CryptoNews of the Week by NordFX

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- Forbes compiled a list of the wealthiest representatives of business in the field of cryptocurrency, following the results of 2020. It is headed by the CEO of the Coinbase crypto-exchange Brian Armstrong with $6.5 billion, followed by the head of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange Sam Bankman-Freed with $4.5 billion and the co-founder of Ripple Chris Larsen - $2.9 billion.
The ranking  also includes: the head of MicroStrategy Michael Saylor - $ 2 billion, CEO of the Binance exchange Changpeng "CZ" Zhao - $1.9 billion, the founders of the Gemini exchange, the Winklevoss brothers - $1.6 billion each, founder of the venture capital company Digital Currency Group Barry Silbert - $1.5 billion , co-founder and former CTO of Ripple Jed McCaleb - $1.4 billion, venture capitalist Tim Draper - $1.1 billion and co-founder of blockchain startup Bloq Matthew Roszak - $1 billion.
When preparing the rating, the Forbes magazine took into account not only the value of the digital assets of the persons involved, but also their traditional assets, including the shares of various companies.

- According to Reuters, the German prosecutor's office is unable to access a wallet with more than 1,700 bitcoins with a total value of about $75 million. The account holder, who was found to be a fraud, refuses to testify against himself and provide access keys. Currently, law enforcement officers are looking for ways to "get close" to these assets through exchanges and wallet operators in order to return them to the victims of the criminal.
The fraudster was sentenced to two years in prison for installing phishing software on third-party computers, with which he deducted funds from the victims' accounts and transferred them to his own wallet. The prosecutor explained that the offender was offered mitigation of punishment if he provided data on the whereabouts of the coins, but he refused. The size of the criminal's assets has significantly increased against the background of the latest bitcoin rally, and it is possible that he is going to use them after his release.

- American children's charity Songs of Love created Superhero Billy Bitcoin to boost interest in their work. Crypto donations to such non-profit organizations in the United States are tax-free. ?Donating in a cryptocurrency like bitcoin is even more efficient than cash. You don't have to pay capital gains tax and can deduct that amount from your taxes,? said Songs of Love. The fund accepts donations in 22 digital assets, and the Superhero Billy Bitcoin is dedicated to supporting children with serious illnesses.

- The price of bitcoin could rise to $100,000 as early as the end of 2021 if other companies follow Tesla's lead, the founder of cryptobank Galaxy Digital Mike Novogratz said in an interview to Bloomberg . Elon Musk's company announced the investment of $1.5 billion in Bitcoin on Monday, February 8. Tesla admitted that in the future they will integrate the first cryptocurrency as a means of payment for their products.
Novogratz called Elon Musk a genius in his decision to listen to people and evaluate the interests of young people. According to the billionaire, other companies will invest in the first cryptocurrency to hedge inflation risks. ?You'll see that every company in America will soon start doing the same,? stated Mike Novogratz.

- Due to the shortage of discrete graphics cards in the market, gaming laptops have become popular among Chinese Ethereum miners. As calculated by the Techarp portal, the payback period for such a computer costing from $1000 is approximately three and a half months.
One laptop with a RTX 3060 video card is able to get 0.00053 ETH ($0.92 at the moment) within two hours. That is, the mining will amount to 2.3 ETH (over $4000) for the year, and a farm of 20 laptops at current prices and taking into account the cost of electricity in China will bring more than $76,800 in profit.

- North Korea has been able to upgrade its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles by using funds stolen in cyberattacks, to finance. According to the Associated Press citing UN experts, these attacks mainly targeted financial institutions and cryptocurrency platforms, and the total amount of the digital assets stolen in the period from 2019 to November 2020 is more than $316 million. Experts say North Korea continues to launder cryptocurrencies stolen by its hackers mostly through Chinese over-the-counter platforms.

- The authorities arrested a 37-year-old Wisconsin resident on charges of attempting to arrange a bespoke homicide. This is stated in the message of the US Department of Justice. The woman found the killer on the darknet, offering to pay for his "work" in cryptocurrency, and provided him with a phone number, place of work and a description of the alleged victim.
Journalists of one of the media learned about the upcoming crime while working on material about transactions in the darknet. They found evidence of a Bitcoin transaction, as well as a screenshot of a wallet with $5,633 in cryptocurrency, after which the reporters contacted the law enforcement. Now the alleged customer faces up to 10 years in prison.

- One of Mexico's richest people (the fortune of $11.7 billion) and founder of Grupo Salinas group of companies Ricardo Salinas Pliego added a Bitcoin hashtag to his Twitter account description. Recall that the founder of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk did the same in January, after which the asset rose to $38,000.
Earlier Pliego admitted in a Cointelegraph commentary that he first bought digital gold in 2013. He sold the asset at $17,000 during a bull rally in 2017 and called the bitcoin ?the best investment of all time.?

- Specialists of financial and investment company Guggenheim Partners said that the value of bitcoin could reach $600,000. According to the company's investment director, Scott Minerd, everything will depend on the number of coins in the public domain. ?Cryptocurrency can rise to very high values. It is possible that we are talking about 400 or even $600,000 per coin. We have been studying the asset for almost ten years, so we understand how it will behave. Bitcoin used to be unjustified for institutional investors, but now everything has changed,? Minerd said.
According to the specialist, the concern is caused by the rapid growth of the asset in the past few weeks. It is possible that we are talking about speculation, in which institutional investors capable of large investments to manage the value of the coin are involved. At present, bitcoin is in a difficult situation, as the departure of large investors will lead to a return of the negative trend. According to Minerd, such a development is unlikely, but it should definitely be taken into account.


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- After bitcoin hit an all-time high of $58,275 on February 21, investors were looking forward to taking the $60,000 high. However, there was a sudden reversal and a sharp drop of 23% to $44,985. According to many experts, the trigger of the massive profit fixation by "whales" was the statement of the former head of the Fed and now the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on the speculative nature of cryptocurrency and the possibility of using it for money laundering. According to analyst Sven Henrich, the head of the Ministry of Finance has actually declared war on bitcoin.
?Digital currencies can provide faster and cheaper payments. But there are many issues to be explored, including consumer protection and money laundering,? Janet Yelen said, also mentioning the possibility of launching the Central Bank's own digital currency (CBDC).
The fall in bitcoin could also have been facilitated by the fall in global indices of technology companies, as well as the beginning of a large-scale vaccination against coronavirus.

- According to Bloomberg, against the background of the decline in the bitcoin rate, the head of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, lost the first place in the ranking of the richest people on the planet. Tesla shares fell 8.6%, causing Musk to lose $15.2 billion. Shortly before the decline, the company announced that it had added $1.5 billion in bitcoin to its balance sheet. At the same time, the fall in bitcoin, according to Bloomberg, may be partly related to the statement of Musk himself, who called the prices of cryptocurrencies too high.

- Due to technical failures, some customers of the Philippine crypto exchange PDAX were able to buy bitcoin almost 10 times cheaper than the market price, Bitpinas reports. One of the users admitted that he bought bitcoins for 300,000 pesos ($6,150), while the average market price of BTC was about $50,000, after which he transferred the cryptocurrency to his wallet.
A day later, PDAX sent him a letter demanding the return of the bitcoins, but the buyer's lawyer claims that "the transaction was legitimate, in accordance with applicable laws, and PDAX cannot withdraw transactions unilaterally."
Another client of this crypto exchange unexpectedly found 40 billion Philippine pesos or about 820 million dollars in his account. It is not reported whether he was able to withdraw this "gift" from PDAX.

- Three platforms - Binance, Huobi and OKEx - account for 75% of the total trading volume on crypto exchanges, according to BDCenter Digital. The safest exchanges were Kraken, Coinbase and Binance.
The study showed that the number of cryptocurrency users has almost tripled since 2018 and reached 191 million users from over 150 countries in the third quarter of 2020. At the same time, the researchers emphasize that the availability of an exchange in a country does not mean the actual availability of all its products and functionality. So the purchase of cryptocurrencies using a credit card is supported only by 65% of sites.

- One of the world's largest money transfer services, MoneyGram, refused to use the product based on the XRP token due to the claims of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Ripple. This is stated in a report by the company.
Against the backdrop of SEC claims, in addition to MoneyGram, Coinbase and OKCoin, Galaxy Digital, Bitstamp, B2C2, eToro and Kraken have already refused to support the XRP token. Asset management company Grayscale Investments announced the liquidation of an XRP-based investment trust, and 21Shares has excluded the Ripple token from its traded exchange products.

- Australian authorities have charged a Sydney resident suspected of drug trafficking, money laundering and bitcoin money laundering for a total of $4.3 million. The police found two bags with $1 million in cash in his car, and seized mobile phones, a laptop and a batch of illegal substances from his home.
Recall that in January 2021, the owner of the RG Coins cryptocurrency exchange Rossen Iosifov already received 121 months in prison for laundering about $5 million using digital assets.

- Analysts reviewed publications about cryptocurrency exchanges in various media. Cointelegraph was the leading media outlet by the number of articles. The first place in popularity was taken by English, the second - Russian.
According to BDCenter Digital, 12 out of 100 Twitter posts are about cryptocurrency. In just the week of February 7-14, Twitter users mentioned bitcoin over 675,000 times. The last record was set on January 10, when the weekly number of posts mentioning bitcoin reached 576,000.

- According to a responsible representative of the Russian Orthodox Church, it does not plan to create its own cryptocurrency to accept donations. The church has also refused to accept bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. At the same time, according to Metropolitan Hilarion, believers may well make donations to the church using the phone.

- According to the co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital Assets Anthony Pompliano, the main cryptocurrency may reach $500 thousand by the end of this decade, and even $1 million in the long term.
However, the growth of cryptocurrency quotes may stop due to the rapid recovery of the global economy after the recession caused by the coronavirus epidemic. In this case, central banks will begin to roll back their quantitative easing programs, raise interest rates, stop buying assets and printing cheap money. As a result, investment flows into bitcoin, as one of the most attractive safe havens, can dry up very quickly.

- The largest developer of graphics processors, the American technology company Nvidia has announced plans to release a series of video cards specifically for mining the Ethereum cryptocurrency, which is the second after bitcoin. According to CNBC, the new type of GPU is called CMP (Crypto Mining Processor) and can appear in the market already in March 2021.


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- The price of bitcoin at the moment is most correlated with real estate prices, and in the future, bitcoin will become similar to low-risk instruments like bonds and will enter the recommended portfolio of investors. This was announced by the head of ARK Investment Cathie Wood on CNBC. ?I think the first cryptocurrency will behave like fixed income markets,? Wood said. ?We have survived a 40-year bond bull market. And we won't be surprised if this new asset class becomes part of the investment portfolio. Perhaps it will be 60% stocks, 20% bonds and 20% cryptocurrency.? Renowned bitcoin critic Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, called Wood's predictions "outrageous."

- The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sent out letters to cryptocurrency holders demanding to pay off large debts to the state. And now, according to Forbes, this agency has launched Hidden Treasure operation to search for residents who hide their income from transactions with digital assets. According to IRS legal counsel Carolyn Shank, the agency is working with private contractors to identify clear signs of violations. "We see you," Shank added menacingly.

- One of the oldest private banks in Germany, Donner & Reuschel, headquartered in Hamburg, is going to add services for the purchase and storage of crypto assets for its clients. Due to high demand, it is planned to launch these services ?as soon as possible,? the bank said in a statement.
Donner & Reuschel was founded in 1798 and manages assets worth about $10.7 billion. The bank plans to "intensively engage" in asset tokenization in the future in order to keep up with changes in the financial industry. ?We are observing the digital asset market and are convinced of the potential of blockchain, including in relation to traditional securities transactions,? said Marcus Vitt, spokesman for the bank's board.

- The entrepreneur and creator of the famous antivirus, John McAfee, has been charged with fraud and money laundering, and now faces up to 100 years in prison. The case will be considered by the Court of the Southern District of New York. Recall that McAfee was arrested in Spain in October 2020, and now he is awaiting extradition to the United States. Another person involved in the process will be the executive advisor of the cryptocurrency team of the entrepreneur Jimmy Gail Watson Jr., who has been recently taken into custody.
The first charge concerns the manipulative appreciation of altcoins using the Pump&Dump scheme on Twitter. McAfee posted tweets advertising certain coins, leading to an active increase in their price. When quotes peaked, members of McAfee's team sold these altcoins and took profits. Another issue concerns undisclosed fees for participating in the ICO promotion.
?McAfee and Watson made nearly $2 million by using social media to perform Pump&Dump schemes. They also used the same platform to promote tokens without disclosing information about the reward received from the ICO organizers. This brought them another $11 million,? the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

- Bitcoin is becoming an increasingly popular asset among a wide variety of categories of investors and is gradually replacing gold in their portfolios. This is stated in the February report of analysts from Bloomberg.
?The process of replacing gold in [investors'] portfolios with bitcoin is accelerating and we are seeing the risks decrease. In 2020, the cryptocurrency became attractive because of the decrease in its volatility compared to the previous year,? the authors of the report emphasize. The shrinking range of price fluctuations signals that bitcoin has actually become an alternative to traditional investment assets.
Bloomberg team is also positive about the further rate of the main cryptocurrency. After the coin broke above $50,000, it got the opportunity to test higher values. Demand for this asset is increasing, and its macroeconomic indicators are improving. According to Bloomberg analysts' forecasts, bitcoin could reach $100,000 this year. In the long term, the growth of its value will also continue, according to the authors of the study.

- According to venture capital pioneer Tim Draper, Netflix could be the next big company to invest in bitcoin. Since bitcoin can provide a hedge against the inflationary risks associated with dollar, Draper doesn't rule out cryptocurrencies as the perfect solution for someone like Netflix founder Reed Hastings.
Hastings is a great innovator with a lot of creative ideas, and since he has power in the company, he may decide to invest some of his funds in bitcoin. According to Draper, Google may follow suit, but it is more likely that companies like Google, Facebook or Apple will want to issue their own cryptocurrencies without being tied to bitcoin.

- The forecast, according to which the bitcoin rate may reach $1 million or more in the next 10 years, was announced by the CEO of the Kraken crypto exchange Jesse Powell. In a dialogue with Bloomberg reporters, he also said that bitcoin could eventually replace all major fiat currencies that are not backed by gold and other precious metals.
?Right now we are only guessing, but if you value bitcoin in dollars, then you must understand that its value tends to infinity. True "believers" will tell you that it will reach the Moon, Mars and eventually become the world's currency," said the head of Kraken. However, he agreed that there is a risk of sharp market fluctuations, and that prices could "rise or fall by 50% any day." Therefore, the term of an investment in bitcoin, according to Powell, should be at least five years.

- According to a number of futuristic experts, bitcoin will continue to grow, but due to its architecture, it will eventually burst and depreciate.
The rise in the cost of bitcoin is hardwired into its mathematics, according to Singularity University expert Evgeny Kuznetsov, and the cost of electricity required for mining is constantly growing. Already, this process consumes energy comparable to that of the Netherlands. At some point, it will require the energy of the whole world to generate just one unit. That is, there is a limitation for the growth of bitcoin: it is blocked by the amount of energy consumption. But this will not happen soon, not in a year or two, and until that moment it will be possible to make huge capital on it, the futurologist believes.


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- The head of the now defunct brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont, Jordan Belfort, who was a prototype for the protagonist of the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street", admitted that he held the wrong position in relation to the bitcoin. This is reported by the Fortune magazine. Digital gold seemed to be the perfect tool for money laundering, and the former broker was sure that regulators would destroy it.
Belfort remembered predicting the fall of the first cryptocurrency on a TV show in 2017. At that time, the asset was rising to the $ 19,000 mark. ?I turned out to be right then,? he recalls. ?But I also thought bitcoin would go away forever. It was difficult to sell and easy to buy: these are all signs of manipulation." Now, according to Jordan Belfort, the coin could rise to $100,000.

- An anonymous user fell for a trick of scammers and sent 10 bitcoins to "Elon Musk". According to the BBC, the victim saw a link to Musk's alleged resource in the comments under one of his Twitter posts. After clicking on the link, he began a dialogue with the "manager." And the latter offered to invest a certain amount in "Musk's new project", which guaranteed huge profits.
The ?manager? promised that funds would double and return to the owner about 20 minutes after the investment. But even such a short period did not embarrass the victim, and he transferred 10 bitcoins to the scammers (more than half a million dollars at the current exchange rate). And only after the ?manager? stopped communicating and the funds were never returned, the ?investor? realized that he had become a victim of criminals.

- The price of bitcoin can rise to $300,000, after which the growth will be replaced by a long-term decline. Bobby Lee, co-founder and former CEO of BTCC cryptocurrency exchange, said this in an interview with CNBC.
?Bitcoin bull market cycles occur every four years, and the current one is a big cycle. I think that bitcoin may rise to $100,000 this summer,? he said. However, after reaching an all-time high of $300,000, even a small price decrease will cause the bubble to collapse. Lee suggested that the new crypto winter will last between two and three years. ?Investors should be prepared for the fact that the value of bitcoin could fall 80-90% from its historical peak,? the entrepreneur added.

- Entrepreneur John McAfee said that the US authorities are using the case against him to crack down on cryptocurrencies. ?The charges against me are absolutely ridiculous. The US is using me as a scapegoat to crack down on all cryptocurrencies. This is a simple and understandable truth,? he wrote from prison.
McAfee's lawyer Andrew Gordon noted that the digital asset regulation is still an emerging area for the IRS and the US Department of Justice, and McAfee's criminal tax evasion case is one of the first to involve cryptocurrencies. "It marks a turning point in the enforcement of cryptocurrency reporting," Gordon said, adding that "Mr. McAfee is firm in his innocence and we stand ready to convince the US federal courts."

- The head of the US Federal Reserve System Jerome Powell questioned the qualities of the first cryptocurrency as a tool for savings and payments. During his speech at the virtual summit of the Bank for International Settlements, Powell noted the high volatility of digital assets, because of which, in his opinion, they are useless as a means of accumulation. ?They are not backed by anything and are used more for speculation, so they are not particularly popular as a means of payment. Crypto assets are more likely to replace gold rather than the dollar,? Powell said.

- According to a new study by analytical company Elliptic, the largest darknet market, Hydra, has a new way of exchanging cryptocurrency for fiat money. The vacuum-packed treasure with money is buried "5-20 cm underground", and the exact GPS coordinates are communicated to the buyer. The service fee is high - about 7% of the exchanged amount.
?This is an interesting way to cash out, but it requires you to be in Russia. This is where many Hydra users are based,? said Elliptic CEO Tom Robinson.
This same method has long been used to sell illegal substances such as drugs. And, as analysts point out, this is a rather risky way, since bandits sometimes pursue customers who are digging up the treasure and take away the "parcels".

- Bitcoin has proven itself once again to be the best rescuer from the ineffective state financial system. The Turkish lira has fallen in relation to the US dollar by another 14% over the past week, as a result of which the residents of Turkey have begun to actively buy bitcoins. This is confirmed by the number of relevant requests in the Turkish segment of Google: it has almost doubled over the last weekend.

- WiseMining introduced the Sato boiler based on ASIC miners, which allows you to mine bitcoins and heat water. The intermediate coolant of the boiler is a special dielectric coolant. The liquid boils and evaporates in the ASIC cooling unit, the vapor rises into the tank coil and condenses, giving off heat to the water. Condensation flows back into the cooling unit of the miner.
The developers provided the possibility of connecting this water heater to the main heating system of the room. The Sato will go on sale in April 2021 and will cost $ 8,990.

- Skybridge Capital CEO and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci claims Elon Musk owns more than $5 billion in bitcoin through Tesla, SpaceX and personally.
Scaramucci gave his comment in the context of discussing the negative impact of mining on the environment. ?No other living person has done more to protect the planet from climate change than Elon Musk. And the idea that he would invest in a ?dirty asset? is absurd. The future of bitcoin mining is renewable energy sources,? he wrote.


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- Attackers demanded 5 BTC (about $275,000), threatening to detonate bombs in two business centers of St. Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia. According to local media reports, the Fort Tower and Renaissance Park business centers received ransom threats by e-mail. However, no explosive devices were found after people were evacuated and buildings were inspected. The police are looking for extortionists.

- Investor and TV star Kevin O'Leary said in a comment to CNBC that he would only buy eco-friendly digital gold. According to him, within a year or two, the crypto community will divide bitcoin into two types: "clean", that is, mined using renewable energy, and "dirty" or "bloody" - mined using "dirty energy."
O'Leary added that environmental concerns were coming to the fore with regard to digital gold. ?I don?t buy coins if I don?t know where and when they were mined. Not from China. No ?bloody? coins,? the investor said. However, he did not specify where he buys "clean" bitcoin and how he determines its origin.
According to analysts' calculations, the annual emissions into the atmosphere from cryptocurrency mining are about 60 million tons of carbon dioxide. In other words, $1 billion worth of bitcoin mining is equivalent to annual carbon emissions from 1.2 million cars.

- According to CoinDesk, the Sacramento Kings NBA basketball club will provide an opportunity for the team and support staff to get paid in the first cryptocurrency. This was stated by its owner. The club plans to give official confirmation this week. The publication believes that such a move will secure the Kings a status as the most crypto-friendly professional sports team in the United States.

- Experts of the JPMorgan bank called the rate of $130,000 as the long-term goal for the first cryptocurrency, having lowered the bar from $146,000 due to the fall in gold quotes, Business Insider reports.
The bank's analysts made such a forecast based on the calculation of the theoretical capitalization of the first cryptocurrency in the event of an inflow of funds from the gold market, for which the cryptocurrency is becoming a digital alternative. According to JPMorgan, the precious metal has outflowed $20 billion since mid-October, while companies have poured $7 billion in bitcoin.
The long-term target for the cryptocurrency rate is based on the idea that its volatility and the volatility of gold will converge. But the bank recalled that this is a long-term process: the realized three-month asset volatility is 86% and 16%, respectively so far.

- The famous American rapper Snoop Dogg said that he is a big bitcoin supporter. ?I believe in bitcoin and the technology that makes global interaction possible,? he said.
The rapper has already become familiar with the volatility of the crypto market and understands that the fall in price does not reflect the initial value of the asset. Price is not the main determinant of the reliability of the leading cryptocurrency for him. ?I don't follow the coin rate too much, because I've been on the market for a long time and got used to rate jumps. I am sure that bitcoin is for a long time, ?says Snoop Dogg. ?The future is happening right before our eyes. I don't think bitcoin is just a consequence of the pandemic. It only adds fuel to the fire. "

- Many "bitcoin bulls" in the expert environment say that the largest digital currency will be able to bypass gold in terms of capitalization in the future. In this case, the value of all bitcoins should grow 10 times and exceed the $11 trillion mark. The authors of the study conducted by Ark Invest, stress that this could happen over the next few years. "We believe that bitcoin is better than gold and it's safe to say that it will capture gold market share or even more."
Commenting on a recent speech by the US Treasury Secretary in which she criticized bitcoin, Ark Invest experts say Janet Yellen used outdated arguments when she said that criminals were using cryptocurrency for money laundering.

- Billionaire and founder of the crypto bank Galaxy Digital Mike Novogratz agrees with the forecast of Ark Invest. He stated In a comment for CNBC that he was shocked by the pace of digital asset adoption. The investor also admitted his previous forecast of the price of the first cryptocurrency of $60,000 too conservative. ?Bitcoin is on the inevitable path to reaching and exceeding the capitalization of gold,? said Novogratz.
According to CompaniesMarketCap, the total market value of gold at the time of writing is $10.8 trillion. According to CoinGecko, the capitalization of the first cryptocurrency is around $1.1 trillion.

- Domain name registrar GoDaddy put up Roger Ver's Bitcoin.com domain for sale for $100 million earlier this week. Upon discovering the ad, the owner said it was ?100% fake? and contacted GoDaddy with a demand to remove the domain from sale. And that was done. At the same time, there were no official comments and explanations from GoDaddy representatives.

- Rich Dad Poor Dad author, investor and entrepreneur Robert Kiyosaki has suggested in a recent interview that bitcoin could reach a value of $1.2 million over the next five years. Kiyosaki first bought the cryptocurrency last year when it was trading at $9,000 after the pandemic actually shackled the global economy. ?I wish I could buy it for 10 cents, like many people did, but I still look like a genius because today it costs about $55,000. I think that in another five years it will grow to $1.2 million,? the entrepreneur announced.
At the same time, even though Kiyosaki has turned into a defender of bitcoin, he still prefers gold and silver for main investments, explaining this by the fact that the cryptocurrency is outside the regulatory field.

- Large investment bank Morgan Stanley has filed an application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to which 12 funds of the bank will be able to invest in BTC. Each of the funds indicated in the application will be able to place up to 25% of the capital in the first cryptocurrency. ?Certain funds can indirectly invest in bitcoin through fiat-settled bitcoin futures or through investments in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). The investments will go through a subsidiary registered in the Cayman Islands. At the same time, the fund may not have investments in bitcoin at a certain point,? the application says.

- Billionaire Mark Cuban revealed that he has concentrated 60% of his cryptocurrency investment portfolio in bitcoin, 30% in Ethereum, and 10% in other digital assets. Cuban called bitcoin the best alternative to gold, and Ethereum - the most similar to a real currency. ?I wish I had bought Ethereum earlier. I started doing this only four years ago,? added Cuban, and compared the growth of Ethereum to the development of the Internet in the late 90s.
According to him, it is this altcoin that matches his ideas about the correct form of money due to its decentralized economy based on smart contracts.


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- PayPal's Venmo mobile payment app now allows users to buy, store and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. The minimum investment in cryptocurrency is just $1. In addition, you can now share the purchased cryptocurrency with friends through the Venmo social feed.
Thus, PayPal continues to expand the functionality associated with digital assets. As a reminder, more recently, this payment giant has allowed users to buy cryptocurrency through its main platform and use their crypto wallets to pay for purchases in online stores around the world.

- Popular cryptocurrency analyst Willy Woo said that Bitcoin's drawdown on April 18 below $51,000 was triggered by massive power outages in China. Due to the fact that most of the miners were temporarily out of order, the hash rate of the asset began to decline. According to Woo, the situation should stabilize soon, which will lead to further increases in the value of bitcoin.
?This is a power outage in Xinjiang province. It is one of the largest regions in China where the mining power of bitcoin is concentrated. According to the BTC Cambridge Energy Consumption Index, Xinjiang accounts for about 25% of the coin's total hashrate. It becomes clear straight away that the entire cryptocurrency market has dropped significantly precisely because of the Chinese incident,? Woo said.
According to the expert, if his theory is confirmed, then the situation with the hash rate of the asset should stabilize quickly. When the main network starts processing the same number of transactions, the value of the coin will start to rise again.

- An unknown attacker allegedly stole phone numbers and credit card details of Domino's Pizza India customers and put them up for sale for 10 bitcoins (about $550,000 at the time of writing). In parallel, the hacker demanded 50 BTC ($2.75 million) from Domino's to prevent the information from getting publicly available.
Representatives of the management company confirmed the hack but denied the leak. "In accordance with our policy, we do not store financial information or credit card information of our customers, so such information has not been compromised," said Domino's Pizza.

- Candidate for the post of New York City Treasurer Reshma Patel presented an urban development plan based on investments in blockchain businesses and cryptocurrencies.
According to her plan, this should play an important role in the restoration of the city. ?My intention to run for office is due to my concerns about the financial health of New York, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is clear that cryptocurrencies have a future in finance and a future in financial planning in New York,? Patel said. Among other things, she plans to invest in funds focused on blockchain, create a working group to explore options for direct investment in technology, and also transfer part of the city's pension fund reserves to digital assets.

- The world-famous American magazine TIME followed the path of Tesla, and in addition to investing in bitcoin, it also began to accept cryptocurrency for subscription payments. To this end, TIME has started to cooperate with the crypto payment platform Crypto.com, offering an additional reward of 10% for those who pay for the service in native Crypto.com CRO tokens.
The service is currently available in the US and Canada, but a global expansion is planned in the coming months. TIME's rapid digital transformation is the result of our commitment to new technologies and working closely with innovative companies like Crypto.com to bring our vision to life, said TIME CTO Bharat Krish.

- Bitcoin trend remains bullish. This is the conclusion reached by analysts of the Santiment resource, who analyzed the frequency of tweets with the phrase "buy the dip" and "bought the dip". With the bitcoin price dipping below $51,000 on April 18, the number of low buy posts hit a weekly record of 2,108 tweets. This allowed Santiment analysts to conclude that this correction is nothing more than a "bump in the road."
This is not the first time Santiment has used Twitter stats to gauge the market. For example, earlier the analysts used the mention of Binance coin (BNB) to determine the peak price of this cryptocurrency.

- Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin need to be considered as alternative investments. This was stated by the deputy governor of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) Li Bo. ?Bitcoin and stablecoins are encrypted assets. It is an investment asset, an alternative investment, not a currency. They should play an important role in the future,? explained Li Bo. However, he stressed the associated regulatory uncertainty. According to the official, "current practices" in the form of banning the operation of bitcoin exchanges and holding ICOs will remain in force until the development of new regulation is completed, which should become similar to the regulation of the banking system.

- Former hedge fund manager and host of CNBC's Mad Money Jim Cramer called himself a "renegade" and announced the sale of his assets in the first cryptocurrency. ?I know people will be mad at me, but I paid off my mortgage with bitcoin yesterday,? Kramer said on TV. The host did not elaborate on how many coins he sold. But, he said, it was half of his digital gold reserves.
Twitter users likened Kramer's move to Laszlo Hanyecz's famous 10,000 BTC purchase of pizza in May 2010.

- The Swiss giant AXA was the first of the insurance companies of this country to start accepting bitcoin for payment. To accept digital payments, the company entered into a partnership agreement with the cryptocurrency broker Bitcoin Suisse. AXA customers will be able to pay with bitcoin for all of the company's products, with the exception of life insurance. This is due to legal restrictions.
AXA has not ruled out that in the future its products can be purchased using other cryptocurrencies, but for now the company will test working with digital assets using BTC only.


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- SpaceX Corporation has entered into a partnership with Dogecoin developers. The launch of the new satellite will be fully paid in this cryptocurrency. The satellite itself in the form of a cube will be delivered to the Moon as part of the Falcon 9 mission in early 2022.
SpaceX Vice President Tom Ochinero said the collaboration "will demonstrate the use of cryptocurrency outside of Earth orbit and lay the foundation for interplanetary commerce." The information was also confirmed by Elon Musk, who has recently received the nickname "dogefather" for his love for this meme cryptocurrency.

- Morgan Creek Capital CEO Mark Yusko believes that bitcoin could reach the value of $250,000 within five years. According to the expert, the rapid adoption of the main cryptocurrency will resemble the popularization of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google. Also, the growth in the value of bitcoin may be affected by the situation in the fiat market, which is now going through hard times.
?At one time, many large companies increased their capitalization to a trillion dollars in 10-20 years. The main cryptocurrency managed to do this much faster. Bitcoin is likely to become the main competitor to gold within a few years, although it is already, says Yusko. - I do not think that cryptocurrencies will start to sink sharply in the near future. The market has many investors already who will not leave it until the last minute. "
?However, not all assets are useful and promising,? the financier continued. - Dogecoin, for example, is a joke and a marketing thing for me. It is naturl that it is rapidly becoming more expensive after references from Elon Musk. I think this can happen with any coin, even if it has no real value."

- Scammers took advantage of the hype surrounding Elon Musk's performance on Saturday Night Live (SNL) to lure over $100,000 in cryptocurrency from users. According to the MalwareHunterTeam project team, the scammers have created more than 30 fake Tesla, SpaceX and SNL accounts. Some of them received a verification mark. To receive a "reward", the attackers asked users to send a small amount of bitcoins, Ethereum, or Dogecoin to their wallets. MalwareHunterTeam noted that this type of scam has been around for a long time, but Twitter still hasn't solved the problem.

- As for Elon Musk himself, he urged to invest in digital assets with caution. ?Digital assets continue to be promising. But it is possible that the market will return to bearish sentiments at any moment. At one time, I thought that investing in cryptocurrencies was a dubious business, but everything has changed over the years,? Musk said. At the same time, the billionaire noted that Tesla bought bitcoins at the beginning of the year for the so-called "free funds", which do not affect the company's activities in any way.

- According to the BBC, the US authorities have arrested a resident of Tennessee, suspected of organizing the contract murder of his wife. According to British media reports, a customer unknown at that time told the killer the make of the car, as well as the date and time when the woman would take the pet to the veterinarian. The payment for the murder was done in bitcoins.
"The FBI headquarters provided blockchain analysis of the transaction and was able to determine that the wallets of the Coinbase crypto exchange were used for payment," the court record says. The exchange, at the request of the authorities, revealed not only the transactions history, but also the name of the owner of the wallets: it was the husband of the alleged victim. He used his home computer and personal bank accounts to buy cryptocurrency. The man was arrested and faces up to 10 years in prison. The identity of the killer has not yet been established.

- Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also continues to influence cryptocurrency quotes; he shared a photo of two goats named Max and Bitcoin. Social media users saw a secret message in this. Some of the commentators called him Bitcoin MAXimalist. And economist Alex Kruger said that the photo of the goats is a great reason for another pump of the first cryptocurrency. ?This is quite in the spirit of 2021. If the market was growing when Elon Musk tweeted about Bitcoin, then surely it should grow when Zuk calls the goats Max and Bitcoin, ?he said and... he was wrong. The price of bitcoin dropped by about $5,000 after the post was published.

- Another interesting event concerning Zukreberg took place in the capital of Russia. The Moscow court officially declared a citizen Mark Elliot Zuckerberg bankrupt. The reason for the litigation was his debt to two Russian banks in the amount of 669 thousand rubles (about $9,000).
This news could become a worldwide sensation. But the fact is that this citizen's name was Yuri Shishlyannikov until December 2018. He was born in Ukraine, and after moving to Russia, he changed his first and last name to Mark Zuckerberg, which is quite easy to do under Russian law.

- The attackers spread an interview allegedly given by Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen to the Kronen Zeitung. He "talks" about his investments in cryptocurrencies there and allegedly admits that he easily earns tens of thousands of euros a day.
According to the Watchlist Internet Internet fraud tracking service, under the guise of an interview with the Austrian President, scammers are promoting the Bitcoin Era, Bitcoin Prime and Crypto Revolt cryptocurrency trading platforms. To start trading, you need to deposit a minimum amount of ?250. Then some consultants contact the investors, and the first profit is displayed on the accounts. This motivates people to invest more. However, neither deposits nor possible profits are paid out to users, Watchlist Internet stresses.

- Analysts of the research service Whalemap presented an analysis of the price dynamics of the main cryptocurrency. According to their findings, large investors, including classic companies from the world of finance, continue to buy bitcoins actively. The largest buying volumes were recorded when the price of the coin was in the range from $54,000 to $58,000.
Whalemap believes that the $52,000 price level represents the point below which it will be difficult for the cryptocurrency to leave for a long time. Moreover, as analysts predict, bitcoin can gain a foothold above $60,000 in the foreseeable future.

- PlanB, the author of the famous S2FX prediction model for the price of bitcoin, agrees that the coin will continue to rise in price. That is why he replenished his crypto wallet by purchasing BTC on May 8 at the rate of $58,776.
Among the arguments in favor of further growth in the price of bitcoin is the growth of reserves of crypto exchanges in dollar stablecoins, which has now reached an absolute maximum of $11.5 billion. Interest in bitcoin is also observed on the part of miners: the hash rate for this cryptocurrency has once again turned out to be at levels that are close to absolute highs.

- Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said at the Ethereal virtual summit that he bought Bitcoin and Ethereum in early March. He made the decision after the country's Senate approved the $1.9 trillion economic bailout plan. It is noteworthy that the United States plan to adopt another aid package, due to the high level of unemployment.
According to Suarez, people will not want to store currency in USD, so cryptocurrencies will continue to grow. The official added that bitcoin has reached a level of acceptance too high to fall under a regulatory ban.
Suarez has previously said he is exploring the possibility of transferring some of Miami's city budget reserves into digital gold.

- The police detained two suspects of fraud in a Russian small town under the pretext of selling mining equipment. According to the investigation, the detainees posted an advertisement on the Internet about the sale of the mining farm. One of the villagers responded and transferred 1,000 rubles (about $13) as an advance. After the attackers sent a photo of the package, the future crypto-miner sent them the remaining amount. However, taking the parcel from the post office, he found two plastic water bottles and an old fire extinguisher in it, hardly suitable for cryptocurrency mining. It should be noted that this is not the first case of selling counterfeit equipment to those who wish to make money in this way.


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- A representative of the international environmental organization Greenpeace told the Financial Times about the suspension of accepting donations in bitcoin due to the high energy consumption when mining cryptocurrency. ?The amounts of energy required to run bitcoin are becoming more evident over time, so this policy no longer seems reasonable,? he said.
The organization began accepting bitcoin in 2014. Greenpeace then noted the environmental benefits of digital gold in the form of lower transaction processing fees compared to banks.

- Mining companies in North America will form the Bitcoin Mining Council, which aims to reduce the industry's greenhouse gas emissions. This decision was made by leading miners at a meeting with Elon Musk.
The meeting was organized by the head of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor. Leaders of Argo Blockchain, Blockcap, Core Scientific, Galaxy Digital, HIVE Blockchain, Hut8 Mining, Marathon and Riot Blockchain participated in the conversation with the Tesla founder.
According to Musk, the companies agreed to disclose data on the use of renewable energy in their activities, as well as share their plans in this area. The billionaire added that they agreed to encourage other miners to do the same.
Against this background, according to data from the CoinGecko service, the crypto market capitalization has grown by about 14%, while bitcoin has risen in price by almost 12%, and returned to the $40,000 zone on Wednesday, May 26.

- One of the first bitcoin miners, Marshal Long, said that Musk spoke with representatives of companies that control "a very, very small network hashrate." ?Don't expect any changes, that's what I'm saying,? he concluded. According to Long, if the billionaire wants to change the situation, he should negotiate with Coinmint and members of the non-profit Texas Blockchain Association, which control about 15% of the hashrate.

- The investment company Ark Invest General Director of Katie Wood confirms her forecast once again. She is confident that, no matter what, bitcoin will still reach $500,000.
Wood says the recent correction has raised the chances of SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission) approval for bitcoin funds. The point is a product with a lower price tag is more likely to get the green light.
In addition, Katie Wood spoke about the statements by Elon Musk that caused the collapse of the crypto market. She suggested that he was pressured by shareholders such as BlackRock to drop the BTC price. However, the head of Ark Invest expects Musk to return to the crypto investor community.

- Professor of NYU Stern Business School Aswath Damodaran believes that Ethereum is better suited for trading on exchanges than bitcoin. According to the expert, the ETH ecosystem is more flexible, which makes it easier to work with it in trades, especially in an environment of increased volatility.
Damodaran noted that many small assets on exchanges are trading better than bitcoin, as transactions with them are faster. The BTC network is much more involved, which means that transfers can take a fairly long period of time, even by the standards of fiat transactions.
?This is the main commercial feature of bitcoin. It is quite difficult to make money on trading with it if you do not catch the moment. The main coin is practically unpredictable, which is why traders often have to rely on good luck. " Therefore, bitcoin is more suitable as a global asset for investment, the specialist believes.

- More than 1000 employees of 16 Domino's Pizza restaurants in the Netherlands will be able to choose between salary in euros or in bitcoins. ?We are a modern company, and we work with a large number of young employees,? said the co-owners of the chain. "We hear them talk about bitcoin and want to offer them the opportunity to own cryptocurrency."
The announcement coincided with the 11th anniversary of the first documented commercial bitcoin transaction in which two pizzas were purchased from Papa John's. At current prices, the then paid 10,000 BTC is worth more than $380 million. Years later, this day was named Bitcoin Pizza Day.

- According to billionaire and Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubinstein, bitcoin has almost no chance of disappearing completely. Even if the asset loses most of its value, it will still be in demand in its own infrastructure. If the coin continues to rise in price, then even the central banks of the states that opposed cryptocurrencies will begin to consider it.
?New asset types are not just a fleeting craze that quickly ceases to be interesting. We are already talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. The coin, which was originally a means for digital payments, has become a full-fledged asset,? the billionaire believes.

- Matthew McDermott, head of the digital assets department of the American bank Goldman Sachs, confirmed the growing demand for cryptocurrencies among institutional investors and asset managers. He also noted in his letter to Global Marco Research that cryptocurrency storage solutions have become safer, however inconsistent actions of regulators can have a negative impact on the development of this market.

- The Development and Reform Commission in China's Inner Mongolia region has published a list of 8 points, in which it describes measures to "combat the mining of virtual currencies" in its territory. The authorities of the region note that they have developed this plan in pursuance of the order of the State Council of China on combating financial risks arising in the process of mining and trading cryptocurrencies.
Industrial parks and data centers are ordered to reduce energy consumption, and telecommunications companies are prohibited from working with miners under the threat of license revocation. The authorities also promise to prosecute illegal miners. The same applies to money laundering attempts and illegal fundraising using cryptocurrencies. In addition, the list mentions Internet cafes that will be closed if mining on their territory is revealed.
Companies whose activities are related to cryptocurrencies mining, and their senior employees are subject to inclusion in the list of unreliable persons, and officials supporting the miners will be subject to disciplinary responsibility.
According to the University of Cambridge, the Inner Mongolia region is currently the third largest bitcoin computing power in China after Xinjiang and Sichuan. They are expected to release similar documents soon.

- According to Reuters, the largest mining companies BTC.TOP and HashCow are winding down their activities in China amid tightening legislation. HashCow, has not yet stopped the current capacity, but has refused to buy new farms.
As for BTC.TOP, this company announced a complete cessation of work in the PRC.

- The Russian authorities may partially reconsider their position on the use of digital currencies. Now bitcoin and the rest of the coins are recognized in fact as property. Such tools are prohibited to use when paying for goods and services. However, there is talk that the State Duma (Parliament) of Russia is already ready to amend the legislation. Cryptocurrency payments can be legalized if they take place under a contractual agreement between the parties.

- The Dogecoin meme cryptocurrency has turned out to be more recognizable among US citizens than Ethereum. This is evidenced by the results of a joint survey conducted by Harris Poll and CouponCabin.
The study involved more than 2,000 American adults, most of whom (89%) had heard of cryptocurrency at least once. It turned out that 71% of respondents know about bitcoin, 29% about Dogecoin and 21% about Ethereum. The USD Coin stablecoin has the same number, 21%. About 18% of survey participants said they are familiar with Litecoin, 10% have heard about the existence of Stellar.
Almost a third of respondents (31%) are confident that cryptocurrencies can become the future of money. Digital assets are seen as a get-rich-quick scheme by 23%. On the other hand, 19% called it a ?questionable? technology. Almost half of the survey participants (44%) said they agree to receive cryptocurrency through incentive programs or cashback.


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