 QUOTE OF THE DAY  |
| If you are bearish or bullish long enough, you will eventually be right." - Unknown |
Happy Thursday! With a strong and swift bounce after Bitcoin touched the $6,100 level, we have had a quick breather. It is unclear how long this bear market will continue but if McAfee wants his prediction to hit in 2020 we better see some upward movement pretty quick!
Cheers,
Blockchain Brew Team
| COIN | PRICE | 24H |
|
| BTC | $6,476.19 | -0.35% |
|
| ETH | $478.031 | -0.11% |
|
| XRP | $0.538755 | +0.13% |
|
| BCH | $855.411 | +0.85% |
|
| EOS | $10.1341 | +2.94% |
|
*Information as of 9:30 AM EST
Researchers Conclude Tether was Used to Inflate Bitcoin’s Price
TETHER
- Tether is the biggest “stable coin” by market capitalization with all Tether being valued at roughly $2.5 billion
- Stable coins are digital currencies that are pegged to some other financial instrument, in Tether’s case, the coin is pegged to the US dollar
- Tether is tied with cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and claims to be backed 1:1 with US dollars, however cryptocurrency investors have been skeptical of this claim and demanded audits of Tether’s banking
USDT INFLATING BTC
- A report was published Wednesday by John Griffin and Amin Shams, from the University of Texas at Austin's Department of Finance, which looked into the relationship between printing of Tether tokens and the price movement of Bitcoin
- Griffin and Shams were able to conclude that Tether was used to inflate the price of Bitcoin during bear markets
- The research finds that it doesn’t take much Tether to cause a significant movement in the price of Bitcoin, "even less than 1 percent of extreme exchange of tether for bitcoin has substantial aggregate price effects"
The researchers summarized their study:
"By mapping the blockchains of bitcoin and tether, we are able to establish that entities associated with the Bitfinex exchange use tether to purchase bitcoin when prices are falling. Such price supporting activities are successful, as Bitcoin prices rise following the periods of intervention. These effects are present only after negative returns and periods following the printing of tether."
5% of All Monero in Circulation Was Mined by Malware, Research Finds
CRYPTOJACKING
- In a report released by enterprise security company Palo Alto Networks, researchers concluded that 5% of all Monero in circulation was mined maliciously
- This type of malicious mining is called cryptojacking and is completed by using other users' computer power to mine cryptocurrencies without the owners knowing
In an email to Cointelegraph, Justin Ehrenhofer spoke on why Monero is a target for mining by cryptojacking:
"[People] may take advantage of Monero's privacy and accessible proof of work features for their own illegitimate personal gain."
MALICIOUS MINING STATS
- In the report, the researcher breaks down Monero's malicious mining stats and found that the total hashrate for Monero cryptojacking is 19 mega-hashes per second
- At this rate, the miners are bringing in about $30,443 per day
CONCLUSIONS
- Malicious mining programs are only expected to continue to grow and cybersecurity will have to adapt to keep up
- Just last week, 40,000 computers were infected with mining malware using the Coinhive mining software
Ripple CEO Continues Bitcoin Bashing
INSULT TO INJURY
- Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, has been a harsh critic of Bitcoin in the past and continued to voice his opinion at 2018 Stifel Cross Sector Insight Conference
- Garlinghouse’s comments come while the price of Bitcoin has been in a downfall in the last several days
- His opinion is that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will not disrupt banks, rather coins like Ripple will be used as a tool by banks
- These comments are not at all surprising, as he is the CEO of Ripple, his opinions fit Ripple’s use case and Bitcoin is a competitor of Ripple
CONTROLLED BY CHINA
- In addition to his comments about Bitcoin not disrupting the banking system, he also criticized the leading cryptocurrency for being controlled by China
- He states how Bitcoin mining is centered in China and that is scary, giving the Chinese government has not been all that friendly to cryptocurrencies
The XRP CEO said:
“I’ll tell you another story that is underreported, but worth paying attention to. Bitcoin is really controlled by China. There are four miners in China that control over 50% of Bitcoin. How do we know that China won’t intervene? How many countries want to use a Chinese-controlled currency? It’s just not going to happen.”
TAKEAWAY
- Yes, these comments are coming from the CEO of the industry’s 3rd biggest coin, who you’d think would be an expert on the space, but you should take his comments with a grain of salt because of his bias
- XRP and BTC are competitors, so it is in Garlinghouse’s best interest to shame Bitcoin and promote his token
- His comments come even as he is himself is invested in Bitcoin
Western Union Won't Support Crypto in the Near Future, CEO Says
CONSUMER'S CHOICE
- Reported yesterday by MarketWatch, Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek said the company will not support a crypto transfer solution anytime soon
- Speaking at the Economic Club of New York, Ersek stated that consumers don't yet favor cryptocurrencies over fiat since fiat has a much more broader set of uses
Ersek made a comment regarding Western Union offering what consumers want, however, cryptocurrencies aren't there yet:
"The consumers tell us what they want. People aren’t paying their hospital bills in cryptos."
PLAYING WITHIN THE LINES
- Western Union has been playing within the lines of regulations and has been careful to not cross governments by toying with cryptocurrencies
- In December of last year, Western Union denied a transaction with the popular exchange Kraken because it was against internal regulations
- In addition, Ersek has made past comments regarding the role central banks play in national currencies and the fact that they won't give up power to a decentralized digital currency in the near future
Bitcoin (BTC)
Russia runs BTC payment for hotel guests during Mundial 2018!
Ark (ARK)
ARK Core v2 codebase for released on public testing network (DevNet).
IOTA (MIOTA)
"Due to popular demand, we will be adding @iotatoken to the Bitpanda platform on the 14th of June!"
Today in Crypto is powered by coinmarketcal.com
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