“Bitcoin fell back below $37,000 on Friday as a top Chinese governmental body called for a crackdown on cryptocurrency mining, amplifying regulatory concerns. The decline happened after a Chinese government website published a statement summarizing a top-level meeting in which officials called for a crackdown on bitcoin mining and trading activities.
We should be more alert and look for potential risks. We should crack down on bitcoin mining and trading activities and prevent individual risks from being passed to the whole society.
Prices for the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization dropped to $36,800 from $41,700 during U.S. trading hours, erasing a sizable chunk of the corrective bounce from Wednesday’s low of $30,201.
This is one of the most high-profile warnings against cryptocurrencies in recent years. The State Council is the chief administrative authority of China, where heads of cabinet-level executive department make national policies.
Anti-bitcoin (mining) news regularly comes up, but this is worth monitoring. Miners in China I’ve spoken with are unsure of the impact right now.”
See Also: Hong Kong regulators set to ban retail Bitcoin trading
“Blockchain data shows large investors remain confident of bitcoin’s long-term prospects and continue to accumulate coins on dips, shrugging off concerns about the negative environmental impacts of cryptocurrency mining.
Wallets linked with over-the-counter (OTC) desks registered an outflow of 10,292 BTC on Wednesday, when bitcoin tanked from $43,000 to nearly $30,000. That was the largest single-day outflow from OTC addresses in 3.5 months. The number rose further to 11,056 BTC on Thursday, hitting the highest level since Dec. 31 and taking the six-day tally to nearly 35,000 BTC.
Once again [there is] strong institutional demand. Whatever bitcoin lows we will see this summer, they won’t be for long.
We believe that most of the leverage is out of the system now, and bitcoin should start to form a base here. However, the sharp fall – 40% between Sunday and Wednesday – has eroded confidence, and it will take some time for bitcoin to regain upward momentum.”
See Also: Market Wrap: China Breaks Crypto as Bitcoin Falls to $36K, ETH Drops $300 in Two Hours
See Also: Everyone is buying the dip, but are they all buying BTC?
“As the amount of energy needed to run bitcoin became clearer, this policy became no longer tenable.
Friends of the Earth, another environmental campaign group, told the FT it was considering the issue. On Friday, Bloomberg radio and TV host Lisa Abramowicz tweeted that asset manager Bridgewater Associates is warning that ‘bitcoin consumes as much energy as some countries, a barrier for investors focused on sustainability.’
Amid the outcry over crypto-based emissions, other bitcoin mining firms including Argo Blockchain have been stressing that its new facilities are largely powered by hydropower.”
See Also: Vitalik: Bitcoin may get ‘left behind’ due to its power usage
“Bill 649 would create a charter that would give consumers and institutions places to custody their digital assets. The banks will look very similar to Wyoming’s special purpose depository institutions, such as Avanti Financial and Kraken Financial. The bill also allows already existing state-chartered banks in Nebraska to open crypto banking divisions.
Like Wyoming SPDIs, digital asset banks in Nebraska won’t lend in fiat, and each bank has to hold 100% of its assets in reserve. Unlike Wyoming’s SPDIs, the Nebraska digital asset banks can’t accept fiat deposits.”
See Also: US Seeks Information About $1.4M EtherDelta Hack in 2017
“With the Etherscan integration, Optimistic Ethereum users will now be able to monitor deposits and withdrawals in addition to viewing when L2 transactions are pre-confirmed and when they have been posted and finalized in batches on L1.
According to the Optimistic Ethereum roadmap, it expects to launch to public mainnet in July 2021. However some whitelisted protocols are moving ahead of that date. One of the first protocols to deploy Optimistic Ethereum (OΞ) is DeFi synthetic assets exchange Synthetix. Founder Kain Warwick stated that the rollout has taken longer than expected but is now imminent.
It really cannot be overstated how enormous a development this will be on OΞ. Especially as more protocols migrate and liquidity transitions to this new L2 infrastructure.”
“A British Member of Parliament is more bullish on Ethereum than Bitcoin and has called on the government to let people experiment with crypto. Tom Tugendhat, MP for Tonbridge and Malling, devoted precious time in a speech of “Affordable and Safe Housing For Fall” on Wednesday to share his prediction that Ethereum will “flip” the market capitalization of Bitcoin.
I’m not going to go in the few moments left of the flippening and why I am going to be bullish on Ether and not Bitcoin, or the nature of the change in the Treasury that is needed to enable innovation that sees the sharing of prosperity on a global basis rather than a local one. We need to think about the contracts and currencies that will shape future trade and risk sharing.”
“Commerzbank joined with chemical firms Evonik and BASF to test the use of blockchain and programmable money in managing supply chains between two companies. Payments were made in a fully automated and digital manner using programmable digital euros based on e-money using Commerzbank’s blockchain platform.
The two German chemical companies transmitted data to Commerzbank, which generated a “complete and tamper-proof depiction” of the business processes, with smart contracts validating the transaction.”
The Disrupt 