07 August Cryptocurrency Newsletter

If you are interested in cryptocurrencies, this newsletter is for you. [img] [img]( [FeedBinary Newsletter]( [Flooding Threatens China’s Bitcoin Miners, Chinese Billionaire Says ‘Three Gorges Dam Collapse Imminent’]( This week cryptocurrency enthusiasts are still focused on the severe flooding in China during the 2020 monsoon season. The flooding has already displaced millions of Chinese citizens and skeptics are concerned about the vast number of bitcoin miners located in the Sichuan province.The landlocked province in Southwest China, Sichuan is located upstream of the Three Gorges Dam. During the last two months, the 2020 monsoon season ravaged the region. Reports note that by the end of June, flooding from the rainy season has displaced 744,000 Chinese residents stemming from 26 provinces. The latest reports highlight that 54 million citizens from China have been affected by the floods and 41,000 homes have collapsed to-date. Estimates show that roughly 50% of the world’s bitcoin miners are located in China and a deep concentration of miners are located in the Sichuan province. Last year, Coinshares reported the concentration in China was around 64%. New estimates from Bitooda stress that China only accounts for 50% of the world’s hashrate in 2020. Every year, reports also explain how Chinese miners migrate in order to obtain cheap hydropower resources during the rainy season. Moreover, every 12-months during the last few years, reports have shown the rain season in China wreaked havoc on mining facilities. On July 27, 2020, the mining operation F2pool, a pool that commands the second-largest share of BTC hashrate, described how bitcoin miners completed the “‘Great Migration’ to prepare for the Sichuan hydro season.” F2pool’s report stresses that halfway through 2020 “the mining industry has already faced several enormous challenges.” Despite the dangers of flooding, the rainy season gives Chinese miners “an average [power supply] price of less than 0.23 RMB (approx. $0.033).” The Great Migration, F2pool said took two weeks to accomplish, and the “annual hydro Season” started right after the third block reward halving. “The extremely competitive hydro season prices have led the Bitcoin network hashrate to push to an all-time high again,” F2pool’s research highlights. One of the fears Sichuan miners face today is how mining facilities are situated next to the infamous Three Gorges Dam. News outlets in Asia have been reporting on the massive flooding caused by the 2020 monsoon season, and a great number of people are concerned about the dam’s structural soundness. Three Gorges Dam is by far the largest dam in the world and it was completed in 2003. According to the Changjiang Ministry of Water Resources, both the Gezhou Dam and the Three Gorges Dam stopped 30 billion cubic meters of floodwater during the last 30-days. The 2020 monsoon season has also made people think that the Three Gorges Dam is being put to extreme tests. Last month the mysterious, exiled Chinese billionaire and whistleblower Miles Guo said that the Three Gorges Dam could collapse soon. People have even created simulations of the dam collapsing and one recent video went viral on social media. Miles Guo also said on August 2 that “the collapse of the Three Gorges Dam was almost imminent.” However, experts and a few other studies disagree with Miles Guo and the collapse theories. Some speculators have said the Three Gorges Dam “is a highly unlikely issue.” Another issue is the fact that the Chinese government has deemed the Three Gorges Dam a “no-flight zone,” since the start of the flooding. The mandate was enforced immediately after discussions about structural issues started on social media. Xinhuanet.com managed to get aerial snapshots of the dam on Sunday, but the dam is also monitored by the army. Aerial photography of Three Gorges Dam is strictly prohibited. Financial columnist Wolfie Zhao also discussed the subject with Tokeninsight’s chief analyst, Johnson Xu, who explained that Chinese mining farms have prepared ahead of time for the flood risks. last month how digital currency proponents have been keenly watching the Three Gorges Dam and the flooding in China. Meanwhile, BTC’s hashrate has climbed higher and the global hashpower today is around 120-125 exahash per second (EH/s). [Read Full Newsletter]( The post [Flooding Threatens China’s Bitcoin Miners, Chinese Billionaire Says ‘Three Gorges Dam Collapse Imminent’]( appeared first on [Feed Binary](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ [Putin Outlines New Russian Crypto Rules And Banks Prepare For New Exchanges]( Russia has revamped the rules of the cryptocurrency game within its borders. In short: cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ether, and others can be traded, but no goods and services in Russia are allowed to be priced in it. If you want to buy a house with Bitcoin, you have to sell it for rubles first. “It’s not the warmest crypto regulations we’ve seen to date, but also not the coldest,” says Mati Greenspan, founder at Quantum Economics. “In any case, it’s great that we’re finally getting more clarity regarding crypto laws around the world.” More clarity came out of the Kremlin on July 31 when Vladimir Putin signed the new cryptocurrency law. It goes into effect in January 2021. The law defines digital currency as “an aggregate of electronic data capable of being accepted as the payment means, not being the monetary unit of the Russian Federation or a foreign state, and as investments,” Russian news agency TASS reported. The digital currency cannot be used to pay for any goods and services. The law also states that digital financial assets “are digital rights comprising money claims” and that owners and issuers have the ability to exercise rights under negotiable securities, rights to participate in equity of a non-public stock company and right to claim transfer of negotiable securities.” These assets can be sold, purchased, exchanged, and pledged. But they cannot be used as a means of payment just like a share in a company is only of any real value when it is sold for cash. Russian banks and exchanges will be allowed to open cryptocurrency exchanges, provided that they register with the central bank. Sergey Popov, a director at Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank, says the new law now has them thinking of issuing its own stablecoin pegged to the ruble, business daily Kommersant reported on Tuesday. According to the report, the stablecoin could be used for settlements involving other digital financial assets. “The new law establishes the basis of digital assets and is a positive event for a blockchain community in (Russia),” says Nick Ovchinnik, 1inch exchange’s chief business development officer. “The timing of this event could not be better due to the rapid development of decentralized finance and other blockchain-based industries. The absence of digital assets rulemaking has put a significant amount of companies involved in mining, trading, and token economy into the grey area,” he says. The majority of people involved in the crypto economy in Russia have always used digital assets as a store of value and not to buy goods and services. There is some hope that the government will also make clear its rules on specific industries, like Bitcoin mining, and put forth a long-term commitment for both blockchain and crypto. Russians in this space have be clamoring about it for at least three years. That the law is a positive step forward seems to be consensus among the crypto community in, and around, Russia. For now, the space is anticipating the decision of the Russian Central Bank on the conditions they will set based on the law. They can go two ways: tighten the limits even lower for retail investors to somewhere between $300 and $500, which is obviously not an investment. Or they can set a reasonable limit, a limit Anti Danilevski, CEO & Founder of KickEX.com, thinks is less likely. Danilevski operates a cryptocurrency exchange. “People will understand that it’s much easier to invest through foreign platforms,” he says. He also suspects that there will be corresponding organizations, such as brokers, who will obtain and manage investor funds and buy securities for them. Danilevski likens that model to the U.S. pre-1920s, when retail investors were getting in on the stock market and bought stocks the professional investor class wanted to dump. Meanwhile, China is developing its crypto market very fast. The United States noticed that and quickly rushed into crypto rules and regulations. They’ve allowed U.S. banks to offer custody of crypto because they are worried about lose the crypto market to China. “The Russian government has, as usual, been asleep at the wheel, and it has no idea what is going on in the world of crypto and blockchain,” says Danilevski. “We are already lagging behind in the economy and only now are we taking tiny steps towards the adoption of crypto. We are behind in the crypto race in this sense. The train has already left.” [Read Full Newsletter]( The post [Putin Outlines New Russian Crypto Rules And Banks Prepare For New Exchanges]( appeared first on [Feed Binary](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ [Wall Street Revealed To Be Edging Out Bitcoin Traders With $1 Million+ Transactions]( Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have attracted the attention of Wall Street in recent years, with some of the biggest bitcoin and crypto asset managers reporting massive inflows. The bitcoin price, after struggling through a prolonged so-called “crypto winter” in 2018, has found relative stability around the $10,000 level over the last 12 months. Now, research from bitcoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain data company Chainalysis has revealed institutional investors on Wall Street are increasingly moving even larger transfers of bitcoin and cryptocurrency—with the trend “only just beginning.” “As of June, approximately 90% of North America’s cryptocurrency transfer volume came from professional-sized transfers, which we categorize as those above $10,000 worth of cryptocurrency,” the Chainalysis team wrote in a blog post detailing the findings of its 2020 geography of cryptocurrency report. “However, over the last two years in North America, we’re seeing the impact of a growing class of institutional investors whose transfers account for the growing dominance of professionals in the North American market since December 2019.” Bitcoin and cryptocurrency transfers in North America above $1 million rose from 46% of the total value transferred in late 2019 to a high of 57% in May 2020, Chainalysis found. The overall professional market share of professional-sized bitcoin and crypto transfers in North America rose from 87% to 92% over the same period. “In other words, the increasing dominance of North America’s professional market since December 2019 appears to be almost entirely driven by transfers of $1 million or more worth of cryptocurrency, many of which we believe are coming from institutional investors,” the researchers wrote. Meanwhile, despite the likes of multi-billion dollar bitcoin and crypto-asset manager Grayscale declaring institutional investors “have now arrived” in the crypto market, the trend could be just getting started. “Institutional money is only just beginning to enter the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and so the market is still relatively immature and fragmented,” Kim Grauer, Chainalysis’ Senior Economist, said via email, pointing to exchanges listing different prices and exchanges being able to handle different amounts of liquidity for big buyers resulting in “liquidity constraints contributing to a higher potential for price volatility and market manipulation.” However, Wall Street’s increasing involvement in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency market “will help cryptocurrency mature in terms of greater transparency and price stability,” according to Grauer. “We anticipate arbitrage opportunities closing up, better solutions for combining liquidity across exchanges, and greater price stability and price discovery,” Grauer said, adding: “We expect that as regulators and financial institutions better understand the benefits of cryptocurrency’s transparency, they will start to trust the space more.” [Read Full Newsletter]( The post [Wall Street Revealed To Be Edging Out Bitcoin Traders With $1 Million+ Transactions]( appeared first on [Feed Binary](. 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