Yesterday BTC fluctuated in roughly the same range and its price remained almost unchanged throughout the day, maintaining similar weekly losses. The market seems to be evaluating the latest macro data, and a possible more complex battle against inflation than anticipated by the officials, searching for clearer direction, waiting for new catalysts. The USD 25,000 threshold for BTC is commonly identified as strong resistance for further growth.
Just Bitcoin Things
- Canadian crypto hardware manufacturer Coinkite released COLDCARD Mk4 firmware v. 5.1.1, which includes updates like "MicroSD card as Second Factor" support, TAPSIGNER import, and more.
- Bitcoin Policy Institute, a think tank dedicated to Bitcoin research, activism, and education, announced a Bitcoin Policy Summit which will take place on April 26, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
- Mash, a Bitcoin monetization service powered by the Lightning Network, announced Ghost Checkout which let's its users to checkout without creating an account (here's a post on stacker.news).
- Privacy wallet Wasabi Wallet released v.2.0.2.2 hotfixes.
- Bitcoin payment processing software BTCPay Server has added a CoinJoin plugin for its merchants, allowing them to retain privacy while managing their stores.
- Trezor, a Prague-based Bitcoin hardware company, has announced that it has taken control of its silicon chip supply chain by by facilitating the manufacture of its own key component, the chip wrapper for its products.
- African Bitcoin education project Qala has partnered with Bitcoin infrastructure developer nodl and node managing monitoring tools provider Bolt Observer to share the best practices in node infrastructure and management, and to drive broader adoption of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network in Africa.
News
- The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) plans to allow some of its clients to trade BTC and other cryptocurrencies.
- During the market downturn, "Three Arrows Capital's" BTC and cryptocurrency investment fund's failure caused the "Digital Currency Group" crypto empire to lose USD 1.1 billion last year.
- "Coinbase" announced that it will no longer support the Binance USD (BUSD) stablecoin on its platforms starting from March 13th, as it no longer meets their requirements.
- Also, **"Coinbase" is launching a new educational campaign calling for an "urgent update to the financial system," which "was largely created over 100 years ago, when computers and the internet did not exist." Here's a dedicated commercial video of the campaign.
- In the world of "NFTs on Bitcoin" aka "Ordinals," the number of NFTs has surpassed 200,000 (there were only a few thousand at the beginning of February).
- At the same time, one of the biggest players in the NFT market, "Yuga Labs," known for its "Bored Ape Yacht Club" NFT collection on the Ethereum (ETH) is now stepping into Bitcoin with a 300 NFT collection called "TwelveFold."
- Meanwhile, analysts at "Glassnode" note that the entire NFT market has been strengthening in recent times.
- Last week, nearly USD 2 million [was withdrawn]( from investment BTC and crypto products, or 94% less than the week before, according to CoinShares data. However, inflows into products that help to bet against the BTC price drop (short) increased by almost USD 10 million.
- Nevertheless, long-term investors continued to fill their BTC portfolios. Last week, they added BTC 18,000 (~USD 418 million). At the same time, Bitfinex analysts write that large BTC investors, the "whales," used to constantly increase their portfolios until the BTC price doubled, so the current portfolio replenishment may indicate the confidence of large investors.
- However, "Kaiko" analysts write that market liquidity is still low, which stops larger investors from making larger transactions that could have a stronger impact on the market. Therefore, larger amounts of BTC have to be bought/sold over a longer period of time.
- "Ark Invest" CEO Cathie Wood once again explained why she believes in the future of BTC and ETH (in the long term):
- The finance director of the payment company "Block", led by Jack Dorsey, Amrita Ahuja, also spoke about the long-term game: "The internet needs its own currency."
- Several famous Japanese corporations, such as Mitsubishi, Fujitsu, and others, have announced the creation of the "Free Japanese Metaverse Zone" - an ecosystem of Metaverse services and platforms that will use the same infrastructure.
- "Playboy" is also preparing to enter the Metaverse this year, although it may not be part of this zone.
- Regarding fashion in the Metaverse,"Decentraland" is holding its second fashion week from March 28th to 31st.
Other Stuff
- The latest numbers on BTC and crypto crimes by Chainalysis can be used to support both skeptics and advocates, so it's important not to get confused. The argument that BTC and crypto technologies are only for criminals is becoming less common but it is still used by regulators and central banks. Therefore, in pursuit of their goals, they can interpret the latest numbers favorably for themselves.
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- For example, last year BTC and crypto were used more for crimes (measured in USD), and the share of such transactions doubled. At the same time, BTC advocates will emphasize more positive trends, such as the fact that crime has decreased in almost all categories.
It's worth noting that:
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- ✅ The overall value of BTC and crypto used for criminal activity increased primarily due to sanctions applied to individual platforms - what was "legal" two years ago is no longer so. Additionally, even trading on sanctioned platforms is considered illegal. Therefore, this change is partly like comparing apples to oranges.
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- ✅ The proportion of illegal transactions increased last year as prices fell - the value of legal transactions decreased more than that of illegal ones. Furthermore, this proportion may also change as more data becomes available. For example, updated 2021 data shows that the proportion of criminal transactions was 0.12%, not 0.15% as previously reported. "Chainalysis" explains that this occurred by including more blockchains in the statistics.
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- ✅ There were discussions about whether to include cases of possible corporate fraud (e.g., "Celsius" or FTX) in the data, but these numbers were not included.
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- ✅ On the other hand, cases where cryptocurrencies are used for "traditional" drug trade payments or money laundering are not included in the data either. "Chainalysis" estimates that the value of money laundered through crypto technologies dropped 68% last year, reaching USD 23.8 billion, or more than other crimes combined. A significant portion of this is due to DeFi theft and fraud. It is also emphasized that "underground" money laundering services are becoming stronger.
Hope this was useful, let me know what you think!
Prepared with the help of dessenter.ghost.io.