25 Bitcoin Transactions Worth $6 Billion Included in One Block.

Several high-value bitcoin (BTC) transactions were included in a single block on June 30.

Bitcoin Block Bot, a Twitter account dedicated to reporting significant bitcoin (BTC) transactions reported that 25 bitcoin transactions worth $6 billion were included in block 583,139 on June 30.

Cryptocurrency news outlet AmbCrypto reported that all the transactions formed a bigger, linear transaction. Wallet 1 initiating the transaction sent 24,392.93062596 BTC to wallet 2, and 300 BTC to wallet 3. This last address received a total of 5,800 BTC, and was a receiving wallet in all 25 transactions.

Wallet 2 also transferred 300 BTC to wallet 3 and 24,092.93013651 to a fourth wallet in a chain that continued for 23 transactions. Curiously, one transaction, coming from vanity address 1BUYBTC1oYQtAjktSRZUtjkeBJ15ABc5bb, contained the following message in its output scripts:

“We'll buy your Bitcoins. sell.buy.bitcoin@protonmail.com”

As of press time, wallet 3 has performed 440,505 transactions, received a total of 5,959,532 BTC, and currently holds nearly 6,445 BTC ($72.5 million). 

As Cointelegraph reported earlier this week, Galaxy Digital founder and crypto enthusiast Mike Novogratz predicted that Bitcoin’s price will stabilize between $10,000 and $14,000.

The same day news broke that Fundstrat Global Advisers Co-Founder Thomas Lee suggested that bitcoin’s volatility makes a long-term approach towards it more appropriate for most traders.

Information source cointelegraph

Bitcoin Mining is Now More Competitive Than Ever, New Data Shows.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) mining difficulty has reached an all-time high, demonstrating the increasing competition for block rewards between miners, data from Blockchain.com revealed on June 27.

Mining difficulty, which adjusts to the network hash rate every 2016 blocks, hit 7.86 trillion, a new record, surpassing the previous peak in October 2018. 

Hash rate itself, which set new records on an almost daily basis throughout recent weeks, has meanwhile come down slightly to linger around 56 quintillion hashes per second. 

In other words, competition among miners for new blocks as well as overall bitcoin network security has never been higher. 

As Cointelegraph reported, it is network metrics such as these which instill confidence in analysts and markets alike. The 2019 bitcoin bull run followed a return to form for network stability after a period of regression in the last quarter of 2018. 

At its lowest, hash rate circled just 32 quintillion hashes, having come down from an August high of 61 quintillion. 

Looking forward, the upcoming bitcoin block reward halving, scheduled for May 2020, could well impact on miner sentiment and move prices accordingly. 

In line with research published by crypto hedge fund Pantera Capital earlier this year, the reach-back effect of the event could be responsible for pushing up the bitcoin price a year in advance.

“Inflection points occurred 376 and 320 days prior to the 2012 and 2016 ‘halvings’, respectively. Taking their average of 348 days could indicate a bottom on June 10, 2019,” the company forecast.

Information source cointelegraph

Bitcoin Price Could See $20K in Two Weeks - $100K This Year, Predicts Market Analyst

Bitcoin (BTC) prices could match their all-time high of $20,000 within the next two weeks — and could hit $50,000 or $100,000 by the end of the year, eToro analyst Simon Peters claimed on June 26.

According to Peters, it took 7 to 14 days for BTC to reach the record figure of $20,000 when it was last at $11,800.

He cautioned that his short-term prediction is based on the assumption that bitcoin maintains its current parabolic trajectory.

Peters believes this rally is different from past surges because it hasn’t been accompanied by a spike in Google searches for “buy bitcoin” — indicating that the capital entering the market is coming from institutions and investors who had previously parked their funds instablecoins.

On whether the surge is sustainable, Peters added:

“With the number of sell positions building in the market it's possible we could see a correction very soon. Even if that was the case though, bitcoin continues to remain on track to close out the first half of the year on a highly positive note. We could see bitcoin reaching $50,000 or even $100,000 this year.”

The analyst went on to note that BTC’s gains are at the expense of altcoins, some of which are being “pummeled” as they languish at significant lows.

Bitcoin’s parabolic advance continued past $12,000 on June 26 — the first time thecryptocurrency has hit this figure in over a year.

Data from CoinMarketCap also suggests BTC has surpassed 60% market dominance for the first time since April 2017, with a capitalization of $226 billion.

Information source cointelegraph

19% of World Population Bought Crypto Before 2019: Kaspersky Report

A new survey by Moscow-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab introduced on June 17th revealed that 19% of people globally have purchased cryptocurrency.

The survey, titled “The Kaspersky Cryptocurrency Report 2019,” was carried out in October and November 2018, with a total of 13,434 respondents in 22 countries.

According to the report, 81% of global population have never purchased cryptocurrencies, while only 10% of respondents said they “fully understand how cryptocurrencies work.”

Meanwhile, just 14% of those who haven’t ever used cryptocurrencies would like to do so in the future, the report notes.

Key findings of The Kaspersky Cryptocurrency Report 2019. Source: Kaspersky Labs

Among major reasons why global crypto investors have stopped using cryptocurrencies, majority of respondents cited its “too high” volatility, implying that the need of stability before they are prepared to use them.

While volatility factor accounted for 31%, other important reasons included loss of money in the bear market, as well as a belief that crypto “is not profitable anymore,” with both factors equally amounted to 23% among the respondents.

With that, 22% of respondents claimed that they stopped using cryptos because they are not backed with real assets. Additionally, hacks and fraud vulnerabilities weren’t the biggest reasons for global crypto users becoming disillusioned, with the respondents citing those factors accounted for only 19% and 15%, respectively.

Reasons why people stopped using cryptos. Source: 

Kaspersky Labs

In a press release accompanying the report, Kaspersky team noted that the adoption of crypto industry by global consumers have been slowing down due to lack a proper understanding of how cryptocurrencies work.

Previously, another survey found that almost 12% of American crypto crypto holders are long-term investors.

Information source cointelegraph

Bitcoin Hash Rate Climbs to New Record High Boosting Network Security

The Bitcoin (BTC) hash rate — the total computing power of the bitcoin network — reached new all-time highs this week, data from monitoring resource Blockchain.com confirmed on June 19.

As the Bitcoin price set a new annual record above $9,000, hash rate, which can be taken as a measure of how much interest there is in mining bitcoin, shot higher than ever before.

For Wednesday this week, the most recent day for which data is available, bitcoin’s hash rate had reached 65.19 trillion hashes per second (Th/s).

The activity did not go unnoticed, with hash rate constantly gaining every day throughout this week.

“Hashrate (more often than not) leads price,” Keiser Report host and major Bitcoin bull, Max Keiser, wrote on Twitter in related comments Thursday.

“This is something not even (bitcoin’s) most ardent supporters understand. It’s the heart of the incentive scheme. It’s Satoshi’s ability to hack humans to create Gold 2.0.”

The number comfortably beats the previous record of 60 Th/s set in late September 2018, and continues the metric’s upward trend.

As Cointelegraph reported, the period after last September proved to be a retrograde step for the bitcoin network, with hash rate falling for the first time ever until the new year.

Various other metrics - and, of course, price - also saw suppression, before network activity picked up in Q1 2019. Thereafter, beginning April 1, the bitcoin price followed, sparking an almost unbroken three-month bull market, which continues.

Information source cointelegraph

Fidelity-Backed Crypto Analytics Firm to Integrate Twitter-Based Crypto Sentiment Feed

Crypto analytics firm Coin Metrics partnered with Social Market Analytics (SMA) to collaborate on a feed of real-time sentiment towards cryptocurrency based on social media data, according to a press release on June 17.

The new partnership intends to collect and analyze data posted by crypto community on social media in order to provide a new tool to help crypto traders to track social media sentiment data to build their portfolio strategies.

The new product will initially target sentiment data solely on social media giant Twitter, Coin Metrics CEO Tim Rice confirmed to Cointelegraph, adding that the firms are currently not considering integration of the service into Facebook.

Specifically,Coin Metrics will incorporate the product into market data platform, called the SMA cryptocurrency Sentiment Feed, providing calculated metrics of data on Twitter, according to a report by crypto media outlet The Block. In the report, Rice said that the calculation algorithms would include relevant tweets and calculate “19 different aggregate sentiment metrics down to snapshots of one minute.”

Social Market Analytics is providing social media-powered predictive data analytics to traditional capital markets participants in various markets, including stocks, forex, Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), futures, among others. Since its establishment in 2012, SMA has been a Twitter Finance partner, the firm’s CEO Joe Gits stated in an email to Cointelegraph.

Meanwhile, Coin Metrics is backed by major American investment management company Fidelity in February 2019, which participated in a $1.9 million funding round in February 2019.

Earlier today, social media giant Facebook released the white paper for its long-anticipated cryptocurrency and blockchain-powered financial project known as Libra stablecoin.

Information source cointelegraph

Fundstrat Global Advisors Technical Analysis Points to Further Rally

In its new technical analysis, market research company Fundstrat Global Advisors says that cryptocurrencies are poised to make further gains, Bloomberg reported on June 13.

Per the analysis, most digital currencies are trending upwards as relative-strength-index momentum has begun to turn upward from neutral. The tendency purportedly indicates strength in the markets.

Rob Sluymer, a technical strategist at Fundstrat, told Bloomberg that he is recommending investors demonstrate patience in the wake of the crypto markets’ surge in May, but stressed that there are early signs of potential new gains. Sluymer said:

“Another upside attempt appears to be developing for most cryptocurrencies. Increase exposure. We expect bitcoin to stage another rally from current levels toward next resistance between $8,800–$9,000.”

In late May, Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee claimed that the crypto winter is over. Lee’s timeline of events documenting the turnaround dates back to November 2018, when a bitcoin cash (BCH) hard fork battle exhausted the bitcoin supply held by two rival mining pools. Other significant milestones listed by Lee include Jan. 23 of this year, when on-chain transactions turned positive year-on-year for the first time in 12 months.

Bitcoin price analyst Oliver Isaacs recently said that he thinks the coin will hit $25,000 around the end of 2019. "There are multiple drivers behind the recent resurgence. There are geopolitical, technological and regulatory drivers. The net effect of the trade war between the U.S. and China has led to the sudden interest in bitcoin as a hedge on investments," Isaacs stated.

Information source cointelegraph

Analytical Firm Calls Bitcoin "King of the Assets Class Hill"

Analytical firm Delphi Digital has called bitcoin (BTC) the “King of the Assets Class Hill” due to the coin’s outperformance in recent months, the Next Web reported on June 3.

Delphi Digital based its commentary on bitcoin’s returns for four straight months, especially given that bitcoin’s performance comes at a time when traditional risk assets continue to face selling pressure. “May’s outperformance has been especially important given the broader weakness across many other asset classes,” the firm said.

According to Delphi Digital, investors have been driven to leave riskier positions for “safe haven assets” amidst waning sentiment for economic growth in 2019 and United States–China trade war controversy,  although bitcoin has still outperformed conventional assets, including gold and oil.

“Contrary to its recent history, bitcoin has remained largely unaffected by the sell-off in risk assets, though expectations for market volatility are trending higher. It is still too early to claim victory yet, but BTC’s uncorrelated nature has so far proved true,” an analyst at Delphi Digital said.

Recently, digital currency investment firm Dadiani Syndicate was reportedly approached by a wealthy client to buy as close to 25% of the bitcoin supply as possible. Commenting on the news, EToro analyst Mati Greenspan stated, "A buyer of this size is going to push the price up to make this kind of accumulation even more expensive.”

Michael Novogratz, founder and CEO of cryptocurrency merchant bank Galaxy Digital, saidthat he expects bitcoin to consolidate in the $7,000–$10,000 range. “If I’m wrong on that, I think I’m wrong to the upside, that there’s enough excitement and momentum that it could carry through,” Novogratz stated.

Information source https://cointelegraph.com