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Bitcoin has had a mixed start to the new year. The price has climbed, most likely for potentially controversial reasonsbut, meanwhile, at least one minor cryptocurrency is going from strength to strength.

The bitcoin price has climbed over the first few days of 2020 but has failed to make meaningful gains and breakout of its long-running malaise, leaving many cryptocurrency traders and investors disappointed.

However, chainlink, a top 20 cryptocurrency traded under the name link boasting an $800 million market capitalization, has risen 25% already in 2020bringing its year-on-year rise close to a staggering 500%.

The bitcoin price has outperformed most major cryptocurrencies over the last year but some smaller ... [+] tokens, including chainlink, are making huge gains.

The chainlink price reached its highest in late June of 2019, hitting $4.55 and up over 1800% from the start of 2019.

The massive rally was caused by interest in chainlink from China, the world's largest bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange by volume, Binance, working with chainlink developers so-called decentralized finance products, and search giant Google using chainlink's blockchain to bridge legacy databases.

"As with most blockchain projects in their infancy given the low liquidity initially, any surge in demand is likely to cause significant impact on price," said Simon Peters, bitcoin and crypto analyst at investment platform eToro.

The chainlink price has fallen back somewhat from its all-time high but has broken the broader cryptocurrency downward trendwith almost all so-called altcoins failing to recover after the brutal crypto winter of late 2018 and early 2019.

The chainlink price hits an all-time high of $4.54 back in July of last year and has since fallen ... [+] back from there but remains significantly up on the start of 2019.

"With chainlink developers working with the likes of Swift to help connect banks to smart contracts, as well as major companies like Google, naturally this has caused excitement around the potential of the platform going forward," Peters added.

"This has subsequently encouraged investors to buy the link token, speculating on the project's future success. With link prices increasing over the last year, this was further compounded by the 'fear of missing out' phenomenon."

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As Bitcoin Struggles, This Minor Cryptocurrency Is Up Almost 500% Over The Past 12 Months - Forbes

By Landon Manning

The South Korean Presidential Committee on the Fourth Industrial Revolution (PCFIR), a committee focused on coordinating regulatory policy around cutting-edge technology in the country, has made recommendations that the government work toward institutional acceptance of crypto assets, causing some to speculate that South Korea is preparing for a crypto arms race against the Chinese digital yuan.

Local media outletBusiness Koreareportedon January 6, 2020, that the PCFIR suggested that the Korean government allow financial institutions to launch cryptocurrency-related products, such as Bitcoin derivatives, as a medium- and long-term strategy for the institutionalization of cryptocurrencies.

As part of this strategy of working toward both nearer and longer term goals, the committee also recommended the development and implementation of a Korean custody solution to avoid relying solely on foreign custodians in the process of handling crypto assets.

This problem seems especially salient for South Korea, as it also formally recommended directly listing bitcoin for sale on Korea Exchange, the nations sole securities operator. Additionally, the report called for the legalization of private firms selling futures on bitcoin products. For this latter measure, the report explicitly drew comparisons to governments like the United States, which have enacted similar measures, calling these regulations a model to be emulated.

Given the way that the PCFIR referenced the international crypto industry, specifically claiming that it is no longer possible to stop crypto-asset trade worldwide, commentators havedrawn attentionto Chinas test phase of developing its own state-backed crypto asset: the digital yuan. The Chinese economy being a significant competitor to South Koreas in a wide range of areas (and also considering Chinas support for North Korea) adds validity to this notion that South Korea has a rivalry with the economic giant in mind in its own approach to formal crypto adoption.

The proposal of these new measures has not been the only crypto-friendly overture from the South Korean government recently. On December 30, 2019, the Ministry of Finance and Strategyconfirmedthat nothing in the countrys tax code currently supports the taxation of capital gains made through trading cryptocurrencies. Although there has been some chatter that the government will seek to tighten its tax codes in the future, concrete legislative attempts are yet to materialize.

Although it is unclear what amount of material resources the South Korean government will commit to the promotion of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies, the suggestion that it will allow private firms more leeway to expand their services independently is a good start. As the possible global implications of Chinas new program begin to crystallize, South Koreas response will surely also become clearer.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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South Korea Moves Toward Institutional Acceptance of Cryptocurrency - Nasdaq

The Financial Services Agency plans to introduce a rule limiting the leverage in cryptocurrency margin trading to twice the deposits of traders, it was learned Friday.

The regulation, which is stricter than the industrys self-imposed cap of four times, will be established to reduce the risks of losses ballooning due to volatile price fluctuations.

The new rule will be included in a Cabinet Office order linked to the revised Financial Instruments and Exchange Act which will go into force in spring, informed sources said.

Cryptocurrencies have been hailed as the payment method of the future partly thanks to their low remittance fees. But the actual use has not reflected these expectations.

Some 80 to 90 percent of the transactions via cryptocurrency exchanges are speculative margin trading.

The FSA discussed leverage regulation with an industry body, the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association, after the revised law was passed by the Diet in May last year.

The agency has decided on the leverage cap of two times based on past price fluctuations and cryptocurrency regulations in Europe and the United States, the sources said.

The association plans to review its rules to reflect the new regulation. Exchange operators are expected to be pressured to alter their business models as the new regulations may lead speculative traders to lose interest in cryptocurrency margin trading.

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Financial Services Agency to limit leverage in cryptocurrency margin trading to twice the deposits made by traders - The Japan Times

Image: Peter Kruse

Security researchers from Romanian antivirus vendor Bitdefender have discovered a botnet that infects home routers and other Internet of Things (IoT) smart devices and then attempts to mine for cryptocurrency.

This marks the third such IoT botnet that wastes its time by attempting to mine cryptocurrency on devices that clearly don't support these types of operations.

Named LiquorBot, the botnet was first spotted in May 2019, according to a report Bitdefender published yesterday.

The botnet is nothing special in terms of technical capabilities. It works just like any other IoT botnet that's been documented over the past few years. Below is a short summary of LiquorBot's features:

About the only novel detail about LiquorBot is the fact that the malware is a version of the Mirai strain rewritten in the Go programming language -- but that's about it.

Most IoT botnets today usually appear and disappear within weeks or months. LiquorBot is a strange case because it remained active throughout all 2019.

Bitdefender says the malware often received updates, usually in the form of new exploits. The most interesting update was, however, recorded in October.

The company says the LiquorBot code was expanded with a module that attempted to mine the Monero (XMR) cryptocurrency on infected devices.

The module, in itself, is quite useless, seeing that the entire botnet is predicated on infected routers, above anything else.

SOHO (Small Office Home Office) routers are cheap devices that lack the CPU and hardware capabilities to adequately mine cryptocurrency -- which is a very resource-heavy operation.

In the past, other IoT botnets have also wasted their time attempting to mine cryptocurrency on SOHO routers, with little success, and with all dropping any attempts within weeks, primarily due to the low yield the hacked devices were turning in.

The first IoT botnet to experiment with the feature was a Mirai-based botnet operated out of China, back in March 2017. The botnet experiment with a Bitcoin-mining module for a week, before dropping the module altogether.

The second was an IoT malware strain named Linux.MulDrop.14, detected by Dr.Web in June 2017. This botnet targeted Raspberry Pi devices, where it also attempted to mine Bitcoin. While Raspberry Pi devices have access to more hardware resources than your casual SOHO router, this botnet didn't break the bank either, stopping its experiments after a few weeks.

The discovery of these two botnets in 2017 encouraged researchers to look into the possibility of IoT botnets of being used as cryptocurrency mining farms. At the time, Errata Security estimated that if a Mirai botnet of 2.5 million bots mined cryptocurrency it would earn only a meager $0.25 per day, effectively dispelling the notion that IoT botnets could ever be used for cryptocurrency mining.

Apparently, the LiquorBot author didn't get the notice.

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Naive IoT botnet wastes its time mining cryptocurrency - ZDNet

New research is revealing just how concentrated the ownership of wealth is among the leading cryptocurrencies by market cap.

Blockchain analytics firm IntoTheBlock is releasing its latest findings on the consolidation of crypto accross some of the biggest coins by market cap. The crypto intelligence company says 321 crypto whales control huge amounts of wealth in the Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin ecosystems.

Although Bitcoin transactions are traceable, the identities of most addresses remains shrouded in mystery, often owned by early investors and in some cases cryptocurrency exchanges.

As for Bitcoin, IntoTheBlock says just 39 whales hold 11.1% of all of existing BTC. For Ethereum, 154 addresses hold 40% of all ETH, and for Litecoin 128 addresses hold 47% of all LTC.

Meanwhile, over half of the circulating supply of Tether is in the hands of 140 wallets.

Heres a breakdown of all the coins in the study.

With a $36.3 billion 24-hour trading volume, Tether is currently outpacing Bitcoins volume at $29.9 billion. The stablecoin is widely used to hedge against the markets notoriously wild swings.

On the surface, the accumulation of coins in the hands of the few may seem like bad news. However, there may be a benefit to the long-term health of the crypto industry. In theory, whales can help keep the price of digital coins stable. Unlike retail traders, they rarely dump at the first sign of weakness. In addition, whales can help carve a bear market bottom as they tend to accumulate when prices dip.

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Featured Image: Shutterstock/22August

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321 Cryptocurrency Whales Control Staggering Amounts of Bitcoin, Ethereum And Litecoin - The Daily Hodl