CHINA'S central bank has declared cryptocurrency transactions illegal as the cost of Bitcoin drops on Coinbase.
China made the cryptocurrency announcement yesterday which states that the mining the tokens is banned.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said: “Virtual currency-related business activities are illegal financial activities.”
The country previously banned financial institutions from offering crypto related transactions, and warned investors against speculative trading in them.
The price of Bitcoin fell more than 9%, to $41,085, in the hours after the announcement, as did most other crypto tokens.
Ethereum skidded almost 10%, falling from $3,100 to around $2,800.
Read our cryptocurrency live blog for the latest news and updates…
- Julia Fields
WHAT IS COINBASE?
Coinbase is an American company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform.
It operates remotely and has no physical office.
- Julia Fields
EXPERTS PREDICT POLYGON’S GROWTH
How the price of Ethereum will change in the future is impossible to know for certain.
However, experts and investors have made some predictions.
Charlie Barton, an investment specialist at comparison site Finder, warned in mid-May: “The performance of Polygon has been extremely strong recently, achieving 10,000% growth in the last year."
"It’s easy to get carried away, but such aggressive growth is highly unlikely to continue forever."
- Julia Fields
CRYPTO SCAMS
While the growth of Bitcoin has skyrocketed in some bank accounts, it's also fueled the growth of crypto-related fraud operations.
The FTC reported that since October of 2020, nearly 7,000 people have reported losses of more than $80million in the US due to cryptocurrency scams.
That number is around 12 times, or 1,000 percent more than reported losses from the period a year earlier.
- Julia Fields
POSING AS AN AGENCY OR BUSINESS
As noted by Inverse, Many phishing scams will attempt to impersonate a government agency or business to get your attention.
Some reports to the FTC said victims were contacted by scammers pretending to be the Social Security Administration and asked to deposit money into Bitcoin ATMs.
Other victims lost money to scammers posing as the cryptocurrency company Coinbase.
- Julia Fields
WHERE DOES COINBASE REVENUE COME FROM?
The majority of Coinbase’s revenues come from Bitcoin and Ether on the Ethereum blockchain.
They are currently the number one and number two cryptocurrencies on the market, according to MarketWatch.
- Julia Fields
WHAT WILL SHIBA INU BE WORTH IN 2022?
Plenty of cryptocurrency fans have predicted Shiba Inu's value for 2022, but you should take it with a pinch of salt as it's nowhere near guaranteed.
For example, crypto website Wallet Investor expects a value of up to $0.000018 in a year's time.
Meanwhile, Coin Price Forecast expects it to hit a value of $0.00002336 by the middle of next year.
It then expects it to end the year at a slightly higher level of $0.00003037.
- Julia Fields
THE ‘MUSK’ EFFECT ON CRYPTO
Elon Musk has once again been linked to activity in the crypto markets.
Earlier this week, the Telsa CEO tweeted about the arrival of his new Shiba Inu pup, Floki.
Just days later, the price of Shiba Inu coin was skyrocketing.
- Julia Fields
LITECOIN VS. BITCOIN
Litecoin, which was established in 2011 by Google engineer Charlie Lee, operates similarly to Bitcoin.
Mr Lee on occasions refers to Litecoin as the “silver to Bitcoin’s gold.”
The two cryptocurrencies act similarly in how their global payment operations are set up. Both are not controlled by financial institutions.
Like most cryptocurrencies, Litecoin uses blockchain technology for processing and recording transactions.
While Litecoin is smaller, it is a quicker and cheaper alternative when compared to Bitcoin.
- Julia Fields
EXPERTS WEIGH IN ON ALCHEMY PAY AND BINANCE
Shaun Heng, vice president of growth and operations at CoinMarketCap told The Sun that it’s challenging to assess the risk of many crypto projects like Alchemy Pay.
And while he isn’t a fan of Alchemy Pay’s crypto-linked cards, he did tout one of its partners, Binance, which is the largest crypto exchange by trading volume globally.
"The partnership with Binance is most definitely a good sign of validation for the project," Heng said.
- Julia Fields
DATING APP SCAMS
Some scam operations have started using dating apps to reel in potential targets.
In some reports, scammers would pose as a long-distance love interest sharing a hot new cryptocurrency opportunity.
About 20 percent of the money reportedly lost through dating scams in around the last year involved cryptocurrency.
- Julia Fields
STEVEN SEAGAL’S BITCOIN SCANDAL
Under Siege and Half Past Dead hardman Seagal was paid to promote “Bitcoiin2Gen” (B2G) which saw 500 investors left out of pocket in cash and other cryptocurrencies as he unwittingly ended up backing the scam.
Seagal reportedly had been offered $250,000 along with £750,000 worth of B2G for appearing in promotional materials for the con artists.
He appeared in a press release for them and “wholeheartedly” endorsed the scheme in a post to his 7million followers on Facebook.
- Julia Fields
FAKE WEBSITES
Another widespread scamming technique is websites that appear to be a new cryptocurrency mining operation or investment opportunity.
These sites encourage investors to wire in money, sometimes offering investment "tiers" and promising greater returns.
But when users attempt to withdraw their cash, they are unable to and told to input even more cryptocurrency.
- Julia Fields
GIVEAWAY SCAMS
Giveaway scams often pose as celebrities or well-known figures and ask victims to send Bitcoin, promising to send back a much larger amount.
Many giveaway scams are marketed over social media, attempting to connect through Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
For instance, victims reported sending more than $2million to scammers impersonating Elon Musk.
- Julia Fields
ALEXIS OHANIAN ON CO-FOUNDER OF ETHEREUM, VITALIK BUTERIN, PART THREE
"I’ve never been more excited about the potential of the Internet," Ohanian added.
"And that’s largely thanks to Vitalik Buterin."
Buterin is the co-founder of Ethereum and also co-founded Bitcoin Magazine in 2011.
- Julia Fields
ALEXIS OHANIAN ON CO-FOUNDER OF ETHEREUM, VITALIK BUTERIN, CONTINUED
"No one person could’ve possibly come up with all of the uses for Ethereum, but it did take one person’s idea to get it started," Ohanian added about Buterin.
"From there, a new world has opened up, and given rise to new ways of leveraging blockchain technology—some of which I’ve invested in."
"Whether it’s startups like Sorare reinventing fantasy sports or Rainbow users showing off their NFT collections, none of this would’ve existed without Vitalik’s creation."
- Julia Fields
ALEXIS OHANIAN ON CO-FOUNDER OF ETHEREUM, VITALIK BUTERIN
"Thanks to Reddit’s r/Ethereum community, I’ve had the privilege of following Vitalik Buterin’s career from early on, which is why I’ve taken a certain pride in watching his legacy grow," Ohanian wrote of the programmer.
"Sure, we can talk about the value he’s created as the platform’s co-founder, including Ethereum’s impressive market cap of around $400 billion, the dazzling world of decentralized apps and this year’s boom in the trading of NFTs."
"What makes Vitalik so special, though, is that he is a builder’s builder."
- Julia Fields
CHINA'S CRACKDOWN ON CRYPTO IS 'BIG OPPORTUNITY' FOR US
China’s crackdown on cryptocurrency transactions “is a big opportunity for the U.S.”, according to Pat Toomey, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee.
This comes as the US Securities and Exchange Commission lobbied for more regulations when it comes to cryptocurrency.
- Julia Fields
CRYPTO AT GOVBALL
The Governor's Ball Music Festival officially has a cryptocurrency partner in CoinBase.
- Julia Fields
CYRPTO WALLET
Robinhood has opened their waitlist for their newest product, a wallet that eases the transfer of cryptocurrency.
- Julia Fields
PLYTH APOLOGIZES FOR ERROR
"We are communicating with Pyth partners and data providers to ensure transparency, accuracy, and confidence in Pyth," the platform wrote.
"We know our users depend on us and we're working with affected partners on remedying the situation.
"Better developer documentation and guidelines on the usage of the Pyth oracle are underway, stay tuned.
"We deeply thank the community for the support you have shown us. Pyth will keep building toward the promise of delivering trustworthy, high-fidelity financial information."
- Julia Fields
BITCOIN ERROR CONTINUED
The platform is an industrial-grade source for pricing information on stocks and cryptocurrencies.
Its contributors include finance giants like Jump Trading Group, DRW and FTX.
It's hard to tell if the glitch had an impact on Bitcoin's market price, or whether it impacted investors.
As of Thursday, Bitcoin's value was sitting at around $43,000.
In a series of tweets on Wednesday, Pyth apologised for the mishap.
- Julia Fields
BITCOIN ERROR
According to Bloomberg, an error on Monday caused the platform Pyth to incorrectly show that the price for Bitcoin was down to about $5,400.
That would have represented a catastrophic drop from around $50,000 earlier this month.
A number of Bitcoin fanatics sounded the alarm online, but it turned out they had nothing to worry about.
Pyth, which provides financial data to a number of major investment firms, confirmed in a tweet on Monday that a glitch was behind the issue.
The blunder did not turn up on other platforms, meaning only Plyth customers were affected.
- Julia Fields
ETHEREUM PRICE PREDICTION CONTINUED
Daniel Polotsky, founder of CoinFlip, a bitcoin ATM operator, added: "Ethereum's price largely follows Bitcoin's halving cycles, although that relationship may begin to decouple as time goes on, and as Ethereum continues to develop use cases that Bitcoin cannot achieve.
"Then, its price may grow at a faster rate than Bitcoin's."
Meanwhile, CoinPriceForecast expects Ethereum to hit $3,479 by the end of 2021 and $7,294 by the end of 2024.
And WalletInvestor has a one-year forecast of $5,581.410 and a five-year forecast of $14,980.60.
Make sure you take these predictions with a pinch of salt though, as they're nowhere near guaranteed.
- Julia Fields
ETHEREUM PRICE PREDICTION
How the price of Ethereum will change in future is impossible to know for certain, but experts and investors have still made predictions.
According to a panel of 42 cryptocurrency experts by comparison site Finder, Ethereum could be worth $4,596 by the end of 2021.
It could then soar above $10,000 later on to hit $17,810 by the end of 2025 and $71,763 by the end of 2030.
However, some experts are even more optimistic and Martin Fröhler, chief executive of trading platform Morpher, sees Ethereum topping $10,000 by this December.
- Julia Fields
WHAT'S THE ETHEREUM PRICE?
The price of Ethereum (ETH) is currently sitting at $3,084 – up by more than 5% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.
It's down 26% since its all-time high of $4,168.70 on May 10, 2021.
However, it's up by from $775 on January 1, meaning it has rocketed by around 300% since the beginning of the year.
But there's no guarantee the price of Ethereum will rise this much again – or even that it will rise at all as cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile.
Before Ethereum started rising this year, its previous all-time high was on January 14 in 2018, when it hit $1,291.92.
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