Bitcoin (BTC) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency, originally described in a 2008 paper by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. Launched in January 2009, it was the world’s first cryptocurrency, and remains the most popular, with the highest market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin was built on several key innovations. Firstly, Nakamoto guaranteed that Bitcoin transactions were immutable, by recording all transactions on a distributed ledger known as a blockchain. Secondly, he ensured Bitcoin’s scarcity by capping the total number of Bitcoin in existence at 21 million. Finally, the community was incentivized to verify transactions by receiving rewards in the form of “mined” Bitcoin for checking the accuracy of the blockchain.
Multinational bank BNP Paribas purchased shares in BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), according to a form 13F filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
According to the firm's 13F report filed May 1, BNP Paribas purchased 1,030 IBIT shares in the first quarter of 2024 at $40.47 a share, for a total of $41,684.10—less than the value of a single Bitcoin, at current prices.
The second-largest bank in Europe by assets, BNP Paribas has allocated a comparitively miniscule p...
Bitcoin and Ethereum have rebounded after starting yesterday morning nearly 10% lower than they were on Tuesday.
At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price is around $57,700 after having made a 0.5% recovery in the past 24 hours. And the Ethereum price, after climbing 2.3% in the past day, is now trading for just below $3,000, according to CoinGecko data.
But the damage has still been done. Per CoinGlass, the past 24 hours saw another $193 million worth of crypto futures contracts liquidated, add...
During a presentation at the annual MicroStrategy World conference in Las Vegas, MicroStrategy co-founder and Executive Chairman Michael Saylor unveiled the open-source MicroStrategy Orange Decentralized Identity protocol.
“Michael presented a very compelling case for why we need decentralized identity and did decentralized identifiers,” MicroStrategy executive vice president of engineering Cezary Raczko told the audience. “He made an even more compelling case why it makes sense to anchor digita...
The Build on Bitcoin (BOB) project announced the launch of its first phase on Wednesday, enabling decentralized apps—dapps—to interact with the world’s top blockchain.
The BOB mainnet is coming online with $300 million in total value locked (TVL) and over 40 dapps already available, the team said on Twitter, declaring “a Bitcoin-driven DeFi summer” with more to come in the next three weeks.
Build on Bitcoin is intended to be a hybrid layer-2 network, an “Ethereum rollup” that merges Bitcoin’s gl...
Artificial intelligence can rapidly scan the massive Bitcoin blockchain for signs of illegal activity, a capability that could dramatically strengthen the work of law enforcement in combatting money laundering, a new report explains.
Blockchain analysis firm Elliptic on Wednesday published a study with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab that analyzed Bitcoin transactions using a deep learning AI model to detect money laundering patterns and identify wallets used in crimes.
Bitcoin is renowned for using a...
The Federal Reserve Wednesday elected to keep its key interest rate steady as the central bank’s focus on fighting inflation compounded pain in the crypto market.
In his typically cautious tone, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters that the fight to get inflation to 2% was difficult but added that he thought it was “unlikely that the next policy rate move will be a hike.”
“I’d say it’s unlikely,” he said, but warned that it was “likely to take longer for us to gain confidence th...
Bitcoin has pulled back 22% from its all-time high in March. Now, on-chain intelligence company Glassnode suggests the market could be “hammering out a local bottom formation.”
In a new report, the firm suggests that the market is currently still in a “euphoria” phase—a period in a bull market where unrealized profits surpass more than half of the market capitalization of Bitcoin. When investors are in this state, the market should expect a correction.
With Bitcoin crashing to $57,000 at the ti...
Amid an apparently growing crackdown on the crypto industry from American regulators, U.S. prosecutors are reportedly investigating Block, the Jack Dorsey-founded company behind Square and Cash App.
Federal prosecutors have been probing the internal processes of the company—including its crypto business—according to a report from NBC News published Wednesday, citing two sources familiar with the investigation.
Prosecutors are reportedly investigating "alleged widespread and yearslong compliance...
If you think the recent dips in the price of Bitcoin is bad, leading financial firm Standard Chartered could further darken your mood, concluding that the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap could fall as far as $50,000.
In a Wednesday note, Geoffrey Kendrick—digital assets researcher at the British company and lead author of the report—said that “the broader macro backdrop has deteriorated for assets like crypto that thrive on liquidity.”
“The driver seems to be a combination of crypto specifi...
United States Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) has stated that she is "deeply troubled" by the Department of Justice's (DOJ's) stance on non-custodial software.
In a tweet, Lummis expressed concern at the DOJ's "hyper-aggressive argument that non-custodial software can constitute a money transmission service." She added that the DOJ's stance "contradicts existing Treasury guidance," and "violates the rule of law."
"Arguments against self-custody software threaten the fundamental property rights tha...
Tokenization firm Securitize just closed a $47 million strategic funding round led by none other than BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager and operator of the most popular spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States.
So far, the firm’s efforts to offer the compliant trading of securities on-chain have established itself as a leader in the United States, based on the size of BlackRock’s tokenized dollar fund—created with Securitize—compared to competitors.
With the funding round’s proceeds, the...
If you're looking to bank a little bit of Bitcoin while playing fun mobile games, there are loads of free play-to-earn iOS and Android games that pay satoshis (1/100,000,000 BTC) while you play and view ads. Not all of them are worth the hassle, but we’ve recommended some that we like.
One of them is SpaceY, an amusing asteroid-mining game from Fumb Games that pays out Bitcoin as you skip across the galaxy to harvest resources. It’s simple and straightforward, but there’s a bit of strategy in th...
In the hours leading up to the next Federal Reserve meeting, investor pessimism has hit Bitcoin and Ethereum hard.
At the time of writing, BTC has dropped 7.6% and ETH is down 6% over the past 24 hours. The Bitcoin price is hovering around $57,000, while the Ethereum price is stuck at just under $2,900, according to data from CoinGecko.
The volatility has been hellish for derivatives traders. In the past 24 hours, $457 million worth of crypto futures positions have been liquidated, according to...
A coal mining company has revealed that it has been quietly mining Bitcoin for over three years.
Alliance Resource Partners, listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker ARLP, disclosed the crypto initiative during its first-quarter earnings call.
“It was just an opportunity that we saw due to the fact that we've got excess power at our mining operations,” said Cary Marshall, senior vice president and chief financial officer at Alliance, according to a transcript of the call published Mo...
After Hong Kong’s spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs had a relatively successful first day of trading compared to crypto futures ETFs, some crypto industry observers believed it would send a message to China and across Asia. However, the CEO of OSL—the sub-custodian for the ChinaAMC and Harvest Global ETFs—believes this framing is wrong.
“Some may view this as a message ‘to’ mainland China,” OSL CEO and Chairman of the Board Patrick Pan told Decrypt. “I think this is more a message ‘from’ China for...
Crypto is having a dismal day, fighting a withering stretch of headwinds. The total market cap of cryptocurrencies stands at $2.33 trillion, down 4.81% in the past day, according to CoinGecko. Meanwhile, April is now the first month since January in which the Crypto Fear and Greed Index has returned to neutral territory, canceling the overall greedy mood of 2024.
Tuesday trends are overwhelmingly bearish, with every coin in the top 100 showing negative performance over the past 24 hours.
Unus Se...
Authorities in Spain have arrested cryptocurrency entrepreneur Roger Ver, once known as "Bitcoin Jesus," after the U.S. Department of Justice charged him with tax evasion.
Unsealed Monday, the indictment alleges that Ver evaded paying taxes to the tune of nearly $50 million, conducted mail fraud, and filed false tax returns.
The DOJ says in its indictment that Ver allegedly lied to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about how much Bitcoin he and his companies really owned.
According to the feds...
The price of Bitcoin plunged to nearly $60,000 per coin on Tuesday afternoon, prompting liquidations for the positions of those betting on the price of the asset to go up.
CoinGlass data shows that in the past 24 hours, over $261 million in long positions for all cryptocurrencies have been liquidated. Including short positions, total liquidations stand at over $324 million.
In the past four hours alone, the figure stands at nearly $70 million—$24.4 million of which were positions in Bitcoin.
Cur...
Bitcoin will be the only digital asset that trades on American stock exchanges via exchange-traded funds (ETFs), according to the prominent founder of software company MicroStrategy.
In its quarterly earnings call for 2024, MicroStrategy founder and Executive Chairman Michael Saylor said that “it’s pretty clear that Bitcoin is the only crypto asset that’s going to be approved for sale in the form of a spot ETF in the United States.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) gave the green li...
On Saturday, January 3, 2009, Bitcoin was born. With the creation of the very first Bitcoin block—known as the 'Genesis Block'—the first set of 50 BTC was mined into existence.
This genesis block is considered the start of the Bitcoin blockchain—and the beginning of the cryptocurrency revolution.
Many would argue that the day it was minted represents Bitcoin's birthday. Though others instead believe that Bitcoin's birthday is actually three months earlier—when the Bitcoin whitepaper was first re...