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      "title": "Bitcoin is seen as the 'boring, old grandpa' in comparison to Ether, according to a partner at Dexterity Capital Management.",
      "body": "According to Michael Safai, managing partner at Dexterity Capital, Bitcoin's stability during uncertain economic times may be contributing to its recent rally. Meanwhile, the excitement in the crypto market is centered around Ethereum, which recently underwent an upgrade. However, allegations that Ethereum is a security and should be regulated as such may be dampening its potential. For now, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission treats Bitcoin as a commodity.",
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      "title": "Silk Road Bitcoin Thief, Worth $3.4 Billion, Gets 1-Year Jail Term",
      "body": "![https://v2.cimg.co/news/110428/267448/adobestock-pr-image-facto.jpeg](https://v2.cimg.co/news/110428/267448/adobestock-pr-image-facto.jpeg)\nJames Zhong, who stole over 50,000 Bitcoin from the Silk Road marketplace in 2012, has been sentenced to one year and one day in prison for wire fraud. In 2021, US police discovered approximately 50,676 Bitcoin worth more than $3.36 billion in Zhong's home. Zhong used a simple glitch on Silk Road's website to steal the funds. Before being arrested, he spent $16 million of the stolen BTC on real estate investments, luxury hotels, nightclubs, and Lamborghinis. Prosecutors have asked the judge to give him less than two years in prison, citing his youth, his autism, and his help in recovering the stolen crypto.",
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      "permlink": "el-salvador-had-a-bitcoin-revolution-hardly-anybody-showed-up",
      "title": "El Salvador Had a Bitcoin Revolution. Hardly Anybody Showed Up",
      "body": "El Salvador President Nayib Bukele took the stage last year to fireworks and AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All night Long,” announcing to a cheering crowd of crypto enthusiasts at a beachside confab that Bitcoin would revolutionize his country. It was November, the digital token had just notched new all-time highs and El Salvador was at the very beginning of its experiment as the world’s first nation to use the cryptocurrency as legal tender. \n\nNow, a year into the journey, there are far fewer fireworks. Adoption has moved slowly, and steep declines in Bitcoin’s price from those lofty levels last fall have dampened the early euphoria that swept across the nation. Bitcoin hasn’t replaced El Salvador’s hard currency, the U.S. dollar — it’s not even close — but it also hasn’t brought the financial ruin that some warned of either. Or not yet anyway.\n\nrelates to El Salvador Had a Bitcoin Revolution. Hardly Anybody Showed Up\nSource: Getty (1)\n“No one really talks about Bitcoin here anymore. It’s kind of been forgotten,” said former El Salvador central bank  chief Carlos Acevedo. “I don’t know if you’d call that a failure, but it certainly hasn’t been a success.” \n\nBukele captivated the world last year when he made Bitcoin an official currency alongside the dollar, stirring a craze in the cryptocurrency community while also drawing criticism from skeptics, including bond traders and the International Monetary Fund. Bitcoin’s Sept. 7 debut was beset with technical glitches, making for an inauspicious beginning. Undaunted, Bukele — sporting “laser eyes” on his Twitter profile picture — barked back at detractors while welcoming Bitcoin backers and crypto executives to his presidential office, where he continues to host them to this day. \n\nRead More: Bitcoin Sparks Wave of Speculation in El Salvador\n\nAs part of the rollout, Salvadorans were offered government-issued digital wallets preloaded with $30 worth of Bitcoin to help kick things off. Under the law, taxes can be paid in Bitcoin and businesses should accept it as a form of payment, unless they are technologically unable to do so. But the coin’s volatility has spooked users, and cryptocurrency has seen broader acceptance in countries with poor payment networks or strict currency controls, such as Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba, Acevedo said. “In El Salvador we have a good payments network, so why transfer money with cryptocurrency?” he said.\n\nMost Salvadorans haven’t poured large amounts of money into Bitcoin, saving many from the recent bear market, Acevedo said.  The same can’t be said of the government itself, which started purchasing the token last year in the run-up to its launch as legal tender and has continued to add to its stockpile, conspicuously “buying the dip” during periods when Bitcoin declined. The result? It’s sitting on losses.\n\nEl Salvador's Bitcoin Purchases\nThe government put its money where its mouth is, and now has about $58 million in unrealized losses from its crypto-buying spree\n\n\nSource: Bloomberg based on Bukele's Tweets\n\nA series of recent surveys found that only a relatively small minority of respondents continue to use digital wallets and few businesses have registered transactions in Bitcoin. And the central bank says only 2% of remittances have been sent via cryptocurrency wallets. \n\nThe government is still claiming victory, however. Bitcoin has attracted foreign investment and tourism and increased financial access to a largely unbanked population, according to Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya. The government says its digital wallet, Chivo, has more than 4 million users. Tourism is on pace to surpass pre-pandemic levels this year and the central bank says 59 cryptocurrency and blockchain companies have registered offices in El Salvador. \n\nRead More: Bitcoin Bet is Paying Off, El Salvador Says\n\nZelaya says the administration still plans to issue a Bitcoin-backed bond, dubbed the “volcano token,” using blockchain technology, though admits recent price declines have hurt sentiment. Advocates say El Salvador is in a position to woo companies in a promising industry and become a hub for financial services in the future, creating high-tech jobs. \n\n“Assuming cars were a failure because after the very first year Ford started production in 1896 no more than 2% of the population had a car would’ve been quite myopic,” said Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer at Bitfinex. “The government has a long-term vision. The crypto industry is highly technological and that is the type of industry that everyone should want in its country.” \n\nNayib Bukele GETTY sub\nBukele, here at the LaBitConf conference in El Salvador last November, remains a Bitcoin cheerleader and evangelizer despite this year’s slump.Photographer: Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images\nBitfinex will serve as a trading platform for the volcano bond and will apply for a license to operate in El Salvador once the government passes a digital securities law to underpin the issuance. Canada-based crypto lending and savings company Ledn saw a 678% increase in users in El Salvador over the past year, according to co-founder Mauricio Di Bartolomeo. New-York based AlphaPoint was hired to fix bugs in the Chivo wallet and a series of other companies have also worked on the country’s rollout. \n\n“I don’t see adoption as low. I see a country where everybody has a Bitcoin wallet and everybody knows what Bitcoin is,” Simon Dixon, founder of crypto financial startup Bank to the Future, said during an August visit to El Salvador in which he met Bukele. Bank to the Future is currently hiring people in El Salvador and planning to open an office there, he said. “This is the first time I’ve ever met a government that has a president who has assembled a team that really operates with the urgency and impact of a fast growing company.”\n\nThe day's biggest stories\nGet caught up with the Evening Briefing.\nEmail\nEnter your email\nSign Up\nBloomberg may send me offers and promotions.\nBy submitting my information, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.\nBut Bukele’s desire to win over Bitcoiners has come with a downside. The IMF has held off on approving a $1.3 billion program for the country citing risks from Bitcoin. The government’s 2,381 Bitcoin bought with public funds are worth $47.2 million at current prices, less than half what the administration paid for them. Moody’s estimates the government has spent $375 million in total on the rollout, including a $150 million fund to back Bitcoin-dollar conversions and the money for the $30 sign-up bonus given to Chivo users.  \n\nRocky Ride for El Salvador's Bonds\nThe country's sovereign bonds lost value most of the year, recovering only after the government announced a debt buyback\n\n\nSource: Bloomberg\n\n“The Bitcoin experiment promoted by the Bukele administration has significantly raised the market’s risk perception of the country,” said Fabiano Borsato, Chief Operating Officer of Torino Capital LLC. “It’s being implemented in a context of fragile public finances, high and persistent fiscal deficits and doubts about the rule of law in the country. This, in our opinion, will prevent El Salvador from accessing financing in the international markets under favorable conditions in the short and medium term.” \n\nOverall, Bukele remains enormously popular among Salvadorans, largely because of his crackdown on gangs, investments in infrastructure and efforts to boost tourism, even as many remain wary of Bitcoin.\n\nBitcoin Nurses Losses After El Salvador's Glitched Rollout \nA customer uses a Chivo Bitcoin automated teller machine at the Cascadas shopping mall in San Salvador.Photographer: Camilo Freedman/Bloomberg\nA May poll by El Salvador’s Universidad Centroamericana Jose Simieon Canas found that 71.1% respondents said the Bitcoin law did nothing to improve their family finances. Those polled ranked Bitcoin as Bukele’s second-biggest policy failure over the past year behind accelerating inflation. \n\n“If you go to any market in El Salvador, you’re more likely to receive an insult than be able to purchase something in Bitcoin,” said Laura Andrade, director of the university’s public opinion institute, which conducted the poll. “It’s not a part of people’s daily routine.” \n\n— With assistance by Stephanie Davidson, and Vildana Hajric",
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      "permlink": "re-benkinmat-it-was-cruel-summer-for-the-bitcoin-market-20220905t142150181z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "Hello welcome to Steemit world! \n I'm @steem.history, who is steem witness. \n This is a recommended post for you.[Newcomers Guide](https://steemitdev.com/guide/@steemitblog/steemit-a-guide-for-newcomers) and [The Complete Steemit Etiquette Guide (Revision 2.0)](https://steemit.com/steem/@steem.history/the-complete-steemit-etiquette-guide-revision-20-homage-1598425779) and, recommended community [Newcomers Community](https://steemit.com/trending/hive-172186) \n I wish you luck to your steemit activities.<center> \n \n \n https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXHwdcNs5VPcBft1iSosPdHLpBNBfjuG84g3ffWhMw5JQ/image.png \n <sub>(The bots avatar has been created using https://robohash.org/)</sub> \n @steem.history \n \n ### My witness activity \n - [My aspiration for STEEM witness](https://steemit.com/hive-185836/@steem.history/my-aspiration-for-steem-witness-1601280729) \n - Provides information on Steem.  \n [Reference](https://steemit.com/trending/hive-130095) \n - Supporting the Steem project. \n [SPUD4STEEM project](https://steemit.com/trending/spud4steem) \n - Supporting the community. \n [Newcomers Community](https://steemit.com/trending/hive-172186),[Steem Sri Lanka](https://steemit.com/trending/hive-133716) ,[WORLD OF XPILAR](https://steemit.com/trending/hive-185836), [GLOBAL STEEM](https://steemit.com/trending/hive-145160), [Scouts](https://steemit.com/trending/hive-181136), [Latino Community](https://steemit.com/trending/hive-188619) \n \n ### My featured posts \n - [The Complete Steemit Etiquette Guide (Revision 2.0) -Homage](https://steemit.com/steem/@steem.history/the-complete-steemit-etiquette-guide-revision-20-homage-1598425779) \n \n [![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmd7of2TpLGqvckkrReWahnkxMWH6eMg5upXesfsujDCnW/image.png)](https://steemlogin.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steem.history&amp;approve=1) \n <sub>please click it!</sub> \n \n ![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmWDnFh7Kcgj2gdPc5RgG9Cezc4Bapq8sQQJvrkxR8rx5z/image.png) \n <sub>(Go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses and type fbslo at the bottom of the page)</sub> \n \n </center>",
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      "permlink": "it-was-cruel-summer-for-the-bitcoin-market",
      "title": "It Was Cruel Summer for the Bitcoin Market",
      "body": "It’s Labor Day weekend, which means that summer is over. No, I do not care that the autumn season hasn’t officially started; summer is over when August is over.\nAnyway, the finance world is usually slow in August since that’s when Wall Street’s finest unwind by doing work by the dim light of their mobile phones in the Hamptons instead of by the bright light of their offices in the Financial District. Now bitcoin, not to be upstaged, thought it would be best to buck that trend entirely by effectively erasing all of July’s price gains in August.\nSo let’s talk about summer markets.\n– George Kaloudis\n______________________________________________________________________\nFirst, let’s let summer mean from the start of June to the end of August. If you look at bitcoin’s last two monthly candles, they look like mirror images of each other, with July’s green and August’s red (see below).\nYou’re reading Crypto Long & Short, our weekly newsletter featuring insights, news and analysis for the professional investor. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Sunday.\nCoinDesk - UnknownMonthly bitcoin price chart (TradingView)\nCandles show how the price of an asset changed over a specified time period. The end of the lines (or wicks) on either side of the rectangles touch the low and high price during the time period, and the bottoms and tops of the rectangles (or candlesticks) represent the open and close price during that time period. Green candles mean the price went up; red candles mean the price went down.\nIn this case: bitcoin started July around $19.9K, hit a monthly low of about $18.8K, peaked around $24.7K in July, and ended July around $23.3K. It then started August around $23.3K, sank to $19.6K, climbed as high as $25.2K, and ended the month around $20.0K.\nSo you could say that bitcoin has taken the summer off – except June happened. Bitcoin opened June trading at about $31.8K, which means bitcoin’s price fell about 33% in the summer. To test the idea that “nothing happens in finance in the summer,” you could compare bitcoin’s summer to the S&P 500’s, which has lost about 4.3% since June (maybe things do happen in finance in the summer).\nBut an interesting fact pattern appears when looking at these summers: Bitcoin hadn’t had a negative summer since 2018 and the S&P 500 hadn’t had one since 2015.\nRead more: Bitcoin's Price Rises Amid Uncertainty\nCoinDesk - UnknownBitcoin summer price performance (TradingView, CoinDesk Indices)\nYou could insert an advertisement for the disclaimer that “past performance is not indicative of future results,” but also, we knew that. The only thing these historical time frames have in common over the years is the time frame itself. But we’ll look at these time frames for some insight anyway, because Mr. Market is emotional, irrational (a dog-themed cryptocurrency is worth billions (there are actually two of them!)) and inefficient (if it weren’t, prices would never move).\nA cruel summer\nHere are some truths: During the last two summers, BTC spot exchange volumes (the dollar value of bitcoin traded) were down about 43.5% in 2021 and about 14.0% in 2022 when compared to the preceding three months, respectively. Volumes were down in both comparable periods, but bitcoin’s price gained 33.1% in 2021 and lost 32.6% in 2022. So if the last two years are any indication, you can reasonably suggest that volumes are thinner in summer, but you probably wouldn’t suggest that it leads to a price increase or decrease.\nAs a disclaimer, the volume data comes from skew, which aggregated across seven trusted exchanges (Kraken, LMAX Digital, ItBit, Bitstamp, Gemini, Coinbase and FTX). As such, the absolute volume number is understated, but it works for comparison purposes.\nIf you then look forward to September, the same volume historically increases rather quickly. The spot exchange volumes in September were $10.7 billion and $51 billion for 2020 and 2021, respectively. Those values make up 38.9% and 42.7% of the preceding three months of volumes (not for nothing, there wasn’t a month-over-month volume increase between August and September in 2020).\nCoinDesk - UnknownBitcoin monthly trading volume (skew)\nSo you could reasonably expect trading volume to pick up, and it typically does in the fourth quarter anyway. But the real question is: At what price?\nWell, if previous Septembers are any indication (which they aren’t), it is valuable to know that bitcoin’s price has decreased in September every year since 2017. So does that mean, after bitcoin performed so poorly this summer, it will be absolutely, tremendously down in September?\nCoinDesk - UnknownBitcoin price performance in September (TradingView, CoinDesk Indicies)\nWho knows? See, the thing about looking at tangible metrics of price performance and volume over time periods is there is one critical item missing in those numbers.\nNarrative.\nSure, the expected volume increase in September might exacerbate whatever narrative is the flavor of the month, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate that bitcoin’s price will definitely fall this September.\n2022’s post–summer narrative\nSo, what is the narrative? These days, traders are paying close attention to the Merge. The Merge is not on Bitcoin (it is on Ethereum), but ether is the second most heavily traded cryptocurrency, so their price action is related. Whether the Merge will be bearish or bullish is up for debate.\nRead more: Ethereum’s Merge Projected for September According to 'Soft' Timeline\nInstead, here’s the cynical narrative my skeptical mind is paying attention to: What if the Merge isn’t as successful as anticipated or, worse yet, it breaks Ethereum? To me that means that either: a) Bitcoin will get dragged down as collateral damage as traders will trade all crypto assets like they’ve failed, b) traders will flood out of ETH to bitcoin since BTC doesn’t really make these sorts of wholesale technology updates and that’s good, or c) something in between.\nRead more: Did Merge Optimism Lift Ether or Was It the S&P 500?\nMy bet is on c, but that’s because it’s easy to not be wrong if you hedge enough. In any event, we’ll be sure to revisit this at the end of September since that would mark the end of the third quarter and the start for the historically heavily traded fourth quarter. On top of that, the Merge will have been … merged … by then so there will be plenty to discuss around its degree of success.",
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