Bitcoin price has had one of its largest corrections since the bull market began, and has since struggled to reclaim $50,000. But the scenario is nowhere near as bad for the cryptocurrency as it is for one of its biggest supporters.
Although the company’s share price had benefitted initially from buying BTC, it wasn’t enough to fend off profit-taking and an eventual now 58% correction in MicroStrategy. Here’s why this could be happening, and what it could also say about the current crypto market trend.
MicroStrategy Shares Fall 50% After Buying More And More BTC
One of the biggest catalysts kickstarting Bitcoin’s most recent bull run, was undeniably when MicroStrategy first revealed it had purchased a sum of BTC to add to its corporate treasure reserves. From then on, others have followed suit, and CEO Michael Saylor has doubled, and tripled down on his initial purchase.
The price per BTC has risen accordingly, from just above $10,000 to nearly $50,000 currently. Along with the price of Bitcoin, MicroStrategy shares have risen almost as sharply as investors used the company to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency, and also bet big on the reemerging brand as well.
RELATED READING | ONE YEAR LATER: BITCOIN EMERGES AS “THE STIMULUS ASSET”
But as Bitcoin started correcting amidst an uneasy macro environment, MicroStrategy stock shares have fallen by 58%. The chart appears to show a parabola that’s now broken, suggesting that the correction isn’t nearly finished.
MicroStrategy has nosedived by more than 50% since an early Feb peak | MSTR on TradingView.com
Could Bitcoin Fall Fate To The Saylor Effect?
As for why MicroStrategy is taking such a beating, it could be due to stock market jitters, that have most left the crypto market unscathed. However, it could be a sign of what’s to come instead.
The orange line superimposed behind the MicroStrategy chart above, is the BTCUSD price chart from Coinbase. Not every peak and trough has followed perfectly, but the path is close enough to suggest there could be some correlation between the two.
If there is a correlation, either Bitcoin is about to correct another 20 to 25%, or there’s something else afoot. As for what other reasons could exist for the divergence, it could come down to more ways to become exposed to BTC now existing in traditional markets than there was a year ago.
RELATED READING | HOW LASER EYES COULD HAVE BITCOIN INVESTORS SEEING RED
Another alternative is that CEO Michael Saylor’s BTC buying spree could be starting to be viewed as irrational, and former believers are now jumping ship. Saylor, who now adorns “laser eyes” on Twitter is one of the cryptocurrency’s biggest supporters, but doesn’t always place bets at the right time – even though the technology itself he bets on is a sure thing.
Saylor was once deemed the biggest loser of the dot com bubble, but ultimately the internet became widely adopted. Few argue that Bitcoin will eventually do the same, but could this scenario that hit Saylor in the past be playing out once again?
Featured image from Deposit Photos, Charts from TradingView.com
Turkish crypto exchange halts trading amid reports of police raid
Published
2 hours ago
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April 22, 2021
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Major Turkish cryptocurrency exchange Thodex has abruptly halted trading and withdrawals amid reports of police raids, Cointelegraph Turkey reported on Thursday.
Thodex posted an official announcement on Twitter on Thursday, informing users that it has halted transactions for a period of four to five days. According to a statement, the platform stopped trading and withdrawals due to a purported partnership with “world-renowned banks and funding companies” to improve its services.
Thodex said that its clients should not be worried about their investments, stating that “users will be informed regularly” during the suspension period. The exchange had previously announced a six-hour-long maintenance break on Tuesday.
The abrupt suspension of trading and withdrawals has concerned the crypto community, as the exchange has gone radio silent since announcing the interruption.
Local publications speculated that the suspension could be part of an exit scam amid reports that the company’s founder, Faruk Fatih Özer, has fled to Thailand with $2 billion worth of crypto. The founder allegedly left Istanbul Airport on Tuesday, while local authorities have launched a criminal investigation against the firm and raided Thodex’s offices.
Thodex did not respond to Cointelegraph’s requests for comment.
The news comes amid a new wave of concern over the Turkish government’s stance on cryptocurrency regulation. The country’s central bank officially announced a ban on crypto payments effective as of April 30.
Additional reporting by Erhan Kahraman and Ayse Karaman.
Ripple co-founder thinks Bitcoin should move away from proof-of-work
Published
6 hours ago
on
April 22, 2021
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Bitcoin (BTC) code contributors need to consider a move away from the cryptocurrency’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen argued.
In a Wednesday blog post, Larsen outlined major PoW-related vulnerabilities, noting growing concerns over Bitcoin’s carbon footprint. According to the executive, PoW-based coins like Bitcoin should consider a code change to carbon-neutral validation methods like proof-of-stake or federated consensus, or something yet to be developed.
“I would argue that such a change is critically important for Bitcoin to remain the world’s dominant cryptocurrency. PoW’s current energy demands and carbon footprint are already unsustainably high, with Bitcoin alone consuming an average of 132 TWh a year — equivalent to roughly 12 million U.S. homes,” Larsen noted.
The co-founder pointed out that non-PoW altcoins — including Ethereum’s anticipated switch to proof-of-stake — make up 43% of all cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, with many new coins choosing to avoid PoW. “It’s clear which way the trend is moving,” he stated.
Larsen mentioned that the XRP ledger has been using federated consensus to secure its network and validate transactions for about nine years. “It’s closed 62+ million ledgers without downtime, uses the energy equivalent of just 50 U.S. homes per year,” he noted. Some new successful altcoins like Binance’s native token Binance Coin (BNB) also operate a version of PoS, Larsen said.
Larsen’s remarks come amid a significant drop in Bitcoin’s dominance on cryptocurrency markets. In March, the Bitcoin Dominance Index dropped below 60% for the first time since October 2020. As the altcoin market gains momentum, Bitcoin continued to lose its share of the market, with the dominance index falling to 50.7% on April 21.
There has been a long-running debate between proponents of PoW and PoS, with PoS advocates seeing mining energy costs as the biggest problem for PoW. The Bitcoin and Monero (XMR) community — some of the biggest PoW proponents — often argue that PoS cannot reach the level of security and decentralization provided by PoW.
Niklas Nikolajsen, the founder of Swiss crypto broker Bitcoin Suisse, predicted that Bitcoin will shift to PoS once the Ethereum network proves the algorithm’s success.
NFTs for Trump-haters, carbon offsets, fractionalized CryptoPunks and more
Published
11 hours ago
on
April 22, 2021
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A group of anon uni students has come up with a way to hit former President Donald Trump where it hurts: by using his Tweets against him to raise money for charities they believe he “despises”.
‘Strategic Meme Group Incorporated’ has set up the website Drumpfs.io to sell Trump’s tweets, at least as recorded by the Trump Twitter Archive. However, there’s no digital certificate of authenticity and the legal status of “ownership” of Tweets outside of the Twitter platform is dubious, to non-existent. One hundred of Trump’s most infamous Tweets are selling for 4.5 ETH each, while regular missives from the former Leader of the Free World change hands for 0.0232 Ether.
Around 97% of the money raised will be donated to Americares, Clean Air Task Force, ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, Doctors Without Borders, and NAACP, while the rest will fund overheads. Drumpfs can be resold on secondary platforms.
Carbon offsets for NFTs
NFTs have become an unlikely poster child for ruining the environment, ahead of other candidates like international flights, heavy industry and car commuters. Various estimates suggest OpenSea is responsible for a cumulative 67.8 million kilograms of carbon emissions while The Weekend’s NFT recent drop apparently emitted more carbon than a plane flying New York to London 86 times.
Now purchasers can simply paste in the collection address of an NFT drop into the Aerial platform and it’ll tell you how many carbon credits you need to buy from them to balance the scales. You can pay with either USD — or weirdly enough, Ethereum, a payment which itself presumably requires additional carbon credits. Aerial co-founder Andreas Homer said:
“We really want to shed light on the environmental consequences of blockchain transactions, and give people those ways to mitigate them through carbon offsets.”
CryptoPunks go to pieces
CryptoPunks are among the earliest, and consequently most valuable, NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain with individual punks selling for more than $7 million each. In other words most of us can’t afford one to hang in the digital pool room. The Unicly CryptoPunks Collection (uPUNK) will offer 250 million fractional shares in a collection of 50 CryptoPunks. It’s the largest collection of Punks to be tokenized so far (but it’s not the first attempt to do so).
At present 80 investors have created 3.6M shares at 5 cents each. While there’s growing interest in fractionalizing high value NFT collections, SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce has warned such tokens could run afoul of securities laws.
50 CryptoPunks have been fractionalized into uPUNK on Unicly.
This is the largest fractionalize CryptoPunks collection ever!
Now, NFT lovers can buy CryptoPunk NFTs without having to buy the whole NFT.https://t.co/bK5fZkwtfr pic.twitter.com/LYQy4rXEuy
When he’s not flogging food delivery services like Menulog in Australia (“chicken wings to the crib”) Snoop Dogg can be found toiling away in the NFT mines. He dropped an NFT collection on OpenSea on 4/20 (a day sacred among smokers) in collaboration with the artist behind the Nyan Cat meme. “Nyan Dogg”, which is pretty much exactly the same thing but with a dog, sold for a little over 14.2 ETH.
Meme based NFTs are hot property right now with the ‘Overly Attached Girlfriend’ NFT selling recently for $411K and ‘Bad Luck Brian’ selling for $36K. LA Mag notes that NFTs are finally allowing meme creators to profit from their work.