An institutional investor is the largest holder of Bitcoin with more than 1% of the current circulating supply of 17.4 million Bitcoins.

MrCoin

Weekly Crypto Recap

"The most misunderstood thing about Bitcoin is that people think it’s just another tech innovation, like the iPhone. But Bitcoin is at heart a social revolution, masked in a tech innovation.” ~Hugo Nguyen

Market State

BTC: €3,080.83 | -11,94% since last week

ETH: €80.34 | -17,17% since last week

BCH: €86.83 | -30,29% since last week

LTC: €21.79 | -20,58% since last week

The cryptocurrency market is still in bear market. Last week we experienced another 10% drop. Most coins are below 80-90% of their all time high. People are most discouraged by the price of Ethereum which has fallen significantly in the past few weeks. This relates to the current state of crypto companies that have raised funds through ICOs. ICO start-ups have raised huge amount of money during 2017. However today the money they have raised lost 90% of their value. ICOs are forced to sell their raised reserves to fund their operation. Despite the bear market institutional investors are still seeing potential in crypto.

Quiz of the week

How many Bitcoins is one Satoshi?

10
0.01
0.00000001

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

Top stories of the week

Betting $1 Million That Crypto Will Outperform Stocks

A crypto index fund manager, Morgan Creek Digital has put a $1 million bet that cryptocurrency will outperform the stock market (S&P 500) over the next 10 years. Morgan Creek Digital manages Digital Asset Index Fund which tracks 10 cryptocurrencies. The bet is recreating Warren Buffett’s famous bet when Buffett put a $1 million bet that just blindly buying shares of the top 500 US companies (S&P 500) was better than actively-managed hedge funds. Buffet has won his bet earlier this year and the money is going to charity. Likewise Morgan Creek invites any investor who believes the S&P 500 will perform better than their basket of cryptocurrencies over a decade to take the other side of the bet.

Ethereum Hard Fork in January 2019

Ethereum’s Constantinople hard fork is set to take place next year. Hard fork doesn’t always mean the chain will split into two coins. When everyone agrees to switch to the new version there is no chain split only an upgrade. The hard fork is going to occur at block 7080000 around January 16, 2019. The Constantinople upgrade will bring five different Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) which will be responsible for the improvement of the Ethereum network efficiency. Among these improvements are Ethereum block reward reduction which is going to be reduced from 3 ETH to 2 ETH per block. In percentage terms the supply of Ethereum will decrease by 33%. This may cause the Ethereum price to go up as lower inflation leads to scarcity.

Grayscale Owns 1% of All Bitcoin

Despite the bear market institutional investors continue to see immense value in cryptocurrencies. Grayscale Investments, a digital currency investment firm established in 2013, has accumulated thousands of Bitcoins through its single-asset investment product, Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC). According to their website “Bitcoin Investment Trust’s shares are the first publicly quoted securities solely invested in and deriving value from the price of Bitcoin”. Since the start of 2018, Grayscale’s Bitcoin holding increased from 30,600 BTC to 203,000 BTC in total, which makes Grayscale the largest holder of Bitcoin with more than 1% of the current circulating supply of 17.4 million Bitcoins.

UnitedCorp Sues Bitcoin Cash Supporters

American technology company UnitedCorp, has filed a lawsuit against Bitcoin Cash ABC supporters, including Bitmain, Bitcoin.com portal, Roger Ver, and the Kraken exchange. The company accuses the supporters of hiring mining power in order to control the Bitcoin Cash network. The Bitcoin Cash network split into two separate chains a few weeks ago, supported by two opposing parties: the Bitcoin ABC version, which uses the ‘BCH’ ticker symbol; and Bitcoin SV, which goes with the ‘BSV’ ticker symbol. The price of Bitcoin Cash has experienced major losses on the day of the lawsuit initiation and Bitcoin SV (BSV) temporarily overtook Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in terms of market capitalization.

Vertcoin Suffers a 51% Attack

Vertcoin was launched in 2014 and is designed to be ASIC resistant and is mineable on regular computers. This means Vertcoin is free of being manipulated by large mining companies that could centralize power in the hands of a few. However, when cryptocurrency prices fall, mining activity decreases leaving small cryptocurrencies vulnerable to 51% attack. 51% attack enables attackers to cancel and reverse transactions. Vertcoin 51% attacks started in October 2018 and happened on 4 different occasions. During the latest attack someone has been reorganizing transactions and causing double spends over 300 blocks. The double spends amounted to over $100,000 loss on the network.

Ethereum Classic Developers Quit

An Ethereum Classic Development (ETCDEV) team was forced to shut down due to the market crash and lack of funding options. The team made the announcement over their twitter account. Prior to the announcement, they tried several alternative sources of funds, but all had failed. In a public poll the ETC community was asked whether they would help fund ETCDEV’s work. Unfortunately, 59% of the community refused to support development team. Following the news the price of Ethereum Classic (ETC) dropped to $3.4 and managed to recover to $3.9. The Ethereum Classic community pointed out that ETCDEV is not the only development team working on Ethereum Classic and to keep calm and build on.

Tweet of the week

Meme of the week

Bitcoin Address Artwork installed on an old bank building in Amsterdam.

Crypto word of the week

51% attack refers to a theoretical attack that could happen if a person or an organization manages to collect 51% of the computing (hashing) power on the network. The attackers would be able to cancel and reverse transactions, which would allow double-spending. There is a website that shows the cost of a one hour 51% attack for different cryptocurrencies. According to the website the current cost of conducting a 51% attack on Bitcoin would be $234,741 per hour. Also the attacker should be able to sustain 51% of the Bitcoin hash rate which is massive amount of mining power that is not available to buy even if you had the money. This is why Bitcoin is referred to most resistant and unhackable coin. 51% attack can only be done with smaller altcoins.

Quiz answer

How many Bitcoins is one Satoshi?

The correct answer is : “C”

Bitcoin is divisible into the 100 millionth unit. The smallest unit of Bitcoin is called Satoshi. One Satoshi is 0.00000001 Bitcoin or one hundred-millionth of a Bitcoin. You can buy, sell or send a fraction of a Bitcoin.

Thank you for reading :)

Have a great day!

MrCoin

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MrCoin

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