Review of the top crypto space news 05.07.2021
Due to the abundance of news about the crypto industry and cryptocurrencies, it seems that the crypto will remain mainstream forever. It’s like in a cool action game, when you wait with bated breath for the further unfolding of events. And the events of last week developed something like this:
The Bitcoin hashrate is at an annual minimum, what are the consequences?
The effect of China’s tough approach to bitcoin miners is very noticeable. But what is the effect and what are the consequences?
The miner is an important part of the Bitcoin network. They process transactions and thus protect the network from attacks. They do this by generating hash keys. These are long strings of random letters and numbers obtained as a result of encrypting transaction data.
Many Chinese miners are active in the Bitcoin network. According to experts, they produced more than 50% of the total computing power, also known as hashing speed. When China announced that it would pursue miners because of the high energy consumption in the country, the result was not long in coming. The total hashrate has fallen sharply.
In fact, the hashrate has been trending upward for many years. But right now, in absolute numbers, the biggest correction in history is taking place. The last time the hashrate was so low was a year ago. Unprecedented reduction in computing power.
Now the zeros mentioned above have come into play again. The network automatically adjusts the complexity to ensure that a block of transaction data is processed every 10 minutes. Now this is almost twice as much, which makes the network more vulnerable to attacks. The upcoming difficulty adjustment is expected to be one of the largest in history. In four days, we will know exactly how much the difficulty will be adjusted.
As soon as the complexity is reduced, it will become easier to mine the Cue Ball. The block transaction time will return to 10 minutes, so the network will become more secure again, and mining will become more profitable for other miners. In short, the consequence of this may be the restoration of the hashrate.
To this should be added the fact that many Chinese miners are moving. Soon they will turn on their devices again, which may contribute to further recovery of computing power.
Salvador buys a large amount of BTC. What for?
El Salvador bought $135 million worth of Bitcoin for distribution among the residents of the country.
Before the weekend, it was announced through Forbes that every adult citizen will receive a free BTC worth $30 if he creates an account in a government application for cryptocurrency. This was announced by President Naib Bukele. About 1,500 Bitcoin ATMs will also be installed. This indicates that the Bitcoin implementation in El Salvador is in full swing.
Another proof of this is the fact that Bukele has developed a plan to mine Bitcoins using volcanic energy. There is a lot of volcanic activity in El Salvador, which releases a lot of heat, which is then converted into energy. 100% clean energy that can be used for mining.
There are about 4.5 million adults living in the country. According to Willy Wu, if all of them accept the government’s offer to receive a free crypto asset, the number of users in the world will immediately increase by 2.5%.
Thus, the transition to Bitcoin as a means of payment is gaining momentum, but President Bukele stressed that the use of BTC is not mandatory. The US dollar also remains the official currency of the country.
“Using Bitcoin will be optional, no one will get them if they don’t want it. When someone receives a payment in BTC, they can choose to automatically receive a payment in dollars.”
Bukele emphasizes that the adoption of BTC as a legal tender will not be comparable to the process that took place when the country adopted the dollar. Then the bank accounts of the population were transferred from the then currency, the colon, to the dollar. This is not the case now.
One of the main reasons why the government has made BTC a legal tender is to simplify the process of transferring money to residents.
From September 7, BTC will officially become legal tender in El Salvador. After that, citizens will have the opportunity to pay with both crypto and US dollars, wherever they are.
The culprit of the largest BTC exit fraud in history Denies the charges
Recently, the media reported that the founders of the South African cryptocurrency investment platform AfriCrypt disappeared with 69,000 BTC.
Perhaps this could be one of the biggest scams in the cryptocurrency world in history. However, the founders, the Keiji brothers, deny that they ran away with the money, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on June 28.
AfriCrypt was allegedly hacked on April 13, but the law firm Hanekom Attorneys immediately considered the situation suspicious when the owners of the platform asked their clients not to take any action.
The reason why the brothers disappeared without a trace was that they were threatened with death by “very dangerous people”. At least, that’s what one of the brothers claims to the WSJ.
He also says that it is impossible for $3.6 billion in Bitcoins to be lost because the company was not that big at all. Keiji says the company managed assets worth up to $200 million during the April peak. 69,000 BTC will amount to about $2.4 billion at current prices. According to Keiji, no more than $5 million was lost during the hacking on April 13.
South Africa’s financial regulator, the Financial Sector Supervisory Authority (FSCA), reported earlier this week that the platform shows signs of ponzi fraud. The promised huge revenues are alarming. It is reported that on July 19, the brothers will appear again to appear at the hearing in the case. According to the law firm, the stolen Bitcoins have already been sent to so-called mixers in an attempt to erase traces.
Why downloading pirated games is a bad idea
Unfortunately, people with bad intentions in the world of cryptocurrencies can extort large amounts of money in many ways. Hackers are always busy exploiting all the weaknesses in systems and software.
Now a group of hackers managed to get into people’s computers through computer games. This mainly concerns pirates with embedded malware. Such malware has been found in popular games such as Grand Theft Auto V and Far Cry 5 and others. The malware is called Crackonosh.
So we are not talking about games bought legally. The only way to infect a computer with this malware is by illegally downloading games from torrent sites and online forums.
In an interview with CNBC, Daniel Benes, a researcher at the antivirus company Avast, explains how infected computers react to Crackonosh. The main phenomenon of malware is that computers become significantly slower. The reason for this is undeniable: hackers use infected computers to mine cryptocurrencies
Infected computers are used for mining cryptocurrency. Since cryptocurrency mining requires a lot from computers, infected computers are becoming noticeably slower. They are constantly mining in the background.
Crackonosh is even smart enough to delay Windows updates and remove antivirus programs.
Avast estimates that more than 200,000 users of their software are already infected with Crackonosh. Every day, this number will increase by about 1,000 victims. Since they are all just Avast users, the actual number will be many times larger.
To date, the hackers, who are probably based in the Czech Republic, have already made more than $ 2 million in profit from their malware. The mining process will also mainly focus on the Monero altcoin (XMR).
Bitcoin is under threat. A large number of GBTC Grayscale shares will be issued in July
At the moment, the sentiment around BTC looks good. However, this does not mean that the largest cryptocurrency will not be in danger in the near future.
According to some analysts, something bad can happen in the world of the crypto industry. All this is due to the giant Bitcoin trust in Grayscale.
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is the world’s largest digital asset manager. This gives users the opportunity to access Bitcoin by buying GBTC shares.
If someone buys these GBTC shares from Grayscale, they are required to hold them for at least six months. After that, the owners have the opportunity to sell these shares again. About 16,000 of these shares will be issued in July, which is worrying. In terms of this, it is about 160,000 Bitcoins, or $5.5 billion.
Indeed, some analysts believe that there are many owners of such shares who, when they cease to be safe, want to sell them. This can lead to a significant drop in the price of Bitcoin. This may even cause the price to fall below the current range.
Nicholas Panigirzoglu, an analyst at JPMorgan, a major American investment bank, says the following:
“Despite the correction this week, we do not want to give up a negative view of the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency market. Although there are some positive aspects that are worth paying attention to, our signals in general remain bearish”.
And this correlation was noticeable before. In the period from April to June, about 139,000 shares from Grayscale Bitcoin Trust have already been issued. At that time, this was accompanied by a giant collapse in the price of BTC. The price dropped from 65,000 to a low of $28,800 in a very short period of time.
Lyn Alden, founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, claims that some time ago the correlation between the issue of GBTC shares and the collapse of the Cue Ball was strong. According to her, a similar scenario may play out if another 140,000 bitcoin shares are issued from the Grayscale fund.
However, not everyone shares this point of view. Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein said in an interview with Barron’s that he does not expect many shareholders to sell their shares. He claims that many people buy stocks with a long-term perspective.