Archive for the ‘Bitcoin’ Category

The price of Bitcoin and Ethereum – The Cryptonomist

In the early days of October, the price of ETH (Ethereum) has suffered more than that of BTC (Bitcoin). In particular, while Bitcoin has held up quite well, Ethereum, on the other hand, appears to be declining.

At the beginning of the month, the price of ETH was around US$1,675, up from the end of September.

After reaching as high as 1,750 USD on October 2, it began a slow descent, bringing it first to 1,600 USD three days later, and then even just above 1,500 USD yesterday.

Right now it is losing 7.5% since the beginning of the month, and almost 12% from its October highs.

However, one has to extend the analysis to the past months as well to get a better idea of what is happening.

In fact it has gained 34% since the beginning of the year, but practically all the gain was in early January. In fact, the current value corresponds to that of January 14, which is the one on which the very rise at the beginning of the year stopped.

It should be mentioned that between March and April it rose as high as 2,140 USD, a level that has still not been exceeded since then.

Then again, that rise in March and April was due to the anticipation of the Shapella update, and once that was exhausted everything returned to normal.

Suffice it to say that by mid-June it was back below 1,700 USD, which is a level in line with that of January 20.

What was perhaps a little surprising is the descent below 1,700 USD, which began in mid-August, and perhaps ended just yesterday. Actually already on September 11 it had fallen to $1,530, but yesterday it updated this low for the second half of 2023.

Right now it is at -68% from the highs of 2021.

The parabola of BTCs price in this 2023 has been similar, but it began to differ sharply just in October.

Specifically, if at the beginning of the month the price was around US$27,000, the current price is only 0.6% lower.

Moreover, given that it has now been lateralizing around 27,000 USD since mid-March, we can say that it did not fall in October as ETH did.

Moreover, compared to the beginning of the year it is gaining 67%, compared to ETHs 34%, and compared to the 2021 highs it is at -61%.

Even in mid-August, when Ethereum made a -16% in three days, in the same period Bitcoin was limited to a -14% that already hinted at a possible differentiation.

The most substantial difference is the one that has accumulated since April 21, when Bitcoin was always at around US$27,000, while Ethereum was above US$1,800. Since then, the price of BTC has lost almost nothing, while ETH is at -16%.

Very interesting is to examine the evolution over the months of the ratio of the market capitalization of Bitcoin to that of Ethereum.

Currently, that ratio is about 2.81 times, with the 2023 peak recorded just three days ago at 2.86.

It should be noted that at the beginning of the year that ratio was only 2.17 times, and that the annual low occurred on January 11 at 2.02.

It has practically been doing nothing but rising since the second half of January, albeit by a small amount.

Even in April, during ETHs mini bull run due to the Shapella update, it was still going up, so much so that it exceeded 2.5.

In other words during 2023 Bitcoins uptrend against Ethereum was never seriously challenged.

It should be noted that the last time values similar to the current ones were recorded was in the first half of July last year, which was after the failure of Celsius and BlockFi following the implosion of the Terra/Luna ecosystem. Also during the all-time highs in November 2021 it was below 2.3.

This apparent decline of Ethereum is actually not at all abnormal.

Something similar in fact was also found during the long crypto winter of 2018/2019, with the price of ETH losing more than Bitcoin and then gaining more than BTC during the bullrun.

Therefore, this is not a true decline, but a different reaction to bear-market and bull-market.

In particular at this time it simply seems that the price of Bitcoin is more resilient.

In this month of October for example, the Dollar Index has remained very high, above 106 points, even rising above 107 points at the beginning of the month. This rise highlighted a small flight from risk-on assets, which penalized Ethereum but did not penalize Bitcoin too much.

The difference can also be seen by comparing the trend with that of the gold price.

The ultimate safe-haven asset over the past two weeks has risen only 2%, so much so that the current level is still lower than it was on September 27, for example. During the same period, Bitcoins price has lost almost nothing, while Ethereums has lost 7.5%.

The anomaly lies in the resilience of BTC, rather than the suffering of ETH, since the latter is for all intents and purposes a risk-on asset. It is as if Bitcoin is considered less risky than ETH.

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The price of Bitcoin and Ethereum - The Cryptonomist

Bitcoin Hashrate Hits New Peak as Miners Feel The Pressure – CryptoPotato

Bitcoin network horsepower continues to climb, which is good news for its security but bad news for miners who are now facing more competition than ever.

Bitcoins hashrate hit a new peak on October 12 of 447 exahashes per second, according to Blockchain.com.

Bitinfocharts has a slightly higher average figure of 481 EH/s, but both are in agreement that it is the highest the metric has ever been.

Hashrate has climbed 77% since the beginning of this year and is up 170% since the bull market peak in November 2021. This means that it is now harder than ever to mine the next block on the chain.

Moreover, the next difficulty adjustment in a few days could be as high as +7.4%. Difficulty is a measure of the competition between miners, and it is also at an all-time high of 57.3T.

The net effect is a decrease in mining profitability, also known as hashprice. Hashprice, which refers to the expected value of 1 TH/s of hashing power per day, has fallen to $0.06 per TH/s per day.

This is down 85% since the bull market peak of $0.40 per TH/s per day as mining profitability slumps.

Bitcoin miners are currently being hit with a triple whammy of high hash rates and difficulty, low asset prices, and high energy costs.

Moreover, JPMorgan predicted that hash rates would drop by 20% after the next halving in late April or early May.

Earlier this week, trader Oliver Velez pointed out that the United States has the largest share of global hashrate at 40%. Furthermore, asset management giant BlackRock has invested in several of the largest Bitcoin mining firms Riot Platforms, Marathon Digital, Cipher Mining, Hut 8, and Terawulf. It also lent money to bankrupt Bitcoin miner Core Scientific in December.

It is clear that the U.S. is playing to win the hashrate war, he said.

If Bitcoin prices do not improve soon, there may be another miner capitulation. The upcoming halving in around six months time will double the headache for miners as the block reward is halved.

It was predicted that BTC prices would need to reach around $90K for mining to remain profitable at current levels.

However, markets are going in the opposite direction at the moment. BTC remains unchanged on the day at $26,844; however, it has lost 4% since last weekend.

There is solid support at the $26K level, which could be where it is heading in the short term.

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Bitcoin Hashrate Hits New Peak as Miners Feel The Pressure - CryptoPotato

Ex-BlackRock Director Says SEC Will Approve a Bitcoin ETF in ‘3 to 6 Months’ – Decrypt

Former BlackRock managing director Steven Schoenfield, whos now the CEO of MarketVector Indexes, gives the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission three to six months before it approves a Bitcoin spot ETF.

Schoenfield gave his estimate during a panel discussion on ETFs at CCDatas Digital Asset Summit in London yesterday, where he was joined by another ex-BlackRock director Martin Bednall, now CEO of Jacobi Asset Management.

Schoenfield was responding to comments made earlier by Bednall that the SEC will probably approve [all ETF applications] at the same time; I dont think they want to give anybody first mover advantage.

Previously the MarketVector CEO said he would have given the industry nine to twelve months before an approval, but the SECs recent decision to delay giving verdicts on several pending ETF applications is unlike previous delaying tactics by the regulator.

Instead of completely rejecting the whole list, they've asked for comments, which is a marginal but significant improvement in the dialogue, says Shoenfield. There's also the Grayscale lawsuit, which the SEC lost, which means they're most likely going to have to allow the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust to be converted into an ETF.

Through its pending ETF application, traditional finances top asset manager, BlackRockshepherding $9.42 trillion in assets-under-management (AUM)seems the likeliest contender to get a Bitcoin spot ETF approved.

After all, it has a winning score of 575-1 when it comes to getting ETFs through the SEC.

Nobody would have seen it coming back in 2017 when BlackRock chief Larry Fink called Bitcoin an index of money laundering.

Fast forward to summer 2023: Fink appeared on FOX News and said that crypto is digitizing gold in many ways.

During CCDatas panel discussion in London yesterday, Martin Bednall said he believes in any case that the traditional financial muscle, in terms of both brand and resources, will give BlackRock a first-mover advantage should the SEC decide to start approving Bitcoin spot ETFs.

Shoenfield was more temperate in his views about their former companys foray into crypto.

I disagree with my former colleague Martin. As much as Blackrock will try to crush the competition, there's a good half dozen, maybe eight or nine, other firms deeply committed to tradable digital assets," he said. "They've all got applications in and some are actually much closer to the crypto ecosystem than than BlackRock. So I think Blackrock will be in for quite a fight.

He later added that his company has run the numbers and believes spot ETF approval may result in a $150 to $200 billion inflow into Bitcoin investment products over three years, which would double or triple the amount of AUM in current Bitcoin products.

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Ex-BlackRock Director Says SEC Will Approve a Bitcoin ETF in '3 to 6 Months' - Decrypt

Time to ‘pull the brakes’ on Ethereum and rotate back to Bitcoin: K33 report – Cointelegraph

The relatively lackluster performance of nine new Ether (ETH) futures exchange-traded funds (ETFs) has prompted analysts at K33 Research to urge a rotate back into Bitcoin (BTC).

In an Oct. 3 market report, analysts Anders Helseth and Vetle Lunde said that its time to pull the brakes on ETH and rotate back into BTC, with the initial trading volume of Ether futures ETFs only accounting for 0.2% of what the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) amassed on its first day of trading in October 2021.

While the analysts noted that no one expected to see initial trading volume on the Ether futures ETFs come anywhere close to that of the Bitcoin futures ETFs launched amid a raging bull market the underwhelming first-day numbers strongly missed expectations.

This lack of institutional appetite for Ether ETFs caused Lunde to walk back on his previous advice of increasing ETH allocation to best capitalize on the ETF hype.

The ETH futures ETF launch provides an important lesson for evaluating the impact of easier access to crypto investments for traditional investors: increased institutional access will only create buying pressure if significant unsatiated demand exists, wrote Lunde.

In the section of the report titled More chop ahead, Lunde explained that the vast majority of the crypto market lacks any meaningful short-term price catalysts and will most likely continue on its sideways trajectory for the foreseeable future.

Related: Bitcoin bull market awaits as US faces bear steepener Arthur Hayes

In Lundes view, this landscape is only really favorable for Bitcoin, which has a potential spot for ETF approval to look forward to early next year, as well as thehalving event, which is currentlyon track for mid-April.

Ben Laidler, global markets strategist at eToro, charted a similar path ahead for crypto assets, albeit with a slightly more bearish sentiment.

In emailed comments to Cointelegraph, Laidler pointed to current macro trends as a potential downward trigger for prices of mainstay crypto assets such as Bitcoin.

The Fed and oil prices have been consistently powerful macro influencers on the crypto market in the past couple of years, wrote Laidler. At the late stage of the rate hike cycle were in, the market is looking for further good news to push on, but with oil prices rising again, this could have a cooling effect on sentiment.

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Magazine: Blockchain detectives Mt. Gox collapse saw birth of Chainalysis

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Time to 'pull the brakes' on Ethereum and rotate back to Bitcoin: K33 report - Cointelegraph

Has Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Returned? – BeInCrypto

After five years of inactivity, an X (formerly Twitter) account with the handle @satoshi posts about Bitcoin.Although no one knows who controls this account, the community is in an uproar, and Bitcoin SV (BSV) skyrocketed by 30%. Is Satoshi Nakamoto back?

Since Satoshi Nakamotos disappearance in 2008, there has been much speculation about the true identity of the Bitcoin inventor.Even Elon Musk and Steve Jobs were suspected to be behind this mysterious figure, but no one could prove it.

On October 2, there was a surprise for thecryptocommunity.The X account @satoshi, which has been inactive since 2018, broke its silence and wrote a post.It said:

Bitcoin is a predicate machine. Over the following months, we shall explore different aspects that were not explicitly contained within the white paper. These aspects are all parts of bitcoin, and are important. Some of these ideas were touched upon in the early years; now is the time to extrapolate and explain.

Bypredicate machine,the author of this tweet probably refers to the fact that thecryptocurrencyworks exclusively with truth values and does not allow manipulation.

In response to this tweet,BSVexperienced an explosiveprice increase of 30% on October 2 and the following day, outperforming Bitcoin andEthereum.

Read more: Satoshi Nakamoto Who is the Founder of Bitcoin?

But could Nakamoto actually be behind this account?Unsurprisingly, this tweet sparked renewed speculation about his true identity.

Former nChain CEO Christen Ager-Hanssen claimed thatCraig Wright controlled the account. After all, he had often posed as Satoshi Nakamoto.

Andy Rowe was also associated with the account but distanced himself and stated that he was not Nakamoto. He wrote:

No, I am not @satoshi. The only scam Ive ever perpetrated was advocating for unbounded blocks. That is forbidden in the permissionless world of crypto.

It is still unclear who is really behind the X account, butBSV, which spun off from Bitcoin Cash in 2018, plays a central role in this identity drama.The development of the hard fork was led by Wright, who wanted to restore the blockchains original protocol.

He believes that the vision back then differed greatly from the implementation today.

Read more: 8 Best Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Wallets in 2023

Amidst this controversy, the Satoshi account made a new post on October 3. It wrote:

Bitcoin was created for everyone. The next halving is an important predicted occurrence when transaction fees are meant to start to supplant the mining subsidy.

There are many who do not want you to know the truth. It is not that they want to silence this account. They want to silence you. 2024 is the year of the Dragon.

Do you have anything to say about Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamotos account or anything else? Write to us or join the discussion on our Telegram channel. You can also catch us on TikTok, Facebook, or X (Twitter).

For BeInCryptos latest Bitcoin (BTC) analysis, click here.

In adherence to the Trust Project guidelines, BeInCrypto is committed to unbiased, transparent reporting. This news article aims to provide accurate, timely information. However, readers are advised to verify facts independently and consult with a professional before making any decisions based on this content.

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Has Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Returned? - BeInCrypto