Kategorie: Crypto Markets

• Tesla, MicroStrategy and Block owned about 85% of Bitcoin held by public companies, currently numbering 27 according to data by CoinGecko.
• The three companies faced paper losses of up to $5 billion as Bitcoin price fell to $18,700 in June.
• Tesla sold 75% if its bitcoins in Q2.

MicroStrategy, Tesla and Block (formerly Square) saw their combined Bitcoin (BTC) holdings shrink by $5 billion in value during the second quarter of 2022, Bloomberg reported.

The hit comes after a 59% dive for BTC price in the quarter, with the calculations reflecting the three companies’ holdings based on previously disclosed figures.

For Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy and Jack Dorsey’s Block, these are only paper losses since the companies have not declared any sales of Bitcoin within the period.

Data from CoinGecko shows MicroStrategy holds 129,218 bitcoins acquired at a combined value of $4 billion, while Block holds 8,027 bitcoins that were valued at over $366 million in March. 

Tesla, on the other hand, announced it had sold 75% of its Bitcoin (BTC) holdings in the quarter, adding $936 million in cash to its balance sheet. However, the electric carmaker purchased its bitcoin at $1.5 billion.

$5 billion ‘paper losses’

As Bitcoin price fell below $20,000 in June, with prices around $18,700 on June 30, the three firms’ combined losses were around $5 billion.

The quartet had owned roughly 85% of the BTC held by public companies in the quarter, with 70% of the paper losses marked on MicroStrategy.

Saylor has previously said his company has not sold its Bitcoin, but investors are likely to be keen on seeing this reflected in the company’s Q2 earnings report on 2 August. Block is also set to release its results on 4 August.

The post MicroStrategy, Tesla, Block faced a $5 billion hit on their Bitcoin bet in Q2 appeared first on CoinJournal.

Zipmex crypto exchange has announced the resumption of withdrawals after it announced on Wednesday that it had halted withdrawals due to the ongoing crypto market meltdown.

However, only withdrawals from the Trade wallet, one of the exchange’s wallets, have resumed.

Zipmex uses two types of assets (Trade Wallet and Z Wallet). The Trade Wallet is used by users to deposit crypto assets and fiat to trade on the platform. On the other hand, Z Wallet allows users to earn bonuses and rewards once they deposit their funds.

Z Wallet operations to remain closed

However, according to the announcement, withdrawals will only be available on the Trade wallet starting today at 7 a.m. ET while Z wallet operations will remain closed until further notice.

📣 Important Announcement📣

Maintenance on the Trade Wallet has ended. Withdrawals for your Trade Wallet are now enabled as of 22 July 2022 at 18:00 (GMT+7).

Transfer from Z Wallet, deposit and trade will continue to be disabled until further notice. pic.twitter.com/voMInELlH5

— ZIPMEX (@zipmex) July 22, 2022

However, this is after the platform said yesterday in a Facebook post that it is exploring all the available options and plans to restore withdrawals from some wallets.

Zipmex recovers some of its funds

Notably, Zipmex had an exposure of $5 million to Celsius and $48 million to Babel Finance, which had halted withdrawals earlier on because of insolvency pressure. However, Zipmex noted that it has recovered some of the assets from its partners.

The company said:

“Zipmex has retrieved the majority of our funds and assets that were historically deposited with our deployment partners and have been actively working to resolve the situation for the remaining outstanding assets, there were no materially adverse impacts to our operations.”

The post Crypto exchange Zipmex resumes withdrawals appeared first on CoinJournal.

Ethereum network will be 55% complete after the ‘merge’, says co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has hinted at the network hitting the 55% roadmap completion level after its much-anticipated “Merge.”

The countdown to the switch from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) is now ticking after last week’s announcement of 19 September as the date it finally happens.

Buterin was speaking at the fifth annual Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) held in Paris.

According to him, the road towards proof-of-stake has been long and arduous for the community.

“The Ethereum protocol right now is in the middle of this long and complicated transition, and it’s a transition toward becoming a system that is more powerful and robust in so many ways,” he said.

He then talked of the “big five” developmental stages of the Ethereum protocol roadmap – the merge, the surge, verge, the purge and the splurge – with the PoS switch reflecting the “Merge” and sharding representing the “Surge.”

Only 55% complete

The merge, which is the transition so far, has achieved much and the decentralisation goal is not far off. However, there’s still much to do, with the network’s overall roadmap likely to hit only the “55% complete” level post-merge.

Completing the transition, he explained, involves “deep changes,” which he says include monetary policy (reduction of issuance), security model and transaction inclusion process.

Scalability is also going to be a big part of Ethereum’s key features – especially as the roadmap moves to the “Surge.”

As is the case, Ethereum 2.0, or ETH 2.0, will usher in the era of 100,000 transactions per second, with shard chains astronomically improving transaction per second (TPS) count from the current average of 30 TPS.

You can watch Vitalik Buterin’s EthCC address in the video below.

The post Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum’s transition has been ‘long and complicated’ appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Ishan and his brother are in custody, arrested on Thursday and are facing fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud charges, while Ramini is yet to be arrested.

• Broadly, the SEC says Ishan violated securities laws, with this the first insider trading case in the crypto sector.

• The SEC says nine of the 25 tokens for which Ishan provided confidential information were securities.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has highlighted nine tokens it says are securities, the details of which come from a landmark case against a former Coinbase manager.

The SEC’s case is against Ishan Wahi, the former product manager at Coinbase and two others – Nikhil Wahi (Ishan’s brother) and Sameer Ramini, a friend. The former Coinbase manager is alleged to have leaked confidential information about token listings announcement, tipping the other two in a scheme that spanned nearly a year and involved $1.1 million in profits.

“Ahead of those announcements, which usually resulted in an increase in the assets’ prices, Nikhil Wahi and Ramani allegedly purchased at least 25 crypto assets, at least nine of which were securities, and then typically sold them shortly after the announcements for a profit,” the SEC said in a press release.

9 tokens deemed securities

The SEC has previously stated that most tokens in the crypto sector are securities, and indeed has an active case against Ripple Labs over the XRP coin.

In this latest installment of its battle to bring deemed securities under the SEC laws, it does identify nine “security” tokens.

What are these tokens? The SEC highlights them here.

LCX (LCX), Amp (AMP), Rally (RLY), Rari Governance (RGT), Power Ledger (POWR), XYO Network (XYO), DFX Finance (DFX), DerivaDAO (DDX) and Kromatika (KROM).

Commenting on these tokens, Gurbir S. Grewal, SEC’s Director of Enforcement, noted that the main concern is not “with labels, but rather the economic realities of an offering.”

“In this case, those realities affirm that a number of the crypto assets at issue were securities, and, as alleged, the defendants engaged in typical insider trading ahead of their listing on Coinbase,” he added.

The post The 9 tokens SEC says are securities in Coinbase insider trading case appeared first on CoinJournal.

JPMorgan says deleveraging in May and June was the most intense since 2018, but that’s getting behind the crypto ecosystem amid increased retail demand.

JPMorgan analysts are saying positivity among retail investors is on the upward trajectory, with an improved  market outlook coming on the back of huge turbulence and uncertainty.

The banking giant notes in a report cited by CoinDesk on Thursday that the unfolding improvement is down to the reducing intensity of the massive deleveraging that characterised the market crash in May and June, as well as over the last several months following the 2021 bull run.

According to JPMorgan analysts, “the extreme phase of backwardation” witnessed in the market over the last two months was the worst since 2018. However, that extreme pain period looks to be fading off amid the sharp crypto price bounces seen this past few days.

Bitcoin (BTC) jumped above $24,000 to test its highest level in over a month, with on-chain data from Glassnode showing the number of wallets in loss (7 day moving average) has dropped to a 30-day low.

📉 #Bitcoin $BTC Number of Addresses in Loss (7d MA) just reached a 1-month low of 17,194,797.077

View metric:https://t.co/s2ciFMlDcX pic.twitter.com/dDl6bzylKw

— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) July 21, 2022

Retail demand jumps amid Ethereum “Merge” news

While Bitcoin’s upside was remarkable, the main avenue of positivity was around Ethereum (ETH), the bank said.

Investor expectations are high after last week’s announcement that Ethereum’s long anticipated “Merge” would be hitting mainnet in September. The buying pressure around the excitement for cryptocurrency’s largest smart contracts platform also seeped into the rest of the market, with ETH/USD jumping above $1,500 as the overall crypto market cap crossed above $1 trillion.

For Ethereum, the number of addresses in profit (7 day moving average) has also reached a one month high.

Notably, the bounce in crypto prices isn’t reflected in crypto funds or futures market, which the bank says is indicative of demand being retail-driven.

Further evidence of retail demand is seen in the increase in the number of “smaller wallets” holding BTC or ETH, JPMorgan added

The post JPMorgan: Retail demand is improving as ‘intense phase’ of deleveraging fades appeared first on CoinJournal.