Tether Pushes Bitcoin to $7500. The sudden surge in price has been attributed to Tether’s crash which dropped below $0.9.

MrCoin

Weekly Crypto Recap

“Bitcoin will succeed by offering a superior product to the global market that outcompetes banks and nation states.” ~ Jameson Lopp, creator of satoshi.info

Market State

BTC: €5,634.63 | -2.30% since last week

ETH: €178.03 | -9.36% since last week

BCH: €381.22 | -15.85% since last week

LTC: €45.75 | -9.58% since last week

For a while now the cryptocurrency market has been relatively stable until last Thursday when the price of Bitcoin suddenly dropped from €5690 to €5390 within a few minutes. There has been a coincidental correlation between the US stock market and the crypto market price drop. Bitcoin was hovering around €5400 before gaining a huge price surge on Monday morning when the price of Bitcoin climbed to €6450 on some Tether integrated exchanges like Bitfinex. The sudden surge in price has been attributed to Tether’s crash which dropped below $0.9. The total supply of Tether is 3 billion which are waiting to be converted to more safer and stronger cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Currently Bitcoin is down by 2.30% to €5,634.63 since last week. While the altcoins have dropped more than 9% during the last week.

Quiz of the week

What is a Bitcoin block reward?

The sum of transaction fees from all the transactions included in a block
Newly generated Bitcoins that are awarded to the miner who mined the block
The sum of all transaction fees in a block plus newly generated Bitcoins that are awarded to the miner who mined the block

Scroll down to see the answer at the end of the newsletter.

Top stories of the week

Liquid, the First Bitcoin Sidechain Launched

Blockstream, the company which employs most Bitcoin Core developers has released Liquid. Liquid is an inter-exchange settlement network, where crypto exchanges can move large amounts of Bitcoins quickly and privately. It’s a sidechain built on top of Bitcoin. Liquid has its own native token called Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) that is 1:1 pegged to Bitcoin. On the Liquid sidechain a new block is produced every single minute and only 2 confirmations are required for a transaction to be fully settled. There has been a lot of controversy around Liquid as it relies on a federation of exchanges (currently 23 exchanges) to confirm a block. Basically, Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) is centralized, where L-BTC is held and censored by a federation of 23 exchanges and Blockstream.

Tether Pushes Bitcoin to $7500

The price of Bitcoin jumped by 11% within two hours on Monday morning as Tether (USDT), proves not so stable as a stablecoin and fell by 10% below its US peg. The suspicious market move was due to investors selling their Tether holdings. A 1:1 reserve ratio between Tether and the US dollar has to be maintained.Tether has to maintain a 1:1 reserve ratio between USDT and the fiat currency. There is scepticism about Tether, whether it has sustainable and sufficient funds to support its USDT supply. Noble Bank, the primary reserve bank of Tether has been up for sale recently. Also Bitfinex exchange, with which Tether shared the same management team had a banking issue recently. In order to avoid losses, people have been selling their Tethers to buy other cryptocurrencies which caused the temporary price spike.

Cryptocurrencies Are Mother of All Bubble

The US Senate Banking Committee held a hearing called "Exploring the Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Ecosystem” on October 11, 2018. An American economist Nouriel Roubini was one of the speakers who expressed his views on cryptocurrency. He is also known as Dr.Doom for his prediction on the 2008 financial crisis. Nouriel made some negative comments on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that they represent the mother of all bubbles. This has triggered the crypto community on Twitter where conversation between Nouriel and the community evolved into personal insults. Nouriel criticized Vitalik Buterin for his failure to deliver a scalable blockchain he has promised since 2013. In the end Ethereum creator Vitalik and Nouriel are planning to have a live debate on the cryptocurrency issue.

Coinbase Has Listed 0x

Popular US crypto exchange Coinbase has added 0x (ZRX) to its trading platform. 0x is an ERC20 token. ERC20 token is a token that is designed and used only on the Ethereum network. 0x is building a protocol for the peer-to-peer decentralized exchange for any Ethereum based tokens. For many crypto enthusiasts it wasn’t a surprise that 0x got added to Coinbase as it is deemed to be a great project. The price of 0x has increased more than 20% after it was listed on Coinbase. Coinbase aims to list all quality coins that meet their standards and are compliant with local law. Currently they are testing 4 other coins, which includes Cardano (ADA), Basic Attention Token (BAT), Stellar (XLM) and ZCash (ZEC). Can you guess which coin will be listed on Coinbase next?

Giant Bitcoin Rat on Wallstreet

A massive inflatable Bitcoin Rat artwork has been placed in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The rat has giant Proof of Work eyes and Bitcoin source code is covering its body. The creator of the artwork is Nelson Saiers, who is a mathematician and a former Wall St derivative trader. Nelson left finance to pursue his art career. He produces and exhibits artistic pieces that shine light on the financial system. The inflatable Bitcoin rat was installed to make people aware of central banks’ bad money management. Andreas Antonopoulos referred to Bitcoin as a sewer rat of currencies as they exist without permission and lives in filth that is not allergic to anything. Bitcoin is is a system that is antifragile and dynamic and robust.

Bank Freezes $28M Belonging to Crypto Exchange

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) has denied access to C$28 million funds (about €18,7 million) belonging to Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. QuadrigaCX was launched in 2013 and is the first exchange in Canada with daily volume of €789,170. The exchange claims that it has been unable to access its funds since January, 2018 when CIBC froze five accounts belonging to the exchange’s payment processor, Costodian Inc. The banks says it froze the accounts as it was unable to determine who owns the funds. CIBC requested the court to take ownership of the funds and decide whom to hand it over: to QuadrigaCX or the 388 users who have been affected.

Tweet of the week

Meme of the week

Crypto word of the week

Halving

Bitcoin has a finite supply, which makes it scarce. There will only be 21 million Bitcoins. Each time a new block is found, a constant amount of Bitcoins are created. The number of new Bitcoins generated per block is halved every 210,000 blocks which takes about four years. This is called “halving.” Initially, the block reward was 50 BTC. Four years later it became 25 BTC. Currently 12,5 Bitcoins are created with each mined block. With the current halving schedule on average 1800 Bitcoins are created daily. The next halving will occur in 2020 when the mining reward will drop from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC.

Quiz answer

What is a Bitcoin block reward?

The correct answer is : “B”

Block reward refers to the new Bitcoins generated by the Bitcoin network to the miner who successfully found a block. Each miner includes a special transaction in his block. The special transaction pays his own Bitcoin address the block reward plus the sum of transaction fees from all the transactions included in the block. If the miner finds a solution that makes that block valid then the block is added to the blockchain and the reward transaction he included becomes spendable.

Thank you for reading :)

Have a great day!

MrCoin

MrCoin

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