Bitcoin extended its losses after China vowed to crack down on the cryptocurrency's mining and trading activities in an effort to prevent financial risks at a meeting chaired by Vice Premier Liu He on Friday, May 21. t was a doubled move against virtual currencies coming just after three Chinese financial regulators banned financial institutions from crypto-related businesses on Wednesday. China will also clamp down on illegal activities in the securities market, and maintain the stability of stock, bond and forex markets, the State Council's Financial Stability and Development Committee said after the meeting. China powers most of the world's bitcoin mining. According to data from the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, China accounted for over 70 percent of the world's computing power for bitcoin between September 2019 and April 2020.
Cryptocurrency mining has drawn regulatory attention in China in recent years. In April 2019, China's National Development and Reform Commission put cryptocurrency mining on a preliminary list of industries it wanted to eliminate, citing concerns including energy-wasting and regulation. However, the final version released in November removed cryptocurrency mining from the list. In June 2019, China's central bank – the People's Bank of China – issued a statement saying it would ban all domestic and foreign cryptocurrency exchanges and Initial Coin Offering websites. By the end of April 2021, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region said it would "clean up and shut down" all cryptocurrency mining operations to reduce carbon emissions in the coal-based region. Beset by the escalating regulations in major economies, bitcoin failed to recover from its tumble week after Tesla's CEO Elon Musk's tweets doubting its environmental impacts. The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday also called for new rules that would require large cryptocurrency transfers to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Reserve flagged the risks cryptocurrencies posed to financial stability. China's Hong Kong also proposed on Friday that cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the city will have to be licensed by the markets regulator and will only be allowed to provide services to professional investors. At time of writing, bitcoin is traded at $39,000 each, about half from its all-time high a month ago of over $63,500 and similar to the level of the beginning of the year.
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The last few days has seen huge volatility and sharp plunges in the prices of crypto currencies, with coins and tokens across the board falling by between 20% - 40%, and then followed by the inevitable bounce back. The story is the same across mega and large cap names such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, through to the myriad of mid and small cap coins and tokens.
Over the last few days, Bitcoin hit a low of $30,000 while Ethereum hit as low as $2000, before Bitcoin bounced back to $37,400 (at the time of writing) and Ethereum retraced up to the $2680 range (at the time of writing). This huge and sharp plunge across cryptos in the last 24 hours has occurred on the back of a week long period in which many crypto prices were already in a sustained downtrend. Is what we are seeing now a shakeout or a healthy correction? Is the bounce back a dead cat bounce or the turning point in a new uptrend? Who knows. There are many views on crypto asset prices (just look at Twitter), and at the end of the day, it’s the combined trading and liquidity of the millions of traders and speculators across the world which create the prices, and the volatility. But in this volatile period, it may be worth diversifying some of your crypto holdings into gold and silver bullion, real and tangible assets that have been wealth preservation and financial insurance for thousands of years. In a shocking retraction, the bullion bank dominated London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) has just announced that it has been overstating LBMA silver vault holdings by a massive 3,300 tonnes of silver.
This overstatement relates to the total quantity of physical silver bars that the LBMA claimed were being held in LBMA vaults in London as of end of March 2021. These LBMA vaults in London are operated by three banks, namely the infamous JP Morgan, the equally infamous HSBC, and the maybe not so infamous ICBC Standard Bank, and three security vaulters, Brinks, Malca Amit and Loomis. On 9 April, to much fanfare, the LBMA published updated monthly vault data for London vaulted silver bars, claiming that as of end of March 2021, total silver held in LBMA London vaults had risen by a whopping 11.04% during March from 1.125 billion ozs (34,996 tonnes) to 1.249 billion ozs (38,859 tonnes), i.e. an increase of 124 million ozs or 3863 tonnes. Continue Reading at BullionStar.com… What are people using it for? Dogecoin is interesting because although it was meant to be satirical and just for fun, it has become an important mainstay in the cryptocurrency world. Due to its incredibly low transaction fees and fast transaction times, as well as relatively stable value, some traders are using it as a means of exchange. For example, if someone wants to withdraw money from a cryptocurrency exchange, it may be very expensive to do so if the currency is in bitcoin. Therefore, some traders may choose to first trade their bitcoin for Dogecoin and then withdraw their currency as Dogecoin before later converting again into something else. Some use it purely for speculation since the price of each unit is so low. It’s possible to purchase many millions of units without spending a fortune, and any small price increase can lead to reasonable market gains. Dogecoin is also very widely accepted at almost every major exchange as well as several instant exchange services such as Shapeshift and Flyp.me. Because Dogecoin is integrated into Shapeshift, it can be used to pay for a wide variety of services and goods that have the Shapeshift API built-in. The future of Dogecoin Dogecoin has fallen on hard times more than once in its history. A highly divisive incident involving a cryptocurrency exchange followed by a massive theft resulted in many Dogecoin fans becoming disaffected, and abandoning the currency. As well, Dogecoin was removed from the Exodus wallet because Exodus claimed Dogecoin is not being developed and lacks several important updates. “Although we love the Dogecoin community…the development seems to have gone stale with not many updates to key components we need. The last release of Dogecoin core was in Nov of 2015. Unfortunately Exodus is built on support from public Insight servers and Dogecoin does not have the latest updates to Insight. We have asked around and it does not seem this is going to happen anytime soon.” But what Dogecoin has going forward, however, outweighs its downsides. It is still accomplishing the original goals that it was set out to accomplish back in 2013. It is still a low-cost, easy to acquire, friendly and welcoming cryptocurrency. The Dogecoin community is especially quite famous for its friendliness and willingness to help new users. Dogecoin supporters are often seen giving out small amounts of the currency in order to encourage others to adopt it and understand it.
While the Doge meme may be all but forgotten for many, for the true believers, it is still a wide-reaching and effective symbol that unites the masses under a unified banner of solidarity. As waves of new users join cryptocurrency every day, many of them will inevitably use Dogecoin to get started, and of those, some will certainly stay and support the community and the currency for the foreseeable future.
Even today it’s still a widely used, traded, and community supported cryptocurrency. It’s available on almost every exchange, and is supported by a number of popular multi-asset wallets.
So read on as we go over more about the history, present, and future of this silly yet highly effective cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency as satire? Created back in December 2013 by creators Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, the currency was originally intended for two main purposes. Arguably, the primary purpose of Dogecoin was to act as a satirical commentary on the sudden explosion and ridiculous valuations of the new currencies coming out at that time. Back in 2013, all sorts of random and debatably pointless cryptocurrencies were created and had million-dollar market caps after just a few days online. One of those was “BBQ Coin“, which at one point had a market cap of nearly $8 million, and is now effectively worth nothing. The second goal was to create a currency that was fun and more readily accessible than the dominant bitcoin. Dogecoin was also designed to have a very large supply in the hundreds of billions so that each individual unit would always have a low price. Other intentions for the currency were to be used as an online tipping currency, such as for Reddit comments or YouTube videos, among other things. The creators of Dogecoin used the popular Doge meme as the name and symbol for the new cryptocurrency. Word of the currency spread quickly through the Internet thanks to an innovative guerrilla marketing campaign using the characteristics of the Doge meme. This usually involved a picture of the Doge character alongside various broken English sentences that often took the structure of “much something”, “very something”, “such something”, “wow”. For example, “such crypto, many coin, very currency, wow” or something like it. Dogecoin technology and economics Dogecoin was created as a fork of Luckycoin, which itself was a fork of Litecoin. Therefore, Dogecoin contains a number of characteristics that are similar to Litecoin but not identical. For example, it uses the Scrypt algorithm which was originally designed so that bitcoin ASICs could not mine it. Of course, Scrypt ASIC miners exist today, but that was not the case back in 2013. Dogecoin also has a shorter block time than Litecoin. Dogecoin was designed to have a very large supply, for the express purpose of keeping the currency accessible. As a result of the low cost of the individual tokens, transaction fees are also significantly lower than other competitors. Typically less than one cent or so is all that it takes to send a transaction. Further, Dogecoin transactions are very fast and confirm quickly. Dogecoin has recently seen a fast rise in price, as of Feb 2021 it trades for around 3cents, it did hit as high as 7cents after a huge pump in price after going viral on TikTok, Twitter and other social media sites. In the last few weeks we’ve seen most gold and silver dealers with ‘out of stock’ signs on their storefront. That’s what the vast majority of silver bullion consumers have been getting since the end of January. Stories have been surfacing online about Silver bullion dealers seeing a rise in demand, one of the biggest they’ve seen in their lifetime. Everyone is buying, and no one is selling the physical metal in the United States. Bullion Dealers are requesting 35% premiums…and that’s if you can get your hands on some.
And yet less than a year ago when pandemic took the world by it’s grip, Gold or silver bullion dealers were nearly completely sold out within a matter of days. In some cases silver premiums reached historic highs, near 100% of spot prices. With the inception of the new #silversqueeze hype inspired by an army of retail investors on Reddit, silver has traded at an 8-year high, as demand was exploding. Silver’s given back $2 since its $29 peak on Feb. 1. But it’s still up 20% since late November, and has gained 125% since its March lows according to Kitco news. To add to that, silver stocks in the United states have been surging. It’s all related to the now infamous WallStreetBets calls to action, the latest of which targeted silver. It was enough to cause Comex to raise silver margins by 18% after just two up days. But silver’s story is still in its early days. Dramatically higher silver prices are still squarely ahead. The silver market has been largely under-owned and underinvested until 2020, when silver began its bull rally and outperformed gold. According to John Feeney from Guardian Vaults: Silver is looking more and more like the metal of the future and a substantial investment for 2021. The big driver that is here to stay is a global move into renewable energy, he said. "Under the Biden administration, we will see a lot of money getting moved into solar panel production. That is happening globally too. If you look at the solar market, the outlook for the next 5-10 years is very bullish for silver." Also, there is an argument to be made for the start of the commodity supercycle. "A lot of analysts think that we are at the beginning of it. There has been a lot of underinvestment in commodities over the last few years. A lot of capital moved into the tech sector and hardly any capital in comparison moved into the commodities sector," Feeney said. Gold and silver as a whole are considered safe haven assets - an investment that’s expected to hold their value during market turbulence. However people are often skeptical about whether to invest in gold or silver! They often think of investing in these metals as a long term yet reliable opportunity. So today we're going to break down in depth: how much gold and silver will be worth if the U.S Dollar collapses? Is it wise to invest in gold and silver or are there other options? Considering gold and Silver is considered are considered safe haven assets as we’ve mentioned above, that makes it a likely choice for investors during political and economic upheavals because they have intrinsic value, carry no credit risk, and cannot be inflated. That’s why either gold or silver, investing in precious metals is one of the best types of investments you can make in 2021. Owning just a small percentage of precious metals diversifies your portfolio, and therefore reduces volatility and risks. It can also protect your future buying power. Even in today’s cryptocurrency dominated world of investing, gold and silver hold a prominent place in the stock market. To briefly summarize this article, I firmly believe silver and gold both are good resources for future investments and something you should own even when the U.S dollar collapses. What are the risks with Bitcoin? Bitcoin is the first and most valuable cryptocurrency and it has seen massive growth in 2017. But many people are warning about the risks associated with Bitcoin. A number of high-profile investors regard Bitcoin as a ‘bubble’ or ‘mirage’, and expect the market to crash, like the dot-com bubble. Others highlight that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin help to enable financial crime and funding of terrorism, due to the level of anonymity that digital currencies can provide to technologically adept criminals.
It seems like everybody is talking about cryptocurrencies at the moment. With apps like Coinbase making it possible to buy and trade cryptocurrencies at the tap of a button, thousands of people – from political idealists to economic opportunists – have been jumping on the crypto investment bandwagon. Cryptocurrencies are creeping into the mainstream, with even Goldman Sachs recently announcing their plans to start trading Bitcoin. 2017 saw the asset value of Bitcoin boom, amidst growing confidence in the first and most important cryptocurrency. Many cryptocurrency investors have seen the growth of Bitcoin as a win-win situation for all concerned. But are crypto-investors inadvertently paying into a system that is making the world less safe, and putting us all at risk? Since its early days, Bitcoin has had its share of ties with criminal activity. With the increased level of anonymity that it provided, Bitcoin was a popular currency on the darknet marketplace the ‘Silk Road’, where it was used chiefly to trade illegal drugs, as well as other contraband. As it crawls towards the mainstream, Bitcoin has certainly shaken off some these negative associations. But the fact remains that crypto transactions continue to afford criminals with a veil of anonymity, enabling them to evade justice – and enabling the financing of all manner of malicious activities. The problem is that, unlike conventional currencies, cryptocurrencies are decentralized, and therefore not subject to the same regulations, reviews, and monitoring as in financial institutions or banks. This means that potential criminal transactions that are processed in cryptocurrency bypass the regulatory controls that banks are legally required to perform. Jargon buster Bitcoin – a digital cryptocurrency and payment system. It is a decentralized digital currency, as it operates independently of a central bank. Cryptocurrency – a digital asset designed to function as a medium of exchange. Encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds. Bitcoin is the first, and, at present, the most valuable cryptocurrency. Blockchain – an encrypted ledger which records the history of cryptocurrency transactions Bitcoin and terrorist funding Amongst the criminal organizations that are benefitting from unregulated cryptocurrency transactions are ISIS. In a PDF circulated on social media, entitled “Bitcoin and the Charity of Violent Physical Struggle”, one ISIS supporter explains, “This system has the potential to revive the lost sunnah of donating to the mujahideen, it is simple, easy, and we ask Allah to hasten it’s (sic) usage for us”. As academics from Macquarie University have highlighted, the utility of crypto for helping to fund ISIS terrorist operations is significant. Ghost Security Group, a hacktivist and anti-terrorism group, claimed to have identified a chain of transactions to Bitcoin wallets believed to be owned by ISIS which contained funds between $4.7m and $15.7m – between one to three percent of their estimated annual income. The group stated to news network NewsBTC that ISIS is “extensively using Bitcoin for funding their operations”. In 2015, German media company Deutsche Welle reported that one Bitcoin wallet believed to belong to ISIS received around $23m within a single month. Virtually everybody knows what a dollar is, but not as many know about the SDR. The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Special Drawing Rights is an international, monetary reserve system created specifically to address limitations of gold and standard fiat currencies such as the USD. In short, should these fail, central banks and their governments retain the ability to trade and plan with liquidity via another, exclusive instrument — the SDR. An Artificial Currency The SDR is not an actual currency, according to the IMF, but a “potential claim on the freely usable currencies of IMF members.” As the official unit of account for the group, and an instrument only available to member countries’ central banks, the IMF itself and “designated, official entities,” SDR are exclusive assets. The average individual cannot get their hands on SDR. Comprising a basket of major global currencies, the composition of the Special Drawing Rights is reviewed in five-year intervals. Currently the SDR utilizes USD, EUR, CNY, JPY, and GBP. The system is said to enable liquidity in international finance when assets like gold or other fiat currencies fail to do so. In the event of an unprecedented, worldwide economic collapse, SDR could become a centralized means by which to rebuild global trade networks. In fact, after the global downturn of 2008-09, the IMF’s issuance of SDR to member countries spiked dramatically in an attempt to re-stabilize the world economy.
Creation of SDR The SDR system was created in 1969 and “was initially defined as equivalent to 0.888671 grams of fine gold—which, at the time, was also equivalent to one U.S. dollar,” imf.org relates. “After the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the SDR was redefined as a basket of currencies.” Of course, the collapse of Bretton Woods meant the international abandonment of the gold standard and the beginning of floating exchange rates. SDR is a uniquely isolated system, with its own exclusive economy and management, including interest rates set weekly and allocations to member countries determined via IMF criteria. Controversy, Control and Crypto The International Monetary Fund is well known as a financial superpower, exercising great influence in a wide scope of global affairs. The group has drawn sharp criticism throughout the years for allegedly destroying local economies and agriculture, negatively affecting healthcare, and overregulation of competing currencies and monetary instruments such as Bitcoin and crypto. In 2018, the group interestingly discouraged the Marshall Islands from creating their own cryptocurrency which could potentially challenge dollar hegemony on the islands, while just months later advocating central bank-issued digital currencies in other, more powerful national economies. While the Marshall Islands appear to be pressing on with their plan, still advocating the SOV national currency designed to fight inflation, standing up to a surveillance and regulatory behemoth like the IMF is not easily done, and likely not without serious compromises. Unlike SDR, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are not regulated or allocated by a centralized, monetary surveillance authority such as the IMF. This has been a source of concern for the group, with former IMF head and European Central Bank presidential nominee Christine Lagarde stating in April: “I think the role of the disruptors and anything that is using distributed ledger technology, whether you call it crypto, assets, currencies, or whatever … that is clearly shaking the system.” For central bankers, this is clearly a threat to stability. Some advocates of radical financial freedom, however, believe that a decentralized shake-up of the old order may be just what is needed. After all, if the IMF can have its own special emergency currency in today’s climate of global financial instability, why not everyone else? Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Monday (March 22) that cryptocurrencies are “speculative” investments, and therefore not reliable. He added that the Fed is moving slowly on the matter of creating a digital dollar, despite the soaring price of bitcoin in recent months.
Speaking at a virtual panel discussion, he added that cryptocurrencies are “highly volatile and therefore not really useful stores of value — and they’re not backed by anything.” As reported by CNBC, Powell said, “It’s more a speculative asset that’s essentially a substitute for gold rather than for the dollar.” The panel discussion on digital banking was hosted by the Bank for International Settlements. Meanwhile, Coinbase said that bitcoin was trading near $57,000, as it has attracted big name investors and some acceptance in the financial industry. For the past several years, the Fed has worked on its own payments system. CNBC said that the final product is likely to happen over the next two years. Last month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that central banks should explore creating and issuing sovereign digital currencies. The opportunity is that such currencies — digital dollars among them — could create “faster, safer and cheaper payments,” she said at a virtual conference. “There’s a lot of things to consider here,” Yellen said. “But it’s worth looking at.” Yellen said that among those “things to consider” is how regulators would “manage money laundering and illicit finance issues.” The rise of cryptocurrencies demands advanced technologies to close the gap with financial criminals, said. Ed Wilson, a partner at Venable LLP, a firm that specializes in financial regulations. Wilson told PYMNTS that solutions will involve using advanced technologies to help financial institutions (FIs) close the gap, with financial criminals out to exploit the digital movement of money. “Banks put too much emphasis on reducing reputational risks [caused by] regulatory failure,” he said. “They could reduce that if they would instead change how they run their account opening and anti-money laundering procedures.” The singer Grimes has made millions recently in an unusual way: by selling art and short videos as NFTs, also known as non-fungible tokens — and, she isn't the only one. NFTs represent the rights to a digital work of art or other media — and some people think they'll soon be more commonplace than bitcoin. In fact, NFTs are already growing ubiquitous: Infamous influencer Logan Paul has made millions off them; rapper Azealia Banks sold a 25-minute audio sex tape for the equivalent of $18,000; and, Kings of Leon will become the first band to release an album in the form of an NFT. In the latter case, with the purchase of the band's NFT, owners can access special perks like tickets to future concerts, exclusive audiovisual art, and more.
But let’s back up. What, exactly, are NFTs, what is the point of buying them, where can they be purchased, and why are we suddenly hearing about them so much? As stated above, NFTs are digital tokens representing a work of art or media. What they are not is cryptocurrency, because their value is not static or prone to only small fluctuations in value. Instead, NFTs' value can go up and down, depending on demand. In that way, buying an NFT is like buying an actual work of art: Demand dictates worth, and is subject to the whims of the market, no matter how extreme. (In this way, NFTs are also a little like stocks.) NFTs can be purchased through online marketplaces like OpenSea, which artists use to mint their work. Once minted, these works are published into tokens, and from there, buyers can either purchase the NFTs or bid on them with cryptocurrency. But, unlike purchasing a physical painting, say, when you buy an NFT, you are obtaining the rights to a digital asset, not the actual asset. To put it another way, one cryptoartist told me that this article could even be minted into an NFT; if someone bought it, they wouldn't be buying the literal article, but the digital asset of it. EXAMPLE Auction house Christie's brought the hammer down on a record-breaking piece of work yesterday: a non-fungible token (NFT) on the Ethereum blockchain that sold for $69.3 million. The work is by Mike Winklemann, or "Beeple," and is titled Everydays: The First 5000 Days. The hammer price, or the bid on which the auctioneer's gavel falls, was $60.25 million. The final price includes a so-called buyer's premium, or auction house fee, of $9.05 million. There are the people who simply don’t understand why an NFT by this artist named Beeple is sold for $69.3 million. But Zucker says that the people who are drawn to NFTs — for whatever reason — are touched by it in different ways. "As I see it, especially after the past year of the pandemic, we live increasingly in the digital world," Zucker says. "So it stands to reason that we are developing systems of value around the aesthetic and creative elements that populate that world." Sarah Zucker, who works across mediums and specializes in screen-based artwork, was excited about the possibility to edition and value her work the same way other, more “traditional” artists have always been able to. She minted her first NFT in 2019. “To have your work be viewed and discussed as something real and tangible has psychic and emotional benefits beyond the obvious life-changing aspect of being able to support yourself directly from your work,” . Adding Financial Data to Digital Authoritarianism China is pushing aggressively to be a global leader in financial technology. Over the last several years, use of mobile payment platforms has exploded in China while cash transactions have declined. At the same time, global interest in the development of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) has also risen, with dozens of central banks now researching ways to offer digital versions of their fiat currency to ordinary citizens. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is leading in these efforts, aiming to release a central bank digital currency of its own. This CBDC system, which the Chinese government calls Digital Currency/ Electronic Payment (DCEP), will likely enable the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to strengthen its digital authoritarianism domestically and export its influence and standard-setting abroad. By eliminating some of the previous constraints on government data collection of private citizens’ transactions, DCEP represents a significant risk to the long-held standards of financial privacy upheld in free societies. The PBOC’s DCEP strategy is motivated by a number of factors. The dominance of private mobile payment firms in China has given such companies an outsized role in retail commerce, making them indispensable to the economy. The PBOC is seeking a digital currency to harness the market share and technological innovation of private financial firms and to gain better access to information about the financial activities of Chinese consumers. DCEP is also part of China’s geopolitical ambitions, and CCP officials frame the progress of DCEP as similar to advancements in other strategically important emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and robotics. DCEP’s development also comes against a backdrop of China’s broader push to internationalize the renminbi. Few technical details about DCEP are publicly confirmed. The PBOC has indicated that DCEP will have a two-tier structure, with the PBOC managing the back-end infrastructure while employing banks and other companies to aid in distribution to the public. It is clear that, despite much initial PBOC discussion about distributed ledger infrastructure, DCEP will not use blockchain as part of its design. DCEP is also likely to allow for some basic programmability involving its transactions and to offer users the opportunity to access the currency via software wallets. Despite some official statements and reporting about these general features, much of the precise operational architecture is still being worked out. China is pushing aggressively to be a global leader in financial technology. It is also clear that the Chinese government hopes to leverage DCEP for the CCP’s domestic political agenda. Whereas PBOC officials have indicated that they will harness huge amounts of DCEP data to enhance monetary policy and monitor for illegal activity, officials higher in the Chinese government have stressed DCEP’s value as a tool for enforcing party discipline. PBOC officials also have said that DCEP will have “controllable anonymity,” allowing the central bank to see all of the transactions taking place while maintaining privacy among transacting parties. However, the system will also enable the CCP to exercise greater control over private transactions, as well as to wield punitive power over Chinese citizens in tandem with the social credit system. Additionally, although a number of PBOC officials hope DCEP will help drive internationalization of the renminbi, DCEP is unlikely to do so by itself in the short term.
The PBOC is in position to launch the largest digital currency project of any major economy. DCEP pilot tests have been underway since mid-2020 in several localities, and a number of state-owned banks and technology firms are building interfaces and distribution systems for the platform. The PBOC hopes to make DCEP available for wider use around the time of the 2022 Winter Olympics, which will be hosted in Beijing. With China’s quick progress in developing and testing the system, U.S. policymakers must closely track DCEP’s development and act strategically to address its potential to further the CCP’s coercive power and its influence in the evolving global financial system. Although DCEP is not likely to displace the U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency, it may serve as a model and standard-bearer for other countries to emulate. The United States might not necessarily need to create its own CBDC, but it must adapt to the quickly changing payments space, understand the geopolitical implications of this technology, influence its development, counter the DCEP’s threats to political and economic liberty, and ensure that financial technology innovation does not further China’s digital authoritarianism. What is a Bitcoin and how does it work? Well, according to Google, Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that you can buy, sell and exchange directly, without an intermediary like a bank. It’s almost right what Google is telling us. Actually only one thing is right, it’s digital? But digital what? Is it a currency? Is it stock? Is it a commodity? Or is it an asset?
So is it true that you can buy, sell and exchange Bitcoins directly? I don’t think so. For buy, sell and exchange Bitcoins to Fiat currency and back, you need a regular bank. Don’t forget. The regular bank knows who you are and the Bitcoin bank need to know that too. Actually they need to know your regular bank account information, they verify it, you need to send them your ID. All will be carefully checked before you can enter the Bitcoin world.
So what is the big advantage of Bitcoins. Well, it’s true you can exchange Bitcoins from Wallet to Wallet. It will be noticed by your receive or send Bitcoin address. Oh, sorry I didn’t mention it before that your Bitcoin Wallet has a receive and send part, both identified by an address. These addresses are not secret. You can find them in the Block chain. And the Bitcoin bank(s) know they are yours. And your Wallet has a balance sheet too. So you can see you own $100,- Bitcoin value in the morning and only $90 in the evening. According to the Bitcoin/dollar exchange rate. What it a Bitcoin really worth? I don’t know. It is based on trust and an agreement. We trust the world behind Bitcoin. We trust the Bitcoin banks. We trust the Block chain. But for what reason? A regular bank is backed by the Central bank of the country. But what is backing the Bitcoin (bank)? We agree on represented value to a fiat currency like the dollar. But what makes that value? The market. Supply and demand? And what when you buy in Euro’s and the Euro is not supporting you? For me it’s just a Ponzi scheme. The ones who did buy the first Bitcoins in 2009 are the winners. But when you step in now you’re just a fool or you have too much money to burn. You will never make the profit they did make so far. But…. some captains of industries, like Elon Musk, Mike Cuban and Kevin O’Leary, think it’s the best thing ever. But is it? Sure it has a price, but does it have value? So is it smart to buy Bitcoin? I don’t think so. Linda Kim WASHINGTON, August 7 -- North Korea has raised up to $2 billion for its weapons of mass destruction programs through cyberattacks on cryptocurrency operators and overseas banks, a report compiled by a panel of the U.N. sanctions committee on the country showed Monday. "Democratic People's Republic of Korea cyber actors, many operating under the direction of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, raised money for its WMD programs with total proceeds to date estimated at up to 2 billion U.S. dollars," the panel of independent experts said in the report, according to a portion obtained by Kyodo News. "In particular, large scale attacks against cryptocurrency exchanges allowed the DPRK to generate income in ways that are hard to trace and subject to less government oversight and regulation than the traditional banking sector," the report said. The DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name. According to the report, the panel looked into at least 35 cases of cyberattacks in 17 countries including Chile, India, Malaysia, South Africa and South Korea. The investigation showed "a marked increase in the scope and sophistication of cyber activities including attacks in violation of the financial sanctions," it added. The findings underscore that cash-strapped North Korea has resorted to cyberattacks as a means to acquire foreign currency amid continued international sanctions. Additionally, the panel said in the report that North Korea's Munitions Industry Department -- a designated entity involved in supervising the country's nuclear and ballistic missile programs -- has been using its subordinate corporations to place IT workers abroad to earn foreign currency. Despite international sanctions, North Korea "enhanced its overall ballistic missile capabilities" through missile launches in May and July, the report said. Pyongyang also continued to violate sanctions "through illicit ship-to-ship transfers" in procurement of WMD-related items and luxury goods, and "as a primary means of importing refined petroleum," it said. The sanctions committee operates under the mandate of the U.N. Security Council. LONDON, June 26 -- Bitcoin jumped to its highest in eighteen months on Wednesday on safe-haven investment flows and growing expectations that Facebook’s Libra could turn cryptocurrency investments mainstream. “It obviously does appear to be benefiting from some sort of flows that gold is benefiting too,” said Michael Hewson, chief market strategist at CMC Markets. “You’ve got all this stuff about Libra going on which is renewing interest in bitcoin”. Bitcoin traded last at $12,485 after reaching a high of $12,935 earlier in the Asian session. So far this year, the cryptocurrency has nearly tripled in value after being in the doldrums last year. TEL AVIV, June 25 -- Hackers have broken into the systems of more than a dozen global telecoms companies and taken large amounts of personal and corporate data, researchers from a cyber security company said on Tuesday, identifying links to previous Chinese cyber-espionage campaigns. Investigators at U.S.-Israeli cyber security firm Cybereason said the attackers compromised companies in more than 30 countries and aimed to gather information on individuals in government, law-enforcement and politics. The hackers also used tools linked to other attacks attributed to Beijing by the United States and its Western allies, said Lior Div, chief executive of Cybereason. “For this level of sophistication it’s not a criminal group. It is a government that has capabilities that can do this kind of attack,” he told Reuters. A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry said he was not aware of the report, but added “we would never allow anyone to engage in such activities on Chinese soil or using Chinese infrastructure.” Cybereason declined to name the companies affected or the countries they operate in, but people familiar with Chinese hacking operations said Beijing was increasingly targeting telcos in Western Europe. Western countries have moved to call out Beijing for its actions in cyberspace, warning that Chinese hackers have compromised companies and government agencies around the world to steal valuable commercial secrets and personal data for espionage purposes. Div said this latest campaign, which his team uncovered over the last nine months, compromised the internal IT network of some of those targeted, allowing the attackers to customize the infrastructure and steal vast amounts of data. In some instances, they managed to compromise a target’s entire active directory, giving them access to every username and password in the organization. They also got hold of personal data, including billing information and call records, Cybereason said in a blog post. “They built a perfect espionage environment,” said Div, a former commander in Israel’s military intelligence unit 8200. “They could grab information as they please on the targets that they are interested in.” Cybereason said multiple tools used by the attackers had previously been used by a Chinese hacking group known as APT10. The United States indicted two alleged members of APT10 in December and joined other Western countries in denouncing the group’s attacks on global technology service providers to steal intellectual property from their clients. The company said on previous occasions it had identified attacks it suspected had come from China or Iran but it was never certain enough to name these countries. Cybereason said: “This time as opposed to in the past we are sure enough to say that the attack originated in China.” “We managed to find not just one piece of software, we managed to find more than five different tools that this specific group used,” Div said. |
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