The Venezuelan arm of the restaurant chain now accepts dash and bitcoin through CryptoBuyer.
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Monday, November 30, 2020
‘Black Friday' BTC sale officially over? 5 things to watch in Bitcoin this week
Bitcoin recovers above $18,500 over the weekend, but the giant BTC futures gap that has now emerged may trigger yet another pullback.
Bitcoin (BTC) is back this week as a rebound takes the largest cryptocurrency ever closer to new all-time highs — what’s in store?
Cointelegraph takes a look what could move Bitcoin markets in the coming days as buyers emerge and $16,000 gets left behind — at least for now.
Bitcoin cancels Black Friday discounts
The main story among Bitcoiners on Monday is its performance over the weekend.
After plumbing depths of $16,300 last week and failing to get much higher than $17,000 in the days following, Bitcoin surprised on Saturday, beginning a climb that has reached $18,600 on Nov. 30.
The timing led to comparisons to Black Friday, as BTC/USD fell in time for the infamous discount day and rose back up afterward.
“Guess the Black Friday bitcoin sale is officially over. Hope you stocked up,” Barry Silbert, CEO of asset management giant Grayscale summarized.
At press-time levels of $18,550, Bitcoin is now up almost 14% versus the lows, recouping the majority of its losses from when it fell from $19,500. This will be a familiar sight for traders, who will now be eyeing the potential for Bitcoin to avoid the psychological selling pressure which so clearly set in near the all-time highs of $20,000.
“Crucial level to hold is the $17,700-17,850 breaker. If that is lost, I think we'll see the 16's again,” Cointelegraph Markets analyst Michaël van de Poppe said in his latest analysis on Sunday.
Van de Poppe likewise highlighted the area around $18,500 and $18,700 as the crucial breakout point to fuel further bullishness. Bitcoin subsequently hit the midpoint of that range, but has so far failed to turn it into a launchpad for reclaiming any higher levels.
Nonetheless, should current levels hold, Bitcoin will easily see its highest ever monthly close at the end of Monday.
$1,300 Bitcoin futures gap opens lower
One major argument for Bitcoin reversing downwards for its next move comes in the form of a classic “gap” setup on futures markets.
Thanks to the weekend’s volatility, Monday has begun with a noticeable “gap” on the charts at CME Bitcoin Futures, this one lying $1,500 lower than the current spot price.
Gaps refer to the empty space left between the end of Friday trading and the start of Monday trading for futures, and the latest one to open is $1,300 in size — one of the largest ever.
Historically, Bitcoin has opted to rise or fall to “fill” such gaps once they appear, and this has tended to occur quickly, meaning that the chance is there for a fresh dip to as low as $16,990 — the beginning of the gap.
A further albeit much smaller gap remains “unfilled” from previous trading at around $19,000.
“It all depends on how harshly we reject in this range and how we are going to react around the support at $17,000, which is also the weekly close on the CME futures,” Van de Poppe commented.
He also noted that one weekend’s upside is no good as a starting point for being bullish. Entering Bitcoin is a wise move only when support is reached on higher timeframe support levels, meaning that the CME gap should be resolved by the time that the real state of the market becomes more obvious.
An accompanying survey meanwhile showed a fairly even split between 6,000 respondents regarding whether BTC/USD would hit $14,000 or $22,000 first.
Stocks drop after record month
Outside Bitcoin, the macro picture is mixed as the month ends. November saw 13% for equities worldwide, a record month as expectations of a Coronavirus vaccine ran high.
On Monday, however, progress began to retreat, with China leading a turnaround from gains to losses and European futures following suit.
The U.S. dollar, already under pressure, is expected to dip to its lowest levels since April 2018, Bloomberg reported on the day. As noted by Cointelegraph, the U.S. dollar currency index (DXY) has been steadily falling over the past weeks, erasing some previous gains.
Bitcoin typically reacts favorably to DXY weakness, and while its relationship to macro assets more broadly is waning, abrupt movements in the index remain apt to dictate short-term market direction.
At press time, DXY stood at 91.72, having broken the 92 support level, which was preserved even in August when Bitcoin hit $12,000 for the first time this year.
Virus-induced headaches meanwhile continue across the Western world. The United Kingdom’s economy, according to estimates from Bloomberg shared by market commentator Holger Zschaepitz, will contract by the most in over 300 years.
Market-specific issues, such as Tesla debuting on the S&P 500, are also on the radar.
"Extreme greed" characterizes macro
“Extreme greed” is what is characterizing investor sentiment in both cryptocurrency and traditional markets, according to classic indicator the Fear & Greed Index.
A popular sentiment gauge for crypto in paritcualr, the Index uses a basket of factors to assess how overbought or oversold the market is based on investor behavior. A normalized score out of 100, the higher the reading, the more likely the market is due for a correction.
Cointelegraph has frequently reported on the Crypto Fear & Greed Index in recent times as it heads towards all-time highs of 95/100. A recent peak of 94 came just prior to BTC/USD shedding $3,000 in a day.
On Monday, the Index stood at 88 — lower than before but still firmly in the “extreme greed” category.
For Zschaepitz, however, the identical “extreme greed” rating for traditional markets is being distorted thanks to the interventions by central banks as part of Coronavirus measures.
“Just to put things into perspective: CNN‘s Fear & Greed Index has risen to 92 as investors have become extreme greedy,” he wrote on Sunday.
“But maybe that greed is mainly driven by CenBank liquidity so this is no longer an reliable indicator for an imminent correction!”
Central banks have bought up a huge range of bad assets in order to give the illusion of competition on the market since March this year, a move which has garnered considerable criticism from Bitcoin circles.
Leave it to the pro buyers?
As quant analyst PlanB acknowledged in a timely reminder on Sunday, a new week means a new round of Bitcoin buying by a group of familiar faces: Grayscale, Square and PayPal.
As last week, the corporate giants will need to satisfy client demand by buying up the diminishing number of coins available at current prices.
This new status quo, formed when PayPal released its cryptocurrency features, has led to estimates showing that there is simply not enough Bitcoin to go around. The three companies’ needs are more than miners can produce, and still compete with demand from elsewhere.
The only logical outcome, should demand increase or stay the same, is for the price of Bitcoin in other assets to rise — a simple equation of supply and demand.
In an interview with CNBC last week, Dan Schulman, PayPal’s CEO, said that the company was betting on Bitcoin becoming more widely used as a currency.
from Cointelegraph.com News https://ift.tt/36iKMPV
Sunday, November 29, 2020
‘Basis Cash’ Launch Brings Defunct Stablecoin Into the DeFi Era
With Basis Cash, a team of anonymous developers is making what might be called a fork of a project that never launched.
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No need to fear the Bitcoin FUD, says Sino Global Capital
After a week of gloomy headlines and a brutal price dip, traders would do well to think long term.
In the midst of the crippling price dips earlier this week, cryptocurrency traders seemed beset on all sides by fear, uncertainty, and doubt. However, Dermot McGrath, head of research at blockchain investment firm Sino Global Capital, said the firm prefers taking a long term view.
Shortly after a Thanksgiving Bitcoin dip to $16,200, news broke that the Chinese government had seized $4.2 billion in cryptocurrencies as part of the Plustoken ponzi scheme court proceedings. Rumors swirled that those tokens were poised to be dumped on the open market, crashing prices further.
However, Sino Global CEO Matthew Graham wrote on Twitter that he believed the majority of the Plustoken Bitcoin had been sold:
hmm my interpretation was *mostly* sold but yes, there’s no need for FUD, agree https://t.co/NAq5iSRoXz
— Matthew Graham (@mattysino) November 27, 2020
Additionally, whether the tokens have been sold or not, in an interview with Cointelegraph McGrath recommended that traders learn to look beyond immediate headlines.
“In the crypto and blockchain ecosystems it is important to be able to ‘cut through the noise,’” he said. "We are long term bullish on Bitcoin and we continue to see the industry professionalize and mature as an asset class."
McGrath also weighed in on a common boogeyman for Western crypto traders — Chinese cryptocurrency miners. Many have speculated that Chinese miners could conduct a 51% attack on the network, and they’ve long been derided by some for controlling vast swaths of the BTC supply:
the cool thing about china having a ton of bitcoins and mining a ton of bitcoins is absolutely nothing
— CryptoGainz (@CryptoGainz1) November 27, 2020
McGrath, however, rejects both notions.
“Some of the reason that “Chinese miners” have been a “boogeyman” to western traders is simply a lack of understanding,” he said. “In theory, of course we know that 51% attacks can occur, but the level of centralization/coordination and incentives simply does not exist among the Chinese miner community for top cryptos.”
“As far as dumping of mined coins, etc. It is possible that Chinese miners are impacted by external factors that would cause them to manage mined coins differently. This is to be expected across different geographies,” he added.
When asked about price targets, McGrath declined to make moonshot calls. He did, however, shed some light on Sino’s investment philosophy.
“Pick projects and teams in which you share a vision and have conviction. Invest for the long-term and don’t get caught up in day to day market fluctuations,” he said. “We invest in teams and projects where we share a vision and have conviction. If we can find, support, and incubate these projects – we’ve done our job.”
As cryptoasset prices resume their uptrend and we continue on into a new bull market, perhaps McGrath’s wisdom is worth considering.
from Cointelegraph.com News https://ift.tt/3fOVX69
Bitcoin mining difficulty approaches ATH as price stabilizes above $18K
Mining difficulty on the network rose by 8.9% today while the hash rate is more than 130 EH/s.
The price of Bitcoin has reached a two-year high of more than $19,000 and fallen below $17,000 more than once in the span of a week as mining difficulty continues to rise.
According to on-chain analytics provider Glassnode, Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty increased by 8.9% today, putting the metric within 5% of its all-time high value set last month.
#Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 8.9% today.
— glassnode (@glassnode) November 29, 2020
It is now only 4.4% below its ATH.
Chart: https://t.co/qtmuDmTfGS pic.twitter.com/1eX63yBAgc
A rise in mining difficulty marked the start of bull cycles in 2013 and 2016, though it remains to be seen whether the coin’s recent rally to within 3% of its ATH price is long-term bullish. The price of Bitcoin fell by 11% last week as many whales moved some of their holdings to exchanges and is $18,122 at the time of publication.
Greater mining difficulty can mean an increase fees for users and the time required to generate a block in addition to increasing the number of unmined transactions in Bitcoin’s mempool. According to estimates from Earn.com, the optimal BTC transaction fee is currently 14,272 satoshis, or roughly $2.60.
The Ethereum (ETH) blockchain has also seen record highs recently. Glassnode reported mining difficulty for the network was at a two-year high on Friday following the price of the token falling from more than $600 on Nov. 23 to $513 in three days.
The network hash rate — an indication as to how much computing power is being dedicated to validating Bitcoin transactions — plunged following the metric and mining difficulty reaching an ATH in October. Data from Blockchain.com shows the metric fell more than 27% between Oct. 17 and Nov. 2, from 146.5 EH/s to 106.6 EH/s. Bitcoin’s hashrate is currently 130.15 EH/s, according to BTC.com.
At the time of publication, the price of Bitcoin is staying above $18,000, having risen 1.9% in the last 24 hours.
from Cointelegraph.com News https://ift.tt/3q6q2mB
The future of gambling? Hamster-powered marble races come to Ethereum
Mia the djungarian 'gamble hamster' will power high-stakes marble races with her trusty hamster wheel.
After just over two years of development, on Sunday a new form of gambling will be released to the Ethereum world on mainnet: hamster-powered marble races.
Powered by Mia, a female djungarian or “winter white dwarf” hamster and her trusty hamster wheel, the project, dubbed “Mia & the Marbles,” is an automated marble-racing and gambling platform from a group of independent developers.
While the concept behind the project may seem… whimsical, in an interview with Cointelegraph the development team for ‘M&M’ revealed how carefully the racing platform has been thought out.
“We guarantee races that are provably fair, provably live and easily-verifiable,” the devs said. “We can guarantee that the races are taking place in real-time and are not pre-recorded. We do this with our provably live video stream that shows the first 8 bits of the current Ethereum blockhash physically on the race track with 8 movable pegs. A high peg stands for a 1, a low peg for a 0.”
The team says that there is also a refund function in place for races that don’t deliver a valid outcome after two days.
While Mia & the Marbles may strike some as a thought experiment or hackathon moonshot come to life, the developers say M&M is inspired by a passion for provably fair gambling.
“We always loved the idea of blockchain gambling projects. But unfortunately, scams are not uncommon in the low-regulated crypto space,” the team said. “So we were brainstorming ideas with the goal to make the provable fairness component easy to understand for anyone, while also being fun at the same time!”
As a coworker, the developers report that Mia is stellar. There was a rough patch in the beginning — when she was a pup, Mia enjoyed nibbling on devs’ fingers — but these days she’s always ready to produce. While many protocols governed by DAOs need to worry about incentive structures and the possibility that another protocol might poach their talent via merger, Mia happily runs in her wheel up to 8 kilometers per day.
“Hamsters are very active naturally and cover wide distances at night to gather food,” the dev team explained.
In the future, there will be more well-developed tracks and possible “championship” brackets for the marbles, and the developers ultimately intend to keep building towards fun, fair games on Ethereum.
“We strongly believe that adding real-world randomness into crypto gambling solutions can dramatically increase the trust that players have into these products. We want to contribute to a fair world.“
from Cointelegraph.com News https://ift.tt/2KIuFCW
Crypto Long & Short: How Bitcoin Development Is Evolving – and What’s Behind It
Bitcoin price spikes grab headlines, but the asset's long-term value depends on its developers – and what drives them.
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