Millions of Bitcoins haven’t moved since 2009 and 2010

MrCoin

Weekly Crypto Recap

The only full node of the global monetary system is the US Federal Reserve. ~ Saifedean Ammous, author of "The Bitcoin Standard”

Market State

BTC: €5,607.34 | 0.68% since last week

ETH: €197.61 | 5.29% since last week

BCH: €395.26 | 2.94% since last week

LTC: €49.15 | 2.67% since last week

The crypto market saw significant growth over the last week. The overall market cap gained 7.68% to €185.53 billion. Bitcoin maintained its price compared to last week. Currently sitting at €5,607.34. The price of Ripple skyrocketed during the week and temporarily stepped into second place, overtaking Ether.

Cryptocurrencies are uncorrelated to traditional financial assets, but they are correlated between each other. Altcoins usually follow Bitcoin’s price movement. This is because Bitcoin is currently the most liquid and most secure cryptocurrency and also, it has the largest market share. During the bull market the correlation between Bitcoin and altcoin loosens. As investors become more confident they shift from Bitcoin’s safety to altcoin. Most altcoins outperformed Bitcoin over the last week, as a result Bitcoin dominance index fell from 55% to 52%. Hope altcoins keep their last week’s performance throughout 2018.

Quiz of the week

How is the price of Bitcoin determined?

Determined by the demand for transactions at the moment
Through supply and demand across multiple Bitcoin exchanges
Determined by the developers of Bitcoin

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

Top stories of the week

Millions of Bitcoins Are Lost Forever

Nic Carter, co-founder of analytical website Coinmetrics is certain that we use inaccurate measuring tools for Bitcoin. Millions of Bitcoins haven’t moved since 2009 and 2010. They should not be ignored, because they are no longer active part of total Bitcoin supply. Carter proposed an alternative measuring tool called “Realized Capitalization”. He assumes that miners have fiat costs which they cover by selling Bitcoins immediately after mining. By aggregating miner revenue over the entire history of Bitcoin gets the total wealth flown into Bitcoin. Aggregation is based on the last price at which the Bitcoins are moved. Carter concluded that Bitcoin realised cap is about €75 billion instead of today’s €98.7 billion market cap.

Hackers Stole €51 Million From Japanese Crypto Exchange

Last week Zaif, the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, was hacked. The exchange has lost 6.7 billion yen worth of digital assets including 5,966 bitcoins worth €51 million. About €16.8 million worth of stolen coins belonged to the exchange and the rest was customer money. The hack occurred on September 14th. Zaif didn’t notice the hack until September 17th, when a server error was detected. The exchange is owned by Osaka-based Tech Bureau Inc. Tech Bureau made an agreement with Fisco Digital Asset Group, which is buying into Zaif exchange and will provide €38 million to refund customers’ lost assets. The attack shows that the cryptocurrency exchanges are easy targets for hackers. Don’t risk losing your assets by storing your private keys on exchanges.

Bitcoin Core Bug Fixed

Bitcoin Core is a software that implements all aspects of Bitcoin including wallets, transactions and block validation, and connects full nodes to the Bitcoin network. Earlier last week an inflation bug was found in Bitcoin Core which has been fixed since. The bug would have allowed printing unlimited Bitcoins. Developers quickly acted on the vulnerability and urged all nodes that use Bitcoin Core to upgrade to the latest version as soon as possible. Some cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin that are built using Bitcoin Core’s code were also affected. Litecoin fixed the same bug last week.

Tezos Mainnet Is Live

The Swiss-based Tezos Foundation has officially launched its self-amending blockchain. Like Ethereum, Tezos is a blockchain platform for smart contracts and decentralized applications. The native currency of Tezos blockchain is “Tezzies” and it trades under ticker symbol XTZ. Tezos has its own governance system which allows Tezos to upgrade itself without hard forks. Developers can propose protocol upgrades wherein they include a request for compensation for their work. Tezos token holders then vote on proposals that are making contributions to the protocol.

Unexpected Ripple (XRP) Flippening

One of the interesting events that happened in the cryptomarket was Ripple Flippening. Flippening is an event when a cryptocurrency takes over another cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization. Ripple has temporarily overtaken Ether, the second most valuable cryptocurrency and positioned itself right behind Bitcoin. Ripple’s price surge may have been influenced by a number of factors. Ripple is releasing its xRapid product next month which uses XRP as a bridge currency allowing fast cross-border bank transactions. Ripple’s annual conference SWELL is going to be held on October 1-2. The keynote speaker of the conference is Bill Clinton.

Decentralised Derivatives Trading on EXPO

The dYdX is an open source decentralised derivative trading protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain. The protocol is supported by notable investors including Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) and Brian Armstrong, co-founder of Coinbase. Expo is the first product of dYdX team which will enable users to trade “margin tokens”. There are two types of margin tokens, “short tokens” and “leveraged long tokens”. Short token is a token that is negatively correlated to an underlying crypto asset. Whereas leveraged long tokens move at multiple of the price of an underlying crypto asset.

Tweet of the week

Meme of the week

Crypto word of the week

Nodes are devices such as computers, mobile phones that run special software which connect them to a cryptocurrency network. Full nodes store all the transactions that ever took place and download and verify new blocks from other nodes to complete their local copies of the blockchain.

Quiz answer

How is the price of Bitcoin determined?

The correct answer is : “B”

Bitcoin price is set across multiple Bitcoin exchanges. It may vary from exchange to exchange and from country to country. Some exchanges may have a significantly higher or lower price. These prices are then collected via API. Price is then calculated by taking the respective market volumes and averaged by their weight.

Thank you for reading :)

Have a great day!

MrCoin

MrCoin

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