BestChange is a top-level and easy way to exchange

[BestChange]

BTC and S&P 500 correlation hit a nine-year high

Bitcoin price and the S&P 500 index have been changing most correlated for 9 years, said eToro analyst Mati Greenspan. The correlation of the prices of the two assets reached 0.6, whereas before it did not exceed 0.3 - with a value of 1, the charts move completely identically. The analyst explained this by the coronavirus pandemic. Bitcoin is still considered a risk asset and hasnt achieved the safe haven status that gold has taken thousands of years to build up, Greenspan summed up. However, he added that the profitability of BTC is still higher than the stock market: since the beginning of the year, BTC added 7% in price, while at the same time, the price of oil collapsed to the levels of the 2000s.

Opinion: only large miners will survive halving

Representatives of the mining industry believe that only large and effective miners will remain after the halving. F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun said that due to a decrease in rewards from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC, unprofitable operators could be absorbed by larger players. A similar position was expressed by Alejandro de la Torre, Poolin Vice President. In his opinion, miners using old equipment will have to disconnect after halving. The head of New Mine, Ibrahim Alkurd, noted that one should not hope for a rise in the price of bitcoin after halving. Miners hoping that the BTC price will jump up after halving the block reward, making their operations profitable, are in trouble, he said. Wang Chun added that after halving, those farms will stay that are capable of mining bitcoin at a cost of $3,500.

[BestChange]

The balance of bitcoins on exchanges fell to a minimum

The number of BTC that users store on exchanges has dropped to a 6-month minimum. According to Glassnode, the current balance is 2.36 million coins. The indicator has been declining since March 13, when the price of bitcoin fell below $4,000. At the same time, the network activity has grown to record levels since 2017. According to TokenAnalyst analysts, investors are withdrawing c r y p t o currency from exchanges, since they are considering long-term storage of coins.

65% of Twitter users believe in the strengthening of BTC after halving

The topic of halving is growing in popularity on the social network Twitter along with increased Google searches. Over the past two weeks, the number of posts mentioning the word "halving" has grown tweets-fold, reports The TIE. On May 6, users posted 2,500 tweets: 65% of them are positive, that is, their authors expect that the event will positively affect the value of bitcoin. The TIE notes that the topic of halving at the end of April surpassed the popularity of coronavirus among c r y p t o enthusiasts.

Ex-President of Bank of China: digital yuan will replace cash

The digital version of yuan, which is already being tested by the Chinese authorities, may completely replace cash in the future, said Li Lihui, the former President of the Bank of China. He noted that unlike traditional currencies, CDBC will not depend on a third-party bank or payment system. In this case, the virtual currency must meet four key conditions: “Whether the digital yuan can become the dominant form of currency and mainstream payment means, depends on whether it has greater efficiency, lower transaction costs, enough economic scale with commercial value, and people’ acceptance,” said the former President of Bank of China. He added that CDBC will have anonymity, like Bitcoin, but the regulator will set limits on the number and frequency of operations without confirming the identity.

[BestChange]

The profit of miners fell by 44%. Halving is to blame

Daily earnings of miners fell from $16 to $9 million after halving on May 12. Obsolete equipment, for example, Antminer S9, has now become unprofitable. At the same time, the bitcoin hash rate fell by 16%, and the block mining time increased to 10 minutes 32 seconds. The problem should be fixed by a correction of complexity, which is expected in 5 days. The estimated difficulty will decrease by 2%.

Stablecoin capitalization exceeded $10 billion

The volume of all existing stablecoins reached $10.4 billion, having updated the historical maximum. Tether holds 85% of the market, second place is occupied by USDC, which accounts for 7.2% of capitalization. Since February, the total supply of stable coins has grown by 79%, and the share of USDT has increased by 3%. Most USDT tokens were issued on the Ethereum blockchain - $5.73 billion, $1.8 billion are working on the Tron network, $1.3 billion use the Omni blockchain.

Pavel Durov announces the closure of the TON c r y p t o project

Pavel Durov, co-founder of VK social network and Telegram messenger, announced the closure of the Telegram Open Network blockchain project. The reason, he said, is the decision of the American court. "Unfortunately, a US court stopped TON from happening. How? Imagine that several people put their money together to build a gold mine – and to later split the gold that comes out of it. Then a judge comes and says: 'These people invested in the gold mine because they were looking for profits. And they didn't want that gold for themselves, they wanted to sell it to other people. Because of this, they are not allowed to get the gold," Durov wrote. He noted that the court banned the use of GRAM c r y p t o currency in the whole world since a US citizen can get access to it. According to the businessman, this is a paradox decision, because it implies control of the American authorities over the sovereignty of other countries. “Unfortunately, we – the 96% of the world's population living elsewhere – are dependent on decision makers elected by the 4% living in the US,” concluded Durov. The businessman said that his team is stopping work on the platform and urged not to be fooled by fraudsters using the name of the project.

[BestChange]

Andreessen Horowitz: the c r y p t o currency market is growing randomly but steadily

Venture Fund Andreessen Horowitz from Silicon Valley has analyzed the c r y p t o currency market and came to the conclusion that it has been showing a “choppy yet consistent growth” since 2010. Experts studied four metrics: the price of bitcoin, activity in social networks, developer activity and startup activity. All four parameters showed positive cumulative annual growth rates. The company noted the importance of the 2017 cycle, which became the reason for the launch of “dozens of interesting projects” from various business areas. “Even though c r y p t o cycles look chaotic, over the long term they’ve generated steady growth of new ideas, code, projects, and startups — the fundamental drivers of software innovation. Technologists and entrepreneurs will continue to push c r y p t o forward in the coming years. We are excited to see what they build,” Andreessen Horowitz concluded.

Miner hackers attacked supercomputers

Last week, a number of supercomputers from the UK, Germany, Switzerland and Spain were attacked by c r y p t o miners. The University of Edinburgh, Leibniz Computing Center, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the Swiss Center for Scientific Computing are among the victims. Experts from Cado Security examined samples of malicious code and concluded that hackers gained access through compromised user data and SSH keys. There is no official evidence that the attacks were carried out by one group of attackers, but Cado Security pointed to similar virus file names and network identifiers.

Cardano creator: misinformation prevents bitcoin from spreading

Cardano founder and Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson suggested that bitcoin is misunderstood due to the abundance of false information and fears. “I started with Bitcoin and started with something called the Bitcoin education project. The goal there was to try to bring as many people as possible into our ecosystem and to also dispel a lot of the common myths, fear, uncertainty, disinformation, and misnomers and things that have been cropping up. In 2013, there was certainly a lot of them, and unfortunately today there’s even more,” the businessman said. Hoskinson created a 40-minute video in which he explained the essence of the first c r y p t o currency and called for similar actions by all industry participants. The reason was the tweet by the writer Joan Rowling, who asked to tell her what Bitcoin is. Having received many answers, including from Ilon Mask and c r y p t o ik Buterin, the author of Harry Potter books has not understood the idea of c r y p t o currency and expressed her disappointment.

[BestChange]

Bitcoin whales withdraw 17,000 BTC over a few hours

Large holders of bitcoin in several transactions withdrew 17,320 BTC (about $169.4 million) from several exchanges, the Whale Alert service noticed. First, 5,000 BTC was sent from Bitfinex to an unknown address. Then 3,058 BTC was transferred from an account on Binance exchange; 2,645 BTC were moved from OKEx in two transactions. A little later, another 3,164 BTC were withdrawn from OKEx, and 1,593 BTC from Coinbase. The senders and recipients are unknown; all transfers were made during the evening and night of May 19. Twitter users have suggested that whales accumulate coins on the verge of the upcoming Bitcoin price increase.

Bitcoin price drops to 0 on BitMEX

On May 19, the BTC/ USD price collapsed to zero at BitMEX, one of the largest c r y p t o derivatives trading sites. After that, the platform suspended trading for several hours. Representatives of the exchange did not explain whether there was a real deal at the rate of $0, or whether it was a technical malfunction. BitMEX said that “all funds are safe”, now the website is working as usual. The other day, a lawsuit was filed against BitMEX, among other accusations, the exchange was accused of price manipulation and fraud.

Bitcoin mining difficulty decreases by 6%

On the morning of May 20, the first change in the complexity of mining Bitcoin took place after the recent halving — the indicator fell by 6%. The reason lies in the hashrate falling after halving the block reward. Now outdated equipment can once again generate revenue at the cost of electricity below $0.05 kW/h. In some provinces of China, due to the rainy season, tariffs for miners have been reduced to $0.03 kWh/h. This may prompt miners who have switched off, to return to c r y p t o currency mining, according to Alejandro De La Torre, vice president of the PoolIn mining pool. According to BTC.com, in two weeks, complexity may decrease by another 6.3%. In early March, the indicator updated its historical maximum, but after the collapse of the exchange rate to $4,000 at the end of the month, it fell by 15.95%.

[BestChange]

Bitcoin Cash is at risk of an attack of 51%

The Bitcoin Cash network lost 30% of hashrate after bitcoin halving - this makes it vulnerable to 51% attack, according to Yassin Elmanjra, analyst at ARK Invest.

“Bitcoin Cash is not looking healthy:

-Hashrate down 30% since halving (& only accounts for ~2% of SHA256 hash)
-Economic throughput at all time lows
-Fees are .05% of miner rev (<$100/day)
-Theoretical 51% attack costs <$10k/hr, ” Yassin tweeted.

He added that he was surprised why the capture of 51% of the c r y p t o currency capacities has not yet been implemented. According to the c r y p t o 51 service, the cost of such an attack is $8,800 per hour.

Investors accumulate Ethereum

On May 24, two records were updated in the ETH network: the number of addresses containing 100 or more coins reached 47,740, and the number of wallets with one or more ETH exceeded 1,042 million. Glassnode service drew attention to these statistics. Earlier, the Grayscale fund, having bought almost half of all coins mined in 2020, reported the growth in popularity of investments in Ethereum. The clients of the fund are institutional investors who invest in securities tied to c r y p t o currency. According to analysts, market participants expect a strengthening of the coin value after the launch of the Ethereum 2.0 network, scheduled for the third quarter of this year.

Canaan miner manufacturer reports loss

Hard times have come for mining equipment manufacturers. The Chinese company Canaan said it suffered $5.6 million losses in Q1. Revenue for this period amounted to $9.4 million - for comparison, in Q4of 2019, the indicator reached $66.5 million. The company's expenses in the first quarter of 2020 exceeded $15 million, which is associated with a two-fold reduction in equipment prices. “The overall market situation since December last year until January had not been too good. So the unit price per TH/s was indeed lower,” said Nangeng Zhang, CEO of the company. According to the F2Pool mining calculator, Canaan devices are significantly inferior in efficiency to the equipment of Bitmain and MicroBT.

[BestChange]

JPMorgan: Bitcoin is trading 25% below the real value

Although the investment bank JPMorgan does not work with c r y p t o currency, the company's specialists occasionally provide analytics on it. According to the bank’s report of May 22, bitcoin today is trading “25% below what the intrinsic price would be after the halving.” The intrinsic value is calculated on the basis of the average cost of mining one coin. Thus, BTC should be trading near the $11,500 mark, which is about $2,400 higher than the current figures. According to JPMorgan, "eventually bitcoin will catch up."

Miners push the market

Miners turned into sellers, exerting pressure on the market, says analyst c r y p t o Kea. Over the past seven days, they have sold 955 coins over what they mined. “We reached Bitcoin miner capitulation territory,” the analyst concluded. At the same time, the BTC hashrate fell to its lowest level in 2020. Even during Black Thursday, when the rate of the first *c r y p t o currency fell to $3,800, the computing power of the network was 94 TH/s. Now it has fallen to 90.30 TH/s. Miners switch off outdated devices, but they are forced to sell bitcoins to pay for current expenses, c r y p t o Kea notes.

The number of “hodlers” increases to the levels of 2016

The number of coins that have not been moving for more than a year has reached 60%, according to cryptanalyst Philipp Swift. This indicates a significant increase in the number of "hodlers" - investors who prefer to hold coins for a long time. The last time this was observed in 2016, it was several months before the bull rally, Swift notes. The analyst used the data of his own HODL Wave indicator, which estimates how long the coins did not move from one address to another. Currently, the indicator value is at levels close to the historical maximum.

[BestChange]

Whales accumulate $4.8 billion in ETH

Ethereum held by large investors recently reached a 10-month high. The 100 largest wallets have accumulated 21.8 million ETH (about $4.8 billion). At the same time, whales have acquired 145 thousand coins over the past two days, according to the analytical service Santiment. Against this background, Ethereum price reached a 2-month high at around $224. Over the past day, c r y p t o currency has risen in price by 5.77%. In addition, the number of ETH long positions on Bitfinex hit a new all-time high: since the beginning of the year, the indicator has grown by 246%, updating the historic maximum at 1.76 million ETH.

Gavin Andresen: c r y p t o trading is all speculation

Gavin Andresen, Chief research officer at Bitcoin Foundation, expressed the opinion that traders speculate at the price of digital currencies, not paying attention to the essence of the underlying technologies. He compared the graphs of the IOTA and ZCash rates over the past year and noted that he does not see significant differences between them. At the same time, from February 12 to March 10, no transactions were made on the IOTA network due to the suspension of the wallet that was attacked. Andresen said that he could not determine from the price chart which of the projects was experiencing problems. “Probably nobody is thinking, and it is all day traders and bots,” the scientist concluded.

[BestChange]

Chinese authorities to close 64 mining farms

After the meeting of Yunnan province officials, it was ordered to shut down 57 illegally operating mining farms that were disguising themselves as Big Data companies. Another 7 facilities under construction must cease working. The region’s authorities noted the benefits of mining companies that take away excess electricity, but pointed out that many of them come into direct agreements with hydroelectric power plants and evade taxes. Earlier, the local power grid company demanded to stop the illegal energy consumption by miners who connect to the stations bypassing the authorities. It is reported that some farms have already put up their equipment for sale.

Bitcoin steadily rises in price in May

The principle of traditional markets “sell in May and go away” does not apply to bitcoin, according to analysts at Messari. Last month, BTC added 9%, slightly higher than the 2020 average of 8.5%. At the same time, in 2019, c r y p t o currency in May rose by 54% with an average return of less than 8% per month. And in just 10 years, Bitcoin showed a positive trend in May 8 out of 10 times, while in 6 cases it was higher than the monthly average. Among classical traders, there is an opinion that in the summer there is no significant growth in the market, so it makes no sense to open long positions until the fall.

[BestChange]

CoinMetrics: signs are emerging that may mark the beginning of an altcoin season

The analytical service CoinMetrics drew attention to the price growth of some c r y p t o assets. Cardano has risen 40% in the past week after announcing the launch date for the next major update “Shelley”. OmiseGo price doubled after Coinbase announced the coin’s listing In addition, ETH price grew by 14% per week, ahead of a number of “core assets” - and the majority of altcoins work on the ethereum blockchain, analysts note. “Such market movements in response to mainnet launches, new product upgrades, and exchange listings are reminiscent of late 2017,” CoinMetrics experts conclude.

Miners reduced bitcoin sales

The Glassnode portal has published data on the influx of coins to exchanges from mining pools. It turned out that after the halving on May 11, miners reduced sales, and now their volume is much lower than the average values for 2020. Over the past two months, sale peaks were observed on May 3 and 7, when Bitcoin price surpassed the $9,000 and $10,000 marks, respectively. Service experts also noted that a surge in BTC price on June 2 above $10,000 provoked an eight-fold increase in the flow of traders’ funds to large exchanges. After the dip to $9,500, the indicators returned to average, which indicates the importance of the round level of $10,000 for market participants.

Bitcoin has got protection against attacks by authorities

Bitcoin Core 0.20.0 was released on June 3. It contains a solution designed to protect the network from attacks of major players, such as nation-states or corporations like Google. Software “Asmap” was included to protect against a theoretical “Erebus” attack. Such an attack involves blocking or substituting P2P connections to isolate a specific part of the network. The attacker must connect to as many nodes around the victim as possible so that all eight of its external connections go through the attacker's network. Thus, the victim is completely isolated from the main blockchain. Theoretically, such an attack, carried out by an entire nation-state, could fracture the entire Bitcoin network.