Tuesday, September 17, 2019

ETH & BTC transaction fees / Crypto consolidation / Killing bitcoin

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Good morning!

Awesome news today. You'll love reading about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Libra, and BitGo. Plus, some shenanigans.

Don't forget our Bitcoiner list on Twitter. Today's follow: Adam Back, a pioneering cryptographer and cypherpunk. Back is the inventor of Hashcash, which was cited by Satoshi Nakamoto in his Bitcoin whitepaper. You'll always learn something from @adam3us.

     

Market Watch: The market is back up again. The top five are all up. Nine of the top 10 currencies are up. Only Tether (#6) is down, and it's down just 0.40%. Ethereum is still making great gains and it's back over $200 again. XRP took a sharp upturn, as did BCH. Let's hope this trend continues.

  • Bitcoin: $10,227 (⬆️ 0.03%) // $183.5 billion market cap.
  • Ethereum: $200.90 (⬆️ 5.15%) // $21.6 billion market cap.
  • XRP: $0.27 (⬆️ 4.79%) // $11.7 billion market cap.
  • Bitcoin Cash: $315.39 (⬆️ 3.59%) // $5.67 billion market cap.
  • Top 100 Winner: Function X: $0.35 (⬆️ 46.17%) // $36.6 million market cap.
  • Top 100 Loser: RIF Token: $0.13 (⬇️ 4.78%) // $65.0 million market cap.

Prices are as of 10:25 p.m. EDT.

     

1. Ethereum's daily transaction fees are on the verge of passing Bitcoin's, according to a Coin Metrics analysis. As of Sunday, ETH's daily transaction fees were $182,899 compared to $185,993 for BTC. The analysis shows when Bitcoin's fees were higher than Ethereum's since January 2018. Using that metric, Ethereum's daily transaction fees blew past Bitcoin's on February 19th and March 18th of this year. Bitcoin fees have fallen in the last 30 days while Ethereum's have gone up; Coin Metric says this is probably due to Tether's migration from Omni to Ethereum. -- COIN METRICS

Ethereum transaction fees are about to bypass Bitcoin transaction fees
     

2. BitGo Chief Technology Officer Benedict Chan says consolidation in cryptocurrencies could be a good thing. While he said BitGo, a digital asset trust and security firm for institutional investors, would like to support all of the projects being developed in the space today, consolidating talent and technology toward a few strong projects would benefit the entire industry. He also said institutional investors interested in crypto have increased in the last six months, but they aren't actually getting into the market due to a lack of custodial services, global liquidity, and portfolio lending margins. Today, he noted, five new bitcoins entering the market every 10 minutes. He expects that to increase to 6.25 BTC every 10 minutes next year after the scheduled halving. -- BLOOMBERG

Do you believe there are too many crypto projects in the market today? Email me at allen.taylor@inside.com and let me know.

     
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3. Dr. Saifedean Ammous, professor of economics at Lebanese American University and author of The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, said the way governments can kill bitcoin is to improve their monetary policies. In a talk at the Baltic Honeybadger 2019 conference in Latvia, Ammous said government organizations can rid the world of cryptocurrencies by making their own currencies sound, eliminating the need for alternative forms of money. He added that any government controls and censorship against bitcoin would advertise bitcoin's value proposition and thus make it more resilient. He went on to say government controls do not override human incentives but change costs and bans lead to black markets and that people find a way to get what they want because "society is stronger than the state." -- YOUTUBE / BITCOINBOY

Austrian economist Saifedean Ammous says governments can kill bitcoin by improving monetary policy
     

4. Active for just a couple of weeks, the Bitcoin.com crypto exchange is already being accused of inflating its volumes. Bitcoin.com launched its crypto exchange on September 2. This morning, @danheld tweeted that Bitcoin.com has merged its order books with HitBC and Bequant through Multiexchange.com. Bitcoin.com is not the only exchange to come under scrutiny for allegedly faking trading volume. BitForex was accused of faking volumes last year. Earlier this year, two South Korea crypto exchange executives went to jail for faking trading volumes at Komid. Some reports indicate that crypto exchanges have faked volumes by as much as 95 percent. According to CoinDesk, only 10 crypto exchanges have actual trading volume. -- BITCOINIST

Bitcoin.com has been accused of faking crypto trade volumes after two weeks from launch
     
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5. BUIDL Bootcamp founder and instructor Justin Moon created his own bitcoin hardware wallet for $110. Moon calls his wallet, which sends and receives bitcoins, Bitboy. The wallet uses a QR code, "air-gapped" feature to secure it from hacking and is considered "stateless," which means it wipes away all data processed during each usage session during the shut down process for the sake of transaction security. Moon posted a video to showcase the device on Twitter. Moon built his wallet with the assistance of code published in Jimmy Song's book on bitcoin programming and some assistance from Stepan Snigirev of CryptoAdvance. The wallet does not make use of private encryption keys. -- DECRYPT

Justin Moon creates his own DIY bitcoin hardware wallet
     

6. eToro conducted a survey and found that 40 percent of millennials would consider investing in cryptocurrencies during a recession. eToro polled 1,000 people and also discovered that members of Generation X prefer tangible goods wheres Generation Z prefers real estate. According to the National Association for Business Economics, 74 percent of U.S. business economists expect a recession by the end of 2021. -- THE TOKENIST

Would you invest in crypto during a recession? Email me at allen.taylor@inside.com and let me know.

     

7. Maria Lobanova at The Tradable recommends the use of hardware wallets and diversification of crypto holdings in more than one location as ways to combat potential losses. The most common scams crypto thieves use to gain access to crypto holdings, she says, are phishing, exchange fraud, mobile phone cracking, pop-up windows, and trojan apps. One other tactic scammers use is to earn crypto enthusiasts' trust on messenger app chats to convince the naive to exchange tokens in a "fee-less" transaction, and when the unexpecting fall for it they end up willingly transferring their cryptocurrencies to a wallet address never to see them again. To avoid mistakes, use reliable crypto services, don't trust password-only services, don't use public wi-fi connections and hotspots to make crypto transactions, and never leave your device unattended in a public location are just a few of her recommendations. -- THE TRADABLE

     

8. A Kraken bug lets users buy bitcoin for $2,000 less than market price and sell at $2,000 more than market. A Twitter thread involving Kraken Exchange's account mentions an unreleased advanced order type that included the bug. The exchange said no liquidity was lost but that trade executions on either end of the $8,000-$12,000 spread were executed. Kraken also said stop market orders were correctly filled at market price. Only one trade was executed at about $100. -- COIN TELEGRAPH

A bug at Kraken allowed one user to buy BTC for $2,000 less than market price and sell for $2K more
     

9. Germany and France have issued a joint statement opposing Facebook's Libra. Their concerns include security risks, investor protection, money laundering, terrorist financing, and "monetary sovereignty." Facebook is still defending its proposed cryptocurrency saying it doesn't create new value. Project lead David Marcus has taken to Twitter to defend the currency. Meanwhile, what appears to be a fake secondary market for Libra has developed as Calibra, Facebook's Libra wallet, Chief Operating Officer Tomer Barel is distancing himself from the Libra Investment Token distributed to members of the Libra Association.  -- MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

     

10. A United Kingdom police force is auctioning off 500,000 GBP in cryptocurrencies acquired from a seizure during two illegal sales transactions. Cryptocurrencies include bitcoin, ethereum, and ripple. A 19-year-old man was found guilty of illegally supplying personal data and hacking services online. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison and ordered to repay over 400,000 GBP in fees he charged customers. The auction will be managed by Wilsons Auctions beginning September 25. -- IRISH TIMES

United Kingdom police are auctioning over 500,000 GBP in crypto after illegal sale
     

Inside Bitcoin is written and curated by award-winning journalist and former newspaper editor Allen Taylor. Recognized by the Dallas Bar Association three times for excellence in legal reporting, Allen has since gone on to author, edit, or ghostwrite several white papers, books and e-books, and over 10,000 blog posts for clients ranging from small business owners to global management companies and corporate executives. Learn more about him on LinkedIn.

Editor: David Stegon (senior editor at Inside, whose reporting experience includes cryptocurrency and technology).

     
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