the stock markets in anticipation of a major breakthrough. “I think that after the spurt [up to $ 30,000] there will be a pullback, the scale of which is very difficult to predict,” says Ki-Young Joo.
According to Vijay Ayyar, one of the top managers of the Luno crypto exchange, such a correction will be no more than 15%, after which bitcoin will face another growth.

- Investor Dennis Hartman, also known as the "king of assets", said in an interview with Bloomberg that bitcoin could become the so-called "millennial gold." According to the specialist, he does not support cryptocurrency assets, however, he considers them to be the main prospect for the future.
According to the financier, central banks around the world will increase their control over digital currencies. Therefore, even if bitcoin remains a fully decentralized unit, it will only be allowed to circulate locally when centralized.
Also, according to Hartmann, despite the prospects for the main cryptocurrency, it may even collapse to zero. This will happen against the background of the introduction of industry regulation in the world community. Due to a number of restrictions, investors will simply stop investing in bitcoin, which will first affect its capitalization, and later on the value.

- The founder of the crypto bank Galaxy Digital, Mike Novogratz, noted on CNBC the strong position of bitcoin in the face of pressure from the current Trump team, which has not been able to stop the record growth of the main cryptocurrency.
In addition, the head of Galaxy Digital expressed the hope that financial regulators under the leadership of President-elect Joe Biden will take a more loyal stance towards cryptocurrencies. “I hope that after the inauguration [January 20, 2021] we will get more progressive regulators. I will be happy to wait for the new administration and get a regulatory framework that supports rather than fights cryptocurrencies,” said Novogratz.

- The most secure strategy for investing in cryptocurrencies in 2021 will be the purchase and storage of a small portfolio of bitcoins and etheriums. This was stated by the head of the digital assets department of the Swiss online bank Swissquote Chris Thomas. In his opinion, these coins have long-term development potential.
In addition, a new form of digital money will appear in 2021, CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency). According to the expert, one of the first countries to introduce such a state digital currency will be China. In Europe, Sweden can become such a country due to the high acceptance rate of such assets. 

- Bitcoin miners' income has increased by 185% since the May halving. And now, according to the estimates of the analytical service Glassnode, the total earnings of all miners in the world is about $1 million per hour.
The experts noted that the last time miners earned so much from mining bitcoin was in July 2019. Then the coin traded in the range from $9k to $11k. But at that point, the BTC mining award was twice the current one.

Almost 20% of Australians own digital currencies at the moment, according to a survey conducted by the Independent Reserve crypto exchange. At the same time, more than 90% of respondents said that they knew about the existence of bitcoin and other virtual coins. Bitcoin turned out to be much more popular than any of the altcoins, among which respondents noted ETH, EOS, XRP and LTС.
As in the past year, the largest share of cryptocurrency holders is among people aged 25 to 34.
 
- Dan Morehead, CEO of Pantera Capital investment company, speaking on CNBC, called the limited supply of bitcoin as a key driver of growth in the value of this cryptocurrency. Currently, giants like PayPal and Grayscale are buying more BTC than bitcoin miners can mine. “When we see that there are large institutional investors, each of whom buys more than 100% of the current issue of such assets, it pushes the price up,” explained Dan Morehead.
The market is nine weeks away from seeing bitcoin at $115,000, according to an estimate in December investment analytics from Pantera Capital.

- The world's largest crypto fund Grayscale published a report last Friday, which shows that the total amount of funds in the cryptocurrency under its control has reached $16.3 billion.
Analyst Kevin Rooke noted that this giant continued to buy up bitcoins even amid the recent consolidation of the crypto market. This clearly indicates that Grayscale is set for a long-term growth in the value of the largest digital currency.
At the moment, Bitcoin and Ethereum Grayscale trusts have accumulated digital assets of $14.075 billion and $1.808 billion, respectively.

- Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has attracted the attention of the community with his stance towards the first cryptocurrency. He called bitcoin the most stable investment in the outgoing, “volatile year” 2020. According to Suarez, Miami and South Florida should be “at the forefront of legislation” promoting digital assets and supported by innovation.
In his address, Suarez has also noted Morgan Creek Digital co-founder Anthony Pompliano saying Miami “is on track to become a bitcoin city.”

- Amsterdam Stock Exchange trader Michael van de Poppe believes that bitcoin will rise from its current level to at least $40,000.  And although the expert does not rule out the likelihood of downward corrections, he is confident that "the bull market for bitcoin will continue for a long time."
In addition, Michael van de Poppe is convinced that a strong rally will be observed in the altcoin market sooner or later, in particular on Ethereum. According to the expert, the rise in prices in the altcoin market will begin after the first quarter of next year.
 
- Ethereum capitalization has exceeded $79 billion. The CEO of the crypto exchange Binance Changpeng Zhao drew attention to the fact that ETH had already surpassed such auto giants as General Motors ($59.5 billion), BMW ($47.1 billion) and Ferrari ($36.2 billion) in terms of capitalization.
In 2021, capital inflows into ETH will be even more significant, according to Messari analyst Ryan Watkins. Some investors are already concentrating exclusively on Ethereum. And the key event for this altcoin will be the launch of Ethereum futures on the Chicago Exchange (CME).


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- Matt Maley, strategist at financial services firm Miller Tabak, believes the cryptocurrency market will face a major setback next year. According to him, the main coin may fall in price by about 25-30 percent in the first months of 2021
Bitcoin's capitalization currently stands at approximately $441 billion. According to Maley, the market is overheated due to large-scale investments, which is why corrections by one or several thousand dollars may become a norm next year.
“I consider cryptocurrencies to be a promising asset, but the minimum correction size next year will be 10%. At the same time, the fall may be at the level of 30% or even more. Therefore, it is worth being prudent before large-scale investments,” the specialist warns.

- Popular analyst and founder of Quantum Economics, Mati Greenspan, expressed an opposite view. In his opinion, the December rise does not mean that the market is "overheated", and a large-scale collapse awaits us. “We are at the very beginning of the period of massive entry of investors into the crypto sphere. This phase of the industry's development is qualitatively different from the rise and fall phases of 2017 and 2018. If demand continues to rise from current levels, and supply is constrained, then there is a possibility that we will see growth of 250% or more."
At the same time, Mati Greenspan excludes a scenario in which BTC will soar to $400,000. “The rally will certainly continue, but there is no need to talk about any astronomical figures yet,” the analyst summed up.

- 190 computers were stolen from the NATO military airbase in Emari (Estonia), which were illegally used to extract cryptocurrency. The Estonian Ministry of Defense reported that mining on the territory of the base was carried out by a certain employee who had access to classified documents. He worked for NATO for 14 years, after which he quit and decided to take the equipment with him. He took out the first computers from the base back in 2015, providing documents on their write-off. The remaining several dozen devices on the territory of Emari were networked and used for mining. In total, this "specialist" was able to mine cryptocurrencies worth 30,000 euros. The Ministry of Defense clarified that about 60% of these earnings would have gone to pay for electricity, but the attacker was using state resources.

- According to the analytical service Glassnode, the number of addresses with cryptocurrency worth more than $1,000,000 has reached 66,500. The increase in the second decade of December alone was about 150%. Analysts noted that some miners have not withdrawn funds from their wallets since the time when one pizza cost several hundred bitcoins. Now they have become dollar millionaires.

- Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk once again spoke on Twitter regarding cryptocurrencies. There, he again confessed his love for Dogecoin and posted a frivolous picture, comparing bitcoin to fiat money and considering it "the same crap."
Recall that in 2019, Musk became the winner of a comic April Fools' poll, in which users were asked to vote for the most suitable candidate for the position of Dogecoin CEO. And last July, Musk spoke on Twitter about the prospect of using Dogecoin technology as a global financial system. After his tweet, the price of the token went up 17%.

- The legendary bitcoin meme HODL is seven years old. It was first used by a user under the nickname GameKyuubi in his post on the BitcoinTalk forum, who later became known as Mr.HODL. On December 18, 2013, being a little drunk by his own admission, he wrote that as a bad trader he prefers to “hodl” so as not to incur financial losses.
“I typed the title twice because I made a mistake the first time. Still a mistake. A girlfriend is stuck in a lesbian bar, bitcoin is falling, so why do I hold? I'll tell you why. Because I'm a bad trader and I know it. Yes, of course, you good traders can see the highs and lows and playfully make a million dollars,” GameKyuubi wrote at the time.
On that day Bitcoin fell in price by almost 40%, GameKyuubi tried to simultaneously talk to his girlfriend and trade bitcoin through a heavily lagging app. After several failed attempts, he went to his room and started drinking.
Hodl, Hodler, is an Internet meme, a slang name for those who buy cryptocurrencies and hold them (do not sell) regardless of the market situation. For the first time, this variant of the spelling appeared as a typo in the word holding.
 
- MicroStrategy, a mobile software company, announced the completion of the last stage of the allocation of reserve assets, during which it invested $650 million raised from investors into 29.646 BTC at an average of $21.925 per coin.
It now owns almost 70,470 bitcoins in total, having spent $1.125 billion at an average price of $15.964 per bitcoin.
The $650 million raised in December was raised through the sale of convertible bonds with a maturity of five years. “The purchase of additional coins confirms our confidence in bitcoin as the most widely used cryptocurrency and a reliable store of value,” said Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy.

- Mill Hill Books has released a 340-page book, Kicking the Hornet's Nest, containing all emails, forum posts, and other entries by the anonymous bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. All entries are collected in chronological order and, according to the publishers, have been published "with almost no editorial comment." The printed version of the edition sells for $29, and it can also be purchased on Amazon. 

- Scott Minerd, investment director of Guggenheim Investments, considers bitcoin to be a grossly undervalued asset, even at current price levels of around $23,000. “Our fundamental work shows that bitcoin should be worth about $400,000,” he said in a conversation with Bloomberg TV.
Analysts at Guggenheim Investments came to this conclusion based on two factors: the limited emission of bitcoin and its value relative to gold. There are many common characteristics that cryptocurrency shares with the precious metal, Minerd said, but bitcoin, unlike gold, "has extraordinary value in the context of transactions."
At the same time, Minerd noted that buying bitcoin above $20,000 seems to him "a little more problematic." His company began investing in bitcoin at a rate of about $10,000.


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- The number of bitcoin addresses with a non-zero balance has approached the mark of 33 million, updating the historical maximum, according to the data of the analytical service Glassnode. The number of wallets with a balance of more than 1 BTC is also steadily growing. The indicator has set a new record at 827,105 recently, recovering from a slight recession at the end of September. According to analysts, such an increase in the number of retail cryptocurrency users clearly indicates the massive adoption of bitcoin.

- Also, the “population” of bitcoin whales grew significantly in 2020 and peaked at 2274 at the end of last month. These data were shared by Philip Gradwell, a senior economist at Chainalysis analytics company. Since the beginning of the year, the category “1000 BTC and more” has grown by 302 new wallets. The balances at the respective addresses have increased by 1.4 million BTC during this time.

- Millennials, young people who were born at the turn of the millennium, believe in bitcoin and see it as an asset preparing to replace fiat money. According to Zach Prince, CEO of cryptocurrency startup BlockFi, they will be the ones who will change the industry and popularize cryptocurrencies. “However, I do not think that the dollar or the euro will completely disappear, but cryptocurrencies have every chance to become their full replacement,” he said.
Speaking at the BlockShow conference, Prince also called promising ways to develop the cryptocurrency industry. According to him, decentralized finance should try to establish communication with regulators, but not make full concessions. If we introduce complete regulation of the market, then it will hardly differ from fiat.

- Despite the rise in the price and popularity of bitcoin over the past few months, it is still far from widespread attention.  A poll conducted by Opinium and AltFi asked 2,000 UK adults how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their financial situation. The majority said they turned to digital investment having refrained from investing in physical assets. However, only 10% of this sample (or 200 people) specified that they bought cryptocurrencies.
Despite the fact that this percentage is relatively small, the results of 2020 can be regarded as an undeniable improvement: the figure was half as low, 5.3%, a year ago.

- US billionaire Ray Dalio admitted that the criticism of cryptocurrencies that had been heard from him earlier was unfounded. "Bitcoin is well suited for portfolio diversification," said the billionaire. “I would advise having cryptocurrencies among the assets, at least as an experiment. When it comes to comparing bitcoin to gold, I prefer to keep those assets that are important to the global economic system." Earlier, Dalio said that bitcoin can complement gold thanks to an expanded list of options that are available to cryptocurrency investors. A coin backed by the precious metal could be the best investment on the market, he said.

- European electricity supplier CEZ Group has uncovered the largest theft in its history. Together with the police, the company's specialists discovered equipment for the extraction of cryptocurrencies illegally connected to the power grids in one of the outbuildings in the Bulgarian village of Kherakovo. The inspection began due to the abnormal high consumption of electricity in the area. As a result of searches, law enforcement officers seized more than 1,000 mining units. Preliminary estimates suggest the stolen electricity was equivalent to a monthly consumption of 4,250 families.

- Bestselling Rich Dad Poor Dad author and entrepreneur Robert Kiyosaki has reiterated his call to buy bitcoin before it surpasses $20,000. He is convinced that the cryptocurrency will continue to grow to $50,000 next year amid the influx of money from institutions. The entrepreneur says that “America is in trouble” and preclude the “death” of the US dollar and a “bright future” for gold, silver, bitcoin and entrepreneurs.

- The well-known Dutch cryptanalyst PlanB, who developed the popular BTC stock-to-flow valuation model, believes that the price of the reference cryptocurrency may rise to $100,000 by the end of 2021, and maybe up to $300,000. PlanB admits that his outlook sounds extremely optimistic and even somewhat amusing for some investors. However, the rise in the price of bitcoin in the past allows him to make such predictions.

- Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says that he sold part of the reserves of the first cryptocurrency back in 2013. He said he had “only a few thousand dollars of net equity” before Ethereum was created. “However, I sold half of my bitcoins to be sure I would not break up if the rate fell to zero,” he writes. This admission was accompanied by Buterin's call not to get into debt or take out loans to buy any digital assets. 

- According to analysts of financial conglomerate JPMorgan Chase, institutional investors can invest up to $600 billion in the first cryptocurrency in the coming years. This requires American, European and Japanese insurance companies and pension funds to invest only 1% of their assets in bitcoin.
As JPMorgan lead strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou noted, the recent $100 million investment by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company marks another milestone in the adoption of the first cryptocurrency by such organizations. At the same time, the analyst admits that it is quite difficult for such traditional investors to invest in cryptocurrency, since there are still regulatory requirements for the choice of investment assets in terms of risks and fulfillment of obligations. This can limit the amount of funds available for buying BTC.
In early December, JPMorgan Payments Manager Takis Georgakopoulos said the bank has become more loyal to bitcoin and is ready to contribute to the development of the cryptocurrency industry.


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- Interest in Bitcoin has reached the summer 2019 level. According to Google Trends, the numbers began to increase almost immediately after the reference coin rose in value to $12,000. Comparing the current growth with the growth in December 2017, followed by a collapse, analysts write: “In December 2017, the main cryptocurrency became a real trend, staying in the top for search queries. Now, the dynamics is about the same, but the indicators are still lower than at the end of 2017. Most likely, the peak of interest will be at the moment when the historical high is broken."

- Bloomberg experts believe that the value of bitcoin in 2021 may increase to $50,000. This is evidenced by a partial repetition of a number of factors that were observed in 2017 during the famous rally. However, Bitcoin now has significantly more support, which minimizes the likelihood of a pullback.
“There is no reason for a change of Bitcoin's movement direction right now,” Bloomberg writes. - The dollar is gradually losing its position, pulling along other fiat currencies. All this is seen by investors who are forced to switch to alternative asset types.” Open interest in the CME bitcoin futures market exceeded $1 billion for the first time in history, which also speaks of growing support from investors.

- One of the factories of the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn has become a victim of the DoppelPaymer ransomware virus. The hackers demanded 1804 BTC (about $33.8 million at the time of writing) from the company. The attackers stole approximately 100 GB of files, encrypted the company's North American segment (1200-1400 servers), deleted 20-30 TB of backups, and made some of the documents publicly available.
In early November, DoppelPaymer attacked another Taiwanese laptop manufacturer, Compal Electronics. Then the attackers demanded 1100 BTC for decryption.

- Bitcoin will rise to $29,569 next year, according to a report from the fintech company Cindicator. This figure was obtained from a survey of over 156,000 users. The respondents with the most accurate forecasts, the so-called "superforcasters", on average expect even greater growth, to $32,056. As for the lower bar, according to the average forecast, it is at $15,000. “Superforcasters” are less optimistic and expect a decline to $12,000.
Cindicator's “hybrid intelligence”, which uses machine learning algorithms to process data from a team of analysts, predicts similar values, only in a narrower range. According to its calculations, the BTC rate next year will not exceed $25,222 and will not fall below $16,000. At the same time, the total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market in 2021 with a probability of 80% will surpass the 2018 record of $828 billion.
According to the same forecast by Cindicator, the price of the first cryptocurrency will reach $21,000 this year.

- Edward Snowden, former special agent of the CIA and the US National Security Agency (NSA), who fled to Russia, recalled that he had been right about the prospects for bitcoin. During the March crash to $3,820, Snowden announced that it was time to buy bitcoin as there was little reason to panic. Now the ex-spy has become an even more staunch supporter of digital gold. “I found out today that the dollar has depreciated against bitcoin by 99.93% since 2013,” he wrote.

- US Global Advisors investment company CEO Frank Holmes suggested that gold, bitcoin and ethereum could rise next year. At the same time, Holmes believes that the price of bitcoin and gold is influenced by completely different factors. Thus, the increase in the value of the first cryptocurrency was influenced by the May halving of the reward to miners to 6.25 BTC. “If global gold mining companies announce that they will cut gold supplies by 50%, I can assure you that gold will cost $10,000 per troy ounce. It's all about supply and demand,” Holmes explained.
As for Ethereum, its rate is driven by the latest advances in decentralized finance (DeFi). DappRadar researchers have recently reported that 96% of the total DeFi transactions was on ethereum in Q3 2020, which also led the daily number of active wallets.

- American billionaire Paul Tudor Jones announced last May that he was investing in bitcoin to hedge against inflation and now calls bitcoin an undervalued asset. “$500 billion is the wrong market capitalization for bitcoin in a world where there is a $90 trillion stock market, and God knows how many trillions there are in fiat currency. I assume it is being misjudged in terms of its inherent capabilities, ”he told Yahoo! Finance. “Cryptocurrencies will have a crazy rocket flight with ups and downs along the way,” he says. - Bitcoin, in particular, will be significantly higher in 20 years than it is now. From here the road for it lies to the north.”
Jones is one of the most recognizable traders in the world today. He rose to fame in the 1980s when he predicted a Black Monday market crash in 1987. He is also associated with the rapid development of the global hedge fund industry. Tudor Investment Corporation manages $10 billion in assets, and the investor's personal fortune is estimated at $5 billion.

- Cuban residents have begun to turn to cryptocurrencies more often after the tightening of US sanctions. On November 23, the Western Union payment system closed 407 offices in Cuba due to restrictions imposed on money transfers to the country, writes Deutsche Welle. Cubans began using bitcoin and some altcoins to circumvent sanctions. At the same time, the volume of many transfers does not exceed $20, and there are about 10 thousand active holders of digital assets in the country.
Recall that Cuba came in second in terms of the number of searches related to bitcoin. In terms of interest in the first cryptocurrency, the country was second only to Nigeria.

- Financial conglomerate Wells Fargo, one of the "big four" US banks, has published a new investment report, in which a separate page under the heading "Bitcoin - 2020's best performing and most volatile asset" is devoted to the cryptocurrency market. The authors do not directly encourage clients to invest in digital assets, but generally maintain an optimistic tone regarding their prospects. “Over the past 12 years, they have grown from literally nothing to a $560 billion market cap,” writes Wells Fargo. "Hobbies don't usually last 12 years."
The bank notes that bitcoin is up 170% over the year, but warns about its high volatility. “Investing in cryptocurrencies today is akin to living in the early days of the 1850s gold rush, which involved more speculation than investing.”


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- Experts agree that Bitcoin will be able to withstand the pressure of banks and reach a new level. According to one of scenarios, the correction of the main cryptocurrency from $19,480 to $16,280, which was fixed last week, is associated with the decision of the US President Donald Trump Administration to tighten control over the circulation of digital assets. Officials chose to change the rules for registering cryptocurrency wallets as one of the ways to manage transactions.
Many crypto companies have already begun developing new versions of wallets, which will receive permits from the US Securities and Exchange Commission before launching. Trump is probably trying to resist China in this way, which is preparing to release its own cryptocurrency. If the digital yuan becomes a cross-border payment instrument, it can be used instead of the dollar. This will make sanctions against China ineffective, and Washington will lose the ability to put pressure on Beijing.
“Bitcoin has an indirect relationship to everything that happens, but even the first statements by representatives of the American government about the desire to start controlling the industry brought it down by several thousand dollars in a matter of hours. But I do not think this will lead to serious problems, as the market has already managed to recover from the correction,” said Mark Yusko, the head of Morgan Creek investment company. Moreover, according to experts of Stack Funds, this correction is not only “healthy”, but also will allow bitcoin to prepare for a new high of $86,000.

- According to Mike Novogratz, head of the Galaxy Digital crypto trading bank, everyone should invest 2-3% of their funds in bitcoin. “After that, it is enough to wait a little time, and you will be surprised, but cryptocurrencies will cost significantly more. If you wait five years, the assets will multiply several times,” he wrote. According to the head of Galaxy Digital, bitcoin volatility can be expected in the near future, but it is unlikely to sink below $12,000, and even a correction to such levels is unlikely.

- An unknown user received 7 Ethereum coins (about $4,200 at the time of writing) for a solved puzzle that began with a billboard in the Warsaw subway. An ad with an ethereum address and hashtags [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] appeared at one of the metro stations and urged passengers to solve the puzzle hiding the secret phrase for withdrawing funds to ETH. The tips were posted on a Twitter account called 0xPoland. The final clue appeared in the print and electronic editions of Gazeta Wyborcza.
The organizers explained that they wanted to invite people to join their team "to create a decentralized financial infrastructure."

- Authorities in Delaware County (Pennsylvania, USA) paid hackers $500,000 in bitcoins after the county's information systems were attacked by the DoppelPaymer ransomware virus. The extortionists gained access to police records, payment documents, procurement information and other databases, however, it is argued that the attack did not affect the voting systems. After getting the ransom, the hackers advised authorities to change passwords and gave recommendations for configuring the Windows domain.

- The number of addresses containing more than one bitcoin is growing steadily and has exceeded 820 thousand. These wallets hold 95% of the total digital gold market volume. This is evidenced by data from analytics companies Glassnode and BitinfoCharts. Smaller addresses store about $16 billion of digital gold. There are 32.6 million addresses with non-zero balance in the world.

- The value of bitcoin could surpass the $500 thousand mark, the founder of the Gemini crypto exchange Tyler Winklevoss, one of the twin brothers who was called the first cryptocurrency billionaires, told CNBC. He called the current price of the main digital coin “an opportunity to buy” as it could rise in price by 25 times in the future. “Bitcoin will surpass gold. If this happens, the capitalization of this cryptocurrency will exceed $9 trillion,” predicted Tyler Winklevoss.
It became known in summer 2020 that the Winklevoss brothers are planning to make a film about their history of investing in cryptocurrency. Ben Mezrich's biographical book "Bitcoin Billionaires" will be filmed for this purpose.

- Global Macro Investor CEO Raul Pal has placed an order to sell all of his gold to invest in BTC and ETH at an 80/20 ratio. He announced this on Twitter and clarified that in addition to gold, there are some bonds and US dollars in his portfolio.
The head of Global Macro Investor expects that even conservative institutional investors, who usually prefer precious metals, will start investing in bitcoin next year. Therefore, Pal made the bold assumption that the rate of the first cryptocurrency cad reach $250,000 in a year.

- A message from South America: the Venezuelan army is mining cryptocurrencies. A Digital Asset Mining Centre for the Armed Forces of the country has opened in Caracas. An area on the territory of the Fort Tiuna headquarters was allocated for the Centre. The military called the creation of a mining center" an unblockable source of income" and an example of cooperation with the civilian sector.
The amount of computing power has not been specified, but it is known that
 the Venezuelan National Guard has previously detained a truck with 315 mining blocks from Bitmain. The equipment was confiscated and has apparently become the basis for a new military crypto facility.

- Joe Biden's administration should focus on integrating bitcoin into the US financial system instead of creating a digital dollar like China. This is the opinion of Niall Ferguson, a former professor at Harvard and Oxford and now a senior researcher at Stanford.
In a new article, the world-renowned economic historian looked at the US dollar, gold and bitcoin as the monetary revolution continued, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing parallels with the plague of the 14th century, the historian noted that the pandemic let digital gold cover a decade-long path in only ten months. And this happened not only because of the closed banks, but also due to the tightening of financial supervision.

- Payment system Visa has entered into cooperation with crypto startup BlockFi to launch a credit card with cashback in bitcoin in early 2021, writes Bloomberg. Users of the "Bitcoin Rewards Credit Card" product will receive a cashback of 1.5% of the amount spent in BTC and will also receive $250 in cryptocurrency once they spend more than $3,000 in the first three months. The rewards earned will be automatically transferred to the client's account in BlockFi, where they will be available for various transactions or withdrawal to a third-party wallet.


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- Musician Sean Lennon, son of world star John Lennon of The Beatles, has sided with the Bitcoin. “If everyone continued to use gold now, then it would have to be carried in bags. In addition, it is much easier to steal such an asset. Cryptocurrencies are almost completely independent. People need freedom, which the authorities, banks and other departments are trying to take away. Bitcoin allows you to use your funds to the maximum,” says Lennon Jr.

- Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, has wished bitcoin luck. According to him, the entire industry will benefit from the growth of the main cryptocurrency, but a decrease in the correlation between assets can lead to new problems. Because of this, the head of Ripple has urged investors to have both bitcoin and altcoins in their portfolio.
He has also noted that the rally in the basic cryptocurrency that began in November could indeed lead to new all-time highs. According to him, ill-wishers are now talking about a new pyramid, which could collapse at any moment. But according to Garlinghouse, bitcoin now has huge support from large investors, making a major correction almost impossible.

- American rapper Logic bragged about $6 million in bitcoin investments to his fans. According to the artist, the funds were transferred to cryptocurrency last month. He first bought bitcoins worth $2 million then, after which he decided to make two more of the same transactions. Many social media users have agreed that Logic has already made good money, since a month ago the cost of bitcoin was significantly lower.

- For the first time, the Lithuanian State Tax Inspectorate has sold the confiscated cryptocurrency worth 6.4 million euros. the assets include Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monero. The funds received from their sale are directed to the state budget. Recall that in the United States, the Federal Marshals Service regularly holds auctions for the sale of cryptocurrency confiscated by law enforcement agencies. Also, soon the confiscated cryptocurrency will be put up for auction in Romania.

- PayPal chief executive Dan Shulman believes bitcoin will ultimately be used more for day-to-day payments rather than a store of value. “The use of cryptocurrency in daily purchases will increase its functionality and stabilize it,” Shulman said, noting that during the coronavirus pandemic, the use of cash has dropped significantly. According to him, up to 70% of consumers no longer want to deal with them.
PayPal opened access to Bitcoin and several altcoins for its customers earlier this month and is now working to integrate trading platforms. This will allow sellers of goods and services to accept digital payments as early as next year. Dan Shulman noted that before launching the service, the company held detailed consultations with world regulators.

- The number of Ethereum addresses on which at least one ETH is stored has reached a historic high of 1.171 million addresses.  Business for the leading altcoin took off in the summer, thanks to the growth of the decentralized finance sector (most of these projects were created on the basis of Ethereum). To date, investors have already invested $13 billion in the DeFi sector.
Still, the current growth cannot be compared with the takeoff of the coin, which began at the end of 2017. Note that as of 01/01/2017, there were only about 66 thousand Ethereum wallets, and just a year later, when the price of ETH reached its historical maximum around $1300, there were already 873 thousand of them (an increase of 1223%).

- On November 24, the price of bitcoin surged above $19,000 for the first time since December 2017. At the time of publication, the market capitalization of this coin has reached $357 billion and exceeded the capitalization of such a giant as investment bank JPMorgan (about $349 billion).
Despite its CEO's skepticism about digital currencies, JPMorgan has already started serving cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Gemini, and bank analysts have confirmed that a number of institutional investors are considering bitcoin as an alternative to gold.

- Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of the telecommunications application Skype, has admitted in an interview with Fortune that he keeps a fairly large part of his personal fortune in cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin has also been supported by the chairman of the messenger company Intercom, Eogan McCabe. "I would like to announce that after years of pampering, I jumped firmly on the bitcoin train and now I want everyone else to do the same."

- Unknown people deceived the employees of the hosting provider GoDaddy and gained access to control over the domains of several cryptocurrency platforms. The attacks began on November 13, according to KrebsonSecurity.
The first victim was the Liquid cryptocurrency exchange. The hosting provider handed over control of the account and domain to an attacker. Liquid chief Mike Kayamori said the hacker managed to partially infiltrate the platform system and gain access to the document repository.
The second victim was the NiceHash cloud mining service: on November 18, experts found an unauthorized change of DNS settings in GoDaddy. NiceHash froze withdrawals for 24 hours until they were sure they were back to their original state.
Supposedly, cryptocurrency companies Bibox, Celsius and Wirex were also victims of the attack.

- Analyst Mati Greenspan believes that the current situation in the cryptocurrency market is qualitatively different from the situation that was observed three years ago. In 2017, the rise in the price of BTC to $20 thousand was the result of the entry of speculators into the crypto sphere. Now the market is controlled by corporations and large investors interested in its stability. The entry of large players leads to the fact that volatility will weaken, and this area will become more attractive, the analyst quotes the CNBC channel. Greenspan expects a further update of bitcoin highs as early as this year.

- Wall Street veteran Max Kaiser believes the supply shock will drive bitcoin to rise to $1 million. “The demand for bitcoin is growing almost exponentially,” he says, “while its supply is mathematically fixed at 900 coins per day. And in 2024, the supply will be halved to 450 BTC per day.
This is why I think that institutions that buy bitcoins will do it directly from miners, and people simply won't have the opportunity to buy coins as the price will skyrocket to $1 million per BTC. Meanwhile, Gen Z, who bought a lot of bitcoins when they were under $100, will become the new global power elite. The world order is about to change.”


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- Hackers attacked large companies in Israel, traditionally demanding a ransom in bitcoins to regain access to confidential information. The new ransomware virus was named Pay2Key. It affects corporate programs through which reports on financial transactions and other data are transmitted. According to IT company CheckPoint, if the conditions set by the criminals are not met, they usually simply upload the databases to the darknet or to specialized resources on the Web, where anyone can view the materials or buy them.

- Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital cryptocurrency bank, in collaboration with investment company CI Global Asset Management, will launch a new bitcoin fund in Canada. The investment company will act as its manager, and the cryptobank will act as co-manager. The latter will carry out all Bitcoin transactions on behalf of the fund. The asset value will be based on the Bloomberg CFIX Bitcoin Index. The partners have already announced preparations for the IPO, as part of the initiative. The offer consists of $10 Class A and F shares. 

- Bloomberg analyst Mike McGlone is confident that the capitalization of the first cryptocurrency will reach $1 trillion in the second half of next year. However, first the price of bitcoin needs to overcome the main obstacle: the all-time high reached in December 2017 at around $20,089. Almost three years have passed since then, during which time the price managed to drop to $3,126, and then grow fivefold, reaching $18,000 at the moment.
“$20,000 is the main obstacle for bitcoin to capitalize at $1 trillion,” McGlone wrote. - The digital version of gold, but with a more limited supply and a history of adding zeros, appears to be in the early stages of pricing and may simply continue to grow in 2021. Its mass acceptance is growing." 

- Actress Maisie Williams, who portrays Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, asked her Twitter followers if she should invest in Bitcoin. At the time of this writing, 650,369 users expressed their opinion, of which 50.7% answered in the affirmative, 49.3% - in the negative.
Comments from representatives of the cryptocurrency community appeared under the post. For example, the founder of the investment company Grayscale, Barry Silbert, recommended Williams to get acquainted with his firm. In the message, he stressed that "Game of Thrones" featured a "greyscale" in keeping with the name of his company, Greyscale.

- Thanks to consolidation in the status of digital gold, the rate of the first cryptocurrency can reach $318,000 by the end of 2021. This forecast was presented by Tom Fitzpatrick, Managing Director of one of the largest banks in the world, Citibank. He believes that the bitcoin market is now reminiscent of the 1970s, when dollar inflation led to increased demand for gold. In 1971, US President Richard Nixon carried out a series of reforms, abandoning the Bretton Woods system and pegging the dollar to gold. As a result, the price of this precious metal showed a steady increase over the next 50 years.
In his new report, Bitcoin: Gold for the 21st Century, Fitzpatrick writes: "Bitcoin moved in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, when new changes in the monetary regime took place and we dropped to zero interest rates." He notes that currently, financial stimulus measures against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic are leading to the formation of conditions similar to the 1970s.
 
- The founder of the Galaxy Digital cryptobank Mike Novogratz admitted that he once bought his first 500,000 ETH at the rate of $0.99 from Vitalik Buterin. According to the billionaire, the Ethereum project team decided that it would be nice for the community to have a buyer from Wall Street. 
As for bitcoin, Novogratz learned about it in 2012 and purchased the first 30,001 BTC at $95 per coin. When asked why such a strange amount, the billionaire replied that at that moment the head of the hedge fund Pantera Capital Dan Morehead bought 30,000 coins, and "then we decided that we would buy 30,001 because we could not afford to have more."
Novogratz also admitted that he planned to sell bitcoin at $1,000 to buy a plane, but he was talked out of it by partner Pete Briger.

- New US Senator Cynthia Lummis plans to bring the discussion of the first cryptocurrency to the national level. The politician said this in an interview with ABC News channel. “21 million bitcoins will be mined and that's it, this is a limited emission. Therefore, I am confident that it will become an important player as a store of value over time,” said Lummis.

- The popular American businessman Robert Kiyosaki agrees with the senator. “Bitcoin's rise has outpaced gold and silver,” he wrote. - What does it mean? This means that you need to buy as much bitcoin and precious metal as you can and don't put it off. The train is already leaving. The dollar is dying. When the dollar falls, the price doesn't matter anymore. What matters is how much gold, silver and bitcoins you have.”
It is curious that in addition to his bestseller "Rich Dad Poor Dad," Kiyosaki wrote two more books in collaboration with US President Donald Trump.

- The price of bitcoin broke through the level of $18,000 with a market capitalization of $338 billion. BTC has grown by more than 50% over the past month as its net purchases on crypto exchanges have far exceeded those of miners. Citing data from analyst firm Glassnode, cryptanalyst Will Wu pointed out that hourly purchases of BTC on exchanges are almost 20 times higher than the amounts attributed to miner sales. Another specialist, Lark Davis, also confirmed that 145,000 bitcoins left the exchanges in the last month, and only 27,000 BTC were mined during this time.


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- Binance cryptocurrency exchange has started blocking the accounts of users from the United States. There are no official explanations for these actions so far. The emails that users received after being blocked say they need to withdraw all the funds from their accounts within 90 days.
According to The Block, previously blocking was carried out only if the user indicated that he or she was a US citizen during the registration process. Now the exchange finds them by IP addresses. For some clients, the administration offers to switch to the Binance US platform or its analogues, since they are not subject to the prohibitions of American law.

- The number of cryptocurrency ATMs has increased by 80% in 2020 compared to their number in 2019. Currently, there are about 11 thousand such devices in the world. An average of 23 new ATMs are installed every day.
According to experts, most often such ATMs are installed by small startups that are trying to make money on the exchange of cryptocurrency for fiat. The devices are installed in large shopping centers mainly in countries where the circulation of digital assets is allowed at the state level. The CoinATMRadar portal has a map of the location of cryptomats around the world. Judging by it, most of the devices are located in the United States and Canada. You can not only get fiat in them, but also buy the cryptocurrencies themselves, at the exchange value. It is not uncommon for the user to choose a platform with an up-to-date rate.

- Many representatives of the cryptosphere are happy with the fact that Joe Biden has most likely won the US presidential election. The crypto community believes that, unlike Donald Trump and his Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Biden will be more liberal about digital currencies and the blockchain industry in general.
According to Mike Novogratz, CEO of crypto trading bank Galaxy Digital, the new administration will accelerate the launch of the incentive program. In this situation, a further increase in investor interest in bitcoin is inevitable, as the dollar will become less attractive amid inflation.

- Popular blogger PlanB remains true to his forecast that the price of the first cryptocurrency will rise to $100 - $288 thousand by December 2021, which is consistent with the Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model on which his expectations are based.
The expert notes that during periods of market corrections, he observes how the algorithms of bitcoin whales pick up hundreds of portions of 0.01 BTC from "weak hands". Later these coins “disappear” in “deep” cold vaults.
According to the S2F model, this move of bitcoins to wallets for long-term storage leads to a reduction in their sales. This is especially true for the period after the halving, which leads to a supply shock and provokes a bull market for the next 18-20 months. This was the case for the first and second halving of miner awards in 2012 and 2016. According to PlanB, the dynamics of bitcoin after the third halving in May 2020 is developing like clockwork, which once again confirms he is right.

- Former associate of George Soros in the Quantum fund, billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, said in an interview with CNBC that he had invested part of the capital under his management in the first cryptocurrency. He admitted that bitcoin may be a better instrument for preserving value than gold.
Druckenmiller has noted the growing stabilization of the first cryptocurrency since its launch 13 years ago. “I'm partly a dinosaur, but I've become better aware that bitcoin can become an asset class that will be interesting from the standpoint of a capital preservation tool,” the investor has explained.
In the same interview, the billionaire predicted a fall in the US dollar over the next three to four years.
 
- The Taiwanese laptop manufacturer Compal Electronics has fallen victim to the DoppelPaymer ransomware virus. For decrypting the files, the hackers demanded 1,100 BTC (almost $17 million at the time of writing), according to Bleeping Computer.
DoppelPaymer is distributed on Windows networks and is known for attacks on corporate networks by gaining access to administrator rights. According to experts from the information security company Group-IB, this virus entered the top three most aggressive and greedy ransomware of 2019.

- Bloomberg analyst Mike McGlone believes that the bitcoin rate will rise to at least $20 thousand in 2021 and renew its all-time high. This is not McGlone's first positive prediction. In early October, he suggested that the first cryptocurrency would rise in price to $100,000 by 2025 and gave several reasons for this. These include the monetary policy of the states, which leads to the depreciation of fiat currencies.
The expert added that the gold will rise in price next year on the same factors as BTC. Its value could rise to $2k an ounce.

- As the publication Unfolded notes, the dependence of Ethereum on bitcoin has been weakening since the end of October. The correlation of the two largest cryptocurrencies decreases amid preparation for the release of the updated version of the Ethereum network (ETH 2.0). It is this factor that has accelerated the separation of the main altcoin from BTC.
Now the correlation is at its lowest level since early 2018. If Ethereum rises in price to $500 in December against the background of weakening bitcoin (now ETH is holding at $460), then it will be able to finally "untie" from its "big brother".

- The market has marked consolidation at two addresses of bitcoins, which have not been in motion for 10 years. According to the data from blockchain.com, the aggregation of coins worth more than $15 million originated from 20 different addresses. Each of them transferred 50 BTC. Until the first halving in 2012, this was the amount miners received as a reward for a successfully mined block.
The situation with early bitcoins of the time of Satoshi Nakamoto always attracts increased attention of the crypto community. Everyone is primarily interested in whether they are really part of the legacy of Satoshi himself. So, more recently, the crypto community enthusiastically discussed the movement of bitcoins worth over $1 billion on the night of the US presidential election. The most fantastic versions were put forward, but later it turned out that this US Department of Justice confiscated almost 70,000 BTC from the purse associated with the Silk Road darkmarket.


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- According to the founder of the investment fund Off The Chain Capital Brian Estes, the attitude towards cryptocurrencies will change dramatically over the next ten years. This is especially true of the American market, which is still showing loyalty to digital assets. Roughly 90 percent of U.S. households will use bitcoin by 2030. Asia will be ahead in this industry, but China and other countries will focus on sovereign coins.

- Well-known analyst Willie Wu believes that bitcoin has entered the "safe haven" stage. He already predicted a similar development of events In early autumn. According to the cryptocurrency expert, the main coin is now showing relative stability, which is why it is not worth waiting for a repeat of the 2017 rally. In addition, even if Bitcoin does go into aggressive growth, it will be in for constant corrections.
“Correlation of the main cryptocurrency by other market industries is gradually decreasing. This ensures the stability of the asset but prevents it from moving to growth. It is because of stability that there is a certain stagnation now,” said Wu. Judging by the trend of recent days, the main coin may be between $13,000 and $14,000 for a long time to come.
 
- An unknown user withdrew 69,370 BTC (approximately $960 million) from a wallet that hackers have been trying to hack for several years. At the time of the transfer, this address was the world fourth largest holder of bitcoin. And, perhaps, the owner of the wallet simply transferred the coins to a new, more secure address. As noted by the Telegram channel Goldfoundinshit, the forums claimed that the wallet is associated with the founder of the anonymous trading platform Silk Road Ross Ulbricht, who is serving a life sentence in an American prison.
 
- Known as the "king of bonds," Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital, recommended the first cryptocurrency and gold as insurance against the dollar's depreciation. Interestingly, Gundlach was saying until recently that he was not ready to participate in the hype around bitcoin. In an interview with Business Insider, he had called the first cryptocurrency a "lie", doubting it was impossible to hack it. “I don't believe in bitcoin. I think it's well tracked. I don’t think it is anonymous,” he had said then. And now the businessman, who manages $141bn in assets, has offered his listeners to hedge the risks of inflation by adding gold and bitcoin to the investment portfolio.

- Residents of Cuba have become much more interested in bitcoin Over the past month. According to Google Trends, in terms of the number of searches related to the first cryptocurrency, the country came in second place, and is now second only to Nigeria. Bitcoin's rise in popularity in the island nation is due to tougher American sanctions, as well as restrictions on the use of PayPal and Stripe payment platforms.
South Africa, Cameroon and Ghana are also among the top five countries with a high interest in bitcoin. Residents of Taiwan, Kazakhstan and Japan turn to the search engine with such a request less often than others.

- Bitcoin showed a negative correlation with the Dow Jones index last week. While stock markets were declining all over the world, the rate of bitcoin rose by 5% and even exceeded the 2019 high. That's not yet the limit, according to some analysts. A new impetus for the growth of BTC may be given by the US presidential election. “Trump's victory should be well received by participants in the financial markets,” experts say, “and the bitcoin rate will grow along with the rates of other assets. If Biden wins, we will see the stock market fall. However, bitcoin is likely to show growth amid expectations of a depreciation of the dollar. "

- A cryptocurrency user in Canada decided to give kids Halloween gift cards, each with $100 in bitcoin, which is roughly 0.007 BTC. Interestingly, some candy hunters, dressed as ghosts, goblins, and witches, were disappointed to receive an inedible piece of cardboard. But there were also those who were delighted to become the owner of a real cryptocurrency. The information that bitcoins were being distributed in this house quickly spread throughout the area, and whole groups of children began to move there on purpose.
The reaction from the crypto community was positive, with many believing that it was a good way to introduce children to the crypto world. "This is a historic moment," said analyst Billy Wu. "When these children come to power, there will be only 0.002 BTC left for each person."

- According to Rai News, a 41-year-old employee of the airport in the Italian city of Lamezia Terme infected the computers of the airport network with a miner virus. He used their computing power to mine ethereum. In addition, the "crypto-enthusiast" has placed several of his own mining farms in the office premises, having powered them from the airport power grid. CCTV cameras managed to capture this, the records of which ended up in the hands of the city prosecutor's office.

- Several US banks have begun negotiations with major crypto custodians such as Anchorage and Coinbase on potential cooperation. This happened after the regulator officially allowed banks to provide such services. This was stated by the head of the United States Currency Exchange Office (OCC) Brian Brooks. He believes that financial conglomerates around the world will not create their own solutions for storing cryptocurrencies from scratch, but rather will buy market leaders or enter into cooperation with them to meet the needs of their customers. 

- Hackers have stolen more than $13.6 billion in cryptocurrency since 2012, committing more than 330 hacks. This is stated in the study of the analytical service Atlas VPN.
Most often, hackers attacked decentralized applications running on the basis of the EOS blockchain platform. There were 117 such cases. Next on the list was the ethereum blockchain platform. The services developed on top of it were attacked 33 times.
As for money, most of all hackers stole it from crypto exchanges and crypto wallets. According to Atlas VPN, there were 87 successful hacks of trading platforms, as a result of which the attackers managed to withdraw $4.8 billion. Wallets suffered even more damage, where the total damage amounted to almost $7.2 billion.


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- The number of cryptocurrency whales has started to increase amid the recent rally in bitcoin. This is evidenced by the CoinMetrics data service. According to the company's specialists, the number of wallets containing more than 1000 coins reached 2.2 thousand on October 25. There were less than 2 thousand of them at the beginning of the year, and their number began to decline at a rapid pace before the May halving.
Based on the current rate, each of the cryptocurrency “whales” is the owner of a fortune of at least 13 million dollars. It is noteworthy that many of them invested in bitcoin during periods when it was very cheap, which speaks of the record profitability of the main coin for its "early" owners.

- One of the leading bitcoin ATM operators LibertyX has added the option to sell bitcoin for cash to 5000 devices located in the United States. This function avoids delays associated with bank transfers. Anyone who wants to sell bitcoins just needs to use an application or a website to enter the number of coins they want to sell and choose a convenient ATM that will give them cash in dollars after specifying the order number. The commission for such an operation is quite large: 8%.

- Bitcoin outperforms gold as an alternative currency and has a significantly better chance of continued growth, according to a new report by the US investment bank JPMorgan. At the same time, the bank's analysts draw attention to the low capitalization of bitcoin, which, in their opinion, is explained by the fact that mainly millennials choose the cryptocurrency. The older generation prefers to keep assets in tangible form, in particular, in gold. Despite this, however, bitcoin has significant potential for long-term growth as millennials will become "an increasingly important component of the investment space" over time.
JPMorgan estimates that the physical gold market, including ETF backed by it, is $2.6 trillion. Bitcoin needs to raise its current value of around $13,000 10 times to equal the precious metal in this respect.

- Hackers broke into the database of the Vastaamo Psychotherapy Centre in Finland. After gaining access to information on thousands of patients at the centre, they demanded a ransom in the amount of 450 thousand euros in bitcoins. The cybercriminals threatened to publish the stolen data and have already begun to implement the threat by uploading the personal data of at least 300 people to the web. The information included the patient's name, telephone number, email address, residential address, diagnosis, and the content of the therapy sessions.
The hackers also offered individual patients to delete their data for a ransom of up to 540 euros in bitcoins.

- After the payment giant PayPal announced the start of support for bitcoin and a number of other cryptocurrencies, Visa, Mastercard and American Express will follow its example. This opinion was expressed in an interview with Bloomberg by the CEO of the Galaxy Investment cryptocurrency fund Mike Novogratz.
However, speaking of bitcoin, Novogratz sees in it only a way to preserve capital and doubts that the first cryptocurrency will become widespread as a means of payment. “I don't think this will happen within the next five years. Bitcoin is used as a means of accumulation. Therefore, as digital gold, it will simply continue to rise in value, and more and more people will include it in their portfolios,” explained Novogratz.
As a reminder, PayPal announced the launch of the function of buying, selling and storing bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin on Wednesday, October 21. The company expects that the new feature will stimulate the global use of cryptocurrencies and prepare the web for digital currencies of central banks.

- According to analysts at Glassnode, the rate of bitcoin has not increased much so far. They conclude from this that the asset will have every chance to take on new barriers in the future. Investors are still only trying to figure out the new policy of bitcoin, since it is more focused on the internal environment now. Stock markets and other external factors have practically ceased to influence it. 

- American programmer, US presidential candidate, "crypto baron" John McAfee, arrested in Spain at the request of the US and accused of tax evasion, gave an interview to Cointelegraph right from his prison cell.
The eccentric millionaire shared his thoughts on the latest developments in the cryptocurrency industry, praised the news of the addition of cryptocurrencies to PayPal's arsenal, and could not resist advertising his own cryptocurrency. “Very soon, we will be faced with a new direction in using cryptocurrencies to execute transactions, rather than as a quick get-rich scheme. That's why I developed the privacy-focused stablecoin Ghost,” McAfee said.

- The founders of the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, the Winklevoss brothers, confirmed their previous prediction, saying that bitcoin will be worth $500,000 sooner or later.
'The question isn't whether bitcoin will cost $500,000 or not, the question is how quickly it will happen. In fact, even this assessment seems to me very conservative - the game has not really even started, "- said Cameron Winklevoss.
Tyler Winklevoss added that he and his brother started buying cryptocurrency back in 2012 and expressed confidence that bitcoin outperforms gold, oil and the US dollar as a store of value and is the only long-term inflation hedge.

- The CEO of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor, who was prophesying the imminent decline of cryptocurrency in the past, claims that he is ready to hold bitcoin for 100 years and does not plan to sell it. Led by Saylor, the company has invested $425 million in bitcoin over the past months. “And this is not speculation or hedge. This is a targeted corporate strategy for the adoption of the bitcoin standard,” Saylor explained. According to him, having considered the available options for preserving capital amid the economic uncertainty in the world, MicroStrategy has come to the conclusion that bitcoin is the best long-term store of value. Taxes and commissions make investments in other assets meaningless, and if not, then they are flawed, because they are controlled by a company management or the state. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is evolving and only gets harder and stronger over time.
Sailor believes that gold cannot be compared to bitcoin. In his opinion, people who hold $100 million in fiat will lose 99% of the value of their assets in 100 years, and investments in gold will, at best, bring 85% of the loss.

- On Wednesday October 28, Donald Trump's campaign website was hacked. As a result, the content of the "About Us" page was changed to accommodate the addresses of the Monero cryptocurrency and the accompanying text. Cybercriminals claim in it to have hacked many devices and gained full access to information about Trump and his relatives. They also claim that they had information at their disposal, allegedly indicating the involvement of the Trump administration in the emergence of the coronavirus, as well as his personal involvement in criminal activity and cooperation with foreigners to manipulate the upcoming election.


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