Cryptocurrency

The small Portuguese archipelago known as Madeira is said to have “adopted” Bitcoin (BTC) -But what exactly does this mean? The announcement, made at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, caused confusion.

Miguel Albuquerque, the president of the Regional Government of Madeira, took to the platform in April and declared: “I believe in the future, and I believe in Bitcoin.” He also announced that he would strive to “create in Madeira a fantastic environment for Bitcoin.” However, the specifics remained in the dark.

Interviewed Andre Loja, a Madeiran businessman who has spearheaded the effort that brought BTC into the archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean to discover the ways Bitcoin can influence the development of the islands.

Madeira was a major player on the Bitcoin world map on April 7th when JAN3’s chief executive Samson Mow with pride, declared that the company “will be adopting Bitcoin.”

After the announcement, media agencies across the globe claimed that Madeira had accepted Bitcoin as a legal currency; however, this wasn’t the situation. Loja stated to sources in the days before his announcement that the decision was to have used the phrase “Madeira is embracing Bitcoin.”

In reality, there is no tax on BTC within Madeira along with Portugal -approximately 620 miles to the north. There is no taxation for Bitcoin capital gains, so if any of Madeira’s residents dispose of the proceeds of BTC and doesn’t have to be reported to the tax authorities.

Loja orange-pilled President Madeira just two weeks before the conference, expressing his plans for Bitcoin as more than an opportunity to draw foreign investors and “protect my island from the fiat system.”

Through chance, Albuquerque came to visit Loja’s coworking facility, one of the few spaces that allowed BTC at the time in Madeira – and Loja took the chance to talk about his love for Bitcoin. Madeira was hit hard by the COVID-19 epidemic when the vital tourism revenue plummeted off the mountain. Loja was forced to present an idea of Bitcoin’s potential to President Obama to diversify and improve Madeira’s economy. It also has other benefits.

Several large investors are rushing towards buying BTC as it begins to climb above $39000 this week. Whalemap revealed that clusters of whale bids are seen above $36000, and this is likely to act as a support level for BTC in the near term. Some of the big investors hold close to 10000 BTC, and they have become very active in recent months owning to fall in BTC price.

The cluster data has some interesting things to show about whales buying around 330,000 BTC in the rane of $36000 and $38000. According to the data available from analytics firm Glassnode, the BTC supply per whale is now at a ten-year high even after a huge increase in BTC user base across the world.

The second half of January saw more outflows than inflows due to the small increase in BTC prices in recent weeks. Analytics firm CryptoQuant said that their balance increased from 2.357 million BTC to about 2.377 BTC in the last week of January.

According to heraldnet.com, Whales are unlikely to use the exchanges when making a big purchase due to high fees and other constraints. On the other hand, buying BTC directly from miners and the OTC trade is a better option for whales as they usually deal in large quantities. The recent fall in BTC prices has pushed retail investors away from the market. However, the large investors are lapping up the opportunity to increase their BTC balance as they see a promising future for the currency.

Bitcoin’s market is unpredictable as no one can predict the future price movements because of its extremely volatile market. On 18^th May, Bitcoin’s price increased over 20%, which was a completely unexpected move that bitcoin’s market made. Despite what Janet Yellen, United States Treasury Secretary, said about crypto companies in the infrastructure bill that is considered currently in the U.S. Senate, the price of bitcoin increased.

Even though bitcoin is reaching new heights every day and is breaking all its previous all-time highs, the investors are concerned that the government could impose regulations, and those regulations will erase all the gains made currently. But at the same time, the derivatives indicators show no confidence in bears. In the proposal, it has been made mandatory that the protocol developers, miners, and validators report the crypto transactions of more than $10,000 to the Internal Revenue Service. The senators, namely Pat Toomey and Cynthia Lummis, are majorly focusing on imposing these requirements on crypto exchanges and brokers that act as intermediaries.

Holders should hold their digital assets, and the crypto market gets benefited from inflation.

Signalscv.com, an analysis firm, has put the spotlight on investors who hold crypto coins for a year or more than what depicts their holding behaviour of cryptocurrencies. Along with holding behaviour, investors also become greedy at times. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is a great indicator of bitcoin that tracks down its social media, searches, volatility and volume and said that it shifted from normal to moderate and then to greed.

Investors should note down that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will soon launch the inflation report of July 2021 along with a market forecast that depicts a 0.5% rise. Only after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell failed to make people understand about a 5.4% rise in the consumer price index every year, the crypto market reacted to it in a positive manner.

Future Market and margin depict minimal activities from bitcoin bears.

Lack of confidence in Bitcoin bears can be clearly observed by having a view at the chart showing where Bitfinex margins were around 90% or more than that. It can be seen that there is no downturn. Margin traders have become popular for generation position contracts of around 20,000 bitcoins or more than that in a short period, which indicates that there is the participation of many arbitrage desks and whales.

Meme pioneer is famous worldwide for its humorous website popularly known as ICHC. It has taken a step forward to publish a series of NFT centred on his globally popular caption ‘Lolcat’ snaps. Everyone is aware of Meme master cheeseburger. Yes, the cheeseburger is a juicy tasty treat you often love to enjoy! ICHC is the short form of ‘I Can Has Cheeseburger?’ It is a well-acclaimed website full of small clippings of animals and their videos especially cats of all kinds. It also has image macros contributing to the rising popularity of the website.

Now the first NFT will be based upon the initial caption unique in its own style, the ‘I Could Take Cheeseburger?’ The other profitable development is the selling of ‘Happy Cat’ known to be the most popular crown jewel of the Nakagawa’s NFT series to NFT marketplace OpenSea. The bidding was stated to be approximately 0.2ETH.

Now more about the NFT Lolcats series:

It is ten pieces of Lolcats collections having vintage lolcat memes and arts inspired by memes. The series is titled, ‘No Fries Today’. It is sure to be a success like another humorous website of theirs. Some part of the profit is to be shared with charitable organizations like the American Society that works to avoid cruelty to animals. The other charity funds will be donated to the Internet Archive and World Wildlife Foundation. Nakagawa, the man behind all these meme series started the most famous picture sharing website, icanhascheezburger.com in the year 2007. Since then there was no turn back as he started many projects that scored him millions and paved the way to donate money to many charity foundations.

NFT isn’t just snapshots of memes as the proposed plan is to clip a story to describe the images of a meme. The small video shots will show the origination of each meme.  A further plan is to release more of such meme collection like ‘The Happy Cat’ series. Gradually in accordance with the popularity of the series, other collections of the meme will be released later. Since the year 2020, NFT has been crossing $60 million in sales each day. The increase in popularity happened because of distinctly portraying each meme tagged with funny captions.  To top it NFT sold the meme series showing the flying toaster shaped feline, ’ the Nyan Cat’  for $580,000 on the Foundation Market app.

Its creator Eric Nakagawa, is now planning to enter wholly in the cryptocurrency spectrum. He is now the founder of Open Source in the Blockchain sector of Novi financial, the Facebook subsidiary that is involved in many transactions projects like the Diem. His future plans are quite rewarding as crypto is the trending digital currency sure to bring in ample monetary gains.  His other rewarding ventures like involving with Ripple Labs as Director of Growing in 2013. He even took the prestigious position of Startup Outreach at the Dogecoin Foundation. Yes, he was the coordinator behind the famous series ‘ doge4water’. It was a fundraised that brought in forty million doges for a Kenya based charity foundation.

Online trading sounds easy, but it is more challenging to do as well as it involves risks. Higher the investment, the higher the risk. It needs practice, knowledge of market data, and information about trading strategies.

Immediate edge website provides an online platform to those who want to buy and sell the trading commodities such as Cryptocurrencies, Bonds, Assets, Contract for Difference, etc. The platform offers an excellent UI interface that is easy to navigate, helping the user learn and grow in online trading.

Key highlights

• It has an easy setup process
• It helps in smooth and error-free trade.
• It gives a stress-free and pleasant training experience by providing advanced algorithms and security measures.
• It monitors the market data according to user search and choices.
• It saves time by providing on hand market data.
• The platform is straightforward and helpful for both beginner and advanced users.

Benefits

• The money earned by the user is his/her that is no additional fees charged for using this platform, not even at the time of withdrawal.
• It uses advanced AI technology. It increases reliability.
• It involves no hidden charges, which means it is an entirely free platform, I.e., No fees for registration, account maintenance, and extra features.
• It is compatible with several devices, which means it is accessible through any device. All one needs is a stable internet connection and browser. It also allows the user to open and work on this platform if he/she is outside.
• It provides an automatic trading process. All one needs to do a check regularly for updates. This platform adapts user trading preferences and works according to them.
• Users can quickly learn the fundamental of trading within a short period.
• With this platform, the user can easily choose the assets he/she want to trade.
• It is for both beginner and experienced users. One need not afraid while trading as they provide easy tools and market data.

Summary

The immediate edge website platform is compatible with an auto trading robot that asks the user for trading parameters. It provides analysis and data according to it, which saves the user time and effort. The busy person decreases the loads by providing on-hand market data in no time, which means the user needs not to study the market before trading. It is also easy for a starter as it allows for knowledge and an easy tool for setting the trading parameter. Overall, it can be used by anyone interested in online trading as it provides a comfortable learning experience.

Recently, two Electrum users fell into the trap of phishing scams and lost a lot of their Bitcoin BTC from their wallets. According to the complaint, one victim lost 1,400 BTC while another lost 36.5 BTC, worth $14.595.000, and $380,512, respectively. The spokesperson for the company revealed that the event might be due to a phishing scam that has been a problem since 2018.

The Chief Operating Officer of OKCoin, Jason Lau, warned users to be careful when dealing with their keys, particularly if they have a huge amount of BTC in their wallet as it then becomes attractive for scammers. He further added that the recent event was a phishing attack where the victims installed software thinking it would be an update giving the hackers access to their wallet account. He said that phishing attacks are becoming common across different financial applications and have also grown more sophisticated, making them difficult to track.

The first reports of a phishing scam on the Electrum wallet came into light on 27^th December 2018 that resulted in a total loss of $1 million. The event came to light when an anonymous Reddit user highlighted the hack. The user explained how the hacker led the wallet user to a malicious webpage using their server and prompting them to enter their personal details of the account. It led the hackers to gather all the information they needed to get total control of the user’s asset. It also involved a fake update for the wallet that led the user to download malware on the device. It was then reported that the wallet address had 243 BTC, but it was later revealed that it had 637.44 BTC that was emptied by the hackers. Soon after the first attack, there were reports of other phishing attacks on the wallet, one of which was the denial-of-service attack.

According to the recent victim, he had not been using the electrum account since 2017 and has 1,400 BTC in the wallet. He mistakenly installed the older version of the electrum wallet and tried to transfer 1 BTC into another account. But, the transaction failed, and a pop-up asked him to update the security before being able to make any transactions. Upon installing the update, his entire balance from the electrum account was transferred to the scammer’s Bitcoin address.

Officers looking into the theft revealed that the thief or thieves behind the scam were using a Binance exchange account that was linked to more than 75 wallet addresses. However, tracking transactions is quite difficult. One of the Electrum representatives stated that they reviewed the victim’s account, and no suspicious indicator was reported.  Jason Lau warned users to double-check any software that they are downloading to their devices and verify the sources of any updates.

 Soon after the 1,400 BTC hack came to light, another victim revealed that he had lost 36.5 BTC from the Electrum wallet about two months back. The victim itself tracked the funds’ stolen funds to five Bitcoin addresses. He tried reaching out to Binance and asked them to return the stolen Bitcoin, they refused.

One of the controversies that arose from the hack was that the user was storing a large amount of Bitcoin into the Electrum account, attracting Keylogging attacks and malware risks. These wallets are not as secure as hardware wallets, but they are pretty easy to use for day to day transactions.

According to experts, users are encouraged to use hardware wallets like Trezor or Ledger. While these two companies had their share of challenges, users still prefer to use hardware wallets for crypto storage and transactions.

With the numero uno population figures and one of the largest economies globally, China is one of the significant forces in finance and technology and has a layered history with Bitcoin. The Central Bank of China is placing a lot of significance in developing the country’s digital currency.

Based on an article published in the PBoC run magazine China Finance last week, it was suggested that Beijing should increase the momentum of CBDC development to seize the opportunity in the global race to issue fiat digital currency. The article said that Beijing needs to push to internationalize the yuan and reduce the dependency on the worldwide dollar payment system. It also mentioned that Beijing should not ignore its advantages and move ahead in the digital currency arena, which has eventually become the ‘new battlefield’ of inter-country competition in global finance.

With two nations China and the United States, gunning for blockchain supremacy, “the tech cold war is here to stay, and China has a lot of advantage in its stride.” mentioned Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen in an opinion piece for The Hill recently. According to Larsen, Beijing has a “once-in-century opportunity to wrest away American control of the global financial system, including the ultimate goal of replacing dollars with digital yuan.” The American values of freedom and openness would take a backseat in the new order.

Many experts have voiced similar concerns. This is a new racing track. It is the cyber race of building and controlling the system and governance that will spearhead the digital economy. The race would include advanced technology like big data, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet of Things. However, blockchain is the key, as noted by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The article on China Finance also mentioned that data feedback from the People’s Bank of China would be helpful for the national monetary policy, particularly in the post-pandemic situation layered with economic challenges.

The article added that at the end of April 2020, the research unit of PBoC had filed for 130 cryptocurrency related patent applications, which includes issuance, circulation, and implementation. The research unit is currently undergoing a testing process of a digital wallet for the currency.

In the recent past Beijing announced a trial run of its digital currency in August 2020, in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, involving 400 million people, which is approximately 29 percent of the Chinese population. The PBoC is also considering using the digital yuan in the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics. Both China and the United States have contested closely in the research and development of blockchain in the last few years. However, the United States still holds the most number of patents in blockchain despite Chinese firm Alibaba filing the most patents so far this year.

Bitcoin has been on the rise as a global underdog on the trading floor. Investor confidence keeps rising higher and higher, and bitcoin is likewise performing better and better. Current trends in the market indicate that Bitcoin has been climbing the ladder so ferociously that it has even surpassed big fortune 500 companies and insanely experienced companies like the world-famous food and beverage company Coca Cola and tech industry leader Intel.

The reason behind the recent astronomic success

This new milestone in Bitcoin’s industrial journey and feather in its entrepreneurial cap comes along after a significant upward tick in its trading patterns strengthened massive investments and trading instances. This increase has been enormous and amounts to around a two hundred billion dollar gap in its trading capitalizations. This trend has been happening since last month this year. The company has had an even higher uptick this day at 222 billion dollars, and at an average, the capitalizations have settled at two hundred billion dollars. 

A reason to Celebrate

These recent developments and capitulation developments have put Bitcoin’s share capacities over major industry veterans like Coca Cola and Intel. This means Bitcoin can be valued at a higher level than these two experienced companies, which is a huge deal if you see the life span of the big wig conglomerates with that of Bitcoin. Coca Cola has been around since ages, and Intel basically accelerated the progress of the whole world with its innovative processors. So for Bitcoin, a relatively younger company with merits of his own to be valued over them is only going to benefit it more. This will convince the investors who could not make up their mind about investing in Bitcoin to decide in its favor.

This new development may be affected by Intel’s recent poor performance on the trading floor. This may have been caused because of its lower than average market performance at the end of the sale. This led to doubts in the investor’s mind, and the company ended up losing as much as forty-five billion dollars. The global pandemic had also affected the market performance of Coca Cola, which forced it to experience a loss of over ninety billion dollars.

Whatever may be the reason, it still holds true that Bitcoin has performed exceptionally well in the recent lean times, which has helped maintain investor confidence.

Big bull investor of the global Bitcoin market, Mike Novogratz, advises that investing in gold is better than investing in Bitcoins. He says that though Bitcoin outperforms the valuable yellow metal in the market, it may be less lucrative because of the high volatility of the crypto market.

Mike Novogratz heads the Galaxy Digital Holdings group. He is the most successful and vocal hedge fund in the United States, who was leading the well-known Fortress Investment Group for many years. This Bitcoin bull and a billionaire investor is the most sought after advisor in the global crypto market. In 2017, Mike was reported to hold 20% of his total net worth in Ethereum and Bitcoins. 

He has correctly predicted the price of Bitcoin trading in the past years. In 2017, he forecast the rise. Being a vocal Bitcoin bull, Mike keeps sharing his views on social platforms. On June 1, his tweet was to hold on to both Bitcoins and Gold. He said Bitcoins prices might reach a new high if the barrier breaks. On July 8, talking to CNBC’s First Money, Mike advised investors to keep more gold than Bitcoins. Bitcoin prices did not fluctuate during this period and steadied at $9000. 

Mike says that Bitcoin has just started adapting to the situation. For reaching a peak, Bitcoin prices need to break a resistance that is more difficult to attain in the present scenario. Yet, Bitcoin will gradually gain more momentum in the market because more and more companies are initiating different methods to fetch the crowd towards the adoption of cryptocurrency or Bitcoin. 

In the interview with CNBC’s First Money, Mike has said that Bitcoin is quite difficult to purchase. Bitcoin would be of the greater price if the purchasing-method were easier. There are various people who try to provide different methods to purchase Bitcoins. Some custodies and funds are also set up by some companies. Also, within some time, they will get an exchange-traded fund, which is like security. It comprises many securities such as trading commodities, cryptocurrencies, etc. that frequently trace an underlying record. These funds may invest in many industry sectors or manipulate several strategies. 

Considering the upcoming changes in the method of holding Bitcoins, Novogratz advises prioritizing the precious metal instead of Bitcoin. He also asks the investors to consider the fact that gold prices are touching a 9-year high. On July 9, gold prices touched a peak price of $1800 since 2011, September. The rising price of gold is evidently because of the economic recession in the Covid-19 situation. Over the last 24 hours or so, the price of gold has increased by 0.1%, making it $1810 per ounce for trading. 

According to one of the biggest advocates of gold, Peter Schiff, investors don’t pay enough attention to the price rise patterns of the precious metal. Speaking to news sources on Thursday, he said that gold is the most neglected bull market. He said that since 2015, the prices of gold had risen by 70%, but investors fail to pay attention to this market’s profitability. 

For those who love to use virtual currency, there is good news. The CEO of Grayscale Investments and Digital Currency Group, Barry Silbert, said that the US has reached a stage where they can no longer ban Bitcoin. In the past, the regulations about cryptocurrency have been a worrying factor for market participants. However, the current situation looks favorable as there are chances of regulations improving in favor of cryptocurrencies in the United States. Even if there is no significant improvement, there are no visible threats in the near future, according to experts. This will surely make many more users go for this virtual currency. It has also attracted the attention of experts in finance who do not love much or are not in favor of the use of cryptocurrencies any more.

Support from policymakers for Bitcoin

Barry Silbert is of the opinion that there is good support coming from policymakers in this regard and they are more informed about the benefits of cryptocurrency than before. The regulators now believe that Bitcoin System can exist without creating any problems and they may ease some regulations down the line. There was some backlash for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the United States and also several other parts of the world. However, things are slowly changing as more and more people are participating eagerly in trading cryptocurrencies, and regulators also understand this concept in a better way.

Efforts by Blockchain supporters

The interesting thing is that this change has not come on its own and many groups that support Blockchain technology, including Blockchain Association, have made lots of efforts to improve relationships with the regulators. Coin Center, which is a known non-profit group for crypto advocacy, has also made several efforts in this regard. The Blockchain Association has been voicing its support for crypto companies and has always supported blockchain technology in every platform in the past.

Experts believe that the cryptocurrency industry is in a safe zone now with regards to regulations in the US. The supporters of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are educating the policymakers in the US about the various advantages of using Blockchain technology. Apart from that, support is also coming from various institutions as they are keener to buy cryptocurrencies in recent times. There is a growing demand for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the institutional segment this year as new users also enter the field.