Crypto-space news round-up 08.02.2021

From hacks to new price highs – such is the diversity of crypto-space news over the past week. But whatever happens in the crypto industry, one thing is obvious: the development of the industry is reaching a new level, and Bitcoin has become a globally recognized asset for hedging.

News Digest of a Past Week

The crypto sector could surprise at any moment, and this week it hasn`t failed to do so, in particular, thanks to the incredible jump in the price of Ethereum. But let’s talk about everything in order.

• Ethereum price at the level of $1700

The cryptocurrency market remains to be in the upward trend, in particular, thanks to the price of Ethereum, which is about $1,700. Thus, Ether continues its move towards $2,000, and this mark should be reached soon.

The rise in the price of Ethereum is an important factor for altcoins as their prices have also skyrocketed. First and foremost, this applies to the DeFi sector, which continues to attract investors in projects such as Aave, Synthetix, Yearn Finance in particular.

For all the hype surrounding the Ethereum ecosystem, some analysts point to the price of ETN, which could rise to $10,000 or $20,000 at the end of a bull cycle.

On the other hand, the rise in the price of Ethereum adversely affects the cost of Gaz in the blockchain, and costs are peaking. Some crypto exchanges sometimes suspend ETH withdrawals due to these huge costs.

The rest of the market is also in the green, with significant progress even for crypto projects since 2017 that are being revived, such as Metal Pay, which has been granted a banking license in the US.

Thus, all cryptocurrencies benefit from price increases, which pleases owners of Bitcoin and altcoins.

Of course, one should expect a correction over the course of this bull cycle, which is just beginning.

• PayPal’s financial results in 2020 improved dramatically thanks to the emergence of Bitcoin trading

PayPal published its financial results for 2020, and they have grown sharply, in particular, thanks to the integration of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading on its platform.

A decision not regretted by PayPal executives and shareholders, and now they are happy to see a jump in turnover thanks to cryptocurrencies.

Since October 2020, the electronic payments platform allows you to sell and store cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

According to PayPal, 2020 is the company’s best year, as its fourth-quarter financial report alone jumped 23.1%, for $6.12 billion.

In 2020, the number of active PayPal accounts reached 72.7 million, with about 16 million registered in the fourth quarter alone, the report said.

PayPal also indicates that customers who have bought Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies are more often returned to the site. Thus, the US company records significant growth in the fourth quarter of last year due to the emergence of cryptocurrencies on its platform.

PayPal CEO Dan Shulman said:

“We saw an outstanding reaction to the launch of cryptocurrencies, even with overstated initial expectations. The amount of crypto traded on our platform has far exceeded our forecasts.

We are pleased to build on this early success by allowing customers to use their crypto balance as a source of financing each time they shop with our 29 million sellers.

The rollout of this opportunity is expected to begin at the end of this quarter and we hope to launch our first international market in the coming months.

These initial steps are just the beginning of a comprehensive roadmap for crypto assets, blockchain and digital currencies”.

The next step will focus on opening operations to other countries outside the United States that cannot yet buy or sell Bitcoins on Paypal. The platform also needs to integrate payments into BTC and cryptocurrency for its 29 million sellers worldwide.

BTC clearly benefited from the arrival of PayPal, which promotes the spread of cryptocurrencies among the general public.

The opening of trading sites could further accelerate this adoption and raise the price of Bitcoins, which could lead to increased demand. So the coming months are promising for Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency sector, not to mention institutional investors who also continue to buy Bitcoin.

• Brave Browser Already Has 25 Million Active Users

Another step forward for Brave’s internet browser, which is gradually gaining market share for Firefox and Google Chrome, reaching 25 million monthly active users.

In a statement on its website, the Brave team welcomes the steady and continued growth of its active admirer worldwide as the Brave browser maintains privacy user information, unlike their competitors, who are more open to marketing their customer data.

“Over the past year, we have more than doubled the number of our users, from 11.6 to 25.4 million per month and from 3.8 to 8.6 million per day.

Last November we topped 20 million MAU, and look forward to even more impressive growth in 2021 as more default users look for private browsing to protect your daily use of the internet.

We also recently exceeded the million-dollar mark for our proven authors, highlighting that the Brave ecosystem is growing for all of our participants: users, creators and advertisers,” says team Brave.

Recall, one of the co-founders of Brave browser and Basic Attention (BAT) token is Brendan Eich. Brandan Eich is also co-founder of Mozilla, which released the famous Firefox web browser in 1998. He also created Javascript in 1995,

With experience in web browsers, Brendan Eich intends to succeed at Brave and may one day topple Firefox or Google Chrome.

“As the global privacy movement gains momentum in 2021 and fewer people trust Big Tech, we hope to provide our fans with more innovative tools protect privacy and reform methods of invasive web tracking,” the developer said

Thus, Brave continues its path, attracting more and more users, and the introduction of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology should lead more and more people to choose a browser, based on this technology.

• Jack Dorsey challenges Craig Wright to prove he’s not Satoshi Nakamoto

Battle for Bitcoin White Paper

Square Crypto challenged Wright through COPA, an organization that includes Coinbase and Blockstream.

COPA wants Wright to present evidence that he is Satoshi Nakamoto as part of its response to the demand for a halt to wrongdoing sent by Square Wright.

Square Crypto, the cryptocurrency arm of Square payment company, disputes Craig Wright’s claim that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin and author of his White Paper. The firm sent Wright a letter asking him to provide evidence that he was Satoshi.

This letter is in response to Wright’s request for Square Crypto to remove download links to the official Bitcoin document. Wright began with BTC developers at Bitcoincore.org and Bitcoin.org, from which he demanded the removal of the White Paper. The former did so for fear of the consequences of a lawsuit.

Square Crypto now answers Wright through the Crypto Open Patent Alliance, an organisation set up last September. The alliance wrote on Twitter that it would post Bitcoin’s technical document and support its members who would want to become holders of it. Some of its members include Coinbase, Protocol Labs, Blockstream and ARK.

Jack Dorsey also attached a letter, which was sent to Wright’s legal team, asking him to prove he was Satoshi.

The COPA letter requires Wright to clarify a number of issues so that its members can “evaluate Wright’s assertion.”

“Please explain on what basis you claim your client is the person hiding behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, and is the author of the White Paper,” the first reads a question on which COPA requires clarification.

Also requested is the date and location where Wright wrote the official WTS document. COPA also wants to know if Wright wrote the white paper on his own. If not, it would request the names of all the other co-authors.

“On what basis provided by any applicable international convention does your client claim to have British and other copyrights to the White Paper”?

COPA gave Wright two weeks, which ends February 19, to answer questions, in the hope that such a mode of action would keep the case out of court. However, as some on social media have pointed out, Wright’s lawyers are not required to answer. In addition, Square could wreck its defense beforehand if the white paper fight ended in court.

This is the latest twist in what is becoming a defining moment for the future of digital currencies. Wright, chief scientist at NChain, has long called himself Satoshi Nakamoto. Many have doused him of plagiarism, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who called him a con artist.

For years, everything was confined to social media. However, after Wright went to court, the case took on a new turn. There are already those who have heeded his request to remove the Bitcoin White Paper.

Wright indicated that he intended to do much more beyond asking BTS-related sites for the document to be removed. While the creator of Bitcoin SV, he believes that BTC and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) infringe on his copyright using the Bitcoin database. Wright’s lawyers said in their letter to Square Crypto:

“We should add that our client and other related individuals have additional rights with respect to Bitcoin technology and the name of Bitcoin. They are committed to ensuring that these rights are respected in due course”.