Andrew Tate, a British-American social media personality and former professional kickboxer, has announced a plan to invest significantly in bitcoin, expressing frustration with banks and their scams. “I’m about to leave fiat completely,” he stressed. “I’m done with the banks. I’m done with their money. Done with the scams.” Andrew Tate Plans to Shift ‘100M’ […]
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Ethereum Price Tops $3,000, But ‘Is Completely Detached From Reality’: Expert
The Ethereum (ETH) price has crossed the ,000 threshold for the first time since April 2022 yesterday. However, amidst the celebratory fireworks in the crypto community, Fred Krueger, a renowned Bitcoin ETF expert, has voiced a starkly contrasting opinion. Krueger, a Wall Street veteran and prop trader, took to X (formerly Twitter) to express his skepticism about the current valuation of ETH, stating, “ETH is completely detached from reality.”
Why Ethereum Is “Completely Detached From Reality”
Krueger’s comments come at a time when the crypto market is witnessing a resurgence in investor interest, with Ethereum at the forefront due to its recent price rally. Despite this, Krueger points out a concerning trend in the usage of the Ethereum blockchain.
ETH is completely detached from reality. A deep dive.———————————————————
ETH is at ,000. Surely this must mean that a ton of people are using ETH, and that this number is only going up, right?
Nope.
Eth, the chain has dropped from 120K… pic.twitter.com/141GwtB0yz
— Fred Krueger (@dotkrueger) February 21, 2024
“ETH is at ,000. Surely this must mean that a ton of people are using ETH, right? Nope. Eth, the chain has dropped from 120K active daily users in 2021, to just 66K over the last year. The top app, Uniswap V3 is only getting 16K DAUs. I remember, back in 2020 this number was 60K or more,” he noted, emphasizing a decline in the platform’s direct utility and engagement.
The Bitcoin ETF expert further criticized the valuation of Ethereum, drawing parallels to meme coins like Shiba Inu due to its inflated market cap, which stands at 1 billion despite the fall in active users. “It really has become a type of meme coin, similar to Shiba Inu,” Krueger remarked, pointing to the stark contrast between Ethereum’s high market cap and its diminishing direct use.
Krueger argues that Ethereum is not only overvalued but also faces stiff competition from other blockchains that outperform it in terms of transaction costs and speed. “It’s not particularly cheap (.50 per transaction), or fast. If you are just interested in reward points for games, or casino-style DeFi apps — Solana, Avalanche, Near etc.. all crush it.”
Krueger also expressed skepticism about the future regulatory landscape for Ethereum, particularly concerning the potential for an ETH exchange-traded fund (ETF). “Finally, I don’t think Gensler is going to allow an ETH ETF… I just don’t think Gary wants to make his second ETF a massive pre-mine. Sets a very bad precedent,” he stated, reflecting on the challenges Ethereum faces in gaining mainstream financial acceptance.
The Crypto Community Reacts
In response to Krueger’s critical take, the crypto community on X provided mixed reactions. One user challenged Krueger’s analysis by pointing to Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap and the misleading nature of using mainnet daily active users (DAU) as a metric for the platform’s health. Krueger, however, remained unconvinced, stating, “Even L2s like Arbitrum have been in decline for the last 12 months. This is not the case that all is well in ETH-land.”
Another user attempted to highlight the cyclical nature of DeFi and the broader crypto market, suggesting that the current downturn is a temporary phase of risk aversion. Yet, Krueger dismissed these arguments, reiterating his lack of interest in speculative DeFi activities and emphasizing his belief in Bitcoin as the true revolutionary cryptocurrency. “I am not interested in degen ape games. Have fun,” he stated.
Krueger’s critique extends beyond Ethereum to the broader landscape of cryptocurrencies, questioning the long-term viability and value proposition of altcoins, including Layer 1 solutions other than Bitcoin. He argues that these platforms are unlikely to become significant value generators in the long term, likening their control mechanisms to fiat currencies but with central figures like Vitalik Buterin in place of traditional central bankers.
Krueger’s overall stance on Ethereum and the broader crypto market is clear. “My position on ETH. At the end of the day, Bitcoin is the revolution… Every other cryptocurrency is fighting for some other much smaller use case,” he explained, underscoring his belief in Bitcoin’s unique value proposition as a decentralized, finite currency system.
At press time, the ETH price surpassed the 0.5 Fibonacci retracement level (at ,922), trading at ,935. A weekly close above this threshold could confirm another leg up for the ETH price.
Russia Launching Payment System With ‘No Restrictions’ — Digital Currencies to Be Completely Unrestricted
Russia is launching a new payment system that is “bound by no restrictions” where digital currencies could be used in cross-border payments, said Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. “Two parties come to an agreement, make settlement payments, and no other country could step in and freeze such payments,” the top official explained.
Digital Currency ‘Bound by No Restrictions’ in Russia’s New Payment System
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Monday that a new payment system will be launched where the use of digital currencies in international payments will be completely unrestricted, Russian news outlet Tass reported.
“We are launching an alternative system of payments based on modern technologies (digital financial assets, digital currencies),” the finance minister was quoted as saying. He elaborated:
Digital currencies could be used in cross-border payments. This is just at the earliest phase of discussions, but the future lies with the use of the digital ruble, the digital yuan, and other similar currencies.
“This is a system of payments that is bound by no restrictions. Two parties come to an agreement, make settlement payments, and no other country could step in and freeze such payments,” Siluanov emphasized.
Due to the economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other Western nations following the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, Russia has intensified its efforts to reduce its reliance on the U.S. dollar. The U.S. and Western allies have seized more than 0 billion in Russian central bank foreign currency assets frozen by sanctions.
The Bank of Russia has been exploring the creation of a digital currency, the digital ruble, as a way to shift away from the U.S. dollar. A report published by the U.S. Congressional Research Service in July 2021 details that the Russian government accelerated its de-dollarization efforts in 2014, noting that the launch of a digital ruble “would further reduce Russia’s reliance on Western (and dollar-centered) payments infrastructure.”
Russia’s De-Dollarization Push
Finance Minister Siluanov also revealed Monday at an education marathon event that the Russian ruble and the Chinese yuan are already replacing the U.S. dollar in mutual settlements between Russia and China, Tass also reported. When asked if the ruble or yuan could replace the USD, the top official replied:
We are already looking at this. For better or worse, I think, this is the current situation. This is our currency … It is replacing [dollar] already. If we look at the structure of trade between Russia and China, now more than 70% — it is already in our national currencies.
What do you think about Russia creating a new payment system “bound by no restrictions”? Let us know in the comments section below.
Fair Win on Blockchain: Dexsport Is Completely Rewriting the Rules of the Game for the Betting Industry
Many people associate earnings in betting with something fickle because, in this industry, the players are entirely dependent on the decision of the broker whether to pay them or not. The Dexsport project sees its mission in correcting this situation. Dexsport is a blockchain-based project that makes the entire game process transparent, with earnings being paid automatically using smart contracts.
Less than a month ago, Dexsport launched its native DESU token on the mainnet. This step contributed to the rapid development of the project: its liquidity pool has grown fivefold, and the number of players has increased to 2.5 thousand. However, given the project’s uniqueness, this is only the beginning, and soon we will surely see the considerable growth of the Dexsport platform.
Dexsport: Make Money in Betting on Completely New Conditions
Dexsport is, without exaggeration, the future of betting. In the form in which the industry exists today, it can’t develop anymore. The fact is that when players appreciate the simplicity and transparency of playing on the blockchain, they are unlikely to want to return to traditional platforms that will have to implement blockchain functionality one day. Dexsport has already done this, and so far, there are no platforms like this on the market.
Dexsport is a platform from the web3 world where users play with a shared liquidity pool and receive their winnings via the blockchain. The platform itself is organized on the principles of DAO. That is, voting by its participants controls it. Introducing technologies such as DeFi, NFT, and the Play-to-earn game model provides unique opportunities for bettors. Most importantly, the decentralized protocol makes the services of intermediaries redundant, and the players themselves become the owners of the game.
“We created Dexsport because we are in love with the game. Initially, it was a kind of project for ourselves, which grew into something much bigger,” says Nikita Vassev, head of Dexsport strategy. “Bookmakers are impersonal. We are completely focused on contact with users. In Dexsport, they fully see everything that this business consists of, and in our system, there are no unnecessary elements and no intermediaries who take your fair winnings for themselves. On Dexsport, you see all transactions, and if you win, you get 100% of your fair winnings.”
All payments on the platform are ensured by the liquidity pool with near-instant
settlements. All the necessary information uncovering the Token Utility is available on the official website dexsport.io in the Tokenomics section. Please, forward your questions directly to Dexsport official Telegram group or email team@dexsport.io
Ethereum Privacy Coin Mixing Service Tornado.cash Now Completely Permissionless
Tornado Cash, a privacy coin mixing tool for the Ethereum network, is now completely permissionless. According to the company’s blog post, from now on the code that runs the service will perpetually self-execute, which means that it is completely decentralized and unstoppable.
Code is Now Law at Tornado.cash
Privacy on Ethereum has just been kicked up a notch, as one of the network’s premier coin mixing services has now gone completely permissionless. According to an official announcement from the company, coin mixing service Tornado Cash is now trustless.
The company has just completed a smart contract upgrade that has created a code that is perpetually self-executing. The upgrade followed the company’s trusted setup ceremony, an elaborate process that relies on computation from multiple parties in order to generate a crucial pair of cryptographic keys that would protect the protocol from manipulation. With over 1,100 contributors, Tornado Cash said that this has been the largest trusted setup ceremony to date.
All of this allowed the company to set the operator address to 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000 on all instances, making all contracts immutable and unstoppable.
What Does This Mean For Ethereum Users
Tornado Cash first launched in August last year, with the company calling the service an “audited experimental software” due to the fact that its developers had full control over the user funds through a multi-signature wallet.
As a coin mixing service, Tornado Cash mixes your cryptocurrency transaction with various other coins and then sends smaller units to the address you selected. To do so, the company must collect all of the transactions into one place—a smart contract or a wallet from where the mixing is essentially done.
The latest upgrade has now made Tornado completely permissionless, which means that no one can modify the smart contracts and the protocol is decentralized and unstoppable. The company and its developers now have no control or any role in relaying transactions.
In the announcement the company said will continue working on the next major version of Tornado Cash, version 3.
“We want to replicate Zcash features onto Ethereum mainnet which would allow private transfers of arbitrary amounts, and the ability to transfer ownership of tornado.cash notes within the pool,” the company said.
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$25 Trillion Spent in US Pursuing Trust, Can Blockchain Eliminate it Completely?
With the immense tribalism surrounding the cryptocurrency space and semantic arguments over abstract concepts like “decentralisation” often dominating crypto discourse, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and what all this building and experimentation is progressing towards.
Andreas Antonopoulos often argues that cryptocurrency is just the first application of the nascent technology that is blockchain, but what exactly does he mean?
My personal highlight of the first day of NEO DevCon 2019 was a presentation given by Dr Chris Berg from RMIT University’s Blockchain Innovation Hub. Berg provided an excellent “zoomed-out” view of the disruptive potential of blockchain technology in a section of the program titled, “Crypto-Economics and the Future of the Global Economy.”
![](https://www.newsbtc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/IMGN4139-1100x733.jpg)
NEO Conference Seattle, 2019
Blockchain Tech: A Weapon of Mass Disruption?
As you would expect, most of the presentations at NEO DevCon 2019 focused directly on development happening both on the NEO protocol itself, as well as the building out of decentralised applications on the network. Berg took the crowd in an entirely different direction – providing a refreshing break from the tech-heavy program that preceded his presentation.
In his talk, the computer science researcher set forth one potential view of a future global economy facilitated by crypto and blockchain tech. Drawing on the work of Nobel prize-winning economists before him, Berg and the Blockchain Innovation Hub have been studying how ledger technology and, more importantly, distributed ledger technology shapes society.
Berg argues that one of the major problems addressed by blockchain technology is the coordination of economic activity when faced with distributed information. Previously, one of the biggest issues with such a coordination is trust – or lack of it. Berg estimates that a staggering 35 percent of today’s US labour force – or about trillion – is required to create enough trust between disparate parties for our current systems to function as they do today. Institutions such as markets, firms, and governments are currently used to provide trust between entities to coordinate economic activity. Yet they are inefficient in doing so.
According to Berg, blockchain technology itself can be considered as one of these trust-enabling institutions. He argues that previous institutions provide little more than a way to operationalise or manage various ledger relationships. Ledger technology, of course, provides humanity a way to map and verify agreed facts – who owns what, for example. These ledgers can document ownership of value, as is the case of money or property. Even companies themselves can be seen as ledgers – a record of labour, capital, and processes.
Berg argues that the world changes each time ledger technology changes. He cites writing as the technology that gave us market society, double entry bookkeeping as changing the future of global capitalism, centralised distributed databases allowing for Empire capitalism, and finally global financial capitalism being made possible by digital ledgers.
![](https://www.newsbtc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/berg-ledger-blockchain.jpg)
Dr. Berg claims that each time ledger technology changes, so too does society.
Enter the Distributed Digital Ledger
According to Berg the invention of decentralised, distributed databases – or as we like to call them blockchains – allows for what he terms the “crypto economy.”
Berg argues that the 20th century was characterised by the debate between centralised and decentralised economies – capitalism versus socialism, essentially. History tells us that decentralised economies seem to dominate centralised ones.
Blockchain technology takes this a step further. It allows for information about said economy to be decentralised too. By decentralising ledger technology, we as a species can move into “the next stage of economic discussion.”
Blockchain technology is a new economic infrastructure capable of creating entirely new economies based on principles of non-hierarchical organisation:
“Blockchains are going to change not just the way we do things but the governance structures in which we do them.”
This disrupts a long-run economic dynamic. Blockchain can provide governance to complex economic relationships without relying on hierarchy as governments and companies are forced to. The result of this, for Berg and his colleagues, is fewer massive organisational forms (companies) and smaller governments. They call this process “dehierarchicalisation.”
By creating trust through code, we can do away with the grossly inefficient, corruptible, and expensive hierarchical organisation that has dominated much of human history.
We are, of course, only just discovering the true implications of this technological advancement. The technology itself is not quite there yet either. The main stumbling block for now is scalability.
Yet, we have already seen the successful application of the tech in crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ether. This is just the beginning. As the technology continues to mature, it is quite possible that it will erode the central pillars of power within our societies and in the process create a more just, less authoritarian tomorrow. A future based on true accountability and transparency, as well as non-hierarchical organisation does indeed appear possible for the first time ever. This is an exciting prospect indeed.
Related Reading: How Co-Founder Sees NEO 3.0 Blockchain Being Used By Everyone From VCs to Potato Farmers in 2020
Featured Images from Shutterstock.
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Ripple CTO Says XRP Ledger is Completely Decentralized
Ripple Labs, Inc. has long been on the defensive against claims from cryptocurrency pundits and investors who believe that its native token, XRP, will be viewed as a security by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) due to its seemingly centralized design.
However, Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz aims to set the record straight about XRP’s “inherently decentralized nature.”
Ripple CTO Dives into the Topic of Decentralization
Decentralization by definition is the “dispersion or distribution of functions and powers,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
However, in the cryptocurrency space, what it means to be decentralized is less clear, and as David Schwartz says in the opening of his new report, “is wildly nuanced, misunderstood and, frankly, evolving.” In the report, titled “The Inherently Decentralized Nature of XRP Ledger,” Schwartz attempts to clear up some of the confusion around the decentralization of XRP.
Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum that use proof-of-work algorithms, thus rewarding miners for validating transactions, XRP uses a consensus protocol that requires validators to record and verify transactions without any incentive. Schwartz says these validators are spread all across the globe and are comprised of a range of individuals, institutions, and cryptocurrency exchanges.
“Put simply, the XRP Ledger is based on an inherently decentralized, democratic, consensus mechanism — which no one party can control.”
Taking to Twitter earlier today, Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, showed his approval of Schwartz’s post, and promised more on the issue during his Ask Me Anything session.
.@joelkatz speaks the TRUTH on XRP Ledger! Brilliantly designed to be inherently decentralized. More on this during my AMA with @CoryTV at 3pm (PT) today on https://t.co/OmzfxkPL6N https://t.co/IIcdA75bIt
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) August 22, 2018
XRP is More Decentralized Than Bitcoin or Ethereum
Schwartz cites the fact that the four largest mining pools control as much as 58% of the Bitcoin network, while three miners control 57% of Ethereum’s, as a reason why these competing cryptocurrencies are even less decentralized than XRP.
This despite the SEC’s contrarian stance that Bitcoin and Ethereum aren’t securities due to the lack of a central governing organization controlling them.
The report also warns of nearly 80% of Bitcoin mining coming from just one country, China, stressing the risk that Bitcoin could become manipulated by a “single sovereign government.” Worse yet, Schwartz warns of a potential 51% attack on blockchain of the two top cryptocurrencies by market cap – a situation that opens the door to for potentially fraudulent transactions.
XRP, on the other hand, requires 80% of its validators across the network to continuously support a proposed change over a two-week period before it is ever applied.
The report states that Ripple only operates 10 of the 150 validators currently verifying transactions on the protocol today, and that each validator only gets one vote in support of any changes. The data suggests that Ripple is far less in control of the XRP cryptocurrency than the stronghold China has over the Bitcoin blockchain.
The most important reason XRP is “decentralized in nature,” according to Schwartz, is the fact that users on the XRP ledger select a Unique Node List (UNL) – a list of trusted validators chosen by the user. Since users are free to choose and even change their UNLs, the XRP ledger “is and always has been inherently decentralized.”
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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Colorado Department of Transportation, CDOT, Completely Offline After Ransomware Virus
Employees at the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) spent the second day offline today, while security officials — including the FBI — continue to investigate a ransomware virus that hijacked computer files and demanded payment in Bitcoin for their return.
According to Amy Ford, a CDOT spokeswoman, only employee computers running Windows and equipped with McAfee security software were impacted.
“No one is back online. What we’re doing is working offline. All our critical services are still online — cameras, variable message boards, CoTrip, alerts on traffic. They are running on separate systems,” Ford said. “The message I’m sharing [with employees] is CDOT operated for a long time without computers so we’ll use pen and paper.”
SamSam
The ordeal began on Wednesday morning when CDOT shut down more than 2,000 employee computers and began investigating the attack. The malicious code was a variant of ransomware called SamSam, according to Brandi Simmons of the Governor’s Office of Information Technology (OIT). Later in the day, in attempts to prevent further damage, McAfee, the security software used by the CDOT computers, provided a software patch to stop the execution of the ransomware.
“This ransomware virus was a variant and the state worked with its antivirus software provider to implement a fix today. The state has robust backup and security tools and has no intention of paying ransomware. Teams will continue to monitor the situation closely and will be working into the night,” said OIT chief technology officer David McCurdy in a statement.
The OIT, which reached out to the FBI for assistance, are still investigating the attack and have not paid a cent to attackers — nor do they plan to according to Simmons:
“No payments have been made or will be made. We are still investigating to see whether or not files were damaged or recovered,” she said in an email.
As noted, the ransomware was a variant of SamSam, which last made headlines in January after targeting the healthcare industry. It encrypted files and renamed them “I’m sorry,” according to a report by security firm TrendMicro. One hospital in Indiana, Hancock Health, paid ,000 to get its files back. To make things worse, a growing problem is that paying cyber-jackers in itself isn’t always easy— sometimes other hackers hijack the ransom payments before they are received and redirect them into their own cryptocurrency wallets.
These remote hacks are becoming more and more common — just last week Elon Musk’s cloud was hacked. In this case, though, the cyber-attackers didn’t steal information: They used his computer system’s power to mine cryptocurrencies, deeming it more profitable than extracting files and demanding ransom.
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