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Hello, dear users of this marvelous forum!

So, it seems like you are in the business of buying and selling e-currencies, exchanging one e-currency into another? This form of trading has quickly become very popular online. As more and more traders earn nice profits, more and more investors flock to the marketplace.

Rumors of easy money always attracts a lot of eager people, wanting to make hay while the going is good. However, there is nobody handing out free money here. You need to be on your toes. Especially important is mastering the art of getting the best possible exchange rate for all of your trades. This is the Alpha and Omega of e-currency exchanging. It can be a very time-consuming process, and is the main reason why new traders might struggle.

The great news is that help is at hand. By using BestChange you can find the best rates for the exchange you wish to make very quickly, indeed!

Blockchain and bitcoin based on it, as any new revolutionary technology, have their drawbacks. The mechanism of ¡®proof-of-work¡¯ consensus uses enormous volumes of electricity, cryptocurrency is used for speculations and sometimes in illegal activities.

But to say that because of that the technology faces a failure, is the same as saying in 1995 that the Internet will not work because it¡¯s clumsy and unorganized.

Bitcoin has been living for over 10 years now despite numerous predictions of its demise. And it is constantly developing. The first cryptocurrency is no longer a ¡°toy for geeks¡± as it used to be in 2009. Today Blockstream satellites allow making bitcoin transactions even without Internet.

Blockstream company which deals with bitcoin blockchain pilot projects and New Zealand developer goTenna have united their efforts to improve the project that allows sending and receiving bitcoins without Internet with the help of data translation via satellites using radio frequencies which are supported by goTenna devices.

The users will be able to receive bitcoins via satellite and goTenna Mesh network without direct connection to the Internet. If you do not like the control of the local provider or your connection is down for some reason, for example, because of a natural disaster, you will still be able to make a transaction.

With all the innovative features, this technology is quite easy to use. With an electricity generator, satellite dish, Raspberry Pi, a Wi-Fi point and the necessary software you could make global bitcoin transactions.

At first sight, it sounds rather expensive. But if you divide the expenses among people, for instance, if the whole village chips in for the purchase of the equipment, the costs are not so high. To use this service, you need a small satellite dish that uses USB port to connect to PC or specialized equipment such as Raspberry Pi. To manage connection, you can use free software with open source code, for instance GNU Radio.

And the service itself has demonstrated ¡°excellent¡± uptime and its network has excess capacity to ensure reliability.

And do you still think that bitcoin does not have any future and nobody uses it?

Blockchain is not a financial pyramid.

To see this, one should understand what a financial pyramid (also called an investment pyramid) is. This is a system for receiving profit via constantly attracting money from new participants. That means the profit of the first participants is paid at the expense of funds of their followers.

It is obvious that if bitcoin does not have any dividend yield, that is, if you do not receive additional funds just because you own cryptocurrency, then bitcoin, as most of other significant cryptocurrencies, cannot be a financial pyramid by definition.

Then why such confusion? Most likely that the reason behind such a poor analogy was the poverty of intellect in most cryptocurrency critics after the events of 2017. They did not even try to learn about the principles and technologies behind cryptocurrencies but started without any reason calling them a financial pyramid. Partially they can be understood, because the previously unknown project that made it possible for people to increase their capital several times over a few months sounds very suspicious.

But what happened is that people earned profit due to the increase in the price of the active, and not because of the means of new users. Yes, to some extend it was the dramatic increase of popularity that brought about price increase, but these concepts should not be confused. Situations when demand starts to dramatically exceed supply are always accompanied by similar price increase. These can be company shares, investment fund units or even salt that can rise in price against the backdrop of false rumors. Price increase due to the growth of demand is a typical market situation, and not a disguised financial pyramid.

That being said, blockchain-based pyramids can sometimes be found, for instance, PonziCoin and Bitconnet. But these are particular cases of the misuse of the technology in creating a financial pyramid, and not vice versa.

It should be noted that there are financial pyramids that are disguised as cryptocurrency projects, only exacerbating the suspicion of inexperienced crowd. For example, they can promise profit thanks to a ¡°unique trading robot¡± that multiplies your investments, or something of this kind. Of course, they have nothing to do with cryptocurrencies, and the illusion of work is maintained at expense of new client¡¯s investments.

We hope that we have made our point clear. And what other unreasonable definitions of bitcoin have you come across? We would be happy to discuss it with you in our next articles.

Did you know that in its modern form, credit card appeared back in 1949? Originally nobody took them seriously, but within the next few years they literally conquered the whole world.

The first universal credit card, which could be used at a variety of establishments, was introduced by the Diners¡¯ Club, Inc., in 1950. Another major card of this type, known as a travel and entertainment card, was established by the American Express Company in 1958. 

Today billions of people around the world use bank cards. The share of cashless payments is gradually growing, and they become a usual and more convenient method of payment.

According to statistics, for the year 2015, debit card usage accounted for 69.5 billion in payments, dwarfing all other forms of non-cash payments including credit cards (33.8 billion) and checks (17.3 billion). One new debit card is issued in the U.S. every five seconds. There were 471 million Visa debit cards in the U.S. and 1.09 billion in the rest of the world at the end of March 2015.

How many bank cards do you have? How often do you use cash?

The Amsterdam Stock Exchange is considered the oldest in the world. It was established in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company, which issued the first shares on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. It was the first company to issue stocks and bonds and the first to formally begin trading in securities.

In the 1600's, the Dutch, French and British governments all gave charters to companies with East India in their names. At the peak of imperialism, it seemed like everyone had a share in the profits from the East Indian and Asian campaigns except the people living there. Sea trips that brought back commodities from the East were very risky - besides pirates, there were risks of weather and losing navigation.

To minimize the risk of a lost ship ruining their profits, ship owners had long been using the help of investors who would finance the trip - outfitting the ship and crew in return for a percentage of the profits if the voyage turned out a success. These early limited liability companies often lasted for only a single voyage. They were then dissolved, and a new one was created for the next trip. Investors lessened their risk by investing in several different ventures at the same time, thereby playing the odds against all of them ending in disaster.

When the East India companies formed, they changed the way business was done. These companies issued stock that would pay dividends on all the proceeds from all the voyages the companies undertook, rather than going voyage by voyage. These were the first modern joint stock companies. This allowed the companies to demand more for their shares and build larger fleets. The size of the companies, combined with royal charters forbidding competition, meant huge profits for investors.

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Is a quantum computer dangerous for Bitcoin?

Many researches say that in less than 10 years ?omputing machines using quantum principles will threaten blockchain technology which is a basis for cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin and similar systems¡¯ defense algorithm is based on a principle of asymmetric encryption with and open and private keys. Transaction is signed by a private key, and its truth is checked with a help of an open key.

Despite the fact that Bitcoin blockchain uses asymmetric encryption, the users don¡¯t have to worry for the safety of their coins. The open key is not stored openly. Thus, the addresses for coins transferring are not open keys, but just the results of usage of hash-function SHA-256. The hashing function performs one-sided transformation and that¡¯s why it¡¯s stable against quantum computer attacks.

The public key is rendered to the network in the open way just until it receives a confirmation. If an attacker receives an open key during transaction, he will have around 10 minutes to get the private key with the help of a quantum computer and try to make his own transaction from the same address but specifying a larger commission.

By the way, bitcoin mining is also relevantly safe, as the equipment for mining cryptocurrencies in the near future will be more powerful that quantum computers.

It is worth to note, that quantum calculations threaten absolutely all systems of computer security which care based on cryptography with an open key, and not only blockchain. Internet connections to render your password in Internet banking uses a similar encryption technology, same as communication in chatrooms, social networks and lots of other routine actions.

All security systems, including blockchain systems, need to take into account postquantum encryption to ensure data safety. But the most simple and effective way can be changing traditional systems by such blockchain which implements quantum-resistant cryptography.

There are several different ways of encryption with open key resistant to quantum calculations: bases on matrix, on code, multidimensional quadratic functions, and hashing function. But let us not digress into detail math stories.

The main point is that if there is a serious threat to blockchain posed by quantum computer, developers can improve the protection. Moreover, successful research and developments in this regards are being done not for the first year.

What do you think, who will be the first in this race ¨C bitcoin developers or quantum computer developers?

Sometimes it is necessary to confirm that you are the owner of this or that address. This may be required when, for instance, the seller wants a confirmation of your solvency, when recovering a hacked or lost account, or to prove that it was you who made a transfer and not somebody else.

Only owning a private key can prove your ownership of a bitcoin-address, but at the same time you cannot give away your private key: anybody with an access to it can spend your funds.

To solve this contradiction, a special function was developed ¨C ¡°signing a message¡±. When you sign a message, you can prove that you own a certain address and manage its funds. At the same time, secret information is not revealed, and no risk is posed for the funds at this address.

Creating a signature for any message is possible with lots of bitcoin-wallets. You will need to specify the address you need to confirm, and a message. The text can be of any nature, but it¡¯s preferable it would tell something to the recipient. We advise you to always put the date and the reason of the message. If you sign any message without the specifics, somebody else might use it and pretend to be the owner of your address.

After signing the message, you can give the message with your signature to the other participant which will prove your ownership of the address. To check the signed message, it is possible to use a wallet or other resources.

Have you ever used this function? Have you heard about signing the messages for cryptocurrency wallets?

??The cost of bitcoin transaction fell by almost 90%

BTC trades almost reached the level of the end of 2017. This is the period when the main cryptocurrency began its famous rally, the peak of which was the increase in the coin rate up to $ 20,000. According to the information of Bitinfocharts service, since that moment the cost for transactions has dropped by almost 88%. In December 2017 commission was around $10-30, and now it has fell down to $0,58 on average. It can be due to considerable popularity of processing operations of BTC transactions at the end of 2017 in comparison with today. Then up to 400 000 operations went through the network daily, when now this figure has dropped to 300 ¨C 350 000 transactions. Another factor influencing the commission cost is the growing popularity of SegWit protocol, the share of usage of which has recently exceeded 60 per cent.

??Transparent Volume experts: Only 17% of bitcoin transactions do not raise suspicion

According to the new service Transparent Volume of the Nomics cryptocompany, the majority of transactions with the main cryptocoin are suspicious. The experts say that only 17% of BTC operations can be considered genuine. Around 35% of transactions are evaluated within the range from ¡°satisfactory¡± to ¡°bad¡±. The total amount of such operations today has reached $3,99 billion.

Transparent Volume is created to monitor the circulation of digital asses between different platforms. It works in real time. Nomics believes that usage of Transparent Volume will help users obtain full and objective information about current trade volumes. The service positions itself as a platform whose work is associated with lesser risk of recording information about fictitious transactions and other misleading facts.

There are prospects: forecasts of digital currency market participants

This week was full of various events for both participants of the cryptocurrency industry as well observers. Here are some expert comments on the current development of the digital asset market.

On Monday Yves Mersch, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB) criticized Facebook¡¯s Libra.¡±Libra could reduce the ECB¡¯s control over the euro, impair the monetary policy transmission mechanism by affecting the liquidity position of euro area banks, and undermine the single currency¡¯s international role¡± . The official has also noted that Facebook¡¯s cryptocoin will in fact be accountable to shareholders, raising trust issues, as it will not be backed by a central bank. Mersch called on regulators to take tight control over Facebook¡¯s projects, and for users not to trust the tempting but questionable promises from the representatives of the American company.

Meanwhile, Jack Dorsey, the head of Square payment start-up and Twitter co-founder, continues to insist that cryprtocurrencies will continue to spread. The businessman believes in bitcoin, but he thinks that it is still too early to call it currency. In one of his latest interviews Dorsey notes, that bitcoin¡¯s rises and falls in prices are more characteristic of a investment asset, such as gold. He hopes that as soon as the cryptocurrency becomes the currency of the Internet, his own start-up will pay more attention to services that create added value, rather than those that are engaged in money transfer

Mark Mobius, an investor in developing markets and Mobius Capital Partners founder said that gold-backed cryptocurrency can be an interesting phenomenon. The investor emphasized that there is a whole generation of people who have faith in the internet, and they have faith in cryptocurrencies.

¡°People believe in dollar because they have faith that with dollars in their hands they can buy something. Crypto enables people to buy something merely because they believe it has value¡±, Mobius said.

In the beginning of the week trader Peter Brandt tweeted that bitcoin has entered the fourth cycle of the parabolic uptrend that could lead it significantly past its all-time high price. The analyst is confident that the price of Bitcoin will reach one hundred thousand dollars in the long run. And although this bold prognosis does not yet have lots of supporters, one can¡¯t ignore the fact that the price of the main cryptocoin is showing steady growth since Monday.

According to Coinmarketcap, by September,6, bitcoin rose in price up to $10 875, starting from the mark of $9 623 on the night of September,2.

Largest chain of convenience stores in Lithuania will promote bitcoins

Narvesen chain (60 stores) and Lietuvos Spauda kiosks in Lithuania are launching the sale of bitcoin vouchers that can be exchanged online into real bitcoins. A person will not need any ID for that, they will only need to provide their email address and the address of their cryptocurrency wallet.

This project is aimed at simplifying the possibility to buy Bitcoins, even for those who have never done that. Narvesen stores and Lietuvos Spauda kiosks have been chosen for that purpose due to their popularity among Lithuanians and positive attitude to cryptocurrencies, and their clients is a necessary targeted audience.

Head of BitMEX crypto exchange is confident in explosive growth of BTC

Arthur Hayes, CEO of cryptocurrency derivatives platform BitMEX is confident that the main crypto coin will once again reach the mark of $20, 000. Crypto enthusiast thinks that will happen because of pumping the economy with newly-printed money which will lead to the loss of interest to fiat money. 

Hayes believes that The US Federal Reserve will restart quantitative easing policy. Last week the European Central Bank launched the program and decreased the deposit rate down to a new historical minimum.

Analysts: Payment companies will have to look for new development options

Analysts of the consulting firm Bain & Company are confident that the payment market will soon change dramatically, as mentioned in their last report. Payment operations will cease to be a separate specialization. Digital wallets will grow in popularity among regular users.

¡°Payments will become free for users and, in the end, for retailers, they will be instant and embedded into other products and services. Cars and fridges, and not people, will be able to place automated orders for replenishing supplies¡±, - experts think.

Industry innovations will push the payment systems to search for original ways for development. Only this way they will be able to meet competition and tap into new markets.

The market of popular crypto currencies is still in the ¡°red zone¡±

During the last day the price of bitcoin was gradually growing. However, the crypto coin, as well as the other top-10 tokens, has not yet left the ¡°red zone¡± of the market. According to Coinmarketcap, at 15:00 CET, the first crypto coin¡¯s price was $9,690.

Market players have different opinions in this regard. Some insist that they hope for the prospect of BTC growth. Others say that there are no drivers for growing in price yet, and the price fluctuations are strictly speculative in nature.

During the last 24 hours, Ethereum dropped more than by 6%, having reached $197. Litecoin has demonstrated the most dramatic drop (-9.23%), having fallen down to $66.

Opinion: BTC is now more stable than a year ago

Alex Kruger, the famous cryptocurrency trader, expressed an opinion that currently the position of the first cryptocurrency is much more stable than it was in 2018. Then, the average trading BTC rate was at the level of $6,400, and this year the crypto coin has managed to get over the $10,000 mark.

The crypto enthusiast believes that the BTC rate growth signals the average increase of crypto coin¡¯s popularity. The gradual adoption of bitcoin is also indicated by the fact that 25 thousand retailers in France, for instance, the Sephora network, plan to accept the first cryptocurrency. It is scheduled to happen already in the beginning of the following year.

Nigerian government official paid $15K ransom in Bitcoin

In a publication for Daily Trust, Nigerian government official Dr. Umar Ardo said the criminals made him pay a $15,000 ransom in bitcoin to release his kidnapped daughter.

Last week, Dr. Ardo¡¯s daughter Amado was kidnapped at a gunpoint around a shopping center. What strikes about this incident is that it is for the first time in history that criminals demand payment in cryptocurrency.

Why in bitcoin? Investigators believe the criminals requested the ransom to be paid in bitcoin to remain anonymous and escape penalty, since blockchain transactions are completely anonymous.

Sadly, incidents like these cast a shadow at the refutation of cryptocurrencies. Despite the indisputable advantages of blockchain technology, many leaders have voiced concern regarding anonymity connected with that.ndustry innovations will push the payment systems to search for original ways for development. Only this way they will be able to meet competition and tap into new markets.

Visa and MasterCard created an Apple Pay competitor for paying for online purchases

Payment systems Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover joined their efforts to create a new option to pay for online purchases in ¡°one click¡±. The joint project Click to Pay will make online checkout easier as all the payment details will be kept in one place. This eliminates the need to enter your credit card number each time.

The new payment service is expected to become the main competitor of Apple Pay and PayPal. A similar function (one-click purchase) is already working on Amazon, but the use is limited only by this online-retailer.

Ex-CFTC Chair: we deliberately collapsed bitcoin

Christopher Giancarlo, former chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission said that the Treasury and the SEC are responsible for bitcoin¡¯s drop in price after reaching its historical minimum in December 2017.

According to him, the regulator intentionally approved the release of bitcoin futures on Chicago Mercantile Exchange to allow to open short positions.

"We saw a bubble building and we thought the best way to address it was to allow the market to interact with it."

Giancarlo said that the US Treasury and SEC decided to collapse the BTC price to prevent the bubble from reaching the dangerous size for the economy. In their time regulators overlooked the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis, that¡¯s why in 2017 they took preventive steps.

Casa start-up solves the problem of passing on crypto assets

Custodial start-up Cassa offers a service of guaranteed passing on of crypto assets.

The gist of the offer is that the owner makes an agreement with Case in which he gives an additional key to his wallet.

Thanks to the fact that the optional key with multisignature is transferred to Casa, this eliminates the theft of bitcoins.

In case the owner of the cryptocurrency passes away, Casa fulfills the last will of the deceased.

Will China buy all the bitcoins?

Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the People¡¯s Republic of China, called for more efforts to advance development in the field of blockchain technologies, which lead to a frenzy in the world of cryptocurrency. For instance, after Xi¡¯s speech, the search volume in the app WeChat for hashtags ¡°Blockchain¡± and ¡°Bitcoin¡± increased 12 and 2 fold correspondingly, and Chinese cryptocoins saw a dramatic price boost during the last weekend. For instance, TRX surged by 50%, and Neo almost doubled its value, having fixed it at a little over $11 for a coin.

Against the background of this frenzy, some people saw China's growing interest in cryptocurrencies as a threat. One of them is Anthony Pompiliano, who tweeted: ¡°Someone tell President Donald Trump that there are only 21 million Bitcoin and China is planning to buy them all. This is going to be the real US ¨C China competition. That should get him to pay attention. The guy hates losing and will try to buy them all.¡±

However, despite this tweet was supported by many people, the majority favor a different opinion on forums dedicated to cryptocurrencies: ¡°If China buys all bitcoins in free circulations, it will acquire nothing more than a large number of empty ¡°candy wrappers¡±, because, as cryptocurrency owners think ¡°in this outcome the interest to bitcoin will evaporate, and the demand for it will drop to zero¡±

Crypto Capital Principal indicted

According to court documents, presented to the accused by the Attorney of the Southern District of New York, Crypto Capital Pricnipal Oz Yosef was planning to transfer $ 10,000,000 to a bank located in the Bahamas for the purpose of misappropriation, which falls under the article on bank fraud.

During the investigation, the company¡¯s funds were frozen. It must be noted that $880 of these funds belonged to Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange.

51 % attack in BCash chain

For a day, in the interval between October 24-25, one or several miners controlled half of all computing power used for mining Bitcoin Cash. During this time the unknown perpetrator(s) managed to mine 73 blocks.

This situation attracted great attention, and the position of the cryptocurrency already not very welcomed in the Internet became even more precarious. For instance, Twitter user Notgrubles suggested delisting Bitcoin Cash from main trading platforms.

The People's Republic of China adopts the first law on cryptography

This law will come into force on January 1, 2020. Interestingly, the law is not connected directly with cryptocurrencies, but is aimed at creating standards for the application of cryptography and passwords management. However, according to experts, passing this law means nothing other than China¡¯s approaching the launching their new national cryptocurrency. It is connected with the fact that cryptography is the main component of cryptocurrency.

TRON dislodged Ethereum in an updated Chinese cryptocurrency rating

CCID of China has presented its fourteenth rating of cryptocurrencies. The leaders occupying the first three positions remained unchanged, but also some reshuffling took place. Ethereum lost 13 points for basic-tech, due to which it ceded the second place in the rating to TRON cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin does not participate in this race to the top and from the moment of publication of the previous rating, having received a small boost to its total index, still occupies the eleventh position.

Actions of one whale could influence on bitcoin surge in 2017 and Stellar has destroyed 55 billion of their token

Bitcoin price surge of 2017 could be fueled by one whale

The University of Texas has published research which shows that a whale was buying a large amount of BTC during drawdowns and additional emission of USDT. It is important that such a ¡°scheme¡± was used only on the Bitfinex exchange.

Connection between bitcoin growth and USDT have been discussed before. TokenAnalyst experts have already noted an incredible coincidence between bitcoin pump and Tether emission. However, it was believed earlier that this had been caused by actions of lots of independent traders.

A group of researchers analyzed all BTC and USDT transaction between March, 1, 2017 and March, 31, 2018 and came to a conclusion that it had been one large player. At the same time, no similar pattern was detected on other exchanges.

It should be understood that Bitfinex controlled over 20% of the market in 2017-2018, and it is only by 2019 that the exchange¡¯s market share dropped to 7,3%.

Stellar burst into the top 10 cryptocurrencies after destroying 55 billion tokens

Stellar team reported destroying 55 billion of tokens. They took this decision after analyzing the plan of blockchain implementation. The coins that got destroyed were mainly the ones for airdrop (out of 43,5 billion only 6 remained), as well as operational fund (out of 16 billion, 11 remained) and affiliate programs (12 billion out of 25).

This was announced at Meridian conference in Mexico, Stellar Development Foundation announced the burning and in two hours the token rate increased by 16% from $0,069 to 0,083. Currently, correction took place and Stellar¡¯s price is $0.0806.

The developers said that no further coin burning is planned. In total, 55 billion (worth of $4 billion) of XML were destroyed.

Einstein Exchange shuts down with the debt of 16 million

Einstein Exchange clients say that the exchange¡¯s management and employees stopped replying to requests and complaints, and the users cannot get access to their funds.

Currently, the management of the exchange has been transferred to the British Columbia Securities Commission (Canada). The total damage estimate is $16 million.

When the exchange was registered its management provided judicial evidence of possessing assets to satisfy all withdrawal requests, however refused to provide the location of the funds.

Currently the office of the exchange is closed, there is no access to their website and investigators cannot establish the location of Michael Ongun Gokturk, the exchange founder. The pages of the exchange in social networks are buried under complaints of dissatisfied customers.

Ethereum developer confirmed the date of hardfork

The next upgrade of Ethereum blockchain called Istanbul, which the users have been waiting for over six months, will be implemented before the end of the year. This has been announced by their developer Peter Szilagyi in Twitter.

The hardfork is scheduled to take place at block 9069000 which should be generated around December, 4, 2019.Fot this new client Geth has already been launched, which already has hard fork.

The peculiarity of the upgrade will be implementing of ProgPoW, programming algorithm aimed at eliminating the advantage of ASIC-miners over GPU-miners.

But the users look more forward to the next upgrade Berlin which is scheduled for the first half of 2020.

North Korea accused of money laundering with the help of cryptocurrencies

The UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea led an investigation which discovered the connection between the country and the Hong Kong blockchain company Marine China.

According to the representatives of UK Security Council, the country¡¯s leadership has been using various strategies with cryptocurrency to evade from international sanctions. It is reported that North Korea made at least 5,000 transactions using stolen cryptocurrenies. It was made to make establishing the source of the money more complicated.

It is believed that the North Korean hackers were using phishing attacks and computer viruses to steal digital currencies and then laundered and cashed it in Singaporean banks. The Committee has not named the total amount of stolen funds.

Morgan Creek CEO: sell Amazon shares, buy bitcoin

Morgan Creek Capital CEO Mark Yusko said that bitcoin is the next groundbreaking technology, and that it is currently the greatest wealth-creation opportunity there is. At the same time, he called Amazon shares ¡°dead money for a decade¡±.

Morgan Creek Capital is known for investing $5 million in Google in 1996. At the time, Google was the sixteenth-most used search engine and not known by many. Later on, this investment turned into $200 million.

BRICS can create its own cryptocurrency

BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are considering a possibility to launch a payment system based on cryptocurrency. It would be used for mutual payments between countries ¨C association members.

The idea was introduced by Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) at the BRICS forum in Brazil. According to him, the members of the association's business council supported this suggestion.

Bitcoin keeps falling. When will this stop?

Bitcoin will test again the resistance of $8,600 level, and in case of breaking it, it will carry on falling, according to Aayush Jindal, NewsBTC analyst. The closest targets are marks of $8,500 ? $8,300. Jindal thinks that for a full turn, the price needs to settle over $8,880.

Trading volume on BitMEX hit 2019 low

The daily trading volume on the largest crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX has dropped down to 86,850 BTC ¡ª lowest since the November 2018. This was brought to attention by CL, Twitter analyst.

¡°This market is officially lifeless,¡± ¡ª he wrote in his account.

BitMEX is the platform with the highest liquidity in the world for cryptocurrency derivatives trading.

Venezuelan government to gift the retirees with cryptocurrency for Christmas

Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuela, said that all the country¡¯s retirees and officials will get 0.5 El Petro (around $30) as a Christmas gift.

El Petro is a national cryptocurrency of Venezuela. As the government of the country says it is fully backed by oil. The government is trying to use El Petro in the country¡¯s economy and for trading with other countries, however, with not much success so far.

Bitcoin crashes below $7,000

Last Friday the world¡¯s first cryptocurrency lost over 10% om price and crashed below $7,000 on a number of exchanges. Such low price of bitcoins is registered for the first time since May this year.

Against this background, the ¡°fear index¡± has dipped down to extreme values at the level of 20. According to the site Alternative.me it can mean a possible growth of the cryptocurrency.

Binance CEO refutes rumors about the raid in Shanghai office of the exchange

On November, 21 media announced that the largest office of Binance in Shanghai shut down after a police raid. Many analytics connect this news to the cryptocurrencies losing prices, including bitcoin¡¯s dropping below $7,000.

Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, refuted this information, calling this information a FUD block.

¡°No police, no raid, no office. Hope you didn¡¯t pay to read that FUD block.¡± ¡ª he wrote in his Twitter-account.

The USA can make Facebook¡¯s cryptocurrency a security

The House of Representative of the USA introduced a new bill about acknowledging managed stablecoins such as Libra as securities.

"Managed stablecoins, such as the proposed Libra, are clearly securities under existing law. This legislation simply clarifies the statute to remove any ambiguity. Bringing clarity to the regulatory structure of these digital assets protects consumers and ensures proper government oversight going forward", ¡ª stated Sylvia Garcia, one of the bill's authors.

Fraudsters are selling Gram. Telegram warns users

Pavel Durov¡¯s team said that selling of Gram tokens has not started yet, and asked users to not fall for scammers¡¯ tricks.

¡°Some websites offer Gram for sale and pretend to be connected with Telegram. Please be advised that these sites are not official and have no relation to Telegram. Gram has not yet been given to anyone and Telegram is not selling Gram¡±, - states the official Telegram-channel of the company.

Cryptocurrency worth of $4.4 billion stolen in 2019

According to the research company CiperTrace, the amount of theft and scamming in the sphere of cryptocurrency reached $4,4 billion since the beginning of the year.

The report says that in Q3 of 2019 criminal have stolen the minimal amount during the past years. However, in comparison with the last year, the losses increased by $2,7 billion.

The company¡¯s experts also named the largest crypto crimes of the year: the cryptocurrency pyramin PlusToken ($2,9 billion) and shutting down of the exchange QuadrigaCX ($195 million).

Andreas Antonopoulos: governments place a damper on bitcoin price

Andreas Antonopoulos, famous bitcoin enthusiast, said that governments act to lower bitcoin¡¯s price, but this is not a conspiracy, it¡¯s just their ¡°job¡±.

¡°We know for a fact that when the bitcoin bubble started to go up really fast in 2017, the U.S. Treasury decided to fast-track the deployments of futures markets in order to stop that bubble. A lot of people see that as conspiracy, but if you look at the mandate of institutions like the Treasury, that¡¯s actually their job¡±, Antonopoulos said in his interview with crypto blogger Ivan on Tech.

According to the analyst, this allowed investors to open positions for on lowering the price of bitcoin which balanced the market, as well as reduced its volatility.

Bank of America named bitcoin the best asset of the decade, billionaires invest into BTC, and ethereum¡¯s volatility is at its lowest

Bank of America: bitcoin is the best investment of the decade

Bank of America Merrill Lynch named bitcoin the best asset for investment of the decade. 1 dollar invested in 2010 would now be $90,026.

For comparison, 1 dollar invested in American stocks during the same period would have the price of $3.46. Myanmar's national currency was named the worst asset, since 2010 $1 invested in it now has a value of just $0.004.

Yet another billionaire bought bitcoins

The number of billionaires investing in cryptocurrencies is steadily growing.

Financial expert Bill Pulte announced his purchase of 11 BTC (around $78,000). He is the CEO of investment company Pulte Capital Partners and is worth about $11 billion. Pulte thinks the main advantage of bitcoin is an opportunity to make a transaction to any part of the world without a middleman. According to the billionaire, bitcoin canmake the life of the poor easier and make the world a better place.

Ethereum¡¯s volatility drops to the level of 2016

Ethereum has been trading in the narrow range of $140-150 for a long time now. According to CoinMetrics.io, ETH¡¯s volatility index dropped to 2016¡¯s lowest.

On December, 8 Ethereum has undergone Istanbul hard fork, which did not lead to the cryptocurrency¡¯s price growth, despite expectations

Ethereum¡¯s price is threatened, and the number of bitcoin hodlers is growing

Ethereum is threatened: Plus Token pyramid¡¯s assets started moving

The organizers of a cryptocurrency pyramid Plus Token moved 789 525 ETH (about $105 million) to an unknown address. Twitter account Whale Alert paid attention to the transfer.

Matteo Leibowitz, the Block¡¯s analyst, thinks that scammers can buy Ethereum futures for sale, crash down the spot price and close future contracts with a profit.

In the summer the Chinese police managed to detain the suspects in the Plus Token ponzi scheme case, but access to wallets could not be obtained.

The price of unspent UTXOs in loss hits a record high

The number of unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) in loss rose to all-time highs above $45 million, according to a research by Glassnode.

This indicates the rise of the number of ¡°hodlers¡± - people who hold bitcoin despite its price decrease.

Federal Reserve: over 50% of bitcoin transactions are illegal

Lael Brainard, member of the United States Federal Reserve Board of Governors, said that 25% of all bitcoin users participate in illegal operations.

¡°One study estimated that more than a quarter of bitcoin users and roughly half of bitcoin transactions, for example, are associated with illegal activity¡±, ¡ª the representative of FR said at an ECB event.

She also said that only a third of exchanges meet the requirements for AML (anti money laundering), CFT (combating the financing of terrorism) and KYC (know your customer) procedure.

Hackers steal 2 million NULS token, Ethereum hard fork scheduled for January,1 and Craig Wright ¡°proved¡± he is Satoshi Nakamoto

 Hackers steal 2 million NULS tokens

Threat actors hacked and official account of the NULS projects and transferred 2 million of tokens. 550 thousand of them have already entered the market, the NULS team says.

At the same time the exchange rate of the coin has stayed almost the same ¨C the currency lost in price just 0.58%. The developers are going to make a hard fork of altcoin to prevent hackers from spending the rest 1,45 million of tokens. The hacking took place because of the NULS 2.2 version security vulnerability.

 Ethereum hard fork to take place on January, 1

Ethereum¡¯s hard fork is scheduled for block 9,200,000 which is expected to be mined by January 1, 2020. The update is designed to delay the Difficulty Bomb by 4 million blocks (equivalent to 611 days).

The developers asked nod owners to update their software before December 30, 2019.

 Craig Wright ¡°proved¡± that he is Satoshi Nakamoto

The Australian scientist Craig Wright demonstrated ¡°proof¡± that he is the bitcoin¡¯s creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

During an interview with Modern Consensus, Wright showed an article to explain the choice the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym. The article is about a philosopher Tominaga Nakamoto who lived in 18 century. The printed out document, made according to Wright in 2008, also contained the following handwritten notes:

¡°Nakamoto is the Japanese Adam Smith. Honest Ledger + Micro Cash. Satoshi is Intelligent History. Not too hard.¡±

He explained that Tominaga Nakamoto wrote about ¡°honest money and the rational nature of things¡±. Wright compared his with Adam Smith ¨C one of the founders of the theory of economics.

Craig Right publicly claimed that he was the creator of bitcoin in 2019 about hasn¡¯t yet provided sufficient evidence to prove it.

 Tone Vays: bitcoin will kill altcoins

Bitcoin¡¯s hash rate growth will eliminate most of altcoins, trader Tone Vays says.

He noted that since December 2017, bitcoin¡¯s hash rate has grown by 800%, which was not the case with altcoins. The trader has also added bitcoin¡¯s dominance index went from 50% to 70% in 2019, and next year it will be 85%.

¡°I think we have another 10-15% in Bitcoin to gain on the sh*tcoins as it continues towards 90% and 95% and then 98%¡±, - Vays said.

Dear beloved subscribers, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Our team wishes you an endless cash flow, sincere kindness, incredible success, interesting ideas and great health for new achievements!

We believe in you and genuinely hope that you will amass wealth, be reasonable with spending and enjoy work-life balance.

As a tradition, we wish hodlers the growth of crypto market, arbitragers ¨C only successful schemes, and we wish miners always work with profits.

Already today you can start building your invincible financial fortress the walls of which will protect you against storms and turmoil. This fortress will help you and your family live the same lifestyle despite all the disruptions behind the fortress wall.

It is time for New Year¡¯s resolutions and goals. Achieving them will make your life interesting, bright and successful.

Happy holidays!