Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Increasing Following Three Consecutive Downward Adjustments
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty had dropped three consecutive times since September, following the bearish sentiment in the markets and the decreasing profit margins for mining. However, the difficulty target recently increased and bounced back to levels from earlier...
Upcoming Bakkt Exchange Raises $182 Million Funding Round
Bakkt — the highly anticipated digital assets platform — raised $182.5 million in a funding round that included 12 partners. Detailed in a Medium post by CEO Kelly Loeffler, Bakkt’s fundraising round included partners such as Boston Consulting Group,...
Bitcoin’s Increasing Prevalence in Cryptographic Research and Scholarly Literature
Blog posts and analysis pieces discussing Bitcoin in one context or another are increasingly common. Publications, Medium pieces, and leading industry figures provide some insightful analysis of the multi-faceted legacy cryptocurrency. However, it is the more discreet...
Bitcoin’s Mining Difficulty Drops Again Amid Signs of Market Turnaround
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty recently dropped roughly 32 percent in the last month following an extended bear market throughout 2018. As miners continue to shut down due to unprofitability, those who remain mining will be rewarded with increased BTC accumulation (less...
Venezuelan Weekly LocalBitcoins Volume Continues to Soar
Venezuela’s LocalBitcoins volume has reached an all-time high (ATH) this week as the Bolivar extends its spectacular downfall and the authoritarian Maduro regime continues its oppression. According to CoinDance, Venezuela’s weekly LocalBitcoin volume has reached more...
BitMEX Research Report Analyzes Miner Impact from Bear Market
BitMEX Research — the research arm of the BitMEX exchange — recently released a report analyzing the effects the recent market downturn has had on the mining industry. BitMEX’s conclusions are drawn from analysis of miner profit margins and the declining...
Bitcoin Hash Rate Declining
Bitcoin’s hash rate has been slowly declining throughout November, mirroring similar levels in early August this year. Currently, the hash rate is roughly 40,349,974 TH/s after rebounding from a 4-month low of approximately 34,727,437 TH/s. The declining hast rate is...
Lightning Network Reach $2 Million Channel Capacity Despite Market Pullbacks
The Lightning Network (LN) — Bitcoin’s layer two off-chain scaling solution and bidirectional payment network — has reached roughly $2 million in capacity (441.23 BTC sum of channel values) and approximately 15.8k open channels despite the recent market...
The Undeniable Value of Bitcoin for Large Money Transfers
One of the most clearcut use cases for Bitcoin is its unprecedented value for transferring large sums of value. As a censorship-resistant and decentralized network, transferring value between two parties is exceedingly faster, cheaper, and safer than traditional...
Chilean Cryptocurrency Exchange Buda Now Supports Lightning Network
In another meaningful sign that Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN) is gaining serious traction, Chilean Bitcoin exchange Buda recently announced its support of the LN. Buda claims to be the largest cryptocurrency market in South America and was in the news cycle earlier...
Princeton and FIU Study Reveals the Powerful Influence of China on Bitcoin
A recent study from Princeton and Florida International University (FIU) details the potential threat that China poses to the Bitcoin network stemming from its centralized economic, political, and domestic Internet control in the country. According to the report, as...
TxTenna Launch Imminent for Offline Bitcoin Transactions
TxTenna — the joint venture between Samourai Wallet and the GoTenna mesh network — is scheduled to launch soon and will enable offline Bitcoin transactions through GoTenna’s mesh network. The result is the ability to send Bitcoin transactions without an...
Bitmain Publishes IPO Prospectus
Bitmain — the Bitcoin mining and ASIC hardware giant — has officially filed its IPO prospectus with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) in a major step towards its public fundraising venture. Following a flurry of high-profile rumors and research into...
Bakkt Planning to Launch Physical Delivery Bitcoin Futures in November
Bakkt is planning on launching in November this year after a long and covert development period that preceded their launch announcement in early August. Bakkt is led by Kelly Loeffler as CEO, and her husband is the chairman and CEO of the Intercontinental Exchange...
The Looming Bitmain IPO
Bitmain — the dominant Bitcoin mining giant — has been the subject of a flurry of recent news following its rumored Hong Kong IPO estimated to be worth $3 billion. Following a release (intentional or not) of Bitmain’s financial data, swirling rumors have...
Casa Releases Lightning Node Hardware Product
Casa — the multi-sig personal key management service — announced the release of its Casa Lightning Node yesterday. Functioning as a full Bitcoin and Lightning node hardware device, the Casa Node is designed to easily run your own Bitcoin and Lightning node...
SEC Set to Review 9 Recently Rejected ETF Proposals
After initially rejecting nine total ETF proposals from ProShares, Direxion, and GraniteShares on Wednesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) commissioner announced that it would go back and review the applications that were rejected on Wednesday. The news...
The Current State of the Lightning Network
The increasing popularity and peak activity of the Bitcoin network towards the end of 2017 really emphasized its need to implement an efficient scaling solution. The bitcoin scalability problem has been well documented and at the forefront of development activity...
Bitcoin Rising in Venezuela
Venezuela currently has one of the highest inflation rates in history and it has reached extraordinary levels over the last year. Venezuela’s annualized inflation rate surpassed 43,000% this June and the cost for a single cup of coffee reached approximately 1 million...
