CryptoNews of the Week by NordFX

CryptoNews of the Week


- According to Bloomberg, the residents of Russia possess a huge amount of digital assets worth about $214 billion. This estimate was obtained by analysing the IP addresses of users of the largest crypto exchanges. In addition, according to the University of Cambridge, Russia became the third country in the world in bitcoin mining (11.23%) in the summer of 2021, after the USA (35.4%) and Kazakhstan (18.1%), where many miners migrated after the ban in China.
The Central Bank of Russia took the initiative to impose a total ban on everything related to this area on January 20, including the circulation and mining of cryptocurrencies, as well as organizing these operations in the country.
However, President Vladimir Putin, instead of a complete ban, supported the proposal of the Ministry of Finance, which provides not for a ban on cryptocurrencies, but for the regulation of their circulation. The President expressed the opinion that the Central Bank should not stand in the way of technological progress. Moreover, Russia has certain competitive advantages, especially in mining, which include a surplus of electricity and well-trained personnel.

- Bitcoin is perceived as a “monetary good” and no altcoin can challenge that status for the foreseeable future. Fidelity Digital Assets analysts came to these conclusions. Experts called the first cryptocurrency not only a technology, but also a perfect form of money in their study “Bitcoin First”. It is the most “secure, decentralized form of assets. Bitcoin has the scarcity and longevity of gold combined with the ease of use, storage and transportation of fiat,” they explained.

- The persistence of high volatility limits the adoption of bitcoin by institutions. This is how JPMorgan analysts justified the decline in the fair, in their opinion, valuation of the first cryptocurrency from $150,000 to $38,000. The specialists noted that the current 50% pullback from the all-time high has highlighted the nature of the boom-bust cycle, which is an obstacle to adding BTC to the portfolios of large investors.
The JPMorgan model assumed that the volatility of bitcoin would converge with the volatility of gold and the alignment of their shares in investment portfolios. And now, bank analysts have admitted that their previous forecast that the bitcoin-to-gold volatility ratio would drop to around 2/1 by the end of 2022 was unrealistic. Therefore, they lowered the fair value of the first cryptocurrency to $38,000, writes Business Insider.
JPMorgan did not rule out a further decline in bitcoin quotes, even in the absence of signs of buyer surrender. “Open interest in futures and the volume of exchange balances indicates less panic or liquidation of positions than last May, especially in relation to large crypto investors,” the specialists concluded in their report.

- Arizona (USA) Senate Member Wendy Rogers introduced a bill that would approve bitcoin as a transactional currency or a means of payment. According to the bill, the first cryptocurrency will be accepted to pay debts, taxes and government fees as well as other obligations. Rogers has also been noted for other initiatives. One of them suggests the possibility of the authorities paying salaries to their employees in cryptocurrency. The senator has also proposed not to levy taxes or fees for “the use of blockchain technology.”
All of these bills must be approved by the Arizona House of Representatives and Senate to be adopted.

- Bitcoin could soar to a high of $93,717 this year and is expected to be worth $76,360 by the end of 2022 and close to $193,000 by the end of 2025. This is the average forecast made by industry representatives during a roundtable discussion organized by the analytical website Finder.
The discussion was attended by 33 fintech experts, half of whom do not expect the cryptocurrency price to fall even against the backdrop of the upcoming increase in US interest rates. Vanessa Harris, director of the cryptocurrency startup Permission, was among the most optimistic participants in the discussion. She predicts that BTC will peak at $220,000 this year. A much more modest figure was voiced by the founder of the CoinFlip bitcoin ATM network, Daniel Polotsky. In his opinion, the cryptocurrency is unlikely to exceed $60,000 in 2022 as the bubbles created by the US Federal Reserve during the pandemic are now deflating.

- Crypto analyst Jason Pizzino believes that despite a solid rebound from its 90-day low of $32,950, the first cryptocurrency is facing a strong resistance. When the price approaches $38,000, it stops because the resistance becomes too strong.
At the same time, according to Pizzino, bitcoin will still enter an accumulation period in the medium term, when whales and investors with smart money will begin to invest in cryptocurrency, waiting for its next bullish trend. This may take a whole year, during which the BTC rate will rise. According to Pizzino's forecast, bitcoin is able to reach a new price high in the second half of 2022, but this will not be a sharp upward movement but a series of ascents.

- American Express, one of the most recognizable credit card operators, has lost ground in processed transaction volumes to the bitcoin network. This is evidenced by the data of the latest NYDIG report.
While the BTC network processed transactions for $3.0 trillion in 2021, for American Express the figure was $1.28 trillion, and this is the best figure in the history of the American corporation. Discover, the 4th largest card operator, posted a result of $0.504 billion, which is also an absolute maximum for the company.
Only two famous brands are ahead of bitcoin: Mastercard and VISA. Their result is $7.72 trillion and $13.5 trillion, respectively. However, the gap between them and the bitcoin is steadily shrinking.

- Global adoption of bitcoin will certainly contribute to the growth of bitcoin to $1 million. This opinion was expressed by the head of Circle, Jeremy Aller in an interview with Business Insider. He admits that he himself is not a "bitcoin maximalist", but he still believes in new cryptocurrency highs. At the same time, the businessman prefers not to compare bitcoin with gold, believing that the digital asset is much more efficient than precious metals. According to the head of Circle, gold as money is simply useless in modern society.

- But analysts at Goldman Sachs, one of the world's largest investment banks, do not share Aller's scenario. In their opinion, the mass adoption of cryptocurrency may, on the contrary, worsen the chances of its long-term growth. Experts argue that the global popularity of digital assets will increase their correlation with traditional ones. This, in turn, will reduce the volatility of cryptocurrencies, as well as reduce their advantage as a diversifying asset in an investor's portfolio.
Moreover, according to Goldman Sachs, cryptocurrencies are unlikely to be able to avoid the influence of macroeconomic forces, such as the monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve.

- Peter Brandt, a well-known Wall Street trader with 45 years of experience, notes that most crypto enthusiasts are now in an extremely bearish mood. Most of the participants in the Laser Eyes flash mob are confident that the price of bitcoin will fall below $30,000 in the near future. According to the expert, this may be a signal to buy the first cryptocurrency. “When the bulls wear laser eyes, it’s time to sell. When bulls become bears, is it time to buy?” Brandt asks.
Recall that the “Laser Eyes” flash mob started on Twitter in February 2021, when bitcoin reached a local high of $58,300. After that, many supporters of the first cryptocurrency, in anticipation of its growth to $100,000, posted photos with “laser eyes” as their profile avatar. Co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital Anthony Pompliano, TV presenter Max Kaiser, CEO of Binance crypto exchange Changpeng Zhao, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other influencers were among the participants in the flash mob.
However, instead of rising to $100,000, the flagship cryptocurrency collapsed to $29,000 by June. So, the current remark of Peter Brand is clearly not devoid of logic.


Notice: These materials are not investment recommendations or guidelines for working in financial markets and are intended for informational purposes only. Trading in financial markets is risky and can result in a complete loss of deposited funds.

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CryptoNews of the Week


- McDonald's fast-food chain has trolled crypto investors amid the fall of the crypto market. McDonald's joked that the owners of digital assets have to get a job in the catering industry during the bearish trend. The post was liked by the community and gained almost 100,000 likes.
In response to the fast-food joke, the CEO of the technology company MicroStrategy Michael Saylor posted his photo wearing a cap with the McDonald's logo and the caption: “Doing my best to buy more bitcoins”.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele also reacted to the joke about bankrupt crypto investors who are forced to cook burgers. Like Michael Saylor, he tweeted a photo of himself wearing a McDonald's cap. This tweet was immediately commented on by a Shibetoshi Nakamoto, who wrote: "Welcome to the McDonald's family, sir."

- But the well-known economist and critic of bitcoin, Nouriel Roubini called on the government of El Salvador in all seriousness to impeach President Nayib Bukele because of his investments in the first cryptocurrency. According to Roubini, the country is on the verge of bankruptcy. “El Salvador’s bitcoin experiment is a real disaster: BTC holders have lost 50% [of the portfolio],” he wrote, calling Bukele a “clown” and a “criminal president” along the way.

- McDonald's trolling has not been ignored by other influencers either. So, the director of the Gemini crypto exchange Tyler Winklevoss wrote that he considers the current fall as an excellent opportunity to buy coins on the Big McBottom. And Elon Musk promised to eat the Happy Meal during the TV broadcast "if McDonald's starts accepting Dogecoin."

- The collapse of bitcoin creates an opportunity to become richer, says Robert Kiyosaki. Rich Dad Poor Dad bestselling author and entrepreneur said he would buy more digital gold if its price dropped to $20,000. "Profits are made when you buy, not when you sell. Bitcoin is crashing. Great news. I bought BTC for $6,000 and $9,000. I will buy more if the price tests $20,000. The time to get rich is coming."
Recall that Kiyosaki predicted a “giant stock market crash” last October and warned that the same fate awaits gold, silver and bitcoin. This is exactly what we are seeing now.

- Goldbug and bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff allowed the collapse of bitcoin below $10,000. In response, Galaxy Digital founder Mike Novogratz offered Schiff a $1 million bet. He promised to send these funds to charity or another purpose of the opponent's choice if BTC trades below $35,000 in a year. At the same time, Novogratz believes that the bear market will be long enough, and therefore does not advise buying on drawdowns now. “It will be difficult for cryptocurrencies to start a rally until the stock market bottoms out. Nevertheless, digital assets have already experienced a significant sell-off and are beginning to receive support from buyers,” he explained.

- Ton Weiss, a well-known trader, analyst and former vice president of JP Morgan Chase, does not rule out the completion of the bitcoin correction in the near future. According to him, the cryptocurrency has reached the 20-month moving average (MA), which is at the level of $34,000. Weiss claims that this is a "perfect opportunity" for a trend reversal and the asset's return to growth. According to the specialist, in the event of a rebound, the price of bitcoin will quickly return to the $40,000 level and consolidate above it.

- Another cryptocurrency analyst, Nicholas Merten predicts that despite the current market conditions, bitcoin could rise almost 7 times to $200,000 by the end of the year. Merten stated on his DataDash YouTube channel (502,000 subscribers) that if bitcoin's capitalization stays above $600 billion, it will set the stage for the coin's bull run in the coming months.
The expert recalled that all rallies occur after corrections and are often spurred on by BTC purchases at heavily discounted prices. Understanding how big players buy is the key to navigating the highly volatile cryptocurrency markets, Merten says.

- According to many market participants, bitcoin can go to the $30,000 area, and then it is likely to turn around. Charles Edwards, the founder of the crypto investment company Capriole, wrote that the signal of the NVT (Network Value to Transaction ratio) indicator shows that BTC is oversold: this situation is rare in the market. “We have entered an open buying zone,” Edwards commented on the current situation.
Recall that this indicator was proposed and is actively used by the well-known analyst Willy Woo. NVT is calculated by dividing bitcoin's market capitalization by its transaction volume (in USD) and is a popular metric to assess whether the coin is overbought or oversold.

- Scott Melker, a trader, analyst, and podcast host, reminded his subscribers that there is nothing unusual about what is happening in the market now. “People have short memories. Bitcoin fell from $60,000 to $30,000 in 10 days in May. 10 DAYS!!! All this has already happened. And that was only 8 months ago. So why be so scared?" he wrote.

- The flagship cryptocurrency has captured the mind of Eric Adams, who is now the mayor of New York. It was last Friday, during an epic price drop, that he received his first paycheck in bitcoin and ethereum, which cut his US dollar pay by 15%. However, Adams did not express any regret about this, apparently believing that he would win in the end anyway. "My goal is to send a message that New York is open to technology and encourage our young people to participate in new emerging markets," says the 110th mayor of the US's largest city.

- Michael Saylor, founder of MicroStrategy, named two reasons for the current correction in the cryptocurrency market. The first of these is the non-transparent regulation and regulatory uncertainty of the crypto industry. The second problem is the imperfection and immaturity of the crypto industry. At the same time, the businessman believes that the current market conditions provide “an excellent entry point for institutional investors interested in cryptocurrencies, who have been on the sidelines so far.”
According to Saylor, a lot of institutional investors are now watching bitcoin and see that it is 40% below the all-time high and that it is consolidating. At the same time, they understand that bitcoin is supported by such serious investors as Bill Miller, regulators, senators, and congressmen, as well as large public companies.
As for MicroStrategy itself, this software developer owns 124,391 BTC. The company has spent about $3.7 billion on the acquisition of cryptocurrency. Thus, the average purchase price is $30,100 per 1 coin.


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Notice: These materials are not investment recommendations or guidelines for working in financial markets and are intended for informational purposes only. Trading in financial markets is risky and can result in a complete loss of deposited funds.

CryptoNews of the Week


- Canadian entrepreneur and Shark Tank TV star Kevin O'Leary spoke to Anthony Pompliano about how sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East are considering mining possibilities. In his opinion, they can enter this space within the next two to three years focusing on the shares of "environmentally friendly" companies.
The businessman did not rule out the creation of his own mining company. In addition to the approval of his initiative by the authorities, O'Leary would like to enlist the support of the inhabitants of the territory associated with its deployment. The entrepreneur called the creation of opportunities for mining companies to reflect income from cryptocurrency mining in financial statements as another condition. He believes this will create an incentive to invest for O'Leary and other financiers.

- The bubble is deflating, so the bitcoin price may fall to $30,000. This opinion was expressed by specialists from the investment company Invesco in their list of “incredible but possible” results for 2022. “Bitcoin’s mass marketing reminds us of stockbrokers' activity leading up to the 1929 crash,” they write.
According to the experts, the drop in quotes from highs around $69,000 to $42,000 in early January is exactly in line with the bubble pattern. This trajectory assumes that the asset will lose 45% of its value within 12 months after the peak. That is, the price will fall to $34,000-$37,000 by the end of October and to $30,000 by the end of 2022.
At the same time, Invesco admitted that they made a mistake with the forecast for 2021, when they predicted a fall in the BTC price below $10,000. Analysts explained their mistake by the fact that bitcoin seems to pass not through one, but through a series of bubbles.

- Guido Buehler, CEO of SEBA licensed cryptocurrency bank, gave an opposite forecast. He believes that digital gold could rise to $75,000 by the end of 2022, according to CNBC. “Our internal valuation models point to a price between $50,000 and $75,000. I am quite sure that we will see this level,” he said, adding that the volatility of bitcoin will remain high, but the asset will be able to test new record levels, the only question is the timing.

- TV presenter, filmmaker and former trader Max Kaiser still believes that bitcoin will hit $220,000 this year. He explained in another interview why his forecast was not realized last year. “As for 2021, I said we would get to $220,000 per coin, which is a typical four-year cycle. What we had in 2021 was a massive mining collapse in China, the hash rate fell by 50%. We have recovered since then and are about to reach a new all-time record hash rate. That's why I'm moving my goal from 2021 to 2022."
“There is a price, there is a hash rate and there is a complexity setting: these are three things you need to keep in mind,” Max Keiser explains. “I have always said that the price lags behind the hash rate, so once we see its new all-time highs, new all-time highs of the bitcoin price will follow.”

- Another cryptocurrency analyst, Justin Bennett, believes that bitcoin is in for a decent rally in the near future. He reviewed BTC historical price movement models that show that the asset is expected to rise by 20-30%. “You can see since the beginning of 2021 that when bitcoin finds a low below the liquidation level, it makes a move up. The average rate of such movement is about 63%, and the lowest was in April, about 27%. – says the expert. “If you take this data and look at the low around $40,000, then a minimum move of around 27% would take the market to around $50,000. This is highly likely given that the $50,000-53,000 range is very important, and sellers will defend this range as resistance. But bitcoin first needs to break the $45,600 mark to start the rally.”

- The number of vacancies related to the cryptocurrency industry in the US increased by 395% in 2021. Such data is provided by the LinkedIn social network. The sample has included ads containing the words "bitcoin", "ethereum", "blockchain" and "cryptocurrency". At the same time, the number of vacancies in the technology sector increased by 98% over the year.
LinkedIn noted that while most jobs were posted by companies specializing in software and finance, interest in crypto-related candidates was also shown in other areas. We are talking about consulting, accounting, hardware and recruiting.

- The owners of the fake YouTube channel of the head of MicroStrategy Michael Saylor lured 26 BTC (about $1.1 million) from one of the users. The scheme of fraud was common and widespread: they promised on behalf of Saylor to “double” any amount sent to the specified address in cryptocurrency. No matter how much is written about this type of scam, there are still those who fall for this bait, driven by greed.
“489 of these scam channels were launched on YouTube last week. We complain about them every 15 minutes, they are blocked after a few hours, but scammers launch new ones,” the real Saylor wrote in his verified Twitter account.

- According to Peter Brandt, a Wall Street trader with 45 years of experience, he expects a further decline in the price of ethereum. To date, this altcoin has already fallen in price by 36% from its all-time high of $4,878 recorded on November 10, 2021. Brandt is pessimistic as he believes that from a technological standpoint, ethereum is “a very complex, costly, and user-inconvenient platform in terms of its use for NFTs, special tokens, and its involvement in the metaverse.” Based on this, Brandt concludes that ETH will lose points in the eyes of investors, giving way to competitors.

- Data from the Glassnode platform shows that investors are buying up ethereum, despite the fall in its value. As mentioned above, this digital currency has lost 36% of its value in two months. At the same time, the number of ETH wallets with a non-zero balance reached a new high of 73,025,019. Network activity is also increasing, which indicates the desire of investors to take advantage of the correction and buy as many tokens as possible. The average daily number of transactions on the blockchain exceeds 1.2 million at the moment.
According to Glassnode analysts, ETH will trade in a narrow range until a clear vector of movement for the US stock market is formed. If the capital goes into risky assets again, then the ethereum will resume the rise along with bitcoin.

- Popular analyst PlanB is considered one of the main supporters of the theory that BTC will grow to $100,000 in 2021. He developed a forecasting model for the behavior of the bitcoin price (S2F), the signals of which indicated the prospects for such a rise.
Despite the fact that the S2F forecast did not come true, PlanB continues to stick to his theory. He is confident that bitcoin has not yet realized the potential laid in it by the 2020 halving. According to the analyst, the coin is now near local lows and is preparing to renew all-time highs in March. According to the analyst, the peak value of bitcoin within the current cycle can be recorded in July-August 2022.
Analysts of the Twitter channel Root largely agreed with PlanB's opinion. They also believe that bitcoin's growth cycle is not yet complete and is ready to resume growth.

- Umar Farooq, Head of the Cryptocurrency Division at JPMorgan Onyx, compared the current level of development of the cryptocurrency market with the music streaming industry in the 90s. “There was a thing called Napster in the 90s. It was clumsy. Not everyone could use it. And 20 years later, you have Apple Music and Spotify. We live in the era of Napster. We just don't know what Spotify looks like. So I think cryptocurrencies will remain. I just don't know in what form," Umar Farooq said. According to him, the industry has already survived the era of the "Wild West" and has now become an established industry, attracting more and more users.
Earlier, the JPMorgan analyst opined that reduced volatility would enable bitcoin to reach $73,000 in 2022, and the “promised” $146,000 in the long term.


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Notice: These materials are not investment recommendations or guidelines for working in financial markets and are intended for informational purposes only. Trading in financial markets is risky and can result in a complete loss of deposited funds.

CryptoNews of the Week


- China's Supreme Economic Planning Authority has officially declared crypto mining "obsolete", backing up the government's efforts to eradicate the industry entirely. The National Development and Reform Commission made the announcement on Monday, January 10, explaining along the way that the country's economy is moving towards a model that favors cleaner, less resource-intensive industries. According to business consultancy Dezan Shira & Associate, the “obsolete” label refers not only to mining, but also to other technologies that will be banned from investment and should be phased out.
As a reminder, China had been the world leader in this industry until last year, when government bans drove most of the crypto miners out of the country, 

- The global adoption of cryptocurrencies will jump from the current 5% to 20% in 2022. This forecast was given by the CEO of Binance crypto exchange Changpeng Zhao in an article for the Indian version of Fortune. The main drivers, in his opinion, will be the SocialFi, GameFi and NFT sectors.
Regarding India, Zhao noted the importance of government support for blockchain and cryptocurrency innovation, regardless of asset classification. According to the NASSCOM report, it is expected that the crypto market in the country will reach $241 million by 2030 and potentially create 877 thousand jobs. The organization also predicts an increase in the inflow of funds from retail investors in digital assets to $15.6 billion from $6.6 billion currently.
The head of Binance stressed that India is poised to “become a leader in blockchain and cryptocurrencies.” “In addition to banking and financial services, DLT technology can improve the efficiency of land transactions, supply chains, agriculture and corporate sustainability,” Zhao added. 

- According to Bloomberg, only 5% of customers surveyed by JPMorgan believe that the bitcoin price will reach $100,000 by the end of 2022. More than 40% believe that it will only return to the $60,000 level. “I'm not surprised by the bearish sentiment on bitcoin. Our futures-based indicator looks oversold", said the bank's strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou. According to him, the fair value of the cryptocurrency ranges from $35,000 to $73,000.

- Jack Dorsey's Block (formerly Square) payment company has opened a recruitment process to develop a next-generation bitcoin miner and a hardware wallet “for the next 100 million bitcoin users.” This is stated in the corresponding section on the company's website. “Our goal is to expand economic opportunities, starting with providing easy-to-use and reliable self-service to a global audience,” the announcement says.

- Bitcoin continues to fall in price after it reached an all-time high of $69,000 last November. Galaxy Digital founder Mike Novogratz called this a healthy pullback in a recent interview with CNBC. He believes that the main cryptocurrency will find support around $38,000-40,000, after which it will return to growth, thanks to purchases by institutional investors.
Nigel Green, CEO of the consulting company deVere Group, has also stated that this is the best time in the current cycle to buy bitcoin.

- However, some experts consider such sentiments to be too optimistic. Thus, the ENCRY Foundation predicts that bitcoin may return to growth only after its price drops to $28,000-30,000. “The flows of liquidity to the markets will decrease in the second half of 2022, after the completion of the asset repurchase program in the United States. Then bitcoin may fall to $30,000,” the company's specialists believe.
The current levels cannot yet be described as a market bottom. This is indicated by another expert, Viktor Pershikov, a leading analyst at 8848 Invest. According to him, conditions that have not yet been observed must be fulfilled for the formation of the bottom. This is a long flat (at least two months in the current circumstances) with the accumulation of long positions and an increase in open interest, a decrease in BTC sales by market participants as well as clarification of the speed and degree of tightening of monetary policy by world central banks.
“The current state of the crypto market is characterized by emotional selling to a large extent, including at a loss, which is typical for situations when retail participants are shaken out of the market. The current decline does not pose a threat for large BTC holders and is a normal market correction before further growth," Pershikov says. In his opinion, bitcoin will spend most of the year in the price range of $30,000-70,000.

- Bitcoin is classified as a risky asset, and it moves mainly in the same direction as technology stocks. Sometimes the correlation of BTC with such assets weakens, but the overall dependence remains high.
Analysts associate the January fall in cryptocurrency with the retreat of stock indices, which is taking place against the background of the US Federal Reserve's readiness to raise the discount rate this quarter. Correlation between bitcoin and the S&P 500 has increased to its highest level since July 2020, according to Kaiko platform. A similar situation is observed between BTC and the Nasdaq index.

- Up to 50% of all transactions in one form or another will be made through Ethereum in 10-20 years. This was stated by Joey Krug, co-director of investments at Pantera Capital in an interview with Bloomberg.
The top manager is convinced that the second largest cryptocurrency by capitalization will play an important role in global finance, and that the explosive growth of Ethereum killers will not be able to undermine its dominance. “There are many compromises in other blockchains, while Ethereum is in the best position in terms of decentralization, which is extremely important,” explained the Pantera Capital Co-Chief Investment Officer.

- Cryptocurrency analyst Justin Bennett said what, in his opinion, awaits Ethereum against the backdrop of a downtrend in the entire market. “One needs to be careful as long as ETH is below $4,000. If ETH returns to this area in the coming weeks and months and can gain a foothold there, then we can talk about the continuation of the strong bullish trend observed in 2021. ”Bennett himself does not mind replenishing his leading altcoin stocks at around $3,000. 
The analyst also looks at ETH against BTC and believes that the ETH/BTC pair could start a long-term rally to 0.18 BTC ($7.388) for 1 Ethereum, but this would require holding the 0.075 BTC ($3.077) level as support. 

- A resident of San Francisco (USA) Siraj Raval uses his 2018 Tesla Model 3 to mine Ethereum. To do this, he launched the corresponding free software on the Apple Mac mini M1, connecting it to the car's center console. Five graphics cards are powered by the Tesla battery.
According to Raval, he was mining for about 20 hours a day on the Tesla battery and was earning from $400 to $800 per month throughout 2021, which made such mining profitable even during the bear market. (The monthly cost of recharging the car was only $30 to $60, despite the fact that he was driving it as well.) 
However, another miner who used Tesla, Thomas Somers, doubted that much profit. “The best estimate I would give for a GPU hashrate in Model 3 would be around 7-10 MH/s. Currently, this will generate revenue of about $13 at a rate of 10 MH/s without taking into account any costs,“ Somers said.


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Notice: These materials are not investment recommendations or guidelines for working in financial markets and are intended for informational purposes only. Trading in financial markets is risky and can result in a complete loss of deposited funds.

CryptoNews of the Week


- It was 13 years ago, on January 3, 2009, that a person or a group of people known as Satoshi Nakamoto launched the main bitcoin network, mining a genesis block with 50 BTC. Its hash contains the title of the article "Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks" by the British edition of The Times. The launch of the network was preceded by the publication of the bitcoin white paper on October 31, 2008. The first bitcoin transaction took place on January 12, 2009: Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 BTC to Hal Finney.
It is possible that one of the incentives for the bitcoin creation was the global financial crisis that broke out in 2007-2008, accompanied by the collapse of the largest investment banks, a widespread decline in production, falling demand and prices for raw materials, rising unemployment and active government intervention in the economy.

- According to the CoinatMrRadar analytical service, against the backdrop of growing demand for cryptocurrencies, about 20,000 new bitcoin ATMs appeared in the world in 2021. Their number has grown by about 2.4 times over the year and is very close to 34,000. The vast majority of these are still in the United States. Genesis Coin is the leader among ATM manufacturers, having installed 13,996 ATMs. It is followed by General Bytes with 7,514. The top three is closed by BitAccess with 4,875 ATMs.

- MicroStrategy increased investments in bitcoin by $94 million. The company's CEO Michael Saylor announced the purchase of 1.9 thousand BTC at an average price of $49,200 per coin. The software developer currently owns 124,391 BTC, which is valued at $6.1 billion. In total, the company spent about $3.7 billion on the purchase of cryptocurrency, so the average price of 1 BTC in its ownership is $30,100.
The head of MicroStrategy is a strong proponent of digital assets and believes bitcoin will become the 21st century's premier store of value. As for China's anti-cryptocurrency measures, Michael Saylor called them a “trillion-dollar mistake”.

- The head of the investment company Ava Labs, John Wu, expressed the opinion in an interview with CNBC that the capitalization of the crypto market will exceed $5 trillion in 2022. According to Wu's forecast, digital assets have the potential to double their market value in the coming year. (The capitalization is $2.25 trillion at the time of writing this review).
According to the head of Ava Labs, cryptocurrencies will be the only asset class that can withstand both the actions of the Fed and the record increase in inflation, which reached its maximum values in the US in almost 40 years in early December 2021. Wu also claims that the share of bitcoin will fall below 30% with the growth of the crypto market, although the price may exceed $75,000 per coin.

- According to cryptocurrency analyst Benjamin Cowen, bitcoin has already bottomed out, although many traders believe the bearish trend will continue. According to Cowen, it can be more revealing sometimes to value bitcoin not in the BTC/USD pair, but in comparison with other assets. As an example, the expert suggests looking at BTC paired with the S&P500 index. Bitcoin has already reached critical support here, Cowen believes. “If you look at bitcoin in the mirror of the stock market, it is testing levels that were tested back in September.”
However, the analyst does not rule out that the main cryptocurrency may return to the level of $40,000 or $42,000. “Anything is possible in the case of investment,” he writes. “All models can be wrong, although some can be useful.”

- Another fraudulent account of Vitalik Buterin has been found on Instagram. According to users, the owner of this account is “pulling followers into classic cryptocurrency fraud schemes.” He encourages subscribers to send him direct messages which contain passphrases for crypto wallets, or persuades them to send him cryptocurrency, promising to return three times as much.
It turns out that the real Vitalik Buterin does not have an official Instagram account, which is what the scammer decided to take advantage of, gaining 643,000 subscribers. The fake account was registered in Israel more than two years ago. However, it is not the only one. If you search Instagram for the name of the Ethereum creator, you will see more than a dozen accounts, many of which are called “Vitalik Biterin_official”.

- Notorious entrepreneur, co-founder of Block.One, former actor and former US presidential candidate Brock Pierce is confident that bitcoin can reach $200,000 this year. Governments are printing excessive amounts of money, thereby fueling inflation, and this will be the main reason for BTC to take off. “I wouldn't be surprised if bitcoin trades for $100,000. It is quite possible that it can jump over $200,000 for a moment,” Pierce said optimistically.

- Anthony Trenchev, co-founder and managing partner of Nexo, a major cryptocurrency lender (over $ 6 billion), exudes optimism like Brock Pierce. “I think bitcoin will reach $100,000 this year, perhaps by the middle of this year,” Trenchev said.

- Economist Alex Kruger expects the main cryptocurrency to grow in early January, but then bears may enter the scene and the reason for this is the next meeting of the US Federal Reserve. “If the report on inflation on January 12 shows an excess of its level,” the specialist explains, “then investors should expect an exit from risky assets on the eve of the FRS meeting on January 26.”

- American billionaire and founder of Bridgewater Associates Ray Dalio said he is impressed by the fact that bitcoin has managed to stand the test of time and agreed with his fellow billionaire Bill Miller is that one should allocate 1-2% of one's net profit for this cryptocurrency. He talks about this in his new book, which is a macroeconomic explanation of why bitcoin will become a $10 trillion asset.
Many members of the crypto community have perceived this billionaire's work as a 550-page advertisement for bitcoin. However, Dalio also warns about the risks for this cryptocurrency in this book. The financier believes that a new alternative may appear in the market due to the nature of the evolutionary process. The billionaire predicts that capital will flow into non-fungible tokens and other coins in the future, for diversification purposes. At the same time, he did not purchase NFTs himself, but the mania accompanying this innovation causes him some interest.
The head of the world's largest hedge fund still does not rule out that governments can outlaw bitcoin, as they once outlawed gold and silver. “Alternative currency is a threat to any government. Each of them wants a monopoly on their currency," Dalio writes.

- Kevin O'Leary, an American entrepreneur and star of the popular business and finance show Shark Tank, said that he is ready to increase the share of cryptocurrencies in his investment portfolio to 20%. However, he is waiting for clearer regulation of the industry to do this.
O'Leary had previously been a crypto sceptic, but these assets already occupy about 10% of his portfolio now, a significant part of them are stablecoins pegged to the US dollar. This is how he is trying to protect himself from inflation of the world reserve currency. According to the entrepreneur, his optimism towards stablecoins is shared by many institutional investors. At the same time, O'Leary has a different attitude to bitcoin due to its significant volatility: “You will not invest 20% or 30% of your portfolio in bitcoin if you are an institutional investor, you simply will not. And stablecoins may well get such an allocation,” he said.

- Bitcoin markets have been consolidating since the start of the year, but chain metrics paint a more positive picture as more and more assets become illiquid. Glassnode examined the supply performance of bitcoin in its report dated January 03, 2022. The results showed that while the asset has been trading sideways so far this year, the illiquid supply has accelerated and now accounts for 76% of the total.
Glassnode defines illiquidity as moving BTC to a wallet with no history of spending. The liquid stock of BTC, which is 24%, is in wallets that regularly spend or trade coins.
The figures indicate that more and more bitcoin is being transferred to storage, which indicates an increase in accumulation. The reduction in highly liquid supply also hints that there is no need to expect a major sell-off or surrender to the bears in the near future.


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CryptoNews of the Week


- Elon Musk is Satoshi Nakamoto. Such a sensational statement was made by a SpaceX and Tesla ex-software developper Sahil Gupta. He revealed details that, in his opinion, prove that Musk is the creator of bitcoin, since he had the necessary resources, knowledge and motivation to do so.
In addition, Sahil Gupta claims that he had once directly asked the billionaire representative Sam Teller if Musk was the creator of bitcoin, he was silent for about 15 seconds, and then said: "Well, what can I say...".

- Philip Hammond, former British Chancellor of the Exchequer, who also served as Foreign Secretary, Secretary of Defense and Minister of Transport, called on retail investors to be “extremely cautious” when investing in cryptocurrencies.
“If a member of my family asked me [whether to invest in cryptocurrency], I would draw their attention to the fact that large and reputable asset managers are now more likely to test the waters [...] It is almost certainly not suitable for retail investors as the main investment grade ", - said Baron Hammond. In his opinion, buying a cryptocurrency is more of a gamble than a serious investment.

- Unlike Baron Hammond, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, one of the richest people in Mexico and founder of the Grupo Salinas group of companies, called on subscribers to actively buy the first cryptocurrency in his New Year's address.
“Stay away from fiat money. The dollar, the euro, the yen, the peso are all the same. It is fake money made of paper and lies. Central banks print more money than ever. Invest in bitcoin,” he said. The billionaire reported that he invested 10% of his liquid portfolio in bitcoin back in November 2020.

“The cryptocurrency market will grow to tens of trillions of dollars,” said Jihan Wu, co-founder of Bitmain and head of Matrixport and Bitdeer, in an interview with Forbes. In his opinion, "even if 95% of existing coins are depreciated or disappear, the growth rate of the remaining 5% will be enormous."
“Innovations like DeFi are breathtaking. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain have created a new world, enabling fintech entrepreneurs to achieve great success. Traditional financial institutions and regulators will also adopt blockchain technology over time,” the billionaire believes.

- The frequency of mentions of bitcoin on Twitter increased by 350% in 2021 compared to 2020. 101 million tweets with the word “bitcoin” were published in just 12 months, according to data from the analytical company Visibrain.
The number of mentions of bitcoin on Twitter jumped sharply against the backdrop of various events. So, there was a surge in the popularity of the asset in February against the background of the flash mob "laser eyes", the participants of which put photos with laser eyes on their Twitter avatars and promised not to change them until bitcoin rose in price to $100,000. An increase in mentions also occurred when Tesla suspended the sale of its cars for bitcoins, and El Salvador recognized the cryptocurrency as an official means of payment.

- Joseph Tsai, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Internet Company Alibaba, announced his commitment to cryptocurrencies. He tweeted a simple and short phrase, "I like cryptocurrencies," to which a lot of users responded. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao did not ignore Tsai's tweet either and replied, "I like Joe."
Recall that the Chinese authorities are taking serious measures against the cryptocurrency industry. And this was the reason that, despite the loyalty of its vice president, the e-commerce giant has already begun to implement an anti-cryptocurrency policy. Alibaba announced last autumn that it will be forbidden to sell mining equipment on the platform. The company has also pledged to stop selling books and tutorials related to the digital asset industry.

- A well-known trader and analyst Tone Weiss predicts a powerful surge of bitcoin. He believes that the current market situation does not reflect the potential of the first cryptocurrency, and the current situation is just a “speed bump in the bull market”. The specialist recalled that similar phenomena have already happened in the past, and each time bitcoin, having overcome the section that slowed it down, picked up speed again. At the same time, Weiss noted that he does not know exactly to what minimum BTC may fall before its value begins to increase. 
The trader also noted that bitcoin is currently trading within a large ascending triangle on the monthly chart. This is a bullish pattern suggesting a continuation of the uptrend. The analyst believes that the asset's overcoming the $60,000 level will open the way for a large-scale rally to $100,000 and above.

- Analyst PlanB also believes that the digital asset is bound to grow. This is indicated by the signals of his S2F forecasting model. PlanB has previously claimed that the main cryptocurrency will be able to break through the $100,000 level before the end of this year. Despite the fact that his forecast did not come true, the analyst continues to believe the S2F signals.

- Lukas Lagoudis, CEO of ARK36 cryptocurrency hedge fund, believes in maintaining the upward trend in the crypto market next year. According to him, the value of coins will increase due to the inflow of capital from institutional investors and the integration of digital assets into traditional financial systems. Lagoudis suggests that the popularity of virtual currencies should increase due to rising inflation and declining bond yields.

- Documentaries that talk about bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry appear on the film market from time to time. Some of them have earned rave reviews from critics and users interested in the industry.
The first place in the TOP-3 is taken by the documentary "This Machine Greens", which tells about the mining process. "Man B" is in the second place, in which the authors examine the attitude of the citizens of Germany and Austria towards bitcoin. The third line is taken by the documentary film "Hard Money". This short film explains why bitcoin is so important for the entire planet. It can also be used to find out why gold was chosen as the main asset for civilization at one time, and what its drawbacks are.

- The US Congress approved an increase in the national debt limit by another $2.5 trillion. According to experts, this decision will once again postpone the threat of federal default until at least the beginning of 2023, accelerate inflation in the United States and lead to an increase in investment in gold and bitcoin.
Max Keiser, a well-known crypto investor and founder of Heisenberg Capital, said the bill created “ideal conditions for bitcoin to grow as the US government capitulated to hyperinflation”. “I don’t want to see America collapse, but I don’t have that many dollars, so I don’t care,” Kaiser announced.
Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss (Tyler Winklevoss) wrote on Twitter that the approval by the US Senate of the debt ceiling “will actually work as advertising for bitcoin at $2.5 trillion.” Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, shares a similar view. “It looks like bitcoin is enjoying government support,” he writes.


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CryptoNews of the Week


- Miners have already mined 90% of the coins from the total bitcoin emission. The bitcoin network has reached the point at block No. 714000 where it remains to mine 2.1 million BTC, or 10% of the available emission volume. However, the total cryptocurrency supply will not be equal to 21 million coins, as provided by the algorithm. Chainalysis has calculated that 3.79 million BTC could be lost forever. In theory, these coins do exist, but they do not circulate.
Also, about 1 million BTC is stored at addresses that are associated with the creator of the first cryptocurrency, Satoshi Nakamoto. These bitcoins were mined early in the development of the network and have not moved since then. Nakamoto left his last public message 11 years ago.
Digital gold is expected to reach its emission limit around 2140 as regular halvings gradually lead to a zero-emission rate.

- According to the Bitstamp cryptocurrency exchange, the number of women investing in cryptocurrency increased by 198% in the first three quarters of 2021compared to the same period in 2020. The highest percentage of new investors are women between the ages of 30 and 35. It is curious that the most successful female investors and traders are the age group from 55 to 60 years old. They tend to invest larger amounts and earn higher returns.
The main reason for this influx is likely the proliferation of information about cryptocurrencies during the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 forced many countries to enter lockdowns, which made citizens stay at home for a long time. It is natural that when left without work, people were forced to look for new opportunities to generate income. In addition, fiat currencies are depreciating catastrophically in many countries.
However, despite the influx of women into what was previously considered predominantly male, gender balance will still take time. According to a report called Financial Tribes You Need to Know, 66% of investors in the cryptocurrency industry are still male.

- The new German government has included cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology in the list of the country's main development directions for the next four years. And now German savings banks have started working on a cryptocurrency wallet project. According to media reports, the plan provides for the possibility of buying and selling digital assets directly through accounts, and customers will not have to undergo additional verification procedures.
For reference: there are about 370 savings banks in Germany. Their aggregate database has about 50 million customers, and assets under management are estimated at €1.4 trillion.

- According to IntoTheBlock experts, if BTC does not hold above $48,000, the risks of its fall to $43,000 will increase, and it is only at this level that the coin will be able to find a local bottom. About 344,000 wallets purchased 395,000 coins at prices in the area of this support. It is these investors who must prevent further pullback so as not to go into the red.

- Attackers hacked the personal Twitter of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They wrote on his behalf about the recognition of the first cryptocurrency as a legal means of payment in the country. The publication also said that India bought 500 BTC and plans to distribute it to citizens. Attackers also attached a link to a fraudulent site allegedly for citizens to receive their share of coins. As of now, the fake tweet has been deleted.

- When the news feed is calm enough, traders begin to pay more attention to technical analysis. And now the legendary trader and techno analyst Peter Brandt warned investors that there is a dangerous double top pattern on the chart of the first cryptocurrency. However, according to a number of experts, this does not mean that the pattern will eventually be fully formed and that the market will go into a deeper correction.
The analytical department of Bestchange believes that despite the high risks of continuing the local fall, the main cryptocurrency is able to go up powerfully in the medium term. “The situation is extremely ambiguous today, but mid-term forecasts until mid-2022 are still positive. Bitcoin needs to lose at least half of its capitalization and securely gain a foothold at levels below $28,000-30,000 in order to abandon most positive scenarios. Until this happens, the hope for $100,000 continues to be relevant,” Bestchange believes.
According to Nikita Soshnikov, director of Alfacash crypto service, the market will face a long period of depressed sentiment if the double top pattern is confirmed. However, “there is no question of any bitcoin at $5,000 or even $15,000. You can simply forget about such prices for cryptocurrency. But it may well fall below $40,000 and stay at this level for several weeks. I even admit a decline in the rate to $35,000, but going below this mark is unlikely,” the expert predicted.

- Elon Musk was named TIME's Person of the Year. The publication noted the impact of the founder of Tesla and SpaceX on life on Earth and “possibly beyond”. "This is a man who seeks to save our planet and help us populate a new one: a jester, a genius, a provocateur, a seer, an industrialist, a showman, a boor, a crazy hybrid of Edison, Barnum, Andrew Carnegie and Dr. Manhattan from The Watchmen," - this is how TIME characterizes the richest person on the planet with a fortune of $265 billion.
When asked by a TIME reporter regarding cryptocurrencies, Musk replied that he is “not such a big opponent of fiat. But the cryptocurrency has advantages, since any government, whatever it may be, has a desire to issue." “I was instrumental in the creation of PayPal. And there are few who understand [the monetary system] better than I do,” multi-billionaire said. However, he doubted that digital assets can replace fiat. “Bitcoin can serve as a store of value, but it cannot be a good substitute for currencies for payments. In this regard, even Dogecoin created as a joke is better suited.”
Among other things, Musk said in the interview with TIME that he would not be held responsible for how the markets react to his tweets: “Markets are in motion all the time on their own for no reason. Is the reaction to my statements significantly different from the random wanderings that they already have? I do not think so. As you can see from my tweets, this is humor, which I find funny, but not everyone agrees. "

- The Weiss Crypto rating agency still adheres to an optimistic scenario despite the protracted correction of the flagship cryptocurrency. Agency analysts support the forecast of colleagues from Bloomberg, who previously announced a high probability of a coin breakthrough to $100,000 in 2022.
The chances of reaching this psychological mark exceed the risks of a further fall, according to the Weiss Crypto review. Against the backdrop of the confrontation with China, the United States will accelerate the legalization of the crypto sphere, which will positively affect the value of digital currencies.
The authors of the study emphasize that cryptocurrency will be the main beneficiary of the fall of the stock market in the context of tightening the monetary policy by the Fed. Investors can abandon stocks in favor of digital currency as a hedging tool. In addition, the decline in the yield on US Treasury bonds may also have a positive effect on the quotes of BTC and ETH.

- According to Michael van de Poppe, creator of the Material Indicators analytical resource, bearish sentiment still prevails among whales. “They have not bought a single drawdown since the beginning of October and have only been selling lately,” he explained.
However, following the results of the US Federal Reserve meeting this week, the BTC rate may complete the correction and move to growth on the triggering of the “sell on rumors, buy on the news” rule. A similar scenario emerges based on the analysis of the order book of the Bitfinex exchange. Traders started placing buy orders in the range of $44,500-$46,000, while at the time of writing, the first cryptocurrency is trading above $47,000.


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CryptoNews of the Week


- The collapse of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on December 04 occurred against the background of investors' flight from risky assets and the fall of the stock market. The reason for this was the news about the largest real estate developer in China Evergrande. The media reported that its founder was summoned to the government because of the possible bankruptcy of the company, which could create serious problems for the entire world economy.
Analysts at Galaxy Digital Research called general nervousness due to the new COVID-19 strain "Omicron" and because of the statement by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell about a possible acceleration in the pace of curtailing the monetary stimulus program, as the reason for the fall in the crypto market.

- Bitcoin is unlikely to have time to renew the highs before the end of 2021 and reach the $100,000 mark after the recent crash. This opinion was expressed by the chief investment officer of Bitwise Asset Management Matt Hougan in an interview with Bloomberg. “I think this level can be the goal for 2022,” the top manager said. In his opinion, the growing support from institutions will be the driver, and there are “fundamental driving forces” for this.
Also, giving a forecast for 2022, Hougan predicted an “explosion of activity based on ethereum”. A Bitwise spokesperson highlighted the DeFi, NFT, Web 3.0 and metaverse sectors, as well as the growing potential of altcoins. “Investors will look at Ethereum, Solana or Polygon. They are beginning to understand that cryptocurrency is more than just bitcoin,” says Hougan.

- President Joe Biden's administration has published the United States Anti-Corruption Strategy. This is the first time that such a document mentions cryptocurrencies. “The Ministry of Justice will use the established National Cryptocurrency Law Enforcement Group to focus on comprehensive investigations and prosecutions of the criminal use of digital assets,” the Strategy says. This group will focus on "crimes committed by exchanges, mixing services and money laundering infrastructure entities."

- A poll by Grayscale Investments showed that more than a quarter of US investors (26%) already own bitcoin, more than half of them (55%) have acquired an asset in the last 12 months. 77% of respondents view digital gold as an investment asset and only 20% see bitcoin as a means of payment.
Despite the popularity of the retention strategy, one in six investors sold at least part of their digital assets, 91% of them did so at a profit.

- Back in early June, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele announced that his country was going to mine BTC using energy from the region's volcanoes. He distributed a video at the end of September talking about the start of construction of the corresponding facility.
However, one of El Salvador's leading ecologists, Ricardo Navarro, believes that BTC mining using geothermal volcanic energy will eventually lead to an environmental disaster. Such energy is quite expensive, and its price is even higher than that of oil. As a result, in his opinion, the country will simply have to purchase more oil. Navarro also insists that "Bukele is not really aware of what is happening with the energy situation."

- The higher the bitcoin rate, the more often it is buried. It is paradoxical, but true: as the quotes grow, skeptics who write obituaries for cryptocurrency become more active. 99bitcoins calculated: the year is not over yet, and BTC has already been predicted death 41 times. The opponents of the coin were even more active only in 2017 and 2018: the premature death of the asset was reported 124 and 93 times then.
The latter of the current obituaries is by economist Bill Blain. Blain calls bitcoin a Ponzi scheme incapable of fulfilling the function of money and argues that cryptocurrency accelerates inflation.
Unlike a number of other crypto critics, Blain has doubts about blockchain technology as well: “From time to time I dig into the myriad of junk that masquerades as the genius of blockchain, mathematics and computational logic that underlies cryptography. Read it yourself: it's 10% fun and 90% complete nonsense,” he writes. 

- Well-known analyst and trader Ton Weiss believes that bitcoin has a better chance of reaching a new all-time high this year after the collapse to $42,000. The coin needs to gain a foothold above $53,500 for the bulls to seize the initiative. “I think it will be like a V-turn. We will not have another chance to buy bitcoin below $50,000,” Weiss believes.

- The USA called "Moscow City" a hub for illegal cryptocurrency transactions. Experts of the Recorded Future company, which specializes in cybersecurity, claim that there are about 50 crypto exchanges that are engaged in illegal activities in this business center of the Russian capital. Recorded Future concluded that part of the payments to the ransomware went through "Moscow City", reports The New York Times.
The US authorities announced In September the imposition of sanctions against the Russian crypto exchange Suex, which has offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg. US officials claim Suex facilitated the withdrawal of ransomware and scammers' funds. This is the first time in US history that the authorities have imposed sanctions on a crypto exchange.

— According to Finbold, Americans suffered about $3.94 billion in losses from various cybercrimes in the first three quarters of 2021, which was the highest in history. Thus, cybercriminals stole at least $12.78 million daily. Compared to three quarters of 2020, losses increased by 83% ($1.9 billion). They amounted to about $1.2 billion In the same period of 2019, and $818 million in 2018.

- A well-known investor and economist Louis Navellier believes that a large bubble has been inflated in the stock market, which may lead to a strong correction of risky assets. As a result, bitcoin could drop to $10,000.
Navellier recalled that a serious fall in the rate of the main cryptocurrency also followed during a similar correction of risky assets in February-March 2020. 
This time, in his opinion, the situation could be even worse, and bitcoin could lose up to 80% of its capitalization. This may be facilitated by the actions of the US Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy.
“A fall below $46,000 (200-day moving average) would be a bearish signal. Bitcoin must fall to $28,500 to complete the double top pattern, and such a decline could indicate a drop below $10,000. This is an 80% decline and bitcoin has already shown similar behavior,” the investor said, referring to the end of 2017.


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CryptoNews of the Week


- Police in the Spanish city of Tarragona arrested a 33-year-old man and a woman who installed hidden miners on computers in stores. The undisclosed criminals have infected at least 16 devices in electronics retailers Mediamarkt and El Corte Ingles department stores.
According to available information, the woman distracted employees and asked for help to start the laptop, which she allegedly bought in their store. Meanwhile, her companion was installing the Nicehash miner and the Anydesk program for remote access to computers on display sample laptops.
The new laptops running at full capacity have raised suspicion among consultants. Mediamarkt's CCTV cameras filmed the accomplices visiting the store three times, and the police were able to identify them from the video.

- Investors should take advantage of the latest correction in the digital asset market to build up their positions. This was stated by Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital and former director of communications in the Donald Trump administration. He noted that not only fundamental factors, but also the monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve, indicate the further growth of cryptocurrency quotes.
“If you believe in long-term fundamentals like we do, then now is the time to buy. I just think that the risk is decreasing in the current situation. The volatility of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is knocking people out of the game. It also washes away some of the leverage, which, in my opinion, creates a springboard for a good first quarter,” the financier explained. Scaramucci stressed that he considers the market reaction "healthy". He called what happened “healing bloodletting”. 

- The bitcoin network has processed more US dollar transactions than PayPal since the beginning of 2021. This is stated in a report by Blockdata. The average quarterly for the decentralized network was $489 billion, while PayPal had $302 billion. However, both of these figures are inferior to the average quarterly volumes of such giants as Mastercard and Visa ($1.8 trillion and $3.2 trillion, respectively).
“It is impressive how bitcoin, being a 12-year-old P2P network, has 27% compared to Mastercard, a company founded in 1966,” Blockdata experts noted. At the same time, in their opinion, the bitcoin network is "fundamentally" different from Mastercard and Visa. It is more of a "saving technology" than a "spending" and has more options for use.
Experts believe it is realistic that the cryptocurrency will surpass financial giants as for the volume of transferable value at some point. But to do that, it needs to bridge the bandwidth gap, which they called "staggering."

- Option traders are betting on bitcoin decline for six months for the first time since May. As noted by the CoinDesk portal, this situation does not necessarily imply a long-term market decline. The six-month expected volatility is now at historical averages, so options with more distant expiration are relatively inexpensive. Traders can buy put options in the hope of large profits for a small investment if the decline does occur. There is one more explanation for what is happening. It lies in the fact that traders are trying to protect their long positions in the spot market.
The price ratio for weekly, monthly and three-month contracts also shifted to the “bears” earlier this month. “Demand is particularly strong for puts with a strike price of $50,000,” the trading firm Paradigm noted.

- Cryptocurrency analyst Justin Bennett believes December could be the month of a rally in the cryptocurrency market, with Ethereum (ETH) and Dogecoin (DOGE) potentially leading it.
According to the expert, the dollar index (DXY), which compares the dollar to a basket of other fiat currencies, could face a downward momentum and give a bullish signal for the crypto market. In addition, Bennett uses a chart of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization (TOTAL). According to him, TOTAL is approaching the completion of the big bullish falling wedge. He also noted the discrepancy between the growing Relative Strength Index (RSI) and the downward exchange rate movement. A rising RSI during a downtrend is often interpreted as a hint of a bullish reversal.

- Imperial Arts French Art Gallery organizes the first ever auction of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) related to personal property owned by Napoleon Bonaparte. The unique auction is held to commemorate the bicentennial of the death of Napoleon I.
The auction will feature: Napoleon's cane from St. Helena, a golden snuffbox, a handwritten letter from Napoleon I to General Bertrand, an official imperial bust of the Empire, a miniature Bonaparte portrait and ivory painting in bronze case depicting Napoleon in the form of Colonel Garde chasseurs a cheval.

- Mark Yusko, CEO of Morgan Creek Capital Management, believes that owning bitcoin and other crypto assets is a way to avoid rampant inflation. In a new interview with CNBC, the head of the investment firm called BTC an "ideal" savings asset in a world where governments are in a race to devalue their currency.
According to the financier, it's not that bitcoin is getting better over fiat currencies. They are getting worse than bitcoin. “There is a global race to the bottom,” says Martin Yusko.
In his opinion, investors should not be fooled by day-to-day fluctuations in the price of bitcoin, which do not necessarily reflect its true value. In the next few months, Yusko said, macroeconomic conditions could become "unstable" and owning BTC would be an advantage.

- 86% of hacked accounts on the Google Cloud platform are their further use for mining, Cybersecurity Action Team experts said. The software needed to do this was loaded on average 22 seconds after the hack. In many cases, attackers gained access to accounts due to poor protection from the users themselves, analysts noted.

- Bitcoin was down $53,360 this week in response to declines in stock indices and commodity futures. The situation is caused by the emergence of a new strain of the Omicron coronavirus. Nigel Green, CEO of the consulting company deVere Group, believes that investors should buy bitcoin right now, during the correction, as its rate will double in a year.
“Panic is the right time to buy BTC,” says Green. He also suggested that concerns about the spread of Omicron will be short-lived, and investors will again focus on rising inflation.

- According to cryptanalyst and trader Benjamin Cowen, the value of bitcoin will not fall below $50,000. That is, within the framework of the current correction, the fall of the first cryptocurrency will not exceed 25% of the historical maximum set on November 10. A similar situation occurred in September, when bitcoin was correcting after reaching $52,000. Then the value of the asset dropped by 23%, after which the coin returned to growth.
Cowen added that the support line for the current bullish trend passes at the $51,000 level. Even if it falls to this level, it is highly likely that the price of the cryptocurrency will push off from this level and begin to rise. At the same time, the specialist admitted that false breakouts of this level could occur.

- Crypto strategist known as Smart Contracter believes that bitcoin is almost ready for a recovery. Smart Contracter uses the Elliott Wave Theory, which predicts the future movement of the rate based on the psychology of market participants, which is manifested in the form of waves. According to his calculations, BTC has completed a 5-wave correction movement and is now ready for a new round of growth.
“There are no signs of an immediate reversal yet, but I believe we have seen the final volumes of surrender. In my opinion, in the case of a worst-case scenario, the BTC rate should rebound sharply to $63,000. The most positive scenario is a new historical maximum,” the expert said.

- The subscribers of the well-known analyst known as PlanB, the creator of the S2F forecasting model, agreed with the opinion that the main cryptocurrency will be able to continue to grow. About 80% of survey participants believe that the maximum recorded on November 10, 2021, around $69,000 is not the limit. According to PlanB, the coin is expected to break through the $100,000 level by the end of the year. However, most of the community members name the $75,000 mark. Ethereum, they believe, is able to rise in price to $7,500 over the same period of time.


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CryptoNews of the Week


- Latvian law enforcement officers detained a suspect in creating a fraudulent cryptocurrency project, who disappeared with €500,000 stolen from deceived customers. According to the police, the detainee is the creator of the Hodlife project and the token of the same name and operated from Spain. He promoted the fraudulent platform on social media, promising quick profits, and he made an exit scam last June and disappeared with investors' money. According to preliminary estimates, more than a thousand investors have suffered.
The stolen funds were laundered through mixing services, but Interpol employees were able to establish a link between different wallets and tracked the attacker.

- US Senator Cynthia Lummis criticized Hillary Clinton for concerns about cryptocurrencies. Earlier, during the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, former First Lady, Secretary of State in the Obama administration and participant of the presidential race in 2016, Mrs. Clinton said that cryptocurrencies can undermine the dollar's status as a reserve currency. Digital assets can also destabilize entire countries, she added.
“Great leaders are not afraid of the future. America could be a winner by adopting bitcoin as a hard currency that can be used to stabilize the dollar and reverse the tailspin that began in 1971,” Lammis wrote in response. She did not elaborate on how the first cryptocurrency should stabilize the dollar, but she did mention 1971. US President Richard Nixon completely abolished the gold standard then, transferring control of the money supply to the Fed. It is believed that this has made the economy more prone to inflation, allowing the printing of unsecured money.

- According to research by The Advisor Coach, Dogecoin is the most searched cryptocurrency in 23 US states. Bitcoin and ethereum are on the second (10 states) and third (eight) lines. The fourth place is a clone of Dogecoin, Shiba Inu.
Analysts explained Dogecoin's leadership by Elon Musk's attention to this asset. Tesla CEO invited users to vote for the option of accepting payments in Dogecoin back in May. Prior to this, the billionaire reported that SpaceX will launch the Doge-1 satellite to the moon in 2022. According to him, the mission is fully paid for with this meme cryptocurrency.
Dogecoin was worth $0.001353 on October 1, 2020. The price rose to $0.6311 per coin In May 2021, or 465 times. However, by the time of this writing on November 24, 2021, it has lost more than 65% in price, falling to $0.2172.

- Edward Snowden, a former NSA and CIA officer who asked for asylum in Russia, said that he treats dog-like tokens like Dogecoin or Shiba Inu badly. According to him, many take meme coins seriously and may suffer losses because of this.
Against the background of the growing popularity of such assets, fraudsters have become more active. The team behind Shiba Inu warned users about the spread of fake project groups on social networks.

- Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto should receive the Nobel Prize in Economics for inventing the first cryptocurrency. This initiative was made by Daniel Leon, co-founder and COO of the Celsius Network crypto platform. "This guy [Nakamoto] has brought hundreds of thousands of people more financial benefits than the bulk of economists in academia," Daniel Leon argued for his position.
He explained that before the advent of cryptocurrencies, people were forced to trust intermediaries, which are centralized institutions like banks and governments. With digital assets, this is no longer necessary. According to Daniel Leon, trusting the "code" rather than the middleman is easier and safer.
“When you lend money to your bank, it pays you 0.1%, but when you borrow, you pay 7.73%. Where is justice? To make matters worse, if a credit institution fails, the government bails it out. In the event of a failure of the government itself, it simply prints money: 30% of all dollars in circulation have been issued in the last 18 months,” COO Celsius Network said indignantly.

- Over a quarter of super-wealthy families around the world have already invested in cryptocurrencies. This is evidenced by the results of a survey of the British consulting company Campden Wealth, conducted among representatives of 385 family offices. The average capital managed by such offices is estimated at $1.6 billion.
31% of wealthy households in North America and 28% in Europe invest in cryptocurrencies, while this share is lower in the Asia-Pacific region, 19%. At the same time, the share of cryptocurrencies in the assets of billionaire families as a whole is still only 1%. Most of the respondents said that they plan to keep the volume of such investments at the current level next year, 28% are going to increase them, and only 4% are going to reduce them.

- A new report from analyst firm Glassnode showed that the market is not showing massive profit-taking. Analysts pointed out that the total supply of short-term bitcoin holders is at a multi-year low below 3 million BTC, which in turn means that the amount held by long-term holders is at a multi-year high. At the same time, they are only building up their positions. The total number of wallets with a non-zero BTC balance in the second half of November also reached an all-time high of 38.76 million.
The data obtained by Glassnode indicates that there are no signs of serious surrender, and that the flagship cryptocurrency may still have a rather long upward rally.

- CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju also expressed a similar opinion to Glassnode. Despite the fact that bitcoin has been getting cheaper since the middle of last week, holders are in no rush to sell it. In parallel, there is a steady trend towards the withdrawal of cryptocurrency for autonomous storage. According to CryptoQuant, trading floors currently have the lowest amount of bitcoins since mid-2018.
Moreover, investors are withdrawing not only BTC, but also ethereum, which reduces the supply of the asset and eases the pressure on the market. In the long term, according to Ki Young Ju, this trend will drive the value of leading digital currencies upward.

- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has once again criticized the decision of the El Salvadorian authorities to recognize bitcoin as the official currency. “Given the high volatility of the bitcoin price,” the Fund said in a statement, “its use as legal tender carries risks for consumers and also threatens financial integrity and stability. Its use also gives rise to contingent fiscal liabilities,” the review says.
The IMF came to this opinion following the visit of its staff to El Salvador. Experts who visited the country recommended that the government of El Salvador "narrow the scope of the bitcoin law and strengthen the regulation and supervision of the new payment system."

- A well-known trader and analyst known as Credible argues that the current correction of bitcoin is a necessity to continue the bullish trend and rise above $70,000. According to the expert, the first cryptocurrency is in the phase of a healthy correction at the moment.
The bitcoin price may fall to $52,000-53,000 in the near future, where the “bottom” of the current correction is located, Credible predicts. According to him, the $69,000 mark that bitcoin reached on November 10 cannot be the top of the current bull market, as historically each subsequent cycle of growth has lasted longer than the previous one.

- Chief commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence Mike McGlone believes that, despite the temporary correction in prices, BTC will grow in 2022. He said on his Twitter account that the asset is likely to face resistance at $100,000 and the $50,000 mark will act as a support level. “The level of adoption of this young technology/asset is increasing, and the supply volume is less and less, which indicates signs of maturation,” the expert explained his forecast.

- The CEO of the American investment management company ARK Invest Katie Wood confirmed her previous forecast for the price of bitcoin at $500,000, saying that this will be facilitated by the growth of institutional investments. Such a price will be achieved if institutional investors allocate 5% of their portfolios for bitcoin.

- Mike Novogratz, CEO of investment firm Galaxy Digital Holdings, said last week that gold "was just crushed by bitcoin." “I think gold was probably the best asset to own,” he added. "But bitcoin is simply the best version of storing value..."
Anthony Scaramucci, founder of another investment firm, Skybridge Capital, also expects bitcoin to "ultimately outshine gold." The price of this cryptocurrency, in his opinion, will easily reach $500,000, so one should invest in BTC right now. “I think bitcoin is likely to be ten times better than gold... I would not be surprised if bitcoin grows exponentially and gold grows in line," said Anthony Scaramucci.
Paul Tudor Jones, a legendary trader with a personal fortune of $4.6 billion and fund manager of the Tudor Investment Corporation, has also admitted recently that he prefers bitcoin over gold. In his opinion, BTC is an excellent alternative as a hedge against inflation in the current economic situation. “It is obvious that there is room for cryptocurrency,” the billionaire said. “At the moment, it is winning the race against gold... And I would prefer it.”


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CryptoNews of the Week


- US President Joe Biden signed a bill to raise $1.2 trillion to upgrade infrastructure without amendments in favor of representatives of the crypto industry. The document contains an extended definition of the concept of “broker”. Depending on the interpretation, miners, wallet developers, DeFi protocol liquidity providers and other digital market players may be required to report the activities of their users to the tax authorities. The crypto community is also concerned about another amendment to the infrastructure plan, which will oblige recipients of digital assets worth more than $10,000 to verify the sender's personal information.
The document has been repeatedly criticized by representatives of the crypto industry, including the head of Tesla Elon Musk and the founder of the payment company Square Jack Dorsey. Some senators believe that participants in the crypto industry should be excluded from this law. According to others, only miners and sellers of hardware and software should be exempt from reporting to the tax authorities.

- Investing Twitter's cash reserves in cryptocurrencies “does not make sense right now”. This was stated by the financial director of the company Ned Segal. According to him, the social network prefers to invest in less volatile instruments, for example, securities. Earlier, Ned Segal reported that Twitter is exploring the possibility of using bitcoin, but this will require the company to make additional decisions.
As of the end of September, Twitter had $3.47 billion in cash and cash equivalents, as well as $3.94 billion in short-term investments.
Meanwhile, the payment company Square, founded by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, continues to hold the main cryptocurrency on its balance sheet. “We have purchased bitcoin, and it seems to us that this not only demonstrates our interest but can also bring benefits from a financial point of view in the long term,” the Square said.

- Bitcoin will “easily” reach a price of $500,000. This forecast was given by Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital investment company, referring to the limited issue of the first cryptocurrency and the potential number of rich investors in it. He noted that according to JPMorgan, there are at least 49 million dollar millionaires, but the supply of digital gold is limited to 21 million coins. “You don’t have enough bitcoins for every millionaire in our society to have at least one coin,” Scaramucci said.
In his opinion, the current price level is still an early opportunity to enter the asset, and the price of the first cryptocurrency will reach the specified $500,000 mark by the end of 2024 or mid-2025. However, this requires that Ark Invest's forecast come true, according to which the number of bitcoin wallets should reach 1 billion by this time.

- The US authorities will sell the confiscated cryptocurrency for $56 million to pay the victims of the BitConnect pyramid. The Justice Department notes that this is “the largest case of one-time recovery of losses from cryptocurrency fraud in the United States.”
The US Securities and Exchange Commission said in a statement that “BitConnect Director Glenn Arcaro and his promoters, none of whom were registered with the Commission as a broker-dealer and were not affiliated with a registered broker-dealer, promoted a potentially high-yielding investment into a lending program for retail investors using recommendation-style videos they posted on YouTube. "
Glenn Arcaro pleaded guilty to deceiving investors in the US and abroad, with the participation of whom the scheme managed to attract more than $2 billion. The verdict will be delivered on January 7, 2022, Arcaro faces up to 20 years in prison.

- Apple will inevitably allow payments in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the future. This opinion was expressed by Anthony Pompliano, co-founder of the investment company Morgan Creek Digital, commenting on Apple CEO Tim Cook's recognition of investments in digital assets.
Pompliano believes that cryptocurrency will not be a separate industry, and all tech giants will sooner or later "infiltrate it into all existing assets and industries." In his opinion, technology companies will more actively enter the cryptocurrency industry in the next 10-20 years, inviting experts and leaders from it.
“It has become normal to discuss cryptocurrencies in any society without risking being branded as 'crazy or lost.' Such conversations do not carry career risks anymore,” he added.

- European electronics and home appliance retailer MediaMarkt has been hit by the Hive ransomware virus. According to Retail Detail, the incident affected many of the chain's stores, mostly in the Netherlands and Germany, and the retailer's 3,100 servers were affected. Initially, hackers demanded a ransom of $240 million in bitcoin. But after the company entered into negotiations, the amount was reduced to $50 million.
For reference: MediaMarkt owns more than 1000 retail facilities in 13 countries. The company employs about 53,000 people and has an annual turnover of over €20 billion.

- Chinese crypto journalist and analyst Willie Woo argues that bitcoin is not ready for impulse growth and renewal of all-time highs at the moment. Woo identified three factors that hinder the rise in price of the first cryptocurrency.
The first factor is bitcoin's high speculative activity. Woo argues that while long-term investors continue to accumulate cryptocurrency, a large number of positions are being opened for short-term speculative purposes.
Another factor that can hold bitcoin back is the launch of the first US exchange-traded fund (ETF) based on bitcoin futures. According to Woo, most institutional investors prefer to buy fund stocks and futures at the moment instead of buying the coin itself.
Recall that the first US exchange-traded fund based on bitcoin futures began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on October 19. Its assets exceeded $1 billion two days after the start of trading. Thus, the fund broke the record growth rate to $1 billion, which was held for 18 years.
The third factor is the overly optimistic sentiment of investors who are confident in the further growth of bitcoin and the entire cryptocurrency market. “Whenever most investors are bullish, it is very difficult for the price to go up because there are a lot of speculative longs in the markets,” Woo explains.

- An undisclosed crypto investor bought 2.2 thousand BTC coins in October 2013, spending about $330 thousand. And so, he withdrew cryptocurrency from his wallet, which had been inactive for eight years, on this November 10. The investments of the crypto investor have increased 455 times during this time, and the value of the asset has been almost $150 million.

- it was a few months ago that there started to sound predictions that the price of bitcoin could soar to $100,000 by December. Bloomberg strategist Mike McGlone was an active supporter of this scenario. This analyst is known for having previously accurately predicted a repeat of the BTC run three years ago and a rise in quotes to $20,000 by the end of 2020.
However, there are skeptics among the experts. “We won't get $100,000 or $150,000 in this Q4 or next Q1,” says popular crypto analyst Nicholas Merten. “I'm sorry, but I'll have to say that. I think that many experts are mistaken. Bitcoin is aiming for growth, but we will only see around $100,000 or $150,000 by the fall of next year.”

- The authorities of Miami (USA) have decided to distribute $21 million in cryptocurrency to residents of the city. Thus, each of the 442,000 Miami residents will receive approximately 0.0007 BTC, which is about $47.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez explained that he decided to take such a step in order to familiarize citizens with the concept of bitcoin. According to him, creating digital wallets for every resident is a rather laborious technical task, but he hopes for the help of cryptocurrency exchanges. After that, a digital registration system will be created to reduce the likelihood of fraud.
In addition, Francis Suarez stated in an interview with Bloomberg that one of the priorities for the city is the ability to pay civil servants their salaries in bitcoin.  


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CryptoNews of the Week


- Bitcoin updated its all-time high, reaching $68,420 on Tuesday, November 9. Ethereum also set a record, rising to $4,830. The total capitalization of the crypto market at the maximum reached $2.947 trillion. Analysts attribute the current rally to the lack of supply amid increasing global interest in digital assets. 

- The value of any asset can collapse at any moment, so it is not only cryptocurrencies that are in the bubble. This opinion was expressed at the Boston conference by billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller. “Cryptocurrencies, meme stocks, art, wine, securities [...] This bubble is in everything, every asset on the planet,” he said. At the same time, Druckenmiller noted that the current situation in the cryptocurrency market is not like the dot-com bubble, which, according to him, had covered significantly fewer people than the digital asset industry today.
Earlier, the famous American investor Bill Miller said that bitcoin is not a bubble, but the asset's volatility is a payment for its advantages.

- Newly elected Mayor of New York Eric Adams called in a CNN commentary on local schools to prepare students for a “new way of thinking” related to blockchain technology and digital assets. The politician noted the low awareness of young voters on this subject: “When I talked about blockchain and bitcoin, young people stopped me and asked me, 'What is this?” Adams called digital assets being "a new way of paying for goods and services around the world" as an argument for including this topic in curricula.
New York must remain a hub for innovation, he said. To this end, the newly elected mayor also plans to oblige local businesses to accept BTC and other cryptocurrencies as a payment method. In addition, he promised to receive his first three paychecks in bitcoin.

- Rahul Rai, manager of the BlockTower Capital cryptocurrency fund, believes that the versatility of the ethereum blockchain will be the main factor that will attract both developers and investors. He is confident that if ethereum manages to restart the global financial system, its market will be much larger than that of bitcoin in the future. The crypto millionaire predicts that, ETH is likely to become the first cryptocurrency in terms of capitalization which could reach several trillion dollars, as early as in mid-2022.
Analysts of the American investment bank JPMorgan made a similar statement in April. In their opinion, bitcoin is a consumer commodity. It can compete with precious metals and be seen as a store of value, but it will give way to ethereum in the long run, which is the pillar of the cryptocurrency economy.

- Apple CEO Tim Cook said he owns cryptocurrencies, using them to diversify his investment portfolio. According to him, he was interested in digital assets "for a while" and researched this topic. At the same time, the CEO of Apple emphasized that the corporation he heads is not going to invest in these financial instruments and does not plan to launch related services or integrate them as an option for paying for its goods or services. 
Tim Cook noted that "there are other things that Apple is definitely looking at." It is still unknown what these words can mean. However, it was in May that the corporation opened a vacancy for a business development manager with five years of experience in the cryptocurrency industry, who is to lead the affiliate program in the segment of "alternative payments".

- Swedish regulators believe that mining bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies using the Prоf-оf-Wоrk algorithm will prevent the country and the European Union from complying with the Paris Agreement on climate change. Officials noted that this process leads to the emission of up to 120 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year. This is equivalent to the carbon footprint of 100 million round-trip flights between Sweden and Thailand.
Regulators have called for a ban on the mining of digital assets in such an energy-intensive manner. At the same time, they believe that the use of renewable energy for mining is unreasonable, since "this energy is urgently needed for [...] large-scale production of batteries and the electrification of the transport sector." According to the University of Cambridge, the electricity used to mine 1 bitcoin is enough to drive 1.8 million kilometers in a medium-sized electric vehicle.

- “Purely bullish” sentiment reigns among retail investors regarding bitcoin. This is reported by the analytical resource Santiment with reference to the off-chain BTC indicators. This rarely plays into the hands of cryptocurrencies, analysts say.
The market, according to Santiment, has formed an “irrational trust” in bitcoin, which can lead to a price correction.
Retail traders are excited about the potential of bitcoin. As for the "bitcoin whales", the situation here is not so straightforward. On the one hand, the total volume of coins on addresses with balances of 100-10,000 BTC has decreased by almost 60,000 BTC over the past 10 days. On the other hand, it has grown significantly on addresses with balances of more than 10,000 BTС. According to experts, this may indicate that large whales are buying coins from smaller ones.

- Investment banking giant Morgan Stanley created a cryptocurrency analytics division in September. And now it has published a guide to the cryptocurrency market for its wealthiest clients. The bank's strategists conducted a detailed analysis of the various activities, sectors and trends that currently make up the highly speculative crypto industry.
Given that the total market capitalization has exceeded $2.8 trillion, and investors are increasingly interested in DеFi, NFT and stablecoins, Morgan Stanley is convinced that this will accelerate the introduction of state regulation in this area.
Morgan Stanley launched three bitcoin funds earlier this year. The minimum deposit required to participate in them is $5 million for institutional investors and $2 million for individuals.

- The top of bitcoin's current bull cycle may be the price of $96,000. This conclusion was reached by analysts of the Kraken crypto exchange. According to their research, the current Q4 has dynamics most similar to the Q4 of 2017 (correlation 0.88), which showed a yield of +220%. In general, cryptocurrency exchange experts predict that BTC will reach heights around $300,000.
The review published by Kraken also notes that November has historically been volatile, which brings the highest monthly returns. If bitcoin's current rally stops at strong resistance around $70,000, a correction can be expected. However, the drop will be no more than 20%.

- Assessing the price of the main cryptocurrency, analyst Willie Woo came to the conclusion that the zone from $50,000 to $60,000 is more than reliable as a support. Bitcoin has secured a capitalization of $1 trillion, and it is difficult to imagine that it will fall below this zone, the expert commented, referring to data from the analytical company Glassnode.

- According to a cryptocurrency analyst known as Altcoin Shеrpa, altcoins will not show the expected high results in the near future due to the bullish exchange rate movement of BTC. “Pay attention to the drop in altcoin/BTC pairs if bitcoin starts moving,” he writes. "I believe that the altcoin season has not yet arrived. They will have time to prove themselves, but after the bitcoin rally cools down."
The analyst noted that bitcoin has formed a higher low of around $60,000, and while there is a possibility of a short-term decline, he expects the asset to grow significantly from current levels: “There is possibility of a short trip to $55,000. But I don't care about these minor movements. I continue to accumulate BTС, and when it starts moving, it will be fast. "

- Crypto strategist Benjamin Cowen, on the other hand, believes that bitcoin will not please its supporters with explosive growth. “We started with about $28,000 to $29,000 and this was the start of 2021,¬” writes Cowen. “What have we seen so far? Not much, right? Will it be possible to show better results by the end of the year? Maybe, but I'm not sure that 2021 will be the year of a parabolic rally for bitcoin."
While the distance between the low and high of the annual range may seem significant, Cowen noted that bitcoin holders are unlikely to be thrilled with such profits: “Look what happened to bitcoin in 2021: nothing special. The profitability was about 130%, and I am sure that most holders will not even get up from the couch for 130%." "We have returned to the top of the range, so there may be some euphoria, as it was from January to March 2021,” the expert continues to reason. - There are chances of a sharp leap, but the data shows that the cycle should last at least through 2022. Looking back to 2021, I think it was, for the most part, a year of long-term re-accumulation." 

- A well-known cryptanalyst under the nickname PlanB said that bitcoin could rise by 700% in early 2022. “If you look at the signals along the chain right now, I dare say that the price will reach the top in almost 6 months, this will be the end of Q1 of next year. - he thinks. - I believe that we will have a BTC rate of $100,000 at the end of the year, and then, perhaps, the currency will continue to grow up to model X (S2FX) and reach the level of $288,000, and possibly more. I would not be surprised if I saw the price rise to $400,000 - 500,000 in Q1 and Q2 of next year."
In the long term, PlanB sees BTC experiencing a hyperbolic surge.
“The old people have the money now. Real estate and gold are physical, not digital. Digital scarcity is a next generation phenomenon, so I'm sure it will happen. I see in my model (S2FX) that there is a linear relationship between scarcity and cost. Scarcity, in my opinion, is the most important factor causing this linear relationship and forcing people to invest more money." 


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- Film director Quentin Tarantino will present a collection of seven NFTs (non-fungible token) based on the 1994 film Pulp Fiction. Each NFT contains an uncut movie scene and bonus content available only to the owner, including original handwritten pages of the script, Tarantino audio commentary and other details about the movie and the director. The auction will be held on the OpenSea trading platform and will be announced later.
NFT is a non-fungible unique token. NFTs work on the blockchain, they first appeared back in 2017 in the Ethereum system. Secret NFT technology allows content creators to decide which collectibles are public and which are private to owners.

- Burger King fast food chain will give away cryptocurrency prizes to visitors in the United States. The prize pool contains 20 BTC, 200 ETH and 2 million DOGE. it is required to spend more than $5 at Burger King to participate in the draw.

- As bitcoin's math and logic do not allow copying or forgery of the first cryptocurrency, it surpasses the US dollar. This was stated by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in a recent interview with Yahoo Finance. He also noted the decentralized nature of digital gold, which allows it to maintain a level of predictability that is difficult to achieve with the US dollar. In his opinion, regulators can create new paper notes on their whim, and therefore it is difficult to predict inflation.
“Look at the US dollar, the government can create new banknotes and borrow, it's like it will never be corrected. Bitcoin is mathematics, mathematical purity. Another bitcoin can never be created,” said Steve Wozniak.

- The author of the book “Rich Dad Poor Dad”, writer and investor Robert Kiyosaki, like Steve Wozniak, has criticized the administration of President Joe Biden and has declared his distrust the US federal government. He believes that the authorities "rip off people", promote inflation and do not try to reduce it.
“Inflation undermines the income of the poor. Inflation makes the rich richer. Biden and the feds are corrupt. Get ready for an economic collapse and a new depression. Be smart. Buy gold, silver and bitcoin,” said Kiyosaki, who has always been very enthusiastic about bitcoin. “I love bitcoin because I don’t trust the Fed, the Treasury or Wall Street,” this investor said.

- The development team does not stop working on improving the Ethereum network, which inspires experts to make the most daring price predictions. So a reputable cryptanalyst known as CryptosRUs predicts that ETH will soon reach $10,000. Moreover, he is confident that now is almost the last opportunity to purchase ETH at a price below this mark.
Among the reasons for the increase in the price of this altcoin, we can consider the recent activation of the London hard fork. In addition, thanks to the latest Ethereum Altair update, a new all-time high of almost $4,500 was set on October 29. However, after this update, network fees have almost doubled, which cannot be considered a factor accompanying the growth of ETH.

- Cryptotrader hamster Mr. Goxx has its own collection of non-fungible tokens (NFT) called Goxx Capital. The tokens are made in the form of animated insert cards.
With NFT sales, the “business partner” (aka owner) of the hamster plans to assemble a new “trade office” for his pet. According to him, the updated workspace will expand the functionality for the hamster's activities, as well as provide more interactive elements for the so-called "wheel of intentions" and "decision tunnels".
Recall that the trading process boils down to the following: Mr. Goxx spins the wheel of intentions, on the basis of which one of 30 tokens is selected. Then the hamster must run through one of two decision-making tunnels: to buy or to sell a token. Mr.Goxx showed a profit of almost 50% in early September. Bitcoin, for example, was only 41% higher, the S&P 500 brought 6-7% to investors, and the Katie Wood ARK Innovation fund was 5%.

- The high price of bitcoin indicates that the economy is facing real inflation, and the rise in prices is not a temporary phenomenon. This opinion was expressed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Bloomberg writes. “You know, bitcoin is already worth $60,000 and I'm not sure it should be bought aggressively. But, of course, this tells us that we are in a crisis moment," Thiel said and expressed regret once again that he had not invested more money in the first cryptocurrency.

- It was 13 years ago, on October 31, 2008, that a person or a group of people known as Satoshi Nakamoto published the bitcoin white paper. The nine-page whitepaper described how the peer-to-peer payment system worked that would revolutionize the financial technology world. Nakamoto summarized the main characteristics of the first cryptocurrency in the foreword to this document: “A fully peer-to-peer version of electronic money would allow sending online payments directly from one side to the other, bypassing financial institutions.” 
The bitcoin network was launched in January 2009. Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared in April 2011, and the public was never able to find out who wrote these 9 pages, which marked the beginning of a multi-billion-dollar industry.

- Chinese crypto analyst Willie Woo said in an interview with Bitcoin Fundamentals that the current “bullish” growth cycle for bitcoin is very different from previous similar periods. Woo noted that the latest wave of BTC accumulation began at the end of last year, when institutional investors began to enter the crypto market, aiming at the long-term accumulation of digital assets. This factor indicates that the current growth cycle will be longer, will continue for another six months to a year, and the price of bitcoin during this period will exceed $100,000, Woo predicts.

- TV presenter, best-selling author and former hedge fund manager Jim Cramer said during the Mad Money program on CNBC that he supports investors buying cryptocurrencies if they are aware of the risks associated with this asset class.
According to him, all the arguments in favour of cryptocurrencies are based on the “theory of a greater fool”, according to which there is always someone who is ready to buy an asset for a higher price, expecting to quickly resell it at a profit to someone else. However, when the "fools" are no longer found, the value of assets drops sharply. If people understand this, why not speculate in cryptocurrencies, Kramer said. 
“I bought bitcoin and ethereum not for protection from inflation,” the TV presenter admitted. - To be honest, it was a kind of gambling for me. I was just playing on the psychology of the crowd, and I have no idea why the rate of these crypto assets went up. Most likely, there are a lot of overly enthusiastic people who want to sell them for a higher price. I have no attachment to ethereum, but I keep it, because millions of even bigger fools can buy it,” Kramer said.
Previously, he preferred to invest in gold and stocks, but now he believes that it is important to diversify the investment portfolio, 5% of which can be bitcoin or ethereum.

- Investors should invest in hedge funds and real estate, as traditional assets, including stocks and bonds, will lag behind them in the next year and will show a return of only 5%, according to analysts at JPMorgan Chase.
Cryptocurrencies can continue to grow, but are unlikely to be stable, so they cannot be recommended as a key asset, JPMorgan says. At the same time, the growth of cryptocurrencies is projected at 15% per annum, which is twice the expectations from hedge funds and exceeds the real estate sector with 12.5%. 
As for bitcoin, analysts estimate its fair value at $35,000. They came to such an assessment based on a comparison with gold, noting that the volatility of the cryptocurrency is about 4 times higher than that of the precious metal. If the BTC volatility drops by half, the $73,000 target will “look reasonable”.


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- Investors committed a record $1.47 billion to crypto funds during the week of October 16-22, and $8 billion since the beginning of the year. Such data is contained in the CoinShares report. The previous record of $670 million was set in February. Amid the digital gold's historical high above $67,000, the total amount of funds in cryptocurrency based financial products reached $79.2 billion during the week. Analysts attributed this dynamic to the successful launch in the US of two Bitcoin ETFs from ProShares and Valkyrie Investments. 
As a result, inflows to bitcoin-based funds totaled $1.45 billion, Solana, Cardano, Binance Coin totaled $8.1 million, $5.3 million and $1.8 million, respectively. At the same time, the outflow of funds from ethereum products has continued for the third week, totaling $1.4 million.

- US Senator Rand Paul called fiat money "unreliable" and expressed optimism about the prospects for cryptocurrencies in the global financial system. “Public money is so unreliable! I began to wonder if cryptocurrency could serve as the world's money as more people lose confidence in the government,” he said.
Reporters note that this kind of message made Rand Paul "a rock star in the eyes of young people" during the 2016 presidential campaign. It was notable for the fact that the Kentucky senator accepted bitcoin donates.

- Several email providers were subjected to DDoS attacks, for the termination of which unknown persons demanded a ransom in bitcoins. Representatives of the Posteo email service confirmed the information. “But we will not pay the specified amount,” Posteo said in a statement. “Companies should not allow criminals to blackmail them under any circumstances. Otherwise, they will be even more attractive to them.”
The RunBox service also announced the attack later. And they also clarified that "they have never paid the criminals" and do not plan to start." In addition to email providers, UK VoIP telephony provider Voipfone and game server provider Sparked were also targeted by DDoS attacks.

- Payment giant Mastercard will soon announce support for cryptocurrencies in its network. CNBC reports. This includes bitcoin wallets, credit and debit cards, and loyalty programs where points can be converted into digital assets. According to Mastercard Executive Vice President of Digital Partnerships Sherry Haymond, the initiative will allow banks to compete with cryptocurrency exchanges.

- Crypto trader and analyst known as Altcoin Sherpa is confident that bitcoin should bounce off the $54,000-58,000 zone where strong support is located, and renew its all-time high, exceeding $80,000, in November.
Another well-known analyst, PlanB, also expects a parabolic rise in the price of bitcoin. As a reminder, PlanB is the creator of the Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model, which predicts the price of the flagship cryptocurrency, and which allowed it to accurately predict BTC prices in August and September. And if bitcoin continues to follow this pattern, “we'll be out $98,000 as early as November and $135,000 in December,” PlanB said. “So, it's going to be a really good Christmas this year.” At the same time, the analyst believes that the flagship cryptocurrency is unlikely to be able to avoid another major correction that historically follows each major bull cycle.

- 150 people have been arrested worldwide as a result of a global special operation against illegal trading on the DarkMarket Internet platform. Law enforcement agencies from nine countries participated in Operation Dark HunTOR. It is one of the most large-scale investigations in Europol's history, assisted by U.S. authorities. Some $31 million in cash and bitcoins, 234 kilograms of drugs and 45 weapons were seized. Moreover, 67 people have been arrested in the US, 47 in Germany, 24 in the UK. Many of the detainees, Europol said, were targets of particular importance. 
Europol says the investigation was a follow-up to a raid by German police against the DarkMarket platform, which was operated by an Australian citizen. Moreover, as part of the same operation, several other illegal trading platforms have been shut down in Italy, four administrators have been arrested and €3.6 million in cryptocurrency seized.

- The American company Walmart Inc., which operates the world's largest wholesale and retail chain, has launched a pilot program to sell bitcoins. Bloomberg reports that the pilot project includes 200 Coinstar ATMs at Walmart stores in the United States. Cryptocurrency will be available in more than 8,000 of these bitcoin ATMs in future. The commission will be 4% when buying BTC and 7% when cashing out.

- Russian insurance company Renaissance Life and InDeFi SmartBank have started jointly developing smart contracts to help inherit digital assets. With the growth of the cryptocurrency market, the problem of inheriting such property has become quite acute. Since cryptocurrencies are decentralized, in the event of the death of the owner, the heirs simply cannot dispose of the property of the deceased without access to the cryptocurrency wallet.
Special smart contracts will enable the client to transfer the disposal of their digital assets to the beneficiary in the event of their death.
The service is expected to have at least 500,000 users in the coming year.

- Popular cryptanalyst and trader Lark Davis believes that “the next six months are likely to be mega-crazy for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies! Many of you will get the chance to completely change your financial destiny,” he tweeted.
Davis does not advise investors to get carried away with speculative altcoins and NFTs in the current situation, but to bet on time-tested coins. “Let the winners win, double and even triple your positions and cut the losers. Do it mercilessly, there is no point in keeping dubious assets,” writes Lark Davis. 
In his view, BTC could increase investor savings by 20 times over the next 10 years, but individual altcoins could generate comparable returns much sooner. “Altcoins are for making money, BTC is for storage,” the expert explains.

- Former Facebook manager Frances Hogan, who made accusations against this corporation, said that investing in cryptocurrencies allows her not to worry about her financial situation. 'As for the foreseeable future, I'm fine. I bought cryptocurrencies at the right time,” she told The New York Times, noting that she moved to Puerto Rico not only to improve her own health, but also to join her “crypto friends”.
Recall that Hogan turned over tens of thousands of internal Facebook documents to journalists and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Among other things, she accused the company of inciting hatred and ignoring teen safety issues. “I have come across a lot of social networks, but Facebook was doing much worse than the rest,” she said. - On Facebook, I have seen conflicts of interest between the public and the corporation over and over again. And Facebook has repeatedly chosen its interests, including to increase earnings."


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- Scammers launched a series of fake broadcasts on YouTube on the evening of October 18, a few hours before the official start of the Apple Unleashed press conference, in which they invited users to take part in the distribution of cryptocurrencies. Viewers were encouraged to send 0.1 BTC to 5 BTC or 3 ETH to 500 ETH to the specified wallet and allegedly get back the double amount of the cryptocurrencies. The fake stream was carried out on a channel that completely copied the Apple's account, which resulted in one of the fake presentations gathering about 30,000 participants.
Scammers often use YouTube to promote fake cryptocurrency giveaways. As a reminder, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak already joined a class action against YouTube and Google in July 2020 over malicious actions, but the court found that the platform did not carry liability for materials posted by third parties.

- The founder of the Brazilian crypto exchange Foxbit, Joao Canhada, acquired 1 BTC for his daughter on the day of her birth, Cointelegraph tells the family story. “I bought bitcoin for her not just as a gift, but as a way to invest in the new economy. At that time, it was estimated at 5,000 Brazilian reais (about $915),” admits the perspicacious father. After just four years, bitcoin has climbed to $63,000 and the investment has generated a 6,800% return. Now we can only guess what the profit will be when the girl comes of age.

- American software architect and entrepreneur Jack Dorsey revealed that payment giant Square is considering creating a device to mine the first open-source cryptocurrency. 
In Dorsey's view, mining should be easier and more accessible to everyone in order to improve the resilience of the bitcoin network. The equipment supply is currently concentrated in just a few companies. For this reason, the creator of Square and Twitter is thinking about removing barriers for miners. 

- The city of North Vancouver in the Canadian province of British Columbia expects to provide heat to the city's residential and industrial buildings by mining bitcoin from 2022.
Municipal energy company Lonsdale Energy Corporation has entered into an agreement with mining firm MintGreen to provide a new carbon-free source of energy for the district heating system instead of burning natural gas. According to the press release, the immersion-cooled cryptocurrency mining rigs convert over 95% of the electricity consumed into heat, which can be used for heating and industrial processes.
“Cryptocurrency miners operate at full capacity 365 days a year, creating a unique opportunity to provide a reliable and sustainable base load for the North Vancouver district heating system,” the statement said. Per 1 MW, the use of mining will prevent up to 20,000 tons of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere.

- Scion Capital hedge fund founder Michael Burry, who predicted the 2007 mortgage crisis, has repeatedly criticized cryptocurrencies, calling the digital asset market an economic bubble. And now he is exploring the possibility of opening a short position in cryptocurrency. This short-run specialist asked his Twitter followers how to do this.
“Okay, I haven't done this before, how can you short on cryptocurrency? Do you need to secure a loan? Is there a short rebate? Can there be a margin call? “, Michael Berry wondered.

- A favorable macroeconomic environment, good network performance and the approval of bitcoin ETFs in the US will help BTC hit new all-time highs this quarter, according to a Finder poll of 50 fintech industry experts.
The survey was attended by representatives of Cypherpunk Holdings, Bitcoin Reserve, Kraken, Arcane and CryptoQuant, as well as 7 professors from universities in Asia, Europe and Australia. According to them, the BTC exchange rate will peak at slightly above $80,000 over the next two months, and the flagship cryptocurrency will finish the year around $71,400.
The levels indicated by these experts were well below the forecasts of Standard Chartered and Bloomberg analysts, who believe bitcoin could exceed $100,000 this year.

- The pace of institutional participation in BTC has accelerated over the past 5 weeks, which is an important sign of the bull market return. According to popular crypto analyst Willy Woo, the next phase of the bitcoin market will be more volatile than previous bullish periods, implying a longer time frame for the current cycle.
This analyst wrote in a series of Twitter posts a year ago that, according to his model, $200,000 per bitcoin by the end of 2021 is a conservative forecast. However, he did not exclude the likelihood that BTC will soar up to $300,000.

- Morgan Creek Capital Management CEO Mark Jusko calls the numbers like Willie Woo's predictions. He suggests that the price of the oldest cryptocurrency could soar to the level of $250,000, only to happen not in 2021, but in the next 5 years. In doing so, he acknowledged that the path to such a peak may not be easy.
Yusko repeated his prediction In another interview with CNBC. He also praised the main crypto asset as superior to gold due to its fixed supply of 21 million coins. “This is a classic supply and demand option. One of the nice things about bitcoin as an asset is that it has a limited supply. We know how many bitcoins will be mined every day for the next 140 years."
By the time BTC reaches the $250,000 mark, Jusko says, its market cap will be equal to that of gold.

- One of the first bitcoin investors, billionaire and CEO of venture capital firm Social Capital, Chamat Palihapitiya, believes that the United States will no longer be able to ban bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrency. In his view, the cryptocurrency market has become too big for US authorities to stifle the emerging industry:
“You can't just take the $2 trillion capitalization off the face of the earth,” Palihapitiya wrote. “Bitcoin is not going anywhere and is currently too institutionalized. There are already quite a few organized pools of capital within this ecosystem.
I can give an example of a simple high-frequency trading by Jump Trading. They posted several photos of a group of hired newbies and a tutorial on programming in Solana. It was an example of bringing people on their part. Therefore, when there are people with big finance and they are ready to invest money in it, the capitalization of the crypto market will grow to $6 trillion, and then to $10 trillion. This is why Powell and Gensler had to voice that they are not going to ban cryptocurrencies. In fact, they know it is impossible. "
As a reminder, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in early October that he had no plans to ban cryptocurrencies. A few days later, SEC chief Gary Gensler practically repeated those words. And it was last Thursday that Senator Cynthia Lammis spoke in the Senate, saying that digital currencies could help countries like the United States cope with an impending crisis when the state runs out of cash. “Thank God for bitcoin, another non-fiat currency that surpasses the irresponsibility of governments, including our own,” exclaimed Ms Senator from a high rostrum.

- Over 99% of bitcoins in circulation bring profit to their holders. This is the conclusion reached by Glassnode analysts. According to the published chart, only 0.98% of the coins (about 186.000 BTC) were bought at a price above $59.000. At the same time, open interest in bitcoin options has risen sharply to the levels of last May-April. The increase from September was +107% (from $6.3 billion to $12.2 billion). Glassnode experts also revealed that nearly $325 million is put on bitcoin's growth to $200,000 by the end of the year.
As for the leading altcoin, according to Glassnode, the number of Ethereum investors holding at least 1 ETH in their crypto wallets has renewed its all-time high, reaching 1.34 million addresses. There were just over 1 million of them at the beginning of the year. In total, the Ethereum network has processed transactions worth more than $6.2 trillion over the past 12 months, 369% more than in 2020.

- The mysterious creator of the bitcoin network, Satoshi Nakamoto, was included In mid-April in the list of the 20 richest people on the planet, but his fortune decreased dramatically after the fall in the price of BTC. However, Nakamoto regained the lost ground this week after the price of the first cryptocurrency topped $60,000.
It is generally believed among crypto experts that Nakamoto has about 1 million bitcoins, some call a smaller figure, some larger. The Whale Alert report calls the figure of 1.125 million BTC. Thus, as of october 17, 2021, Nakamoto owns approximately $60.7 billion in Bitcoin (BTC), $625 million in Bitcoin cash (BCH), $169 million in Bitcoinsv (BSV), and $191 million in Ecash (formerly known as BCHA or Bitcoin ABC). In total, this amounts to $60.9 billion.


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- Financial giant JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has previously repeatedly criticized cryptocurrencies, promised to fire employees trading digital assets, and called bitcoin holders fools. And now, according to Bloomberg, he smothered the first cryptocurrency to smithereens once again, but admitted that the customers of his holding believe otherwise.
“I personally think bitcoin is worth nothing,” Dimon said at the Institute of International Finance's annual meeting. “But our clients are adults and they don't agree. This is what creates markets. Therefore, if they want to be able to buy BTC, we can provide them with legal and transparent access.”
At the same time, he added that cryptocurrencies will be subject to regulation as concerns grow in Washington regarding stablecoins and the new asset class in general.

- Co-founder of venture capital firm Morgan Creek Digital, Anthony Pompliano, revealed that YouTube removed his channel on the evening of October 11 while on air with popular blogger PlanB. According to Pompliano, this came after discussions about a bullish scenario for bitcoin for the next five years. He later published screenshots of emails from the service, which described the content about the first cryptocurrency as “dangerous and harmful.” Video hosting representatives felt that the channel's creators were allegedly “encouraging illegal activities.”
Pompliano said about two hours later that the YouTube channel had been restored, though "without any explanation from the company."

- 26 Israelis were detained in Tel Aviv on October 5, during a joint operation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Israeli Police on suspicion of involvement in organized financial fraud in the field of Forex and crypto. And just a week later, all 26 were released, without any special conditions of release.
As previously stated in an official statement by the Israeli police, the detainees provided false brokerage services to clients around the world, thus embezzling $7 million. Users were promised access to forex or cryptocurrency trading, which in reality did not take place, and funds were simply appropriated by the scheme organizers.
And now all the detainees, without exception, were released after a court hearing. Moreover, lawyers for earlier suspects are preparing countersuits against the nation's law enforcement agencies. However, there are reports that two more new crypto-fraud cases involving Israeli citizens are being investigated in the neighboring country of Cyprus.

- Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin criticized El Salvador's decision to recognize bitcoin as the official currency. He stressed that the process of forcibly integrating digital assets into the financial system “runs counter to the ideals of freedom that should be appreciated by members of the cryptocurrency community. In addition, the tactic of simultaneously distributing BTC to millions of El Salvadorians with little or no prior training is reckless and fraught with the risk of large numbers of innocent people being hacked or tricked. "
“Shame on everyone (okay, I'll name the main culprits: shame on bitcoin maximalists) who praise him [President Nayib Bukele] without any criticism,” Buterin wrote on Reddit.

- Legendary billionaire investor and founder of Miller Value Partners, Bill Miller, called bitcoin digital gold and compared his bet on it to buying Amazon stock during the dot-com bubble crash. According to the billionaire, he acquired shares of the tech giant Amazon at an average price of $17 more than 20 years ago. The first cryptocurrency cost him an average of $500 per coin.
“Bitcoin is much less risky at $43,000 than at $300. Now it is recognized, a huge amount of venture capital has gone into it, all the big banks are involved,” Miller said. However, the billionaire advised investors who are not too deeply versed in cryptocurrency to invest no more than 1% of funds in digital assets. Regarding altcoins, Miller noted that the chances of succeeding with more than “10,000 existing tokens and other” are extremely small,” although “Bitcoin, Ethereum, and some other coins will probably exist for a while.”

- Research Institute Capgemini conducted a survey around the world to analyze the current payment situation. In addition, the statistics of the Bank for International Settlements, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other central banks were studied.
Capgemini noted that less than 10% of consumers currently use cryptocurrency for payments. However, the research institute predicts that nearly 45% of customers will use this new payment method in one to two years. This trend will be supported by the growing demand for international payments and the reluctance to pay high transaction fees. Cryptocurrency credit cards will become more widespread. At the same time, the researchers concluded that the prospects for cryptocurrencies and stablecoins are vague, due to the ambiguous position of governments around the world.

- According to Coinmarketcap data, Apple Corporation currently has the largest capitalization ($2.34 trillion), followed by Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and bitcoin is in fifth place. If you look at the statistics, the total capitalization of the stock market is currently about $100 trillion, the capitalization of the gold market is around $12 trillion, the total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market has exceeded $2 trillion, and the capitalization of BTC is already $1 trillion. 
What can the above statistics indicate? According to the authors of the publication in Freedman Club Crypto News, only that the flagship cryptocurrency has the potential to not only bypass corporations in terms of capitalization, but also entire sectors of the world economy.

- The Swiss non-profit think tank 2B4CH has proposed making bitcoin one of the reserve assets of the Bank of Switzerland and reflecting this in the country's Constitution.
2B4CH was founded in Geneva in 2017. It conducts research on how cryptocurrencies and blockchain can affect society, and what changes they can bring to the financial sector. And now 2B4CH has announced on Twitter the launch of a “popular initiative” aimed at collecting 100,000 signatures to amend Article 99, paragraph 3, of the Swiss Constitution. In particular, 2B4CH proposes that the Central Bank of that country should be able to store bitcoin as a reserve asset alongside gold. And in case of successful implementation of the initiative, Switzerland, according to the organizers of the plebiscite, will become a good example for other countries.

- An employee of the US Navy and his wife were arrested on suspicion of selling classified data for cryptocurrency. This is reported on the website of the American Ministry of Justice. According to authorities, nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebbe sold information about the design of American nuclear submarines with the help of his wife, allegedly to a representative of a foreign country. The latter turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.
The agent sent Toebbe $10,000 in cryptocurrency in June (according to CoinDesk, Monero). After receiving the payment, the couple hid the secret SD card inside the peanut butter sandwich in a pre-arranged location. The agent then sent them another $20,000.
Toebbe hid another SD card in a gum box in August, receiving $70,000 for the decryption key. And more recently, in October, the engineer made another cache with another map containing data on submarines, after which he and his wife were arrested.

- American Crypto Exchange Kraken experts believe that the price of the flagship asset could reach $100,000 by the end of 2021. Based on the analysis of the dynamics of previous years, a calculation was made, according to which, the price of bitcoin tends to grow during the fourth quarter of any year. During this period, "the average and median returns reached +119% and +58%, respectively." If the average return of the previous 2020 year recurs, BTC could end the year close to $100,000. More precisely, around $96,000. However, if we see not the average, but the median profitability, experts write, then the price of bitcoin will rise to about $70,000.


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CryptoNews of the Week


- The United States will hold a meeting with representatives from 30 countries to jointly fight cybercrime and the illegal use of cryptocurrencies, US President Joe Biden said. It is not specified which specific states are in question.
The Biden administration has identified tracking cryptocurrency transactions as a possible option to combat ransomware. This happened after several cyberattacks on major US companies.

- ESET has released a list of countries with the highest rate of cryptocurrency related cyber threats. Russia comes first, accounting for 10% of all cases detected. Peru comes second with 6.8% of threats, third is the United States responsible for 5.3% of threats.
At the same time, the total number of cryptocurrency threats detected by ESET has decreased by 23.6%. Experts have noticed that this dynamic is directly linked to cryptocurrency prices: the threats have decreased significantly since the collapse of the quotes last May.  
In addition to mining malware, cryptocurrency investment fraud schemes are gaining popularity, where scammers lure their victims to fake investment sites or impersonate governmental bodies or celebrities.
Victims of such schemes lost at least $80 million from October 2020 to May 2021, according to the Federal Trade Commission of the United States. Meanwhile, according to Chainalysis, the financial pyramid Finiko with Russian roots alone collected $800 million worth of cryptocurrency from Eastern Europeans.

- Well-known Canadian entrepreneur, investor and TV show host Kevin O'Leary said that he now has more cryptocurrency in his portfolio than gold. “Gold takes 5% in my portfolio and cryptocurrency has bypassed it for the first time. But this does not mean that I will sell all the gold, since I do not see the point in this yet. The crypto sector offers not only speculation on the BTC rate now, but there are many other ways to invest as well. And I plan to become an investor in this field.”
Cryptocurrencies currently account for 7% of his portfolio, O'Leary said. At the same time, he said that while gold and bitcoin are often opposed, having both assets in your portfolio is a good idea.

- Chivo public cryptocurrency wallet users in El Salvador will receive a discount on their car fuel if they pay in bitcoin. The announcement was made by the country's president, Nayib Bukele.
“State-owned Chivo negotiated with major fuel companies to sell every gallon of gasoline through a crypto wallet for $0.20 cheaper from October 1," he wrote. According to Bukele, the measure “reverses several increases in global fuel prices.”
Users expressed their doubts about the usefulness of such a step in their comments: “These 20 cents will come from all of us, right? The filling stations will not lose, they will be reimbursed from the taxes we paid, including the taxes of those who walk. "

- Former CIA and US National Security Agency official Edward Snowden, who escaped to Russia, said the Chinese government's crackdown on the cryptocurrency industry “has only strengthened bitcoin."
Snowden recalled his own entry from March 2020 about the desire to buy the first cryptocurrency and noted the tenfold growth of the asset since then. “It [bitcoin] has grown about tenfold since then, despite a coordinated global campaign by governments to undermine public understanding and support of cryptocurrencies,” wrote the former special agent.

- Chief strategist at CoinShares Meltem Demirors investment company said in a comment to CNBC that the rate of the first cryptocurrency will soar to $100,000 by the end of 2021. A lot of cash remains untapped, she said, so investors plan to include digital gold in their portfolio.
She also named the buy-on-rumor, sell-on-fact model as one of the catalysts for price changes in the first cryptocurrency. “We are now seeing a lot of hype around the potential approval of the Bitcoin ETF,” explained Demirors. She said “certain movements” on long-term options with six-digit figures will begin at the end of Q4 2021 and early Q1 2022.

- Anthony Pompliano, an avid bitcoin supporter and co-founder of the Morgan Creek Digital venture capital firm, has identified the most serious risks to the coin's growth. “Unlike the sentiments of bitcoin supporters, it will not turn into a currency, which means its market will be quite limited. The maximum for bitcoin is the capitalization of gold, which is essentially a store of value. Bitcoin is not used for day-to-day shopping, and while its upside potential may be slightly higher, it is still limited. "
Pompliano also highlighted several factors that may have undesirable consequences for the main cryptocurrency: “It may be revealed who Satoshi is and if it turns out he is not a very good person, this could have a negative impact on bitcoin itself. In addition, no one uses it for specific purposes, such as making international payments, as it is slow and expensive. There is also an option that governments will decide to tighten measures against bitcoin in the future, for example, they will begin to regulate it, impose heavy taxes or even ban and outlaw it. "
A particular risk, according to Pompliano, is that “bitcoin is still in development. It is still being updated, and although the process includes many filters, security checks and more, there may be a bug in the code that is introduced that will cost a lot.”

- Most of the surveyed cryptocurrency investors from Africa stated that their main motivation is to ensure their family well-being. According to Luno's research, almost half (48%) of respondents are willing to save and invest their salary in cryptocurrencies to pay for their children's education, while 43% are willing to create a starter capital for children and grandchildren, 39% for saving. 

- Galaxy Digital crypto bank founder Mike Novogratz told CNN that bitcoin will make fundamental changes to the financial system. He has also urged investors not to pay attention to the volatility of digital gold, but to look at the big picture of the market. “Bubbles and manias are happening around things that change our thinking fundamentally,” Novogratz stressed.
According to the banker, cryptocurrency investors are not just interested in profit, they believe in fundamental changes in the financial system, and the growing interest in bitcoin is associated with the underlying technology.
The head of Galaxy Digital predicted the price of bitcoin to rise to $500,000 in ten years. He believes that 75% of altcoins will disappear from the market over the same period.


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CryptoNews of the Week


- The author of the bestselling book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and entrepreneur Robert Kiyosaki predicted "a giant stock market crash in October." The same fate awaits gold, silver and bitcoin, he said. Kiyosaki cited U.S. Treasury bonds, which have recently been rising rapidly, among the reasons for the collapse. “Cash is best for making deals after a crash,” the entrepreneur wrote.
Kiyosaki also spoke out about another Chinese crackdown on the crypto industry, which caused the price of bitcoin to fall below $40,000. “This means that China is going to launch a government cryptocurrency. If the US follows suit, the Fed will outlaw bitcoin. The U.S. government will become centralized like China, communism will begin in the United States, our freedoms will end,” he wrote.

- The United States of America should take the opposite position to China and buy bitcoin, said Thiel Capital COO Blake Masters. “Let's do the opposite. The U.S. government should buy bitcoin's strategic reserve, Fort Nakamoto, the new Fort Knox,” he wrote.
Masters is a Republican Party representative and Senate candidate from the state of Arizona. Those wishing to support his election campaign can send donations in digital gold, he said. Earlier, his fellow party member, Senator Pat Toomey, called China's crackdown on the cryptocurrency industry "a great opportunity for the United States."

- Due to a security failure, a fake cryptocurrency giveaway was carried out on the popular Bitcoin.org website. Visitors to the website saw immediately a pop-up asking them to send cryptocurrency to a bitcoin wallet using a QR code and receive twice as much in return. The fake message said the Bitcoin Foundation would like to thank the community and that the giveaway will be limited to the first 10,000 users.
Visitors to the site could not remove this message, making the rest of the website inaccessible. Bitcoin.org was founded in August 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto himself. It hosts various important materials, such as the original white paper and developer documentation on bitcoin.
Despite the fact that the fake giveaway scam is not new at all, there were some who bought into the trick and sent quite large amounts in BTC to the fraudsters' wallet.

- The popular Chloe Baffled meme depicting a two-year-old girl was sold as a non-fungible token (NFT) for 25 ETH, nearly $74,000 at the time of the deal. The buyer was the music company 3F Music from Dubai (UAE). The family will keep the proceeds in Ethereum in hopes of further growth of the cryptocurrency. The mother of the heroine plans to spend this money in the future on the education of her daughters, and the “baffled” Chloe herself wants to buy a horse or “build a Disneyland,” writes the BBC.
Chloe became popular in 2013 after posting a video of her reacting baffled to news of a trip to Disneyland while her older sister Lily cries. This video gained more than 20 million likes.

- Analyst under the nickname PlanB, the author of the Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model, has just recently predicted that the bitcoin rate will exceed $100,000 at the end of this year. At the same time, he warned that the next few months will be key for the digital asset market. The Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model predicts the value of bitcoin by calculating the ratio of the asset's total available supply and its annual increase. And now the analysts' calculations have shown that instead of rising, the price of the flagship coin could drop to $30,000.

- Over the past three months, the value of the portfolio of Mr. Gox - a crypto trader hamster on the Twitch platform - has increased by 30%. Over the same time, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway fund assets fell 2%.
The hamster's owner built a special cage for it in June 2021, equipped with optical sensors that are connected to the Arduino Nano controller. This allows the rodent to "trade" digital assets. Turning the running wheel, the hamster "selects" a specific cryptocurrency for trading. The program will sell the coin when the rodent runs through the left tunnel and will buy it if it passes through the right one.
The rodent managed to outperform not only Berkshire Hathaway, but also the S&P 500 (+ 6% over the same period) and NASDAQ 100 (+ 12%), as well as bitcoin itself (+ 23%). The largest asset in Mr. Gox's portfolio is Tron (TRX). The hamster purchased it five times, and the price of this cryptocurrency has grown by 40% since the first transaction.

— According to TripleA research, the number of cryptocurrency users worldwide exceeded 280 million, with India accounting for the largest increase. There are now over 100 million digital currency users, or 7.3% of the country's population. As for other countries, there are 27.4 million in the United States, 17.3 million in Russia, 13.0 million in Nigeria, and Brazil is fifth with 10.3 million.
At the same time, the number of businesses accepting cryptocurrency as payment has grown to 18,000. The report identifies top brands such as fast-food restaurant chain Burger King, travel company Expedia and online commerce platform Rakuten that now accept cryptocurrency payments.

- Billionaire trader, SAC Capital Advisors hedge fund owner Steve A. Cohen has seen a perfect scenario for Bitcoin that could steer it into future rallies. So, Cowan believes that BTC may now go down, while it is important for the price to hold the 20-week simple moving average (SMA) as support. This will be the key to creating bullish momentum that will push the BTC price up to $64,000.
The 20-week SMA, coupled with the 21-week exponential moving average (EMA), is what Cowen calls the "bull market support band." In his view, it is crucial for bitcoin to stay above this band, as history shows that BTC tends to break through the first time it is retested.

- According to 99Bitcoins statistics, bitcoin was predicted to pass out 37 times in 2021. Interestingly, this amount is 2.65 times higher than in 2020, during which BTC “passed away” only 14 times.
This site has acted as the official repository for all bitcoin obituaries since 2010, with precise criteria for selecting such publications. In particular, the content selection takes into account whether the article mentions the uselessness of bitcoin both at present and in the future. In addition, the source resource, its traffic, and the credibility of the person who owns the words about the demise of the main cryptocurrency are taken into account.
The last registered obituary dates from September 21, 2021 and was written by renowned economist Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University, who stated that bitcoin is a highly speculative zero-value asset. “Bitcoin's volatility is its Achilles heel and the reason why it will never become a reliable unit of account or currency. Bitcoin is nothing more than a speculative asset with a fundamental value equal to zero,” Hanke's obituary reads.


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- The risk of default by Evergrande, one of China's largest construction companies, which has accumulated 2 trillion yuan ($309 billion) in debt, triggered panic in financial markets on September 20. Investors began to get rid of risk assets, tumbling stock markets. The cryptocurrency market did not escape the sell-off either. While bitcoin was at $52,870 on Monday, it fell short term to $39,666 on Wednesday, losing up to 25% of its value.
Evergrande's structure includes 200 offshore and 2,000 Chinese companies operating in multiple countries, according to Bloomberg. The 2 trillion-yuan liability is the world largest debt and is equivalent to 2% of China's GDP. Evergrande's net worth is about $3.9 billion, nearly 80 times less than its $309 billion debt.

- The US Treasury has included the Suex cryptocurrency exchanger in the sanctions list, as well as 25 addresses in the bitcoin, ethereum and tether networks. According to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), at least eight ransomware, scam projects and darknet marketplaces passed through Suex.
Chainalysis, an analytics company involved in the investigation, found that Suex had received more than $480 million in bitcoin since February 2018. At least $160 million of that amount is related to illegal activities.

- The president of Euro Pacific Capital, a well-known supporter of gold Peter Schiff once again criticized bitcoin and allowed the imminent end of the "cryptocurrency bubble". “There are now more than 12,000 tokens, 84 of which currently have a market cap above $1 billion. There's nothing special about bitcoin. Altcoin supply will continue to grow until the cryptocurrency bubble bursts. Supply will exceed demand and prices will collapse almost overnight," Schiff wrote. In his view, the first cryptocurrency would “only take money from the pockets of people stupid enough to buy it.”
In the comments, the financier reaffirmed his commitment to the precious metal and pointed out that the value of gold is "in its usefulness." “You can do more with gold than with any other metal, and it does not lose its unique properties over time,” said Schiff.

- Bitcoin is a monetary standard that will become a global reserve currency one day. This opinion was expressed by the head of SkyBridge Capital Anthony Scaramucci. He urged people to learn more about the crypto industry, even if they are skeptical about the digital asset market. According to him, it is important to understand “why you don’t want to own digital gold”.
“Bitcoin is volatile because it is at an early stage of adoption. Amazon had the same volatile curve 24 years ago. But if you invested $10,000 in Amazon shares at the IPO, you would receive $21 million today,” explained Scaramucci. He advised newcomers to the crypto industry to allocate up to 5% of their investment portfolio to digital assets, explaining the recommendation as high profits if the market grows and low losses if it collapses.

- An anonymous bitcoin wallet owner who bought $8.1k worth of cryptocurrency in 2012 has come forward almost 10 years later. According to the profile publication Decrypt, their account held more than 616 bitcoins. During its storage, each coin has increased in value nearly 3,500 times, with the total value of its assets approaching $28 million.

- The fair price of Ethereum based on network activity is $1,500, JPMorgan strategist Nikolaos Panigirtsoglou said in a Markets Insider commentary. “We're looking at hashrate and unique address counts to try to understand the value of ethereum,” added the JPMorgan strategist. According to him, the second-most capitalized cryptocurrency network is less attractive than its price suggests. Panigirtzoglou noted the growing competition from Solana, Cardano and other blockchains.
For reference, the ETH price has dropped 40% from $4,020 to $2,650 this week from September 20-22.

- The opposite point of view is held by cryptocurrency trader and analyst Lark Davis. He believes that the ETH rate will reach $10,000 in the coming weeks. The analyst notes that large investors, banks and corporations continue to invest in the ethereum ecosystem. 
Davis cited its limited supply in the market as another factor in favor of the growth of this altcoin. Currently, the reserves of the second cryptocurrency on cryptocurrency wallets are at record lows. This shows the reluctance of investors to sell their holdings in ETH. “87 per cent of coins have not moved for more than three months. 87 per cent! That's crazy, “ the analyst exclaimed.
In addition, a significant shortage of ethereum is created by burning of underlying transaction fees as well as by an increase in ethereum 2.0 staking deposits.

- While the price of bitcoin has climbed from $31,000 to $52,000 since the end of July, long-term holders have sold the coins they purchased between the $18,000 and $31,000 levels, consistently making a profit of about $1 billion per day. This data is provided in the latest report by Glassnode. Long-term in this classification refers to holders who received their coins more than 155 days ago.
“Note that these prices formed in the 2020-2021 bull market and suggest that long-term bitcoin investors may be becoming more active traders, record profits, use derivatives to hedge risks, or speculate more than in Q2,” Glassnode experts write. “This may also suggest uncertainty in the current market structure, as coins that have been purchased at close to current prices are being spent.”
At the same time, the authors note that despite the increased sales from this group, there was also a strong demand. As confirmation, they point to the fact that the aggregate balance of bitcoin on the exchanges continued to decline and hit a new multi-year low of 13% of turnover before the collapse on September 20.

- The FBI received over 1,800 complaints related to cryptocurrency fraud on dating sites between January 1, 2021, and July 31, 2021. Victims' losses are estimated at $133.4 million.
People are more likely to suffer from depression and loneliness during the pandemic, so dating and socializing apps have become very popular. First, the scammers establish "contact" with the potential victim. After getting the victim's trust, the attacker claims to be versed in cryptocurrency investments and trading and directs the person to a fraudulent site. Once a user has invested a certain amount, the scammer allows them to withdraw the “first profit”: a small amount of money, thus gaining the trust of the victim. The scammer then advises the user to deposit a larger sum. If the “client” stops receiving funds, then communication with the client ends as well.

- Financial market experts have recently conducted a study, the subject of which was the proposal of the famous car manufacturer Henry Ford to replace gold with the so-called "energy currency". The issue was raised by him in the New York Tribune as early as 1921. The study culminated in the fact that Ford's proposed project to launch a new currency is strikingly similar to the description of BTC, which was presented in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto.
The front page of the newspaper featured an article detailing the "energy currency" that Ford believed could end wars and become the backbone of a new era's monetary system.
The auto industrialist proposed replacing gold with a currency that would fully function on the basis of "units of force", for which he could build a huge hydroelectric power station. Thus, the potentially created currency would have been able to become the most stable and secured monetary unit of the time and would prevent a massive increase in the rich profiting from speculation with gold.


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CryptoNews of the Week


- Analytics software provider MicroStrategy has purchased an additional 5,050 BTC at $48,099 for approximately $243 million. This was announced by the head of the company Michael Saylor. As of September 12, MicroStrategy owns 114,042 BTC. A total of $3.16 billion was spent on their purchase, thus the average cost was $27,713 per coin.
MicroStrategy was the first public company to invest a portion of its equity capital ($ 250 million) in bitcoin in August 2020. Later, the company's board of directors approved a policy to increase investment in digital gold at the expense of cash reserves. Other US companies that have made similar large investments in cryptocurrency include Jack Dorsey's Square and Elon Musk's Tesla. Now they are set to be joined by billionaire Alan Howard's Brevan Howard Asset Management hedge fund, which opened a dedicated BH Digital division for these purposes.

- US citizen of Canadian origin Galeb Alaumari was found guilty of helping North Korean military intelligence officers launder funds obtained as a result of hacking of cryptocurrency exchanges and hacker attacks on various companies and financial institutions. The WannaCry ransomware stole more than $1.3 billion in total. This includes the cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, the attempted hacking of banks in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Mexico, Malta, and the theft of various personal data.
Galeb Alaumari said he was responsible for cashing out funds through fake bank accounts and cryptocurrency. The defendant also confessed to sending out phishing emails. One of the victims of the scheme was a university in Canada, which transferred $9.4 million to fraudsters, believing it was communicating with a major construction company. The US Federal court sentenced Alaumari to 11 years in prison and a $30 million fine.

- Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood expects bitcoin to rise to $500,000 within five years. In a conversation with CNBC, Wood explained that the validity of her forecast will depend on whether companies continue to diversify their bitcoin reserves and whether institutional investors decide to place 5% of assets in it.
The head of Ark Invest noted that if she had to choose one cryptocurrency, she wouldn't hesitate to prefer bitcoin “because states now consider it a means of payment.”
Wood also highlighted the potential of ethereum. “Ethereum is experiencing an explosion of developer activity thanks to NFT and DeFi. I am fascinated by what is happening in DeFi, which is dramatically reducing the cost of infrastructure for financial services. Although I know that the financial industry does not welcome this right now. We are nevertheless likely to continue with the 60% bitcoin and 40% ethereum strategy,” she added.
Earlier, analysts at Standard Chartered bank predicted bitcoin to rise to $175,000 and ethereum to $35,000.

- After El Salvador recognized bitcoin as legal tender, Panama decided to follow suit. A cryptocurrency bill has been submitted to the Panamanian Congress. Panama does not have either a central bank currently or its own official currency, and the US dollar is used as a means of payment.
If the law is passed, legal entities and individuals of Panama will be able to freely use BTC and ETH as a means of payment for any government or commercial transactions. In addition, it is proposed to transfer public records to the blockchain and digitize legislative and administrative acts. “Such a move will help create a lot of jobs, attract investment and make the government more transparent,” the bill's initiators said.
Unlike El Salvador, the Panamanian option does not provide for the mandatory use of cryptocurrencies, that is, citizens and companies will be able to freely decide whether they want to accept cryptocurrencies or be limited to just the dollar.

- A recent survey by Sherlock Communications found that almost half of Brazilians agree that bitcoin should be accepted as the country's official currency, as El Salvador did. 48% of respondents voted for this (17% support without any doubt, 31% with some conditions). Only 21% rejected this idea (9% categorically, 12% moderately). The remaining respondents (31 percent) maintain a neutral stance.

- Artist Monica Rizzolli earned 1623 ETH (about $5.4 million at the time of the transaction) for the sale of the NFT series "Fragments of an Infinite Field" on the Art Blocks marketplace. The collection, consisting of 1,024 generative images, sold out on September 13 in less than an hour. The price for individual copies started from 10 ETH. Well-known NFT collectors Cozomo de' Medici and JDH spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy individual paintings.
The main parameter for creating the composition was the seasons, which set the colors and the phenomena depicted in the picture. Subsequently, some of the collection's items were resold on the OpenSea marketplace for 69 ETH (about $229,000).

- The State Bureau of Investigation of Ukraine has established the involvement of three employees of the cyber department of the Security Service of this country (SBU) in the kidnapping of a cryptocurrency trader.
According to the investigation, SBU agents received information about the trader having a large amount in cryptocurrency in autumn 2020. They organized his abduction, took him to the forest and beat him for an hour and a half, demanding that $200,000 be handed over to them. After being refused, the agents moved the abductee to police headquarters. They continued to extort funds There, lowering the amount to $80,000. The trader was forced to agree, and called his wife, who transferred 7 BTC (at the time of the transaction, the equivalent of the ransom amount) to the cryptocurrency wallet specified by the extortionists.
All three face charges of robbery with violence, kidnapping and abuse of authority. The investigation also examines the involvement of eight other SBU officers in the crime.

- Austrian economist Ronald-Peter Stöferle, managing partner of investment company Incrementum AG, said that "in five to ten years, bitcoin will rise to heights that we cannot currently imagine." At the same time, the top manager noted that the next phase of bitcoin's growth has not yet begun. According to him, the rise in price of bitcoin will occur when the asset becomes "a means of inflation protection during the ongoing large monetary experiments." 

- Crypto trading veteran Ton Weiss predicts that bitcoin (BTC) will complete the current correction relatively soon and then rise sharply to six-digit levels.
Weiss explained during the new strategy session that the recent move in the BTC price is reminiscent of July, when the flagship cryptocurrency fell to a one-year low below $29,000 and then aggressively rose to $52,000 in less than six weeks.
According to Weiss, bitcoin is likely to fall short and give traders an opportunity to buy near the $40,000 level. After which it will bounce back sharply from that support and go up. 
“The $40,000 low will come either next week or may be delayed until early October, and then we will cross that area with a rise to $50,000 in mid to late October. We will be over $65,000 by early November, and probably $100,000 by the end of December,” he said. 


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CryptoNews of the Week


- El Salvador entered into force a law recognizing bitcoin as a legal means of payment on Tuesday, September 7. President Nayib Bukele tweeted about this three minutes before midnight local time. “In three minutes, we will go down in history,” wrote Bukele.
Earlier, the head of state confirmed that the government of El Salvador acquired the first 200 BTC. The purchase is part of a new $150m fund approved by the authorities to secure the exchange of bitcoin and dollars.

- Bitcoin has been growing since July 20. And so, on the news that BTC became the official currency of El Salvador, its quotes fell 18% on Tuesday September 7, from $52,870 to $43,205, dragging down the entire crypto market.
The World Bank refused to support El Salvador in accepting bitcoin as a legal tender, and leading rating agencies such as Fitch were quick to point out the weaknesses of the country's government's move. In particular, El Salvador's insurance industry will be hit. Bonds rated B- are already circulating in it, and now the situation will be aggravated by the presence of an unstable cryptocurrency.
At the time of writing this review, the leading cryptocurrency has managed to win back some of its losses, and it is trading at around $46,500 per coin.

- Standard Chartered Global Banking Group analysts have been positive about the prospects for bitcoin and ethereum. The team of researchers compared ethereum to the financial market, where lending, insurance and exchange transactions take place. Bitcoin, in their opinion, is more like a currency. Therefore, given the wider range of ETH use cases, its capitalization may eventually reach the first cryptocurrency.
Standard Chartered predicts bitcoin prices in the $50,000-$175,000 range and ethereum in the $26,000-$35,000 range. Thus, these cryptocurrencies should grow threefold and tenfold, respectively. “While the return on ETH may outperform BTC in the future, the risks are also higher,” the bank said.

- Three-time National Basketball Association of North America (NBA) champion Stephen Curry asked Twitter users for advice on cryptocurrencies. “Just starting to play the crypto game... Do you have any advice? ', wrote the athlete. Several prominent crypto industry participants reacted to the tweet. MicroStrategy chief Michael Saylor said he spent a lot of time thinking about the issue, “and chose bitcoin.” “I bought over $3 billion worth of bitcoin as I consider it the future of digital property,” Saylor wrote.

- Senior strategist Mike McGlone called the $100,000 mark for bitcoin and the $5,000 mark for ethereum as "the path of least resistance" in the September Bloomberg Crypto Outlook report. “Crypto assets are entering a renewed second-half bull market after a serious drop from previous highs,” the Bloomberg expert noted.
He also characterized investment portfolios that do not have any of these cryptocurrencies as vulnerable. “We envision the future of bitcoin as a digital reserve asset that complements the dollar,” McGlone concluded.

- Ark Invest CEO Cathy Wood suggested that the cryptocurrency market is far from ending its rally. Despite the recent rally, the markets show no signs of a price bubble, she said. “We think bitcoin is much more than a store of value or digital gold. This is a new global monetary system that is completely decentralized and not subject to politicians' whims".
The top executive added that cryptocurrencies have become a generational phenomenon that evolves as technology advances. “The average investor does not understand how provocative the next five to fifteen years will be, as these S-curves feed off each other and enter exponential growth trajectories that we have not seen before,” says Wood.
At the same time, the expert believes that regulation is necessary for the maturity of the sector, which will affect bitcoin in the most positive way.

- US-based Crypto Asset Recovery company specializes in guessing “hundreds of millions or billions” of passwords. Its experts have concluded that bitcoin wallets whose passwords have been lost by their owners currently store billions of dollars’ worth of coins. At the same time, access to approximately 68-90 thousand BTC can be restored. This is about $4 billion at current prices.
According to a report from another company, Chainalsis, up to 20% of the existing 18.5 million bitcoins have been lost. 

- According to the latest research, 17% of Australians own cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is the most popular digital asset, with Ethereum, Dogecoin and Bitcoin Cash taking the second, third and fourth places.
The majority of holders (30%) reported that they purchased crypto assets in order to diversify their portfolio. Second on the list of reasons (24%) was the rise in the price of bitcoins and altcoins. There are twice as many men as women among cryptocurrency holders. This is while the number of women holding crypto wallets has doubled since the beginning of the year.

- The management of the billionaire Bill Miller's Miller Opportunity Trust believes that bitcoin has significant growth potential, as this asset can act as a digital analogue of gold.
Miller Opportunity Trust has recently announced the purchase of 1.5 million shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust fund for $44.7 million. The report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) notes that the investment was made in anticipation of the asset's growth. Fund strategists and analysts have been monitoring bitcoin performance for a long time and chose the best time to buy.
“Bitcoin has been falling this quarter and the trust's shares have been traded at a significant discount to the value of the underlying asset, providing additional upside potential. While gold has a capitalization of $11 trillion, bitcoin only reaches $900 billion, a significant lag. We are in the early days of bitcoin adoption and the asset will be very volatile, but we believe the risk-to-reward ratio is attractive,” Miller Opportunity Trust said in a statement.


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CryptoNews of the Week


- Hundreds of residents rallied in the capital of El Salvador against the legalization of the first cryptocurrency, Euronews reports. Citizens are concerned about possible increases in corruption due to the replacement of the US dollar with bitcoin
The Salvadoran Association of International Freight Carriers has demanded an amendment to the bill, removing the obligation to accept digital gold as payment. Otherwise, industry officials said they would suspend services. But this initiative of the country's President Nayib Bukele, in addition to opponents, has many supporters. In contrast to transport workers, for example, the legalization of bitcoin was supported by the Salvadoran branch of fast-food restaurant chain KFC.

- Another piece of news is from the field of transport. Backed by Internet giant Alibaba, electric car maker Zhiji Auto has developed an app for owners of upcoming IM electric vehicles. With its help, drivers will be able to earn digital currency for the mileage covered. 
Motorists will have to enter information about each kilometer they run in order to enter the mining pool. They will receive the Stone digital currency as a reward. The company plans to issue 500 coins 144 times a day for a start. The issue will be halved every four years to maintain liquidity.
The asset can be exchanged for various services of the company. When the car's mileage reaches 5,000 km, its owner will be able to purchase a next-generation smart driving system for coins or increase the battery capacity to 120 kWh.
The IM electric car will go on sale in 2022. According to the manufacturers, the novelty should become a worthy competitor to Tesla: its range on one charge is 1,000 km.

- Venezuelan law enforcers are looking for a 23-year-old man who organized his own kidnapping in order to steal $1.15 million worth of bitcoins from gullible citizens. The attackers allegedly forced him to withdraw the cryptocurrency from the Binance exchange and transfer it to various wallets. The man is accused of fraud and money laundering and is currently on the wanted list.

- Investor John Paulson, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at $3.5 billion, called the cryptocurrency a "bubble" in an interview with Bloomberg. In his view, the digital asset market will “ultimately prove worthless,” so it is not worth investing in it. “Cryptocurrencies are a bubble. I would describe them as a limited supply of nothing. If the demand is greater than the limited supply, the price will rise. But, if demand falls, the price will also fall. None of the cryptocurrencies have intrinsic value,” Paulson explained his point.
For the record: John Paulson was named the best private asset manager by Alpha magazine 15 years ago, in 2007. Paulson's fund managed to earn $3.7 billion then at the end of the year, despite the mortgage crisis and the collapse of the American market.

- Analyst Aaron Arnold in his YouTube channel (952 thousand subscribers) named the fundamental factors that, in his opinion, will provoke the "explosive" growth of ethereum. He considers a key feature the recent change in the altcoin blockchain, which introduced a digital coin burning mechanism. The London update was released on ethereum network on August 05, which completely changed the transaction fee mechanism. A portion of the commission that miners previously received as a reward is now burned. According to the Ultrasound.Money service, more than 134,800 coins worth over $427 million have already been burned on the ethereum network since the activation of this update. The average burning rate is 3.77 coins per minute.
The analyst considers lower Ethereum net inflation as a second driver of growth. According to Arnold's calculations, it is only 1.1% in annual terms at the moment, while the same indicator for bitcoin is at the level of 1.75%.
Arnold also recalled the multiple growth of funds blocked in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. In his view, this is the third factor that contributes to ethereum's price hike. According to DeFi Pulse, if the volume of blocked funds was $16 billion on January 1 of this year, this figure had already reached $82 billion by August 30 (an increase of 412% since the beginning of the year).

- Billionaire investor Bill Miller purchased bitcoin through the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). Such information is contained in the reporting, which has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to The Block. As of June 30, Miller Opportunity Trust owns 1.5 million GBTC shares worth $44.7 million. The size of this position increased to $59 million by September 1 and is 1.55% in the fund's portfolio.  
The second big player whose investment came to light this week is banking giant Morgan Stanley. It has been actively increasing the size of its position in GBTC in recent months. And this is also reflected in the reporting to the SEC. GBTC shares turned out to be included in several of the bank's funds. The largest investment came from Morgan Stanley Insight Fund, which acquired 928.051 GBTC shares for $27.665 million.

- As in other countries around the world, the number of citizens buying digital currencies continues to grow in the USA. And the highest proportion of crypto investors are young people under the age of 35. CNBC revealed that 11% of young US residents invested some of the capital they received in the form of assistance from the state during the coronavirus pandemic in bitcoin and other coins. (By comparison, stocks were picked by 15%).
60% of those who preferred cryptocurrency stated that they are set for long-term storage of this asset. On the contrary, 21% are just waiting for a convenient moment to profitably sell the previously purchased coins.

- The number of vacancies related to cryptocurrency has grown by 118% over the year. Software development was the most sought-after position in this field, with 29.7% of vacancies. In second place are managerial positions with 10%.

- Experts at Kaspersky Lab discovered the Swarez Trojan, which, among other things, stole cryptocurrency wallet data. This was reported by the press service of the company. The peak of activity of the malware occurred in the spring of 2021. The attackers used the games Among Us, Battlefield 4, Battlefield V, Control, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, FIFA 21, Fortnite, GTA V, Minecraft, NBA 2K21, Need for Speed Heat, PUBG, Rust, The Sims 4 and Titanfall 2. Attempts to download such files were recorded in 45 countries.

- Northstar & Badcharts British analyst and co-founder Kevin Wadsworth believes BTC will rise to $100,000 by the end of 2021. After that, the current bullish stage will be completed for the cryptocurrency.
Speaking of the first cryptocurrency, Wadsworth believes that its value will increase "in September, October and, presumably, in November." Some of the leading altcoins (such as ethereum), he said, could also rise significantly, since a rise in prices by 3-4 times is quite likely.

- PlanB analyst is also confident that BTC will break through the $100K level by Christmas. This is indicated by the signals of his S2F forecasting model.
Bitcoin's prospects for further growth are also indicated by year analysis of cryptocurrency behavior. Analysts at Twitter Root channel are confident that the main driver of BTC is halvings (a 2-time reduction in mining awards). They form a shortage of coins in the market, which positively affects the value of a digital asset. As for bitcoin, it has yet to fulfil the growth potential that halving put into it in May 2020. 

-¬Spencer Schiff, son of the famous bitcoin critic and gold advocate Peter Schiff, wrote that there were big changes in his life in the last year: he went all-in, preferring bitcoin to gold. Back in August 2020, he kept most of his savings in the most popular precious metal but has now decided to transfer all the assets to the main cryptocurrency.
His father Peter Schiff, CEO and global strategist at Euro Pacific Capital, has recently tweeted that he considers those who do not sell bitcoins to be "real idiots." He also expressed the opinion that this coin will never reach $100 thousand and compared the hype around the cryptocurrency with tulip mania. However, he also publicly regretted on several occasions that he had not bought bitcoin in the early days of the asset's appearance.


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CryptoNews of the Week


- MicroStrategy acquired additional 3,907 BTC worth about $177 million on August 24. The average purchase price was $45,294 per coin, including commissions and other expenses.
In total, this analytics provider has invested more than $2.9 billion in digital gold. Now there is a total of 108,992 BTC on MicroStrategy's balance sheet. At the time of writing, the value of this cryptocurrency is estimated at $5.25 billion.

- El Salvador has begun preparing infrastructure related to the entry into force of the law to recognize bitcoin as an official means of payment. Operations with this cryptocurrency will be available at 200 ATMs and 50 bank branches by September 7. Residents will be able to withdraw cash 24 hours a day without any commission.
Head of State Nayib Bukele assured that ATMs will appear in all parts of El Salvador in the future. “What if someone is not interested in bitcoin? Keep living your ordinary life. Nobody is going to take your dollars. You can always queue up at Western Union and pay a commission,” Bukele stated. The President of El Salvador estimates that citizens lose about $400 million on remittances fees each year.

- Trend Micro experts found over 120 fake applications for cloud mining of cryptocurrencies in the Google Play Store. Some of them have been downloaded over 100,000 times. Malware does not have a mining feature, according to the study. However, they charge users a monthly fee of about $15 and additional payments allegedly for “enhanced mining opportunities.” Some apps require a prepayment.
Following Trend Micro's appeal to Google, eight fraudulent apps were removed. These include BitFunds, Bitcoin Miner, Daily Bitcoin Rewards, Crypto Holic, MineBit Pro, Bitcoin 2021, Ethereum - Pool Mining Cloud and Bitcoin (BTC) crypto wallet - Pool Mining Cloud Wallet. However, according to Trend Micro, about 120 malware is still available for download.

- A 24-year-old electronic engineer from Pretoria (South Africa) could now be richer by about $1 million but lost the wallet data with 20 BTC mined 10 years ago. He mined the cryptocurrency at school age. To do this, he used a computer with 512 GB of RAM. “I don’t remember exactly how much time I was mining, but it lasted about a couple of months continuously,” the failed millionaire recalls. Eventually he got fed up with it, as the computer could not be used for other tasks, and the cryptocurrency cost virtually nothing. During that year, the price of the first cryptocurrency rose from $0.0008 to $0.08.
Then he lost the paper with the key and password from the bitcoin wallet, and at some point, while cleaning the computer, he also deleted the data file. Some seven years later, with the price of the cryptocurrency already reaching $1,000, the engineer made an attempt to gain access to the mined coins. “I remember collecting all the HDDs, memory cards, CDs and DVDs in the house and carefully reviewing each one. It took about a week." However, there was no happy end.
Chainanalysis estimates that about 20% of mined bitcoins are in lost or forgotten cryptocurrency wallets at the moment.

- American banking giant Citigroup is awaiting regulatory approval to begin trading bitcoin futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). Citigroup will therefore become another megabank after Goldman Sachs offering similar opportunities
The bank is also reported to be actively picking up staff for its cryptocurrency team in London.

- A constant critic of bitcoin, president of the brokerage company Euro Pacific Capital Inc., Peter Schiff admitted that the price of BTC could still show impressive growth, reaching $100,000.
Schiff is known as the man who takes every opportunity to strike at cryptocurrency and call for the purchase of gold. And now, in an interview with Coin Stories, this "golden beetle" expressed regret for not making investments in bitcoin on time. Despite all the negative things said about the first cryptocurrency, Schiff still did not undertake to dispute the fact that BTC is a great store of value. In fact, the ROI on bitcoin has been 8,900,000% over the past decade.
“I wish I had bought bitcoin when I first heard about it - it was a serious mistake,” the financier admitted. "I could invest $100,000 in it, yes, I could. Instead, I invested that $100,000 in other things that failed. Now I could become a bitcoin billionaire because I knew about it early on. If I could go back in time, I would have acted differently,” Schiff lamented.
At the same time, he remains bearish and excludes the possibility that the asset will ever be massively used as a means of payment. According to the financier, the only merit of bitcoin is that people speculate on it.

- Earlier, senior strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence Mike McGlone repeatedly predicted the growth of BTC to $100,000. But, according to the expert, the mainstream of the second largest cryptocurrency by capitalization can become an obstacle to growth. People are beginning to realize that ethereum is “the building block for all financial technology, DeFi and infrastructure in a world that is going digital,” McGlone said.
The expert named non-fungible tokens (NFT) as another powerful support for the price of the main altcoin. Such assets are becoming extremely popular and are mostly issued on the ETH blockchain.
In doing so, McGlone called former Goldman Sachs hedge fund manager Raoul Pal's forecast of Ethereum growth to $20,000 as overstated. But also, the price will not fall below $2,000, rather the rate will exceed $4,000, according to the analyst.

- Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin is much more optimistic about the future of this altcoin. He expects that after the recent London hardfork and implementation of EIP-1559, the ETH price will be 10 times higher than current levels and reach $30,000. In this case, the capitalization of this altcoin would reach $3 trillion, and exceed the capitalization of all the major technology companies in the world.

— An Australian entrepreneur promised to pay BTC worth $5 to everyone who gets a coronavirus vaccination.
The Mayor of Cool Valley, Missouri (USA) is planning a much more generous reward. He announced his intention to donate $500 to $1000 in BTC to each of the 1,500 Cool Valley residents, as he believes this cryptocurrency has the potential to make them rich. “I have friends whose lives have completely changed: from ordinary workers with a working schedule from nine to five, they have become owners of a fortune of more than $80 million in a few years,” the mayor explained his initiative. At the same time, he put forward one condition: recipients will not be able to sell their bitcoins for five years, which, according to the mayor, will allow them to wait for the price of BTC to rise to half a million dollars.
Residents of the city reacted to this initiative very positively, so the mayor has a lot of chances to be re-elected for a new term.

- With the start of another bitcoin rally, some major players predict that cryptocurrency will reach new record levels by the end of the year. The survey was conducted by Elwood Asset Management, with 55 out of an estimated 175 cryptocurrency hedge funds.
According to the data, 65% of these hedge funds predict that bitcoin will be trading in the $50,000 to $100,000 range by the end of 2021. 21% of those surveyed named a price between $100,000 and $150,000. And only 1% of hedge funds predicts that the asset's value will be below $50,000. 
63% of hedge funds believe that the cryptocurrency market capitalization will be in the range of $2 trillion to $5 trillion, with another 11% estimating a market capitalization of between $5 trillion and $10 trillion.

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CryptoNews of the Week


- Journalists of the world media drew attention to the online speech of Jerome Powell to students at the Town Hall conference. The Fed chief noted the ever-increasing importance of cryptocurrencies, outlining the phrase about the U.S. Treasury's examination of holding a portion of the country's reserves in digital assets. Making such a decision would literally blow up the cryptocurrency market, repeating the situation of 2017. The price of bitcoin soared then from $750 to $19,270, which is 25 times, getting the slang name “To the Moon”.
While Powell just theorizes about supporting cryptocurrencies, the US Congress may well arrange a mini "To the Moon" in the near future. First, the congressmen forced the US Treasury to prepare an explanatory guide that exempts all participants in the crypto market from submitting tax reports, except for brokers.
And two senators decided to go even further and introduced a bill simplifying the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) guidelines for miners, wallet operators, and others. FATF is now trying to achieve complete deanonymization of all blockchain transactions by forcing crypto industry members to implement the “travel rules” option. It applies to fiat transfers, where the bank will not accept payment without verified data.

- An unknown hacker has hacked a major Legalizer forum on drug trafficking in the former USSR countries. He posted some of the information in public access, the rest is sold by the hacker for at least 1 BTC. The information in the database includes among other passport data of the alleged owners of the forum, customer contacts and their correspondence.
The owner and developer of Legalizer is listed as a Latvian citizen, one of the ex-developers is a resident of the Moscow region of Russia, and the current administrator is a Ukrainian citizen. According to the Blockchair service, 20.57 BTC (about $935,000 at the time of writing) went through the drug forum's cryptocurrency wallet.

- Cryptocurrency analyst Benjamin Cowen believes bitcoin is facing a crucial test this September, which will determine the future direction of the entire market. According to him, bitcoin has tested the 20-week moving average every September since 2017 and either bounced or broke through it. And if another test happens this September, it will be possible to make a forecast basing on it until April 2022. “We will find out if the market will be bullish or if growth will stall for several months,” the analyst said.
The 20-week MA is currently around $43,500 and if BTC can hold that level as support, according to Benjamin Cowen, we will see an upward move. “The prospects are quite good, and if we manage to stay at this level as support, then we will have pleasant surprises,” he said.

- The largest American retailer Walmart (more than 11,700 hypermarkets in 28 countries) has opened a vacancy for the head of the cryptocurrency business. The new position provides for the creation and management of the digital asset development strategy. Recall that back in 2019, The Block, citing a patent application from Walmart, announced the company's plans to launch its own stablecoin.

- A popular cryptocurrency analyst and trader with the nickname DonAlt named four altcoins that are ready for a rally and can surpass BTC in profitability.
The first pair on the list is XRP/BTC. According to the trader, it is already "up 50 per cent but is still far from the level of resistance." DoAlt believes this pair could yet show 185% growth from current levels.
Next on the list is the popular Bitcoin Cash (BCH) altcoin. According to the trader, the BCH/BTC pair managed to stay above the key support level and is now ready to reach 0.02 BTC, as the next resistance level is about 50 per cent higher. The third asset is VeChain (VET), and at the bottom of the list is Tron (TRX).

- Bloomberg chief analyst Eric Balchunas suggested that a programmer from California Hal Finney was hiding behind the alias of the bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. He is known in the crypto community as one of the early supporters of bitcoin, who participated in the development of the cryptocurrency, and also conducted the first bitcoin transaction with Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. The programmer died in 2014 at the age of 58 due to a serious illness.
The chief analyst at Bloomberg gained confidence that Finney was the creator of bitcoin after reading a message on the forum that the programmer sent back in 1993. Finney described there the idea of cryptocurrency trading cards, the principle of which is similar to the technology of non-fungible tokens (NFT).
It became known this spring that the fortune of the creator of bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto, who, according to various estimates, owns from 750 thousand to 1.1 million BTC, exceeded $61 billion.

- Residents of India, the second most populous country in the world, can now receive cashback in bitcoins. The card, issued by GoSats and available online, allows users to earn BTC when shopping at major stores such as Amazon, Starbucks and Flipkart.
The new product is being rolled out by GoSats in partnership with the non-profit National Payment Corporation of India, which promotes digital services across the country. This corporation was founded in December 2008 and is directly owned by the Reserve Bank of India, which should help avoid any regulatory hurdles from the authorities.

- As it turns out, bitcoin follows the Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model developed by popular cryptanalyst PlanB so far. Plan B gave his forecast for the coming months in June 2021, when BTC was trading below $35,000. According to him, the price of BTC should reach $135,000 by the end of this December.

- Along with the current spike in prices, bitcoin has also shown significant improvement in network metrics. In particular, bitcoin miners have continued to accumulate, their balance has grown steadily over the past month. This means that they expect further growth in the price of the coin, so they do not want to take profits now.
Santiment, a web data analysis firm, also reported encouraging data for investors. It reports that the supply of bitcoin on exchanges has dropped to a two-week low. This suggests that a large amount of BTC will go to cold wallets. Analyst firm Glassnode has made a similar observation: “Bitcoin continued to leave exchanges in August at rates ranging from 75,000 to 100,000 coins per month. This outflow is similar to the period between 2020 and the Q1 21, when large accumulations prevailed.”

- Bloomberg analyst Michael McGlone speaks once again in favor of the first cryptocurrency. In his opinion, BTC is capable of replacing gold as an asset for hedging risks and accumulating wealth, "and the efforts of American regulators are unlikely to be able to prevent this."
Michael McGlone stressed that “digitizing money and the financial industry” is giving bitcoin a huge boost to growth. Once upon a time, similar factors allowed the US dollar to dominate the global financial arena. At the same time, gold does not have any strong drivers for growth, according to the analyst.
According to McGlone's forecast, bitcoin could well reach $100,000 in the medium term.

- According to a study conducted in the United States, LGBTQ representatives were among the most active crypto investors. One in four Americans in this category has invested in digital currency. 
The surge in such interest is due to both positive and negative factors. Yosef Bonaparte, a professor at the University of Colorado, explains that gender discrimination, on average, reduces a person's chances of trading the stock market by 40%. Many members of the community have low incomes and are embarrassed to apply to traditional investment funds due to the huge amounts that the latter demand as payment for services. The key factor behind the growth in the number of crypto investors in the LGBTQ camp is the near-zero threshold for entering this market.

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CryptoNews of the Week


- “Outlaw” and “The Siege” star Steven Seagal found himself implicated in advertising a cryptocurrency scam organized by a group of Serbian nationalists. According to the investigation, fraudsters deceived almost 500 people and lured away from them a total of $11 million in cryptocurrencies and fiat money.
Steven Seagal featured in promos for the new B2G coin as brand ambassador. The actor urged his followers in social media, 7 million people on Facebook and 100 thousand on Twitter, not to miss the chance with B2G.
Investors thought they were investing in mining and would earn up to 200% in 60-90 days. However, their money went into accounts controlled by a certain person of Serbian-Australian descent living in the Philippines. 
Steven Seagal received $250,000 plus 750,000 B2G tokens for advertising. However, according to him, he broke the agreement when he had doubts about the "honesty of the project." According to Segal's manager, “the star fell victim to deception like everyone else.”
The charges were brought against 16 participants in the scheme, most of them of Serbian origin. They are accused of bank fraud and money laundering. This group performed about 20 cryptocurrency scams and defrauded investors for a total of $70 million. As for Segal, he agreed to pay a $300,000 fine for illegally advertising securities.

- Bloomberg Intelligence senior strategist Mike McGlone predicted bitcoin to rise to $100,000 in a new report. He noted the strong support for digital gold and Ethereum in recent months and the start of the growth phase of these assets. “Bitcoin seems to have found support around the $30,000 mark, just as it did at $4,000 in early 2019. We see parallels with those events and, apparently, bitcoin may well reach $100,000. "
The analyst added that the bulls are preparing for the next step in the cryptocurrency market. He also stressed that the BTC rate was below the 20-week moving average for a long time, which indicates a sell-off of this cryptocurrency among "weak" buyers.
"Bitcoin is becoming digital gold in the world going in this direction, and Ethereum is evolving as a platform for digitalizing finance," said senior strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence.

- AMC Theatres, a major cinema chain which owns 593 theaters in the United States and 335 abroad, will introduce the first cryptocurrency as a method to pay for tickets. The system for accepting cryptocurrency payments will be ready by the end of the year and is designed to increase sales amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to The Wrap.

- A well-known crypto strategist and trader nicknamed Crypto Dog predicts a serious bullish growth in BTC and ETH. "Bitcoin will get to $50,000 very soon." With regard to Ethereum, the analyst believes that with a new 30-day high of $3,182, ETH's all-time high is just around the corner.
As for the ETH/BTC pair, the strategist believes that it has upside potential of at least 40% from the current level of 0.07 BTC: "After crossing the 0.068 BTC level, I expect a strong rally to the level above 0.1 BTC."

- The Italian authorities have closed 32 Telegram groups in which thousands of people were offered to buy fake Green Pass.  This document allows Italians who have already received at least one COVID-19 vaccine, recently recovered from the virus or tested negative, to visit cinemas, gyms, museums, restaurants, etc. Criminals preferred payments in cryptocurrency. There was no fixed price; on average, a fake document could be purchased for 500 euros or 588 dollars.

- Well-known cryptocurrency analyst Willy Wu believes that the bitcoin rate should rise in order to correct the supply/demand imbalance in the market. Based on fundamentals, Bitcoin's fair rate is $53,200, Wu said. However, he warned that fundamental factors do not allow forecasting for a short period, but with sufficient time, they will fully justify themselves.
Another analyst, Will Clemente, agreed with Wu's opinion and noted that, based on the bitcoin liquidity data from the Glassnode analytical platform, he predicted its growth to about $53,000 back on July 31.

- Israel's National Intelligence Agency Mossad has posted a job list on its website that features a tech expert on cryptocurrencies. The intelligence service did not specify what tasks the specialist would have to meet. However, the Ynet news outlet suggested that Mossad is interested in using the cryptocurrency, including for organizing payments to its agents.

- Bridgewater Associates billionaire founder Ray Dalio does not rule out bitcoin growth, but still prefers gold. Dalio has stated that he holds a "very small volume" of bitcoin. “If you put a gun to my head and let me choose only one of the two, I’ll choose gold,” he said.
At the same time, the billionaire admitted that bitcoin is still an important tool for diversifying portfolios: "There are certain assets that are worth holding to diversify a portfolio, and bitcoin is a kind of digital gold."

- The US Senate sent a bill to the House of Representatives on Tuesday, August 10, according to which miners, wallet developers, liquidity providers in DeFi protocols, etc. can be required to report to the IRS on the activities of their users. However, as it stands, the bill's requirements are not technically feasible, for which the document has been repeatedly criticized by the most prominent representatives of the crypto industry, including Elon Musk.

- Due to a hacker attack, the protocol for communication of various blockchains Poly Network lost $611 million. This is the largest damage in the entire history of the space of decentralized finance and cryptocurrencies as such. The previous anti-record was held by the Japanese exchange Coincheck, which lost over $500 million in NEM tokens in 2018.
The current attack stole $273 million in Ethereum blockchain tokens, $253 million in Binance Smart Chain blockchain tokens and $85 million in USDC stablecoin.

- Tom Lee, head of the analytical company Fundstrat, recalled the "golden rule" for crypto investors on CNBC. He has always encouraged to buy bitcoin every time once the quotes cross the 200-day moving average (MA 200) from the bottom up. Starting in 2017, in three out of five cases, the closing of the daily candle above this line was the beginning of a gradual increase in trading volumes and the development of long-term upward trends that lasted from 4 months to a year.
Two failures, according to Tom Lee, do not in any way cancel his "golden rule", since in these cases the BTC rate managed to rise enough for traders to protect their positions from any loss.
Tom Lee also reiterated his prediction that he sees bitcoin in the region of $100-120k in 2022. The new wave of demand will be driven by rising global inflation and technological changes in cryptocurrency.
Note that Tom Lee is the brother of the creator of Litecoin, but this time he did not discuss the future of this coin.

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CryptoNews of the Week


- Bitcoin has the potential to become the "property of the future" that everyone, starting from small investors to big tech companies and governments, will be able to possess. This opinion was expressed by the head of MicroStrategy Michael Saylor in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
The top manager noted that his company's bet on the first cryptocurrency was the embodiment of "a strategy with the greatest growth potential and the least risk." "For some, diversification is the purchase of other cryptocurrencies or shares. For us, bitcoin is the same diversification. We see a future in which digital gold will become the basis of technological innovation in Apple, Amazon and Facebook and will take place on the balance sheets of corporations, cities, states and countriess," the billionaire explained.

- The Legislative Assembly of El Salvador adopted a law in June recognizing bitcoin as an official means of payment in the country. It will come into force on September 7, 2021. Analysts at Bank of America, one of the largest financial institutions in the United States, believe that such a step can give this country a number of serious advantages.
The bank's experts noted that the country's decision to recognize cryptocurrency as legal tender could potentially reduce the cost of remittances from abroad, which account for almost a quarter of El Salvador's GDP. This can positively affect the incomes of the country's citizens.
The analysts have called the democratization of financial services another advantage of the introduction of bitcoin, since approximately 70% of the adult population of the country does not have bank accounts. El Salvador can also attract direct foreign investment flows, becoming a major cryptocurrency mining center similar to Iceland.

- The animated show Stoner Cats, launched by Hollywood actress of Ukrainian origin Mila Kunis, attracted 3647 ETH (more than $9 million at the time of writing) in 35 minutes of the token sale. A collection of digital cats was put up for sale at a price of 0.35 ETH per "animal". The proceeds from the sale will be used to finance the new series. 
Due to the hype, the cost of commissions in the Ethereum network has increased. And the crypto community joked that "cats have once again "clogged" the network, hinting at the situation with the game CryptoKitties.

- According to the latest data of the analytical resource Glassnode, more and more investors have been recently investing in the world's main cryptocurrency. In particular, a sharp jump in the total number of active bitcoin addresses was registered at the end of July. The increase in the indicator was about 30% in just a week. And the purses of "whales" accumulated 9.23 million BTC for the first time in history.
Glassnode experts focused on such an indicator as "Entities" for higher reliability of data. It does not take into account each bitcoin wallet separately but considers users (individuals and institutionals) controlling clusters of network addresses.
Glassnode explains these positive dynamics by the recent growth of the bitcoin rate. Its price has been consistently strengthening since July 21, and it managed again to reach a height of $42,500 on August 1. (However, at the time of writing, BTC has already rolled back below $38,000).

- A trader from South Korea lost more than $500,000 when trying to buy BTC, AsiaOne reports. According to the publication, he arranged a personal meeting with a bitcoin seller in a southern district of Hong Kong. However, four criminalss were waiting for him at the meeting place. Threatening with a knife, they took away from the trader a bag in which there were 3 million Hong Kong dollars (about $523,000). The man was injured In the attack and was taken to a local hospital. Law enforcement officers have not yet been able to find the criminals.
According to AsiaOne, this is the second robbery in Hong Kong this year when trying to buy cryptocurrency. A 22-year-old local resident was robbed of 2 million Hong Kong dollars in June. And it is quite likely that this is the work of the same gang.

- A popular cryptocurrency analyst under the nickname Jack Sparrow believes that bitcoin is on the verge of a new wave of growth. This will be the fifth and final bullish season in the current market cycle.
The analyst builds on previous cycles of 2013 and 2017 and also uses Elliot's wave theory. This method of technical analysis is based on the psychology of the masses and the cyclicality of the market. According to the theory, the fifth wave of growth is usually the largest. Then the trend changes for the opposite.
Jack Sparrow believes that the bitcoin rate can grow tenfold in the long run. As for Ethereum, it is now in the accumulation phase and is also preparing for growth. The rate of the second cryptocurrency may exceed $3,050 soon.

- Cryptocurrency was mined on the equipment of the Main Directorate of the Police of Poland (KGP), Gazeta Wyborcza reports. The mining was organized by an IT specialist of the department, who has already been fired. According to the newspaper, he will be followed by another employee.
Fears were caused by a possible leak of official data from police computers caused by illegal mining. However, the department denied this possibility: "The device used was not connected to any database, and the case is largely related to the theft of electricity."
Recall that this is not the only case of such use of service equipment. Mining was also done on hospital computers in Estonia, on the equipment of an airport in Italy. And engineers in the city of Sarov in Russia mined bitcoins on a supercomputer of a classified nuclear center. All of them were fined, and one of the ex-employees of the center was imprisoned.

- State Street, the second oldest U.S. bank with an investment portfolio of $3.1 trillion, plans to begin providing cryptocurrency-related services. It is about helping private funds to carry out transactions with digital assets, as well as to provide services for keeping records of such transactions. To this end, State Street has agreed to cooperate with Lukka, which has experience in assessing the value of digital assets based on the state of supply and demand. Such information will be useful for those private funds of the bank that are looking for optimal price levels to enter the cryptocurrency market.

- There is a theory that the movement of the price of bitcoin is based on changes in spot trading, and that the derivatives market also has a huge impact on the quotes of the main cryptocurrency.
Call contracts in the bitcoin derivatives market are associated with the demand for price increases, put contracts insure against falling prices. As of Aug. 1, the put/call ratio had fallen to an 8-month low. This ratio was so low for the last time in December 2020. Low put/call ratios indicate that bitcoin investors are supporting price increases. That need is now higher than what we saw in April, right before BTC soared to $60,000.
The probability index shows that there is a 30% chance that BTC will reach $46,000 soon. Moreover, according to the indicator readings, the overall probability that bitcoin will be worth between $50,000 and $55,000 is 28.3%.

- Michael Miebach, CEO of payment giant Mastercard said that cryptocurrencies must enter the banking sector. Moreover, he has publicly stated that his company will do everything possible to become an integral part of the crypto space. "Mastercard is ready to become an assistant for the authorities in this task. We are ready for experiments and testing of digital currencies, so that in the end banks begin to work with them," Miebach said.
The top manager added that Mastercard will allow 1 billion of its users to pay with digital assets in more than 30 countries around the world in 2021.
Recall that another payment giant, Visa, is already working on the integration of stablecoins into the global economy.

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The $100,000 Super Lottery was launched by the brokerage company NordFX among its clients on April 1. The name speaks for itself: 100 cash prizes of $500, $1,000, $2,500 and a super prize of $ 20,000 will be drawn by the year end.

It is quite easy to take part in the lottery and get a chance to win one or even several of these prizes. It is enough to have a Pro account in NordFX (and for those who do not have it - register and open a new one), top it up with $200 and... just trade.

Having made a trading turnover of only 2 lots in Forex currency pairs or gold (or 4 lots in silver), the trader will automatically receive a virtual lottery ticket. The number of lottery tickets for one participant is not limited. The more deposits and the greater the turnover, the more lottery tickets the participant will have, and the greater their chances of becoming a winner of the prize money.

Unlike trader contests, there is no need for a lottery participant to show exceptional trading results. In this case, both experienced professionals and beginners have equal chances of winning. And they can either use the received prize money in further trading, or take it out without any restrictions.

70 prizes of $500 each, 20 prizes of $1,000 each, 10 prizes of $2,500 and 1 super prize of $20,000 will be drawn. The draws will be held on October 1, 2021 and January 3, 2022. The first draw of the Super Lottery by brokerage NordFX took place on July 1, 2021. It was online, and anyone could follow the prize draw on the Internet. The video of the draw has been posted on the company's official YouTube channel.

For more details, visit the NordFX website
 

Notice: These materials are not investment recommendations or guidelines for working in financial markets and are intended for informational purposes only. Trading in financial markets is risky and can result in a complete loss of deposited funds.

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CryptoNews of the Week


- Mastercard, in collaboration with financial platforms Evolve Bank & Trust, Paxos and Circle, is launching a new program that will allow more banks and cryptocurrency companies to offer plastic and virtual cards to those wishing to “spend their digital assets wherever Mastercard is accepted”. This is stated in a press release by the company. It also noted that cryptocurrency providers are now having difficulty converting cryptocurrency into fiat. The new initiative will address this problem.

- Half of the fintech and cryptocurrency experts expect bitcoin to surpass fiat and national digital currencies by 2040. Finder.com reached such conclusions in their survey. Moreover, a third of them believe that the so-called "hyperbitcoinization" will come by 2035 or earlier. 
Optimists have not lost faith in the favorable prospects of the first cryptocurrency. They believe that El Salvador's acceptance of bitcoin as a means of payment will set an example for other emerging economies. However, the second half of those surveyed questioned bitcoin's ability to become the dominant asset in global finance.

 - Professional boxing legend Mike Tyson invited Twitter followers to choose between bitcoin and Ethereum. The discussion was joined by the head of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor, who said that he spent over a thousand hours thinking about this issue. He ended up choosing the first cryptocurrency. “I bought $2.9 billion worth of bitcoin because I consider it the future of digital ownership,” said the head of MicroStrategy.
Other representatives of the crypto industry joined the discussion. For example, OkeX Bitcoin exchange head Jay Hao responded with a meme with the text “You don't have to choose if you have both.”

- The Chinese cryptocurrency community has been recently actively discussing a video in which a roller is crushing a large number of ASIC miners. Some members of the community associated what was happening with the recent bans by the PRC authorities. Others have suggested that the action takes place in Latin America. However, it was later revealed that Malaysia's law enforcement agents destroyed the equipment. A local portal cited a statement from the Miri County Police Chief, according to whom 1,069 bitcoin miners worth $1.25 million were destroyed. The equipment was seized in six raids between February and April.

- Major bitcoin investor Tim Draper hasn't changed his optimism about cryptocurrency No.1, despite the sharp drop in its price. According to the billionaire, BTC's price will reach $250,000 by early 2023 at the latest. It is worth noting that Draper has previously managed to make accurate predictions. So, in 2014, he predicted that bitcoin would break the $10,000 level within three years.
Draper sees a whole set of financial functions in bitcoin, so he believes that this cryptocurrency will spread in countries with both developed and emerging economies.

- Data obtained by news site Finbold shows that the popularity of cryptocurrency applications for iOS and Android has grown 2.6 times over the year. They now dominate the top 50 asset management apps, surpassing similar stock trading programs in the USA. The number of downloads of applications for transactions with cryptocurrencies in the AppStore has already exceeded 18 million in 2021, in Google Play - 15 million.

- David Tice, co-founder of hedge fund Morand-Tice Capital Management, is confident that this is a "very dangerous period" for owning bitcoin and other financial assets. “The market is very overvalued in terms of future profits. Debt is growing at an unprecedented rate. The government bond market, where rates are falling sharply, is behaving very strangely,” he said in an interview with CNBC.
Tice has earned the reputation of being a bearish investor on bullish cycles. Thus, he sold his "bear" fund Prudent Bear Fund during the 2008 crisis. Now the financier is confident of the inevitability of a collapse in markets, although he acknowledges that accurately predicting the moment of the next major pullback is very difficult. He urges investors to weigh the risks as, in an attempt to earn 3-5% in the short term, they are threatening themselves with a 40% pullback. Especially, he believes, this is true for stocks of big tech companies such as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet.
The cryptocurrency investment is described by Tice as “very dangerous.” “We had a position on bitcoin when it was worth $10,000,” the investor admitted. - Nevertheless, when it went up to $60,000, we decided that this rate has outlived itself. Concerns from central banks and the Bank for International Settlements have grown strongly lately, with all of them giving strong negative comments. I think it's very dangerous to hold bitcoin today."
Tice himself is now betting on the rise in the price of precious metals and shares of companies from the mining sector.

- A crowdfunding campaign for a documentary about cryptocurrency Ethereum and its co-founder Vitalik Buterin raised $1,900,000 on the Mirror platform in just three days. The goal was to raise an amount of 750 ETH (about $1.37 million at the time of writing). However, 662 users donated 1,036 coins. The most generous of them will be credited. The film titled “Ethereum: The Infinite Garden,” is scheduled to premiere in winter 2023. Optimist studio is working on it.

- More than 200 people from about 20 countries have lost about $70 million due to scams related to the OEN cryptocurrency. According to The Standard, the scammers, posing as attractive Chinese women on dating sites, urged their fans to invest in this cryptocurrency through the Bitfex.pro and Bitfex.vip exchanges, which are currently no longer working.
The "girls", who were very difficult to refuse, deprived some especially gullible clients of almost all their funds. So, one client in love lost $100,900, and after he ran out of money, the "beauty" broke off relations with him.
Given that the IP addresses of the sites changed each time, the Hong Kong police admitted that the investigation was at an impasse, as the cybercriminals left no leads.

- According to data from BitinFoCharts, one of the bitcoin megakits controls about 144,000 coins in 18 wallets, each containing exactly 8,000 BTC. The total value of the coins is currently more than $4.3 billion. It bought a further 29,880 BTC for about $950 million last weekend of July 16-18, making it clear that big players continue to accumulate during the fall in the price of the main cryptocurrency.


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CryptoNews of the Week


- Increased regulatory oversight could benefit the cryptocurrency industry, said Jihan Wu, billionaire and co-founder of Bitmain. In his view, regulation “cuts out attackers” and improves the industry's reputation in a rapid growth environment.
He also suggested that more active interaction of representatives of the cryptocurrency industry with the authorities could bring positive results as well. The billionaire cited Singapore, where one of his companies is based, as an example. According to Wu, the government of this country is taking a “reasonable” stance on digital assets, allowing Singapore to become a “hub for crypto innovation”.

- Bitcoin ransomware received more than $33 million in cryptocurrency in 2021, according to Ransomwhere data. 2This cybersecurity-focused service collects ransomware attacks and tracks payments from affected users to ransomware. 
According to Ransomwhere, REvil (Sodinokibi) from the eponymous hacker group has become the largest ransomware in 2021. Its victims paid the extortionists over $11.3 million. In second place is Netwalker (Mailto), whose developers have received more than $5.7 million. The amount of cumulative damage could grow significantly if the REvil group receives the $70 million they demanded from victims in early July.

- Galaxy Digital cryptobank founder Mike Novogratz said in a commentary on CNBC that the US cryptocurrency community has taken a leading position in the bear market, whose origins lie in Asia. “We see Asia selling it [bitcoin] and the US buying it back. China has declared war on the crypto industry as part of the broader Cold War we are getting into."
Earlier, Novogratz called the exodus of miners from China a “big plus,” and said that the PRC's repressive policies would not prevent the development of the crypto industry.

- Albany Engineering Corp's hydroelectric plant, located in New York, USA, provides a profit margin on bitcoin mining three times higher than on the sale of energy. The hydroelectric power station was built in 1897, almost 125 years ago, and it is one of the oldest operating renewable energy facilities.
According to the top managers of the plant, a years-long litigation with the distribution network regarding tariffs has forced the company to consider alternative sources of revenue. True, the management doubts the long-term potential of the cryptocurrency, so translates coins into dollars immediately as they come in.

- As a result of an operation carried out by the New Zealand police, attackers... stole $45,000 worth of cryptocurrency from its bitcoin wallet. According to the New Zealand Herald, law enforcement officers conducted an online investigation into money laundering but fell victim to cyber scams themselves as a result.
The cryptocurrency was acquired in 2020 and was intended for “controlled purchasing”. But something went wrong, and the police lost control over the course of this special operation. Two internal investigations have been conducted into the theft, but no breaches of standard procedures have been identified. 

- Legendary investor Bill Miller, in an interview with Market Insider, called bitcoin the best asset for protecting against inflation. The main cryptocurrency emerged in response to the 2008 crisis to be free from government control and manipulation, Miller explained. Also, the investor agrees with the view that bitcoin is digital gold because it is more convenient to use than any precious metal. As for the high volatility of digital assets, Miller believes this is the price that needs to be paid for the benefits. 
Bill Miller's Miller Value Partners fund became one of the best in hedge fund history in 2019, with a return of 119%. The investor started purchasing bitcoins a few years ago, when they cost $300 per coin. Much of the fund's capital was earned from the growth in the value of the first cryptocurrency.

- On July 12, two transactions were recorded to transfer 740 bitcoins, which were motionless on the wallet of a certain holder since May 2012. It was reported by analytical service Whale Alert. Nine years ago, the value of these coins was $3.7k. (at $5 per BTC), and $26.1 million at the time of the transaction. That is, the value of digital coins has increased 7000 times over 9 years.
A similar move was recorded in February 2021. Then a large bitcoin holder transferred 100 coins to other addresses, which had been in his wallet without moving since June 2010. Their total cost was only about $8, and it reached $5 million at the time of the transaction: the price increased 622,000 times over 11 years.

- Bitcoin is ready for a major price movement, says analyst Will Clemente. He published a chart in his Twitter (136 thousand subscribers) with an indicator, which speaks of a possible imminent exit of the price of the first cryptocurrency from a narrow range.
As to the direction of the bitcoin rate, Clemente wrote that he was optimistic. According to the analyst, the market is now in the accumulation stage, and large players continue to actively buy the first cryptocurrency. "Whale" stocks increased by 65,429 BTC just last week. According to Clemente, there may be a shortage of supply of the main cryptocurrency in the near future, since large players often acquire assets for long-term purposes.
Clemente also stressed that the growth in the number of cryptocurrency users continues. Whereas their number usually decreases after the peak in prices. And this is also an argument in favor of the upcoming growth of BTC.

- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak called bitcoin "the most amazing mathematical miracle," according to El Sol de Mexico. He also believes that the flagship cryptocurrency is more expensive than gold, since its emission is limited.
Wozniak has been a staunch supporter of bitcoin for years. He even stated in June 2018 that he sees BTC as the single world currency and believes in its longevity. However, the 70-year-old tech entrepreneur himself does not personally invest in bitcoin, and launched his own crypto project called Efforce a few months ago.

- Bitcoin has reached a level where it can resume the rally. This opinion is shared by Bloomberg analyst Mike McGlone. According to him, the cryptocurrency is ready to resume growth towards $100,000. "Bitcoin is poised to return to a bullish trend in the second half of the year, and crude oil is ready to resume a bearish trend," McGlone wrote on Twitter.
The expert is confident that the growth of the cryptocurrency will "have serious macroeconomic consequences" this time. It is worth noting, however, that this is not the first time McGlone predicts a sharp rise in digital assets. For example, he announced in early February that the volatility of bitcoin can increase the gap between its price and gold "hundreds of times."

- According to Reuters, the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (South Korea) uses... faeces to generate electricity. Students are paid Ggool digital currency for each toilet visit.
One of the professors of the institute developed an environmentally friendly toilet BeeVi. It is connected to a laboratory that uses excreta to produce biogas. According to the scientist's calculations, a person produces about 500 grams of feces every day, which can be converted into 50 liters of methane. This amount of gas generates 0.5 kW of electricity, which is equal to the cost of a car to cover a distance of 1.2 km.
The science Initiative brings students up to 10 Ggool per day. The coin is accepted as payment in shops on campus. And the energy produced with the help of students powers a number of devices on the territory of the institute, including a boiler.

- British IT engineer James Howells threw a 7.5K BTC hard drive into the trash eight years ago, messing it up with another device. He then asked local authorities for permission to excavate a local dump to find his property, but was refused. Now Howells came up with a new search plan.
According to his calculations, he will need at least 12 months for the operation. This will be a "large-scale search," the engineer claims, which will not use "buckets and shovels" but the most modern technology. “We have a system with multiple conveyor belts, X-ray scanners and artificial intelligence that is trained to recognize objects that are similar in size and density to a hard drive,” Howells explained.
All of this will require a lot of financial investment, but one of the hedge funds has promised to cover all equipment costs in exchange for a share of bitcoins that can be found in the landfill. It is expected that the researchers will have to sort through 300-400 thousand tons of waste. The cost of 7,500 BTC is about $246,000,000 at the time of this writing.


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CryptoNews of the Week


- CNBC conducted a Wall Street survey of nearly 100 investment directors, financial strategists and portfolio managers. 44% of them believe that bitcoin will close 2021 with a price below $30,000. 25% of respondents believe that the rate of the first cryptocurrency at that time will reach $40,000. A similar proportion of respondents chose the $50,000 level, with only 6% predicting a rise to $60,000.
Discussing the results, the channel's hosts agreed with the short-term outlook in general, noting that even $30,000 for the end of the year would alleviate many of the concerns of market participants by setting a long-term bottom.

- More than a thousand companies were affected by the cyberattack on the American software developer Kaseya. The operators of the REvil ransomware virus, who are being linked to Russia, are allegedly behind the hack. The company initially said that only a small group of its customers were affected by the hackers' actions, but the scale of those affected by the attack was increasing as the investigation progressed.
Cybersecurity experts assumed immediately that the hacker group REvil was behind the attack. Huntress Labs later discovered a $70 million ransom demand in bitcoin on a darknet hacker site for decrypting the files of all victims.
REvil (also known as Sodinokibi) is often associated with Russia due to the fact that they do not attack Russian organizations or enterprises in the countries of the former USSR and often publish messages in Russian.

- JP Morgan Bank analyst Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said in an interview with CNBC that investors have begun to shift funds from other digital assets to bitcoin over the past few weeks. This reversed the trend that began in April, when there was a large inflow of funds into altcoins. "The flow of funds, even to Ethereum, has noticeably decreased over the past two to three weeks, while the outflow of funds from bitcoins has slowed down." This could mean that the bear market for bitcoin is likely coming to an end.
JP Morgan believes that the value of bitcoin itself is more important for institutional investors than its volatility. And further integration of the world of institutional companies into bitcoin will lead to a “normalization” of cryptocurrency No.1 volatility, according to Panigirtsoglou.

- The Crypto Head cryptocurrency platform rated the United States as the country most prepared for the massive introduction of digital assets. When compiling a ranking of 76 countries, the platform's specialists took into account: number of thematic Google searches, number of cryptocurrency ATMs installed, the level of legalization of cryptocurrencies by tax and financial laws.
The USA received a score of 7.13 points out of possible 10. Cyprus and Singapore are next in the ranking with 6.47 and 6.3 respectively. Rounding out the top five are Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.

- Brazil's Federal Police liquidated Bitcoin Banco Group, whose damage for 7,000 citizens exceeded $300 million. Its leader, Claudio Oliveira, known as the "King of Bitcoin", has been arrested.
During the 2017 bull market, the Bitcoin Banco Group promised clients “incredible profits”. In late 2019, the firm reported the disappearance of 7000 BTC and filed for court recovery. This document involves signing an agreement with the authorities to reorganize activities to avoid bankruptcy. However, the investigation, which lasted three years, revealed that employees of the organization had been systematically transferring client funds into Oliveira's personal accounts.

- Bitcoin.org, a popular information resource, allegedly created by Satoshi Nakamoto himself, underwent an "absolutely massive DDoS attack." The hackers who attacked the site are known to have demanded a ransom in bitcoins. Now Bitcoin.org is already operating normally. However, it is not known how the site operator reacted to the blackmail, or whether it paid the ransom to cyber criminals.

- Popular cryptanalyst PlanB (609,000 subscribers) outlined the worst scenario of the main cryptocurrency movement. Using a stock-to-flow ratio (S2F) model, he concluded that the next six months would either prove that the model worked for bitcoin, or it would prove it useless.
S2F has traditionally been applied to commodities such as gold and silver. PlanB used it to predict if bitcoin could surpass the $288,000 level. And now he has reported that BTC's bearish price move defies his calculations. According to PlanB, the worst-case scenario for bitcoin in July is closing the month at $28,000. In August, this is where the worst-case closing scenario could be $47,000. According to him, the next six months will determine whether or not BTC will actually hit the six-digit range by the end of the bull race.

- Morning Brew invited subscribers to share professional fears via Twitter. The answers had to be only four words. "Elon Musk tweeted something," - this is the fear of crypto investors, described by manager Devin Marty, hinting that the statements of the billionaire have a strong impact on the quotes of digital assets. These four words have received the most likes. At the same time, some users felt that if messages on Twitter increase the volatility of an asset, then this asset cannot be considered "serious".
The fact that Elon Musk's remarks can move the market is confirmed by a survey conducted by Investing.com. According to its results, one in five respondents who sold bitcoin in May 2021 associated this decision with Musk's criticism of the cryptocurrency.

- US Senator Cynthia Lummis wants Americans to use cryptocurrency to diversify their retirement savings. Ms. Legislator is concerned about 100%-dollar retirement plans and encourages people to use bitcoins to avoid "keeping all their eggs in one basket." Cynthia Lummis herself now has about 5 BTC and when she bought the cryptocurrency for the first time, the price was $330.
The senator suggested that US pension funds also diversify their long-term portfolios with bitcoin, calling it a "good store of value." Although she personally prefers BTC, she believes that Ethereum is also a promising project.

- A number of analysts have interpreted the current situation in the bitcoin market as a phase of accumulation according to the Wyckoff method, which means that the current low of $28,800 is the minimum of the correction (“Spring”), and a stepwise increase should be expected in the future.
Wyckoff's scheme will be confirmed if bitcoin fixes above the $36,000 resistance. In addition, some experts attach particular importance to overcoming the downtrend of the Relative Strength Index (RSI) on the daily chart.
Michael van de Poppe, trader of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, also praised the developments in the crypto market. He noted that the consolidation continues and urged traders to be patient and wait for a breakout from the current price range. It is quite obvious that the famous trader expects a break up.

- Michael Novogratz, founder of the Galaxy Digital cryptocurrency bank, believes in the potential of Ethereum. He stated in a recent interview that this altcoin is capable of overshadowing bitcoin. Although BTC has become popular as a store of value, the ETH platform has the potential to become the foundation for the upcoming Web 3.0. However, there is one issue: Ethereum is facing stiff competition from Solana, Terra and other ecosystems in this direction.
As for the clients of his own bank, Novogratz sees that there is no real worries about the collapse of the crypto industry, as investors understand that changes in the financial world are just beginning.

- Insiders are reporting that the George Soros Foundation, formerly known as the adversary of cryptocurrencies, will enter this market. New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), the billionaire-sponsored institutional investor platform, has previously announced it is opening up access to cryptocurrency to clients of hundreds of US banks. And now the media, citing two insider sources, are spreading information that Dawn Fitzpatrick, the investment director of Soros Fund Management, after studying the market, allowed managers to trade cryptocurrency. Fitzpatrick's team also intends to invest in companies working with blockchain technology. However, there has been no official statement on this matter yet.


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- "The cryptocurrency market is not yet completely healthy, however, the healing process has already begun." This conclusion was reached by JPMorgan analysts in their new report, Bloomberg writes. Although bitcoin is still far from highs, cryptocurrencies are gradually recovering from the collapse.
For example, the lack of activity in the bitcoin futures market was described by JPMorgan strategists as a “positive factor.” However, the short-term outlook, in their opinion, is "extremely difficult." Analysts also believe that there are still "submarine positions" in the market, that the market should get rid of. However, it is unclear from the report what level bitcoin should reach for full “healing.”

- Former CEO of Gyft and co-founder of the Civic project, Vinnie Lingham, was once nicknamed the "oracle" because he was able to predict the future value of the oldest cryptocurrency.
Lingham's predictions for BTC are not always optimistic, and his calls are traditionally more conservative than those of people with fantastic ideas. However, like many others, he believes there is a possibility that BTC could hit six figures as early as this year. Oracle wrote in his Twitter account that if the price continues to hold at $30,000, then we will probably see bitcoin at $100,000 by the end of the year.

- Owners of small hydropower plants in China are forced to sell equipment due to government restrictive measures against bitcoin miners. These are small hydroelectric power plants generating about 50 MW, some of which are located in the Sichuan province. Local authorities demanded a halt to the activities of “key” miners until June 20 and banned energy companies from supplying power to them.

- The President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a law providing for the introduction of additional mining fees. The National Association of Blockchain and Data Center Industry of Kazakhstan said the decision will “very negatively affect the investment attractiveness of the industry.” According to the president of the association, miners from China, who see Kazakhstan as a possible jurisdiction for migration, are also “embarrassed by this initiative.”
As for the authorities, they see no “critical consequences” from the adoption of the law. In their view, the introduction of an additional electricity charge when mining cryptocurrencies will allow "to bring out of the shadow those miners who are now in the grey zone." 

- Former Cramer & Co hedge fund manager and host of the Mad Money show on CNBC Jim Cramer cut his positions at Ethereum in May, after the coin hit the historic high at $4,350. And now he has again increased his savings in the second most capitalized cryptocurrency. Surprisingly, it was the positive dynamics of... bitcoin that pushed him to buy Ethereum. “I went back to Ethereum because bitcoin held above $30,000,” he claimed. And he added, "I love Ethereum because people are really using it a lot more."

- Billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who is one of the top three richest people in Mexico according to Forbes, said that when choosing an asset for the next 30 years, “would I never choose the stinking fiat”, and preferred bitcoin.
“Fiat is a fraud,” Pliego stated. “See: I started my career in 1981. The Mexican peso was then quoted against the dollar at a rate of 20 to 1. But after 10 years, the rate became 20,000 to 1. And that's just in Mexico. But look at Venezuela, Argentina or Zimbabwe. The numbers have grown so much that this has led to a violation of all proportions. Therefore, no pesos, no paper money!"
Salinas believes that bitcoin should be part of every investor's portfolio. 'It's an asset that has international value and is trading with incredible liquidity globally. That's enough for it to be part of every portfolio, period." 
The key advantage of bitcoin, according to the billionaire, is its limited emission. For the same reason, he does not believe in Ethereum, explaining that unlimited emission leads to the depreciation of existing assets.

- One of the markets where the competition between bitcoin and gold is most pronounced is India - a country where people used to traditionally invest in the precious metal. It is believed that Indian households own more than 25,000 tons of gold, although bitcoin has recently entered the country as well. According to the analytical service Chainalysis, investments in cryptocurrency in the country have grown from about $200 million to almost $40 billion in the last year alone, which means an increase of 20,000%. This is despite numerous efforts by the country's government and central bank to prevent, if not totally ban, investment in cryptocurrencies.
There are now more than 15 million crypto investors in the country, which is less than 23 million in the US, but more than 2.3 million in the UK. However, for a country with a population of over 1.3 billion people, the share of those involved in cryptocurrency transactions is still very low: 1.15%.
Of the 15 million named, the largest proportion are millennials under 35, who are less attracted to gold than previous generations, according to the World Gold Council. 

- Veteran of the crypto market and one of the largest BTC holders, 41-year-old Mircea Popescu died in Costa Rica. He was also known as a blogger and self-proclaimed "greatest erotic writer in the world."
According to local media reports, Popescu was carried off by a current near the Tramonto Hotel when he went to swim in a prohibited place. His body was found on the beach on the morning of June 23. A medical team arrived at the scene, but resuscitation measures did not bring results. 
Remembering Popescu, members of the crypto community call him "the evil genius of bitcoin maximalism", "the father of toxicity around bitcoin" and "sleeping giant". He was one of bitcoin's most conservative supporters and objected to any changes to the cryptocurrency protocol. “The guy had enough bitcoins to do whatever he wanted in life. Popescu could drop bitcoin almost to zero at one moment and hold the price for some time. He aroused little sympathy but laid the foundations for what we have today."
Some believe that by naming 1 million coins, Popescu exaggerated the number of bitcoins at his disposal. The real figure could be between 50,000 and 300,000 BTC. However, it made him one of the largest cryptocurrency holders in the world. Now this huge number of bitcoins has disappeared, apparently forever.

- Paraguay could become the next country after El Salvador to recognize bitcoin as legal tender. The corresponding bill will be presented in the country's parliament on July 14. According to a representative of the Congress, the initiative has already found support among "a number of very important enterprises in Paraguay."
On June 22, Paraguay's Universidad Americana University announced that it will accept Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple as tuition fees from August 2021.

- Jason Urban, Co-Head of Trading at Galaxy Digital, noted that negative news should exhaust itself by autumn, and bitcoin will continue its upward movement. He believes quotes could reach $70,000 by the end of this year. “We will soon see an update to the historical high,” he declared.
Urban believes that many institutional investors have not yet entered the crypto market due to regulatory uncertainty, however, they will sooner or later, creating an increased demand for BTC.

- Sam Trabucco, a trader at Alameda Research, also believes that the bitcoin market is already preparing for an upswing. In his opinion, a few negative news that have been released recently have no fundamental value and is only aimed at creating short-term negative sentiments.
Trabucco writes that negative news from China, Elon Musk's concerns about the environmental friendliness of bitcoin and the likely insolvency of MicroStrategy associated with the fall in BTC are causing an overly negative reaction. Previously, the price reacted in the same way to the Tesla purchase for BTC and Musk's optimistic messages. “But none of this news in any way affects the value of bitcoin and how people should evaluate it in the medium term,” the expert said.
Trabucco also added that it was all exacerbated by a bloated derivatives market and massive liquidations of positions. “No one wanted to sell at $30,000, however many were forced to do so. This means that the $30,000 price should be taken as a buy signal,” he said.


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- Sotheby's auction house, founded in 1744, will auction a rare diamond in Hong Kong. The lot has been estimated at $10-$15 million. The bets are planned to be accepted in the traditional currency, bitcoins or Ethereum. Bidding will start on July 9. Before that, the 101.38-carat pear-shaped diamond will be exhibited at Sotheby's Gallery in Hong Kong.
“This is truly a symbolic moment,” the auction house said in a statement. “The most ancient and symbolic value denominator can be purchased for the first time with the latest universal currency of humanity.”

- According to Reuters, China's authorities have once again caused panic in the cryptocurrency market. The People's Bank of China has reportedly urged banks to immediately close payment gateways for customers who trade in digital assets. The crypto market reacted immediately to this news with a drop to $1.164 trillion. Thus, in just seven days, from June 15 to 22, the market has shrunk by more than 33%.
Along with the fall of the crypto market, the hash rate of the bitcoin network also falls. At the time of writing, it has shrunk to 91 exahash per sec. Note that the last time the network recorded such values was back in November 2020. However, according to a number of experts, this reduction in the hash rate may be due to the relocation of miners from China to other countries.

- Amid the Chinese government's crackdown on the crypto industry, a logistics company in Guangzhou announced it was transporting a large batch of bitcoin mining equipment to the United States. According to CNBC, the cargo weighing 3,000 kg will be delivered to Maryland by air. 
Earlier, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez talked about plans to attract Chinese miners to the city, giving them access to nuclear energy. He stressed that he had not received specific proposals, but he was sure that cheap electricity would be of interest to industry representatives.

- Michael Burry, an investor and founder of hedge fund Scion Capital, who predicted the 2007 mortgage crisis, warned subscribers about the collapse of the cryptocurrency market. However, then this tweet was deleted. "All the hype and speculation is just attracting retail traders before the mother of all the crashes. Parabolic [uptrends] will not pass. [...] History has not changed,” Burry wrote.
The investor also noted that the problem of the digital asset market lies in too much leverage. “If you don’t know how much leverage is in cryptocurrencies, you don’t know anything about cryptocurrencies,” he stressed.
Burry had earlier warned that the market had inflated "the biggest bubble in history." In his post, he used the hashtag FlyingPigs360, which, according to Business Insider, may be a reference to the adage about investment: "Bulls make money, bears make money, but pigs get slaughtered." 

- Bestselling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad and entrepreneur Robert Kiyosaki has also predicted the collapse of the crypto market. “The biggest bubble in world history is getting bigger. The biggest crash in world history is approaching. Buy more gold and silver. Expect bitcoin to drop to $24,000,” he wrote.
Recall that in 2020, Kiyosaki advised buying the first cryptocurrency until its price exceeded $20,000 and predicted the growth of the asset to $50,000.

- Business intelligence and software provider MicroStrategy has done it again: it has bought over 13,000 bitcoins. Michael Saylor's firm is now the largest corporate investor in digital assets. It owns 105,085 BTC, which is 0.5% of all bitcoins that ever existed and 0.56% of all tokens currently in circulation.
The company made the purchase after it raised $500 million through the placement of high-priority securities. As Saylor wrote on Twitter, 13,005 coins were bought for just under $500 million at an average price of $37,617. In total, the businessman has invested over $2.7 billion in bitcoins, and the average purchase price was $26,080, which allows the company to remain in the black for now.
Note that on the back of the latest drop in the crypto market, MicroStrategy shares are down 7.8%.

- Popular analyst PlanB has described a potentially bearish scenario for bitcoin this year. As usual, he relies on a stock-to-flow ratio (S2F) model. PlanB emphasizes that the current price pattern is consistent with a bearish scenario, however he is confident that bitcoin will hit its all-time high by October. And the price will reach $135,000 by the end of the year.
“Bitcoin fell below $34,000 due to Elon Musk's tweet about the unsustainability of bitcoin, as well as due to the panic caused by the Chinese repression against miners,” he tweeted. “However, there are more fundamental reasons for the June decline. Perhaps they will spread to July. My worst-case scenario for 2021 (based on on-chain analysis): August> $47,000, September> $43,000, October> $63,000, November> $98,000, December> $135,000." The most optimistic scenario assumes an increase in BTC to $450,000.

- Russian billionaire co-owner of the aluminum giant En+ Group Oleg Deripaska accused the Bank of Russia of tight regulation of digital assets. In his opinion, the central bank discourages citizens from getting involved in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. He suggested that the country should add the main cryptocurrency as a means of payment.
In addition, the oligarch pointed to the need for Russia to effectively conclude business deals with the rest of the world and called on the central bank to adopt "a real financial instrument that ensures independence in foreign trade settlements." “Even poor El Salvador realized the need for digital currencies and took the simple path of accepting bitcoin as a means of payment,” Deripaska said.

- Former Cramer & Co hedge fund manager and host of CNBC's Mad Money show Jim Cramer sold most of his bitcoins following news of China's mining restrictions. Cramer said there were structural problems in digital gold and predicted a further decline in its price. "When China pursues something, they tend to bring the matter to an end. This is not a democracy. This is a dictatorship. I think they see bitcoin as a direct threat to the regime because of what it is - the system is beyond their control.”
Cramer also said that a decrease in the rate of mined coins could have a positive effect on the rate of the first cryptocurrency, but this did not happen. “When mining is limited, bitcoin obviously has to go up, unless holders are going out all over the place,” he explained.
The Mad Money presenter added that the drop in Bitcoin to $30,000 could be an entry point for new investors. However, the presenter himself does not intend to buy cryptocurrency.

- The founder of the Point72 Asset Management Fund Steve Cohen, unlike Jim Cramer, on the contrary, reformatted completely to cryptocurrency. Cohen, whose net worth is estimated at $14 billion, said that he does not care about the current price of bitcoin, as he is still an early investor:
“Now I definitely won't miss anything. I missed the first part, but I still feel that I got involved quite early,” says the billionaire.

- IOHK CEO, Cardano founder and Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson has no doubts that ETH will beat BTC. 
“The problem with bitcoin is that it's too slow - it's like programming for mainframes of the past, compared to building applications now. The only reason bitcoin still exists is because there is a huge amount of money invested in its support. " “Bitcoin is our worst enemy. It has a huge network, a well-known name and the support of regulators. But you cannot change its system, even if you fix the most problematic places, ” - said Hoskinson. He also commented on the bitcoin community, calling it "too ossified" and reluctant to innovate.

- Tesla founder Elon Musk should better study the mining of the first cryptocurrency, since in reality it is much more environmentally friendly than is commonly thought. “I don’t know how long Elon has been studying mining, but I hope he does a little more research on this topic,” said Kraken CEO Jesse Powell in an interview with Bloomberg. He acknowledged that there may be greener alternatives to bitcoin. But, in his opinion, people overestimate the harm of cryptocurrency to the environment.
Mining digital gold allows a lot of excess and wasted energy to be utilized, and also contributes to the development of the renewable energy sector, Powell said.


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- According to Coingecko, bitcoin is up 12% on the back of another tweet by Elon Musk. Tesla's owner said the company will resume selling electric cars for BTC when at least half of the miners switch to renewable energy.
The tweet was a response to criticism from Magda Wierzycka, the head of Sygnia finance company. She said in the podcast The Money Show the Tesla founder was manipulating the price of the first cryptocurrency. In her view, the billionaire raised the price of digital gold deliberately and eliminated much of his position at highs. Sygnia's CEO emphasized that if Musk's tweets were about any public company, he would have already been targeted by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Musk called the words of the head of Sygnia inaccurate and recalled that the electric car manufacturer sold only 10% of its bitcoins to test the liquidity of the market.

- Venture capitalist and billionaire Tim Draper predicted in 2018 the growth of the first cryptocurrency to $250,000 by 2022 and called the blockchain one of the most outstanding inventions in human history. And he has confirmed his forecast now, albeit with some timing prolongation. Bitcoin will hit the $250,000 mark by the end of 2022 or early 2023, according to his latest statement, despite the sharp price fluctuations.
The reasons for the growth, which the billionaire named, are still the same: the limited emission of coins and the growing demand for digital gold. “Give it [bitcoin] about a year and a half and all retailers will use OpenNode,” the investor said. As a reminder, OpenNode is a bitcoin payment processor created by a group of enthusiasts, in the development of which Tim Draper invested $1.25 mln.

- Tunisian Finance Minister Ali Kuli announced the need to change the country's legislation to “decriminalize” ownership of the first cryptocurrency. He said the occasion was reports of the arrest of a 17-year-old for using digital assets.
Local media reported in May that Tunisian law enforcement had allegedly accused the young man of money laundering. The incident sparked outrage in the cryptocurrency community: some of its participants expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of clarity in the regulation of the industry.

- Tudor Investment hedge fund trader and founder Paul Tudor Jones said in an interview with CNBC that he would channel 5% of his capital into bitcoin. He is convinced that the first cryptocurrency contributes to the diversification of the investment portfolio through “embedded mathematics.”
The billionaire currently reserves 5% each for gold, bitcoin, exchange contracts and cash. It will determine the scenario for placing the remaining 80% funds after analyzing the outcome of the June 16 meeting of the US Fed. The investor hinted that he could increase the share of "inflationary" instruments if the monetary authorities ignore the recent surge in consumer prices. In his view, it was of a “very significant” character.
“For me, the first cryptocurrency is just a way to look fundamentally at how I protect my wealth over time. This is a great opportunity for diversification, for preserving capital, the billionaire explained. "If they [the Fed] say, "We are on the trajectory [of a temporary increase in inflation], everything is fine," then I’ll go all-in.” 

- El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele proposed a "bitcoin law" to parliament last week. Cryptocurrency is recognized as legal tender and companies are required to accept BTC as payment, unless they are located in rural areas with no internet access. In addition, bitcoin trading is exempt from capital gains taxes.
And now Bukele has come up with another initiative. He instructed the head of state-owned electricity company LaGeo to develop a plan to mine Bitcoin using volcanic energy. “Very cheap, 100% clean, 100% renewable energy with zero emissions. We will try to get things done quickly,” the head of state wrote on Twitter.
There are over 20 volcanoes in El Salvador, some of which are active. LaGeo is now using volcanoes to generate geothermal energy. And, for example, Genesis Mining in Iceland uses underground heat to generate electricity. 

- According to the regular Millionaire Survey, 47% of wealthy millennials in the USA buy crypto assets. At the same time, 35% of them hold more than half of their investment portfolio in digital assets.
Millennials have shown greater interest in cryptocurrencies than owners of large fortunes overall. Those were only about 17%. Moreover, only every tenth of them invested more than 10% of their capital in digital assets.

- Banks in Texas (USA) have been authorized to accept and store customers' bitcoins, as well as handle their cryptocurrency transactions. Lending organizations also received the rights from the state authorities to collaborate with startups developing various services for digital assets.
It should be noted that of all American states, Texas was one of the first, as early as 2019, to move on the path to legislate this market. 

- The Netherlands should immediately impose a blanket ban on mining and bitcoin operations, Pieter Hasekamp, director of the Economic Analysis Bureau at the country's Ministry of Economy, said.
The official listed a number of reasons why the authorities need to recognize the first cryptocurrency as illegal. In his view, digital gold has no intrinsic value, and the coin itself does not perform any of the three functions of money: the unit of accounting, the means of payment and the means of accumulation.
Hasekamp mentioned security issues, fraud risks and added that digital assets are used in criminal activities. At the same time, he considers the collapse of the crypto market inevitable.

- According to the New Indian Express, India's hostile stance on bitcoin is changing to a more loyal one. The authorities now intend not to ban but regulate the crypto sphere. India wants to create an alternative asset class that will include digital currencies. The regulatory framework will be created by the Securities and Exchange Council in partnership with the Ministry of Finance.


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- Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk received a video allegedly from the Anonymous hacker group. It says that his tweets regarding cryptocurrency ruined the lives of ordinary working people, their dreams collapsed due to Musk's public tantrums.
The man in the video, in the group's familiar Guy Fawkes mask, changed his voice and called the billionaire a Bond villain who pretends to be a visionary, but in fact is a narcissistic rich man desperately in need of attention.
The video indicates that Musk abandoned bitcoin only because he feared Tesla would lose subsidies from the state. And the hackers called Musk's recent initiative to create a Council of Bitcoin Miners an attempt to take control of the industry.
The video, which has already garnered about 2 million views, ends with a challenge: “You consider yourself the smartest, but this time you will play against an equal opponent. We are Anonymous! We are legion! Wait for us".

- Goldman Sachs bank experts have downgraded the "rating" of bitcoin from "gold" to "copper". According to them, it is still difficult to put the main coin on a par with gold, since it does not have such a powerful support as this precious metal. Commodities expert Jeff Curry explained that the volatility of the main coin is very similar in nature to the price swings of copper in the global market.
Previously, a similar point of view was voiced by JPMorgan experts. According to them, the main cryptocurrency is a cyclical commodity, and therefore cannot compete with precious metals or fiat. Investment companies are well aware of this, which is why they have portfolios that only consist of a few percent of bitcoin and other digital assets.

- The opposite point of view to bankers was expressed by the CEO of the crypto exchange Gemini and bitcoin billionaire Tyler Winklevoss. He believes that bitcoin is still in its early stages of development. “Bitcoin is Gold 2.0,” Winklevoss said, “and its market cap should be over $10 trillion, just like gold. It is currently at the level of $1 trillion, that is, growth may be at least 10 times more. "
In his opinion, even a rate of about $35,000 is an excellent opportunity to enter a long-term investment. With a capitalization of $10 trillion, 1 BTC will be worth $500,000, and this may happen within the current decade, or maybe within the next 5 years.
“We will hodl to at least $500,000, and even then, we will not have to sell the asset, because it can be lent, used as collateral, etc.,” the billionaire added. And then he flew into space in his fantasies, claiming that bitcoin could be used for transactions between planets in the future: “Bitcoin is a project that continues to evolve and can achieve much more. It could become the global reserve digital currency of the world or even several planets when we get to Mars. "

- The MIT students who participated in the bitcoin research spent the cryptocurrency they had been given on textbooks and food. As Bloomberg calculated, they missed ... 13,000% of their profits.
In 2014, Bitcoin Core developer Jeremy Rubin and Nascent co-founder Dan Elitzer, while students at the university, launched the MIT Bitcoin Project. Each project participant received $100 in the first cryptocurrency (0.3 BTC at the exchange rate at that time) in order to create an ecosystem of digital currencies on campus.
More than 3,100 students joined the study. Every tenth student got rid of cryptocurrency in the first two weeks, and by mid-2017, every fourth student had converted it to fiat and used it for purchases and other expenses. The participants in the experiment spent digital gold mainly in the campus bookstore. They also bought beer and ordered food.
The rest kept the coins in their wallets, expecting further growth in their value. One of the project participants said that she wanted to spend bitcoins on a T-shirt that cost $35, but abandoned her idea, and did the right thing: the price of these coins exceeds $4,000 now.

- Billionaire Mark Lasry, founder of Avenue Capital Management, said bitcoin's explosive growth in 2021 has exceeded his expectations. He also expressed regret that he had not invested enough in the first cryptocurrency.
Commenting on his previous forecast regarding the rise in the price of the coin to $40,000, the investor noted that the cryptocurrency market has already formed, and nothing threatens it. “If a market is created, it does not disappear anywhere. For this reason, I became interested in bitcoin. I thought that with the arrival of institutional investors, the price would start to rise,” he added.
At the same time, Lasry stressed that any movement of digital gold can be explained: “To be honest, I do not know where bitcoin is going. I can justify why it will rise to $100,000, but I can also justify why it will fall to $20,000."

- Analytical software provider MicroStrategy Inc. announced a $400 million convertible bond offering maturing in 2028. Accredited investors will become buyers of securities. The company will use the funds raised from the placement to buy bitcoins.
According to Bitcoin Treasuries, MicroStrategy currently owns 92,079 BTC worth over $3.37 billion so far.

- Against the background of the market correction, bitcoin whales have increased their positions, and large Ethereum wallets continue to hold assets. Analysts of Santiment came to such conclusions.
According to the company, the number of bitcoin addresses with balances from 100 BTC to 10,000 BTC has been growing steadily for two and a half weeks. “It seems that whales are buying confidently on the fall,” the experts concluded.
As for the addresses holding 1,000-100,000 ETH, their number practically does not change during the period when the asset fluctuates in the range of $2,000- $2,500. “This group of investors is still holding on to the huge number of tokens that they have been accumulating at a rapid pace since last October,” the experts note.
The NVT indicator (a tool for identifying bubbles in the cryptocurrency market) indicates the continued bearish sentiment for the first cryptocurrency. The NVT confirms investor bearish sentiment for Ethereum as well, for the first time since April 2020.

- The American company Progressive Care began accepting bitcoin as payment for rapid tests for COVID-19. The service is available in PharmcoRx pharmacies, and one can pay for tests through a QR code.
The company stressed that they believe in the future of the blockchain and want to provide an opportunity for testing for coronavirus "to those who have an alternative view of payment systems." 

- The Kalashnikov Concern, which produces the well-known AK-47 machine, would like to abandon the international payment system SWIFT and switch to using digital currencies. Such an unexpected statement was made by a rock singer, former Deputy Minister of Transport of Russia, and now the owner of the concern, Alan Lushnikov. “We really need it,” he said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF)
According to him, this alternative system is not tied to SWIFT and is not controlled by banks. For this reason, the company is less interested in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).


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