Category Archives: Bitcoin

What’s Behind the Bitcoin Price Surge? Vibes, Mostly – WIRED

The latest surge in the price of bitcoin is increasing the clamor around it, says Dal Bianco, drawing in yet more speculators and creating a self-reinforcing cycle. Likewise, when collective confidence in the prospect of further price growth falters, she says, the resultant downturn can be equally sudden. Under these conditions, demand can vanish as rapidly as it forms.

On March 3, Michael Green, chief strategist at asset management firm Simplify, entered into a wager with Peter McCormack, host of the podcast What Bitcoin Did. They were betting on the price of bitcoin. Green wagered $20,000 that bitcoin would not reach a price of $100,000 per coin by the end of the year. McCormack wagered $100,000 that it would.

The bet, Green says, was in part motivated by a desire to highlight areas of weakness in the economic theory presented as dogma by bitcoin evangelists. He takes issue with the way bitcoin is being sold to the investing public as a store of value designed ultimately to be the currency of the future, he says. I think that is a bunch of economic nonsense. Because the supply of bitcoin will shrink steadily over time as people lose access to irrecoverable wallets, Green argues, it cannot support a system of credit, because the cost of borrowing will eventually rise to a point that almost no one can afford.

In January, US regulators approved the first batch of bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which give people a way to invest in the cryptocurrency through a brokerage, as they would a regular stock. The arrival of bitcoin ETFs is said to have catalyzed the latest surge in price, by unlocking a wave of pent-up demand among investorsboth institutions and regular peoplepreviously unable or unwilling to deal with a crypto exchange or risk storing crypto manually themselves. In approving the new bitcoin funds, says Green, regulators have incentivized financial institutions for whom the ETFs represent a new source of revenue to spend tons of money on marketing to drive demand, and in turn disincentivized any emphasis on deficiencies in the logic of bitcoinomics.

The belief in the future potential of bitcoin has become religious, says Green. That missionary zeal is more likely to influence the price, says Green, than any economic mechanism built into the system. Even if McCormack were to lose the wager, he says, it could be chalked up as a fruitful marketing expense. McCormack told WIRED the wager with Green was not a marketing stunt. I did the bet to prove him wrong, he says.

The influence of evangelism on the price of bitcoin limits the opportunity for good-faith debate about the prospects of the Bitcoin system, says Angel.Once you drink the Kool-Aid, you have a powerful financial incentive to preach to the world that bitcoin is the most wonderful thing, he says. If there were a Nobel prize in marketing, it should be given to Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoins biggest boosters embrace that dynamic as well. Bitcoin price appreciation is an advertisement, says Mow. Investors buy in on the prospect of richesand then fall down the rabbit hole themselves, creating a new generation of believers to spread the Bitcoin gospel.

See original here:
What's Behind the Bitcoin Price Surge? Vibes, Mostly - WIRED

Bitcoin Rebounds But Concerns Mount as Ethereums Perpetual Funding Turns Negative – CryptoPotato

Our website is a comprehensive guide to digital currency investing & trading.Here are a few suggestions to get started, and get the most from us:

Begin with Bitcoin for Beginners.

Get the edge with our exclusive Bitcoin and cryptoguides.

Check out our Crypto YouTube channel, that includes beginners and advanced tutorial videos and market updates. Dont forget to subscribe!

See the original post here:
Bitcoin Rebounds But Concerns Mount as Ethereums Perpetual Funding Turns Negative - CryptoPotato

Shiba Inu (SHIB) Price Prediction After Bitcoin Halving – Watcher Guru

Bitcoin skyrocketed in price touching a new high of $73,737 during mid-March this month. The phenomenal spike also led Shiba Inu to hit a new yearly high of $0.00004282 at the same period. The sudden spurt in price for Shiba Inu comes on the heels of the Bitcoin halving event.

Also Read: Shiba Inu: Investment of $4,400 Grows To $50 Million Today

For the uninitiated, the Bitcoin halving event is scheduled to take place next month on April 20, 2024. The event will make the supply of BTC cut into half making the cryptocurrency scarcely available. The development will make Bitcoin further shoot up in price as the demand will be high with limited supply. The move will make not only Bitcoin but also Shiba Inu and other leading cryptocurrencies sustainably scale up in the indices.

Leading on-chain metrics and price prediction firm CoinCodex has painted a rosy picture for Shiba Inu. According to the price prediction, SHIB could rise by another 225% on the heels of the Bitcoin halving. The forecast highlights that Shiba Inu could breach its all-time high of $0.00008616 and reach a new ATH of $0.00009 level.

Also Read: Cryptocurrency: 3 Coins Under $1 To Buy This Week For Profits

Thats an uptick and return on investment (ROI) of approximately 226% from its current price of $0.00002783. Therefore, an investment of $10,000 in SHIB could turn into $32,600 next month during Bitcoin halving if the prediction turns accurate. If the token holds on to the momentum, it could also delete its fourth zero and hit the $0.0001 mark.

Also Read:Shiba Inu: How To Make $1 Million If SHIBs Price Hits $0.001

However, the cryptocurrency market is highly volatile and there is no guarantee that SHIB could spike 225% in 30 days. It is advised to do thorough research before taking an entry position in the cryptocurrency market currently. Trade at your own risk as the Bitcoin halving event could make the markets turn volatile.

Read more:
Shiba Inu (SHIB) Price Prediction After Bitcoin Halving - Watcher Guru

Bitcoin Price Bounces To $62500, Up Nearly 50% In 2024 – Investor’s Business Daily

Access to this page has been denied because we believe you are using automation tools to browse the website.

This may happen as a result of the following:

Please make sure that Javascript and cookies are enabled on your browser and that you are not blocking them from loading.

Reference ID: #98e95a27-d729-11ee-a268-7b8a9bd19b2c

Continue reading here:
Bitcoin Price Bounces To $62500, Up Nearly 50% In 2024 - Investor's Business Daily

Bitcoin price tops $60,000 for first time since 2021 – Financial Times

Unlock the Editors Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The price of bitcoin has climbed above $60,000 for the first time in more than two years, as a lightning rally puts the worlds biggest cryptocurrency within touching distance of its all-time high.

Bitcoin rose as much as 12.6 per cent to hit $63,968 on Wednesday, before falling back to about $60,000. The rally has brought its gains to 42 per cent in the first two months of this year.

The rapid ascent has revived memories of the crypto bull market that pushed the token to its record peak of nearly $69,000 in November 2021, as investors pile in amid fear of missing out on further price rises.

This is insane, said Timo Lehes, co-founder of blockchain company Swarm, adding that he expected more money to flow into the token.

When people see these kinds of increases in a short period of time...then it just draws in people and Fomo does kick in, he said.

In January, US regulators approved the launch of spot bitcoin exchange traded funds by mainstream asset managers including BlackRock and Invesco, paving the way for an influx of new cash from investors looking to speculate on the cryptocurrency through a regulated vehicle.

The 11 funds now hold 303,000 bitcoins, according to K33 Research, worth $18bn and equivalent to about 1.5 per cent of the total bitcoin supply.

We could see the all-time high being broken any day now, said Simon Peters, an analyst at trading firm eToro. The driving force behind it is without a doubt the [bitcoin funds].

The surge in bitcoin price comes amid a wider rally in traditional financial markets.

Chipmaker Nvidias blockbuster results have fed an investor frenzy over the potential of artificial intelligence technology, helping push US and European stocks to all-time highs in the past week.

Crypto trading platform Coinbase blamed traffic that was 10 times normal for disruptions to some users, including displays of a zero balance in their accounts.

We appreciate your patience, Coinbase said. Were beginning to see improvement in customer trading. Due to increased traffic, some customers may still see errors in login, sends, receives and with some payment methods. Rest assured your funds are safe.

The price of bitcoin has soared despite US regulators clampdown on the biggest crypto companies and continued scepticism about the token. Last week, European Central Bank officials lambasted the cryptocurrency, saying the fair value of bitcoin is still zero.

Recommended

For society, a renewed boom-bust cycle of bitcoin is a dire perspective. And the collateral damage will be massive, they wrote, adding that the tokens price is not an indicator of its sustainability.

The crypto industry has been boosted by the belief that it is moving on from the scandals of recent years. The Securities and Exchange Commission hit Binance, the worlds biggest crypto exchange, with a record $4.3bn fine in November for crimes including failing to protect against money laundering and breaching international sanctions.

Binances rival, FTX, collapsed in 2022 and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty on seven charges of fraud and money laundering. This week, his legal team argued for the former crypto tycoon to spend just a few years in prison, rather than the 100-year sentence he could face.

View post:
Bitcoin price tops $60,000 for first time since 2021 - Financial Times

News updates from February 28: Bitcoin breaks through $60,000; US GDP growth revised down – Financial Times

US GDP: Economists expect the second estimate for fourth-quarter economic growth to come in at 3.3 per cent, unchanged from the advance figure, and down from a 4.9 per cent increase in the third quarter.

Salesforce: The cloud-based software companys revenue is expected to jump nearly 10 per cent in the fourth quarter, according to analysts polled by LSEG. Investors will be keen to learn more about demand for its software and artificial intelligence products. The company is forecast to swing to a profit of $1.29 a share after a loss of 10 cents a share a year earlier.

Other companies: TJX Companies will report earnings before the bell. Paramount Global, AMC Entertainment, and HP will report after the bell.

Fedspeak: Susan Collins, president of the Federal Reserves Boston branch, will participate in a fireside chat at an event hosted by Dartmouth Colleges Tuck School of Business. John Williams, president of the New York Fed, will participate in a discussion organised by the Long Island Association.

Read the original here:
News updates from February 28: Bitcoin breaks through $60,000; US GDP growth revised down - Financial Times

US gov’t moved $922 million of seized Bitcoin after BTC price broke $60,000 – Cointelegraph

The United States government transferred $922 million worth of Bitcoin from two cryptocurrency wallets that held funds seized from Bitfinex in 2016.

The U.S. governments transfers occurred the same day Bitcoin (BTC) breached $60,000 for the first time in over two years on Feb. 28. Bitcoin rose 5.52% in the 24 hours leading up to 9:45 pm UTC to trade at $62,507. The worlds first cryptocurrency is up over 20% in the past week.

The first test transfer, worth only 1 Bitcoin ($60,200 during the transfer), occurred at 3:39 pm on Feb. 28. Shortly after, the U.S. government-labeled wallet sent a second transaction worth 2,817 Bitcoin ($172.74 million), a third transaction worth 0.01 Bitcoin ($613.35) and a fourth transaction worth 12,267 Bitcoin ($748.46 million), according to Arkham Intelligence data.

The government seized the funds in 2016 after Bitfinex was hacked for approximately 119,754 BTC, worth over $7.4 billion at its current price.

The transfers occurred a day after Ilya Lichtenstein, a hacker who stole and laundered over $4.5 billion worth of Bitcoin from the Bitfinex exchange, appeared in a Washington court detailing how he pulled off one the worlds largest Bitcoin heists.

Lichtenstein reportedly told a jury on Feb. 27 that he had access to Bitfinexs systems for several months while also hacking individual accounts at other exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken, according to a Bloomberg report.

Lichtenstein and his rapper wife, Heather Morgan (also known as Razzlekhan), were arrested in February 2022. At the time, the U.S. government alleged they conspired to launder $4.5 billion in hacked Bitcoin, of which the government seized $3.6 billion in the largest financial seizure in history. The government seized an additional $475 million worth of Bitcoin on Aug. 3, 2022.

Lichtenstein and his wife pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy in connection with the Bitfinex hack in August 2023. Amazon has reportedly started making a movie on the Bitfinex money launderers. The script will reportedly be inspired by a 2022 article on the couple in The New York Times, branding them as Bitcoins Bonnie and Clyde.

Related: Why is Bitcoin price up today?

Continue reading here:
US gov't moved $922 million of seized Bitcoin after BTC price broke $60,000 - Cointelegraph

Some Coinbase Users Unable To Trade, See Zero Balance Due to Outage as Bitcoin Soars – Investopedia

Key Takeaways

A Coinbase (COIN)outage left some users to witness zero balance in their accounts and unable to trade Wednesday, even as bitcoin (BTCUSD) soared past $63,000.

A status update on the Coinbase website timestamped 9:40 a.m. Pacific Time said that customer assets were "safe" and that the exchange was "aware that some users may see a zero balance across their Coinbase accounts and may experience errors in buying or selling."

With bitcoin rallying to its highest price since November 2021, a surge in traffic may have caused the service disruption, according to a post by Coinbase co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Brian Armstrong on X.

By 7:15 p.m. Eastern, Coinbase said it had restored all services on Coinbase.com, though some customers continued to see incorrect account balances. Earlier in the day, the exchange admitted that high traffic had caused the some of the issues that its users faced. Armstrong also posted on X that traffic surge Wednesday was greater than 10xthe threshold Coinbase had tested it could handle.

While a direct correlation cannot be drawn, there was a sharp drop in the price of bitcoin in the immediate few minutes preceding Coinbase's post about the interruption.

TradingView

Earlier today, there was another service disruption that involved delayed transactions for some Coinbase users trading on the Ethereum network. That issue was resolved close to 1:30 p.m. Eastern.

Coinbase shares gave up some of their earlier gains and were up 0.79%, trading a shade above $200 around 3:27 p.m. ET Wednesday. Bitcoin gave up its earlier gains, slipping under $60,000 before reclaiming that price milestone, higher by roughly 5% for the day.

(UpdateFeb. 28, 2024: This story was updated to include more recent outage status provided by Coinbase, additional comments from Coinbase CEO Armstrong's X posts and more current price movements.)

The rest is here:
Some Coinbase Users Unable To Trade, See Zero Balance Due to Outage as Bitcoin Soars - Investopedia

Marathon Digital Tumbles On Earnings; Bitcoin Breaks Above $60000 To November 2021 Levels – Investor’s Business Daily

Access to this page has been denied because we believe you are using automation tools to browse the website.

This may happen as a result of the following:

Please make sure that Javascript and cookies are enabled on your browser and that you are not blocking them from loading.

Reference ID: #9e6b35e9-d729-11ee-8736-d0acf8e3dd34

See the original post:
Marathon Digital Tumbles On Earnings; Bitcoin Breaks Above $60000 To November 2021 Levels - Investor's Business Daily

Bitcoin Crosses $63K as ETF Volumes Soar and ‘Halving’ Nears – Investopedia

Key Takeaways

Bitcoin rose above $63,000 for the first time since November 2021 on Wednesday morning, buoyed by a surge in trading activity in spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds this week.

Also lifting investor appetite for the token: A reduction in its supply growth, an event known as its "halving," slated for April.

The largest cryptocurrency has staged a massive comeback since it traded at around $20,000 just under a year ago. Bitcoin (BTC) prices are up around 45% since the beginning of the year and have soared from $42,000 to more than $60,000 in a matter of weeks.

TradingView

This latest price increase in the digital asset comes as activity around spot bitcoin ETFs hit levels not seen since these fundswhich opened up bitcoin to a whole new swathe of retail investorsstarted trading in January. The new nine spot bitcoin ETFs, which only excludes the preexisting Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), hit a new all-time high for trading volume on Monday, according to Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas.

Blackrock's (BLK) iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) broke its own trading volume records on both Monday and Tuesday.

In addition to the obvious hype around the spot bitcoin ETFs, a recent report from Grayscale Advisors LLC pointed to the upcoming bitcoin halving event as a key factor driving bitcoin prices. Slated to occur in April, the halving will cut the supply of new bitcoin created per block as well as the rewards for bitcoin miners in half.

With the supply of bitcoin capped at 21 million and more than 19.6 million already in circulation, halving will slow supplyfeeding the token's scarcity.

The halving is also likely to affect returns of bitcoin mining stocks, which have recently enjoyed stellar gains.

Bitcoin's rally has lifted the whole cryptocurrency space. According to CoinGecko data, the market capitalization of the entire cryptocurrency market has surpassed $2 trillion for the first time since April 2022. Bitcoin accounts for nearly $1.2 trillion of that.

The crytpo market's gains haven't matched the pace of bitcoin's this year, although ether (ETH) recently broke through the $3,000 mark for the first time since April 2022.

Crypto-focused stocks, such as Coinbase (COIN) and Riot Blockchain (RIOT), have also hit new year-to-date highs during this latest rally. Notably, software-intelligence firm Microstrategy (MSTR) now holds more than $11 billion worth of bitcoin on its balance sheet.

Read more:
Bitcoin Crosses $63K as ETF Volumes Soar and 'Halving' Nears - Investopedia