Chainlink, a decentralized computing and oracle protocol, Avalanche, known for its layer one (L1) blockchain technology, and GMX, a notable decentralized exchange, have launched Chainlink Data Streams on the Avalanche blockchain. Chainlink, Avalanche, GMX Launch Data Streams on Avalanche Blockchain In communications shared with Bitcoin.com News by the three teams, the announcement notes that Chainlink […]
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Bitcoin Price Boon: French Bank Predicts ECB To Activate QE Again
For both those involved in Bitcoin and traditional markets, all eyes have been on the world’s central banks over the past year. Many analysts claim that whatever the world’s leading monetary authorities decide to do with the economy will dictate the direction for global markets, and, potentially, the fate of the current fiat economic hegemony.
Related Reading: Bakkt Physically Settled Bitcoin Futures Product to Launch in September
A prominent French bank, Societe Generale, is currently expecting for the European Union’s monetary body, the European Central Bank, to begin more capital injection into the economy. Should this play out, the Bitcoin price could benefit. A lot.
ECB Could Kickstart Bitcoin Price Boom
Since the Great Recession (and the birth of Bitcoin), central banks have enlisted what is known as “quantitative easing”. This modern monetary policy sees central banks purchase securities and assets off the open market. Often, it’s bonds (debt); sometimes, it’s precious metals or stocks.
Quantitative easing — also known as open market operations — has catalyzed a massive boom in the stock market, one that is nearly unmatched in modern society. However, it has come at a cost: growing wealth disparities and the mass printing of fiat money.
But according to a recent report from Bloomberg, which cited a prediction from France’s Societe Generale, quantitative easing may get more dramatic more here. And this may be bullish for Bitcoin.
Societe Generale Predicts ECB Will Launch Open-Ended QE Next Month https://t.co/ltewwns7Z7
— Jan Nieuwenhuijs (@JanGold_) August 29, 2019
Societe Generale economist Anatoli Annenkov said in a note that the ECB will soon launch an “open-ended” easing program, which may lift the Euro Zone’s out of a recessionary trend. Annenkov wrote that after the September 12th meeting of the ECB, it will announce 40 billion euros worth of monthly asset purchases, while cutting its deposit rate by 20 bps.
This may be a price boon for hard assets, like gold and Bitcoin. Firstly, this expected fresh round of easing shows that the ECB is currently charting a recession, which many say will see capital rush into safe-haven assets, namely gold and silver but potentially Bitcoin too.
And secondly, these asset purchases should inject more liquidity into the economy, which may push investors to risk assets and hedges.
Federal Reserve May Cut Rates… Again
Across the pond in the United States, analysts are expecting for the Federal Reserve to also enlist questionable monetary policies.
As reported by NewsBTC previously, the Federal Funds futures are pricing in a rate cut in September. That’s not all, the futures are expecting rate cuts to occur well into 2020, potentially even until September 2020’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.
Joe McCann, a prominent technical analyst and crypto content creator, wrote on Twitter that this rate cut probability matrix “has guaranteed Bitcoin’s bull run well into 2020”.
To explain why this makes sense, here’s a comment from Fundstrat’s Tom Lee:
“Bitcoin’s becoming increasingly a macrohedge for investors against things that could go wrong. Rate cuts are adding liquidity. Liquidity is pushing money into all these risk assets and also hedges, which is helping Bitcoin.”
Featured Image from Shutterstock
The post Bitcoin Price Boon: French Bank Predicts ECB To Activate QE Again appeared first on NewsBTC.
Ethereum’s Constantinople Hard Fork to Activate on Testnet in October
Ethereum developers have confirmed an upcoming upgrade will activate on Ropsten around October 9.
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Now the SegWit2x Hard Fork Has Really Failed to Activate
In case there were any remaining doubts, it now seems clear that the SegWit2x hard fork will not happen.
The SegWit2x project, a product of the New York Agreement signed onto by a long list of companies and miners in May, had scheduled a hard fork to double Bitcoin’s block weight limit today. And while the controversial effort was suspended by leaders of the project last week, this would not have stopped anyone else from proceeding with it. Companies like Coinbase were indeed taking into account that the SegWit2x hard fork could still happen.
The Fork That Wasn’t
SegWit2x nodes – most notably btc1 – were programmed to fork away from the Bitcoin blockchain this afternoon (UTC) to create the SegWit2x blockchain and a new currency, often referred to as B2X. However, not a single SegWit2x block has been mined since fork point, nor is there any indication that this is likely to happen. For all intents and purposes, there is no SegWit2x – nor a B2X.
Further, software bugs in the btc1 codebase made all btc1 implementations grind to a halt even before it reached the expected fork point. While Bitcoin and SegWit2x nodes were widely expected to share a single blockchain up until block 494783 and then to go their own ways at block 494784, btc1 nodes never made it past block 494782.
This is mainly because the first block on the SegWit2x chain was required to have a “base block” larger than one megabyte. This is how the chain would diverge from the original Bitcoin protocol. But due to what is referred to as an “off-by-one error,” SegWit2x blocks started to reject smaller-than-one-megabyte blocks one block too soon – at block 494,783 instead of 494,784.
Moreover, another btc1 bug prevented miners from mining a big enough block when it was needed. So even if some miners did want to proceed with the fork, they accidentally wouldn’t have done so – at least not automatically. Miners would instead have had to manually configure their block weight settings, but it’s unlikely they knew about this step. Btc1 maintainer Jeff Garzik (while also denying there was a problem) has since released a patch to resolve this issue.
But judging by the absence of any SegWit2x blocks, the patch hasn’t made a difference, most likely because few, if any, miners were interested in mining on the SegWit2x chain in the first place.
NO2X?
Despite the seeming failure of SegWit2x to take off in any way, it should be noted that there is technically no way to declare a fork like SegWit2x officially “dead” or “failed.”
While unlikely, it’s always possible that the SegWit2x hard fork could proceed at some point in the future. In fact, there is no way to tell whether the SegWit2x chain is currently being mined with a little bit of hash power right now, and it is strictly impossible to foresee whether it will be mined later on. Perhaps a SegWit2x block will be found a day from now, a week from now or even ten years from now, at which point SegWit2x and B2X will technically come into existence.
However, since the SegWit2x chain did not include a mining difficulty reset, it will be as hard to mine a B2X block as it currently is to mine a BTC block. Meanwhile, market support for B2X appears to be extremely low, with B2X futures trading below 2 percent of BTC. So even if miners decide to mine B2X blocks, they’d almost certainly be earning far less than they would by mining BTC. Or, more accurately, they’d spend more on electricity bills than they’d be able to earn by mining B2X. The financial incentive to mine the SegWit2x chain just isn’t there.
Alternatively, SegWit2x could see a bit of a rebirth in the form of “BitcoinX” (BTX). This project, supposedly started by disappointed SegWit2x supporters, will take a snapshot of bitcoin balances at block height 494,783 and start a SegWit2x-like altcoin that offers all BTC holders the equivalent amount in BTX. Though, while this coin is arguably more viable than B2X thanks to a mining difficulty reset and more, it really is a new coin – arguably even more so than B2X would have been.
The post Now the SegWit2x Hard Fork Has Really Failed to Activate appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.
Now the SegWit2x Hard Fork Has Really Failed to Activate
In case there were any remaining doubts, it now seems clear that the SegWit2x hard fork will not happen.The SegWit2x project, a product of the New York Agreement signed onto by a long list of companies and miners in May, had scheduled a hard fork to double Bitcoins block weight limit today. And while the controversial effort was suspended by leaders of the project last week, this would not have stopped anyone else from proceeding with it. Companies like Coinbase were indeed taking into accoun
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ConsenSys’ Ethereal SF to Activate Ethereum Community in San Francisco
Every blockchain enthusiast is sure that blockchain technology will come to the forefront of daily life. Decentralized Autonomous Corporations like self driving car services and smart contracts for anything from home to car ownership are on the horizon for the next generation of the internet. The implications of a changing job market may leave many to wonder what their place will be in the future of the blockchain. Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article Sure, we may soon live in the world where the blockchain has revolutionized everything in our day-to-day life with things like tokenized assets. The only question
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