World’s Largest Cryptocurrency Bitcoin Drops To $31,000

The cryptocurrency market has continued its slide from last week, mirroring the fall of the broader stock market. The world’s largest cryptocurrency, bitcoin, fell to $31,075.70 on Monday evening, a 10% drop from Sunday at 5 p.m. EDT. Bitcoin’s price has fallen 54% from its record high of $67,802 in November. It is on track for the worst five-day stretch since the five days ended March 16, 2020, when it fell almost 38%. Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, fell Monday to $2,286.10, almost 10% below the price Sunday evening.

With more professional investors trading crypto, the market has increasingly moved in tandem with traditional markets. Many institutional investors that buy cryptocurrencies treat them as risk assets, similar to technology stocks. Investors tend to retreat to safer corners of the market during turbulent bouts. The stock market dropped last week the day after the Federal Reserve announced a rate increase of a half point, the biggest since 2000, to battle inflation. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said there could be additional increases during the summer. The central bank is also unwinding some of its $9 trillion asset portfolio. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite hit a new 52-week low on Monday, falling 26% year to date. Crypto prices have been stagnant for much of 2022 as investors brace for rising interest rates. The crypto market has been active over the past 24 hours, with almost $155 billion in market volume in that period, according to CoinMarketCap. The global crypto market fell to $1.4 trillion. Cryptocurrency companies have been working to become household names. Flush with venture-capital investment, crypto platforms have been spending more cash on lobbying efforts and marketing directly to consumers. Inflation fears, worries about big interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve and jitters about a possible economic slowdown have rattled Wall Street and sent bond yields skyrocketing. The 10-year Treasury bond yield is now hovering just above 3.1%, having more than doubled this year. Long-term bond yields are now at their highest level since November 2018. The surge in yields has also helped lift the value of the dollar, which tends tor rise in tandem with interest rates. The US Dollar Index is now trading near its highest level in twenty years. That's bad news for bitcoin too, as many crypto backers point to dollar weakness as a bullish sign for digital currencies. As rates (and the dollar) continue to climb, some crypto skeptics think the selling in bitcoin has only just begun. The Federal Reserve is starting to pull back on monthly bond purchases and other stimulus which could be bad news for all sorts of speculative assets. "The dramatic reversal of Fed liquidity ... will collapse the pandemic era bubble in crypto currencies, money losing tech companies and meme stocks," said Jay Hatfield, chief investment officer of Infrastructure Capital Management and manager of the InfraCap Equity Income ETF.

GameStop Is Working On an NFT Marketplace

GameStop has hired a team to build an NFT marketplace and establish crypto partnerships, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. People familiar with the plans told the outlet that the video game retailer has already hired more than 20 people to run the department, which is creating a digital hub for NFTs and metaverse wearables.

The marketplace will launch later this year, they said. In addition, the brand will soon close deals with two crypto companies to share technologies and develop blockchain games and it plans to invest tens of millions of dollars into similar agreements with other crypto firms in the future. Shares in the company jumped by over 22% following the news. GameStop has seen a resurgence over the last year, largely thanks to Reddit‘s r/wallstreetbets. The retailer’s stock skyrocketed when members of the forum banded together to boost its value, cementing its place as a meme stock. The company quietly announced that it was working on NFTs in May and teased the new project through a website dedicated to the blockchain asset. It also created its own GME token, though there have been no transactions yet.

Bitcoin Expected to Rise on Taproot Upgrade

Cryptocurrencies were mostly lower on Friday after buyers failed to sustain the all-time price highs reached in bitcoin and ether earlier this week. Analysts expect trading activity to advance next week following the Bitcoin Taproot upgrade, which aims to improve privacy and efficiency on the blockchain network. “Bulls may have some power left to push the market higher as a result of the [Taproot] upgrade,” Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad, chief product officer at Bitpanda, wrote in an email. The upgrade is expected to be implemented in the next few days, although other analysts expect minimal impact on bitcoin’s price. It’s possible some investors have entered long positions ahead of the Taproot upgrade given BTC’s near 30% gain over the past few months. In the meantime, traders are looking beyond bitcoin for additional profit opportunities, albeit after a possible price correction.

“Bitcoin’s chart has likely become too noisy to remain a reliable indicator of the crypto market, conceding that role to ether,” Alex Kuptsikevich, an analyst at FxPro, wrote in an email. “If so, a break of this strong uptrend could prove to be the first signal of a correction,” which could encourage buying on dips, Kuptsikevich wrote.

Latest prices

    Bitcoin (BTC): $64,192, -0.97%
    Ether (ETH): $4,673, -1.31%
    S&P 500: $4,682, +0.72%
    Gold: $1,865, +0.18%
    10-year Treasury yield closed at 1.57%

Bitcoin volatility declines

Bitcoin’s realized volatility is slowly drifting back toward a one-year low, according to options data provider Skew. The chart below shows a persistent decline in volatility since May, which was when BTC entered a bear market.

For now, some analysts expect volatility to remain low despite recent all-time price highs. QCP Capital, a crypto trading firm based in Singapore, stated in a Telegram chat that it holds a neutral position in BTC and a short-vega options position in ETH. Short-vega means the trader benefits if implied volatility falls.

Ether pullback expected

Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, could face a pullback toward the $4,000-$4,2000 support zone. Technical indicators show initial signs of upside exhaustion after ether reached an all-time price high around $4,800 earlier this week.

ETH is up about 3% over the past week, compared with a 4% rise in BTC over the same period. The chart below shows a slight drop in the ETH/BTC price ratio this month, although the downside appears to be limited toward the 0.067 support level. Additionally, blockchain data shows ether’s active addresses and trading volumes have decoupled from rising prices, which could indicate scope for a pullback in ETH.

Global Crypto Adoption Index Top Countries Reports

It comes as no surprise that the use of cryptocurrency has grown across the world and is being adopted at an increasing rate. In the 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index report it highlights that more and more countries are taking the plunge into crypto. By the end of the second quarter in 2021, it suggested that the global adoption rate has grown by more than 2300 percent since the third quarter of 2019 and has risen over 881 percent in the past year.

 

Research has also shown that the reason for the fast adoption rate across different markets globally has surprisingly stemmed from emerging markets. The index indicates that emerging markets may have turned to cryptocurrency to preserve their savings when faced with currency devaluation, sending and receiving remittances or even further business transactions. The adoption rate in North America, Europe and Asia over the past year has been largely fuelled by institutional investment. In emerging markets including Kenya, Nigeria, Vietnam and Venezuela, the research is seeing large transaction volumes on a peer-to-peer basis. Vietnam currently ranks first overall as the top country using crypto, followed by India, Pakistan, Ukraine, Kenya, Nigeria, Venezuela and then the United States. Central and Souther Asia, Latin America and Africa have sent more web traffic through peer-to-peer platforms than larger economies in Western Europe and Eastern Asia. It is evident that the use of crypto will continue to grow and definitely here to stay.

Bitcoin Sinks After Colonial Pipeline Ransom Recovery

Bitcoin’s price slipped again Tuesday amid a brutal sell-off among digital currencies. The reason for the move was unclear, however it may be related to concerns over security of the cryptocurrency after U.S. officials managed to recover most of the ransom paid to hackers that targeted Colonial Pipeline. Court documents said investigators were able to access the password for one of the hackers’ bitcoin wallets. The money was recovered by a recently launched task force in Washington created as part of the government’s response to a rise in cyberattacks. Bitcoin accelerated its slide to fall below the $32,000 level late Tuesday morning. The world’s largest cryptocurrency then recovered slightly, trading 9% lower at $32,854.99 as of 4:01 p.m. ET. Smaller digital coins also slumped, with ether falling about 8% to $2,499.28 and XRP tanking over 7%. In April, 2021 was looking to be a banner year for digital assets, with bitcoin having topped $60,000 for the first time ever. But a recent plunge in crypto prices has shaken confidence in the market.

 

Bitcoin sank to nearly $30,000 last month, and is currently down roughly 50% from its all-time high. The digital currency is now up only about 12% since the start of the year, though it’s still more than tripled in price from a year ago. On Monday, U.S. law enforcement officials said they had seized $2.3 million in bitcoin paid to DarkSide, the cybercriminal gang behind a crippling cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline. According to a court document, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was able to access the “private key,” or password, for one of the hackers’ bitcoin wallets. Bitcoin has often been the currency of choice for hackers demanding ransom payments to decrypt data locked by malware known as “ransomware.” Crypto media outlet Decrypt reported there were unfounded rumors that the attackers’ bitcoin wallet had been “hacked,” an unlikely scenario. DarkSide, which reportedly received $90 million in bitcoin ransom payments before shutting down, operated a so-called “ransomware as a service” business model, where hackers develop and market ransomware tools and sell them to affiliates who then carry out attacks. According to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, the seized funds represented the bulk of the DarkSide affiliate’s share of the ransom paid out by Colonial. John Hultquist, vice president of analysis at Mandiant Threat Intelligence, called the move a “welcome development.” “It has become clear that we need to use several tools to stem the tide of this serious problem, and even law enforcement agencies need to broaden their approach beyond building cases against criminals who may be beyond the grasp of the law,” said Hultquist. “In addition to the immediate benefits of this approach, a stronger focus on disruption may disincentivize this behavior, which is growing in a vicious cycle,” he added. A number of issues are weighing on cryptocurrencies, including fears of a regulatory clampdown and recent tweets from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Chinese authorities last month called for a crackdown on crypto mining and trading. Once a major player in the market, China has since moved to stamp out speculative investment in cryptocurrencies, banning a fundraising method known as initial coin offerings and shuttering local exchanges. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has gone from a supporter of bitcoin to seemingly falling out of love with it in a matter of months. Musk’s electric car firm stopped accepting bitcoin as a payment method last month due to concerns over its environmental impact, resulting in a crypto market sell-off. “Bitcoin bulls have been chastened by the market pull back and perhaps are feeling once bitten, twice shy,” Charles Hayter, CEO of digital currency data firm CryptoCompare, told MangaSpurs. “The euphoria has worn off to some extent in the retail frenzy, as regulators have moved to temper manias,” he added. “Data is showing continued cornering of the market by institutionals.” Last week, thousands of bitcoin investors descended on Miami for an event billed as the biggest bitcoin event in history. The conference had a few bizarre highlights, including El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announcing plans for the country to accept bitcoin as legal tender.

Nvidia confirms it accidentally unlocked RTX 3060 Ethereum mining

A software update released by Nvidia inadvertently bypassed the Ether (ETH) mining block the firm placed on its own GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card. A spokesperson for Nvidia confirmed on Tuesday that the latest 470.05 driver update was mistakenly released with code intended for use only by Nvidia developers, which allowed for the removal of the hash rate limiter. “A developer driver inadvertently included code used for internal development which removes the hash rate limiter on RTX 3060 in some configurations,” said an Nvidia spokesperson, as reported by The Verge. In February, Nvidia decided to intentionally hamper the Ether-mining effectiveness of its RTX 3060 series graphics cards to prevent a demand-induced shortage caused by crypto miners.

 

A three-way handshake between the hardware, the software and the computer firmware was supposed to ensure that the card recognized when it was being used to mine Ether and cut its computational power in half, from 50 megahertz per second to 25 MH/s. But the back door that allowed the card’s hash rate limiter to be bypassed came from the software side, and it was released by Nvidia itself. The offending beta update has since been pulled by the software company, but versions of it have already made it out onto the internet. Elsewhere on Tuesday, Andreas Schilling of tech website HardwareLuxx tested reports that custom edits to a computer’s BIOS were required to bypass the hash rate limiter. After testing driver 470.05 with a custom and standard BIOS, Schilling confirmed that no special modifications were required and that Nvidia’s driver removed the hash rate limiter itself. While the news only compounds the misery of gamers waiting to upgrade their graphics cards, the gaffe by Nvidia might not necessarily result in Ether miners eating up the next supply of GPU shipments. According to Hexus, the latest reports suggest that the affected driver can only unlock one RTX 3060 at a time, rendering it unsuitable for use in large mining-farms, for the time being at least. Initial rumors suggested a custom modification had bypassed the RTX 3060’s hash rate limiter last Wednesday, allowing it to mine Ether at full capacity. It was later revealed that the mod had not enabled the card to mine Ether specifically but had been rigged to enable the mining of another GPU-mineable cryptocurrency, Ravencoin (RVN).