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Bitcoiners Have Now Started To Run Their Own Nodes As Figures Peak

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The proverbial “Run your own node” has been preached throughout the Bitcoin literature and this has gained prominence yet again as the crypto-asset further advanced its rally.

According to the latest development, Bitcoin network statistics tracker, Coin Dance’s chart which revealed that there are 11.6k public nodes running on the network at the time of writing as opposed to 11.25k that was established almost a year back.

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Bitcoin has had a rough week but it did manage to position above a whopping $34k. Being the world’s premier cryptocurrency requires enormous amount of machinery needed to maintain this global infrastructure. This is where Bitcoin full nodes comes in.

Custody solutions by third-party providers of storage and security services for cryptocurrencies have been a contentious subject. Owing to this, several BTC users have now started to run their own nodes.

Running a Bitcoin node

There are several reasons to run a node which depend on a myriad of factors. On one hand, the BTC software developers utilize full nodes for the purpose of API access to the network. On the other hand, firms that develop applications for sending and receiving Bitcoin transactions often run several full nodes. So it all depends on a specific set of goals and motivations for the users.

One of the most crucial incentives is that full nodes don’t query third parties like centralized and SPV wallets. Hence, running a Bitcoin node and the very ethos of decentralization also goes hand in hand

For some, the motivation for running a full node is to make the BTC network more robust and as the figures increase, the network does become stronger than ever. This is primarily because, greater the number of full nodes that are used to verify transactions, the network not only becomes more decentralized but also becomes resistant to potential breaches in the future.

Notably, this area of the Bitcoin ecosystem hasn’t yet captured too much retail eye despite a linear growth in terms of its usage and has not been institutionalized or monetized.

Bitstamp Mandates KYC; Dutch Users Banned From Withdrawals Without KYC

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Cryptocurrencies were rolled out into the world in order to steer clear of the centralized institutions. Bitstamp seems to be complying with the laws imposed by these institutions as it recently mandated KYC for its users in the Netherlands.

Bitstamp Now Requires Users To Submit Photographic Proof

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies stood out as they were not affiliated with any centralized entity or financial institution. However, over the years, as popularity and the value of the crypto market surged, people started pouring their funds into it. This also lured in perpetrators who wanted to pocket quick money without working hard. To combat this, governments started scrutinizing the platforms that were part of the industry. Bitstamp was seen abiding by these laws put forth by the Dutch government.

In a recent tweet, a Twitter user, Bitcoin Marcus revealed that users of the prominent cryptocurrency exchange, Bitstamp were required to submit KYC related documents in order to carry out withdrawals. The tweet read,

The post stressed on the latest rules put forth by the financial regulators of the Netherlands. The exchange wrote,

“Due to new regulation regarding cryptocurrencies introduced by the Dutch government, we have made some changes to how cryptocurrency withdrawals work at Bitstamp. […] before you can withdraw crypto from Bitstamp to an outside address, you have to add that address to your whitelist and provide a photo that proves it really is your address.

Users can carry this out on the exchange’s web page. The exchange went on to enable the withdrawal whitelisting option starting from 15 January 2021.

These rules came about in November 2020 where the Dutch Central Bank mandated the verification process. The cryptocurrency exchange revealed that its Europe wing wanted to serve its users while upholding security.

Netherlands wasn’t the only country doing so as several others including the USA have started implying stricter laws against crypto.

Bitcoin Is Providing Fresh Opportunity For Buyers

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Bitcoin has been trading sideways which has slowed down the bullish momentum for the altcoins. Despite the struggle, the world’s largest crypto-asset has secured its support area and a major downside in the coming days appeared highly unlikely.

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According to the crypto-analytic platform Santiment’s latest chart, there could be signs of fresh buying action in the coming days. If the Bitcoin network realized profit/loss [NPL] is to be taken into account, we can see from the chart above that it underwent a strong dip recently which suggested that investors were realizing losses amid the panic sell-offs.

Whereas abrupt spikes in Bitcoin’s NPL metric has often surged during price rallies, signaling regular profit-taking and a healthy amount of investor fear about the crypto-asset’s short-term potential.

The latest trend of laying low could essentially mean that support has been formed at the current level and Bitcoin could see an upward swing in its price in the coming days even as sellers attempted to break it on multiple occasions. The cryptocurrency has also been seeing large rounds of buying activity in a bid to counter selling pressure coming from the large whales especially from crypto giants such as Coinbase and Binance.

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Bitcoin’s Buying Pressure Intact

Bitcoin currently exchanged hands at $36,286. The crypto-asset has enjoyed an impressive surge since the market crash of Black Thursday in mid 2020.

Following the recent market correction, the RSI noted a massive spike all the way to the overbought region followed by a lesser sharp reversal. Despite the fall, RSI was well-above the 50-median line. It is important to note that Bitcoin has managed to position itself above the buying zone since the first week of October.

The optimism in the space can be credited to the institutional investors who have flocked to the market en mass seeking a hedge against inflation as COVID wreaked havoc on the global economy. Even as Bitcoin’s rising demand pushed its market value by roughly 1,000% since the market crash, the upward momentum does not appear to be smooth. Here’s why

Despite its extended bull rally and swift breach of its new ATH above $42k, the resistance wall has jeopardized Bitcoin’s relief rally. According to a popular analyst, the crypto-asset’ss short-term upside potential faced strong rejection due to the high funding rates for leveraged positions. .

Bitcoin ETP Worth $200M By CoinShares Is All Set To Make Its Debut On SIX Swiss Exchange

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Bitcoin [BTC] has put the crypto industry on the top with its price change. The asset quadrupled and has insinuated a series of adoption. To facilitate and aid the growth of the king coin, several platforms have been onboarding new products as well as services. CoinShares, an asset manager based in the US was seen elevating the market with its latest venture.

Bitcoin ETP To Go Live On Swiss Stock Exchange

Bitcoin lovers were rejoicing as the king coin was seemingly making its way back to $40K. At the time of writing, BTC was trading for $37,331 with a 4.34% surge in the last 24-hours. The latest news about CoinShares launching a Bitcoin exchange-traded product [ETP], was a cherry on top. The asset manager affirmed that the Bitcoin ETP would go live on 19 January 2021 on the SIX Swiss Exchange. The product will reportedly be listed under BITC.

Speaking about CoinShares latest addition, Frank Spiteri, the Chief Revenue Officer of the company said,

“A lot of institutional clients have a very strong due-diligence process, and we wanted to bring to market a best-in-class product to embrace that demand. We are ready, as of January, to embrace the forthcoming demand from institutional clients.”

The custodians for this were reported to be, Coinshares, Ledger’s Komainu along with Nomura Holdings Inc. Furthermore, an expense ratio of 0.98% is said to be charged.

Several other platforms including the latest ETC Group of London rolled out a Bitcoin ETP on the Swiss Exchange.

Meltem Demirors, the Chief Strategy Officer at CoinShares shared a tweet congratulating the firm. In the tweet, she also revealed that the ETP was going to roll out with $200 million in AUM [assets under management]. Her tweet read,

“massive congrats to our [email protected] starting 2021 off with a bang […] our newest exchange traded product (ETP) line launches tomorrow w $200M in AUM”

Bitcoin Continues To Garner Endorsements From Former Govt Officials Across Canada And USA

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Bitcoin’s price change put the asset on top. As the world yearned for digitalization during the disastrous pandemic, cryptocurrencies especially Bitcoin was seen acquiring immense traction. As celebrities and even the average Joe steered towards the crypto industry, government officials did not hold back. The latest crypto rally seems to have insinuated a new chain of attention to the asset as the former Prime Minister of Canada recently spoke about the king coin in a recent interview.

Bitcoin A Potential Reserve Currency?

The financial sphere has been longing to replace the US dollar’s monopoly. The 22nd Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper pointed out that the lack of alternatives has been helping the USD stay on top. Appearing at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, the former prime minister revealed that a large alternative was required to overpower the dollar and the Euro as well as the Chinese currency, yuan. However, both these have their own drawbacks, he added.

He went on to suggest that Gold, Bitcoin along with Central Bank Digital Currencies [CBDC] could replace the dollar as the world’s major reserve currency. He detailed,

“I think you’ll see the number of things that people use as reserves will expand, but the U.S. dollar will still be the bulk of it.”

The Bitcoin Bubble narrative has been surfing around the world. While some have been saying “Buy the dip”, a few others are sticking to the anecdote that Bitcoin was a bubble that was going break anytime soon. Steering towards the United States of America, Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury Secretary recently appeared in Bloomberg’s interview and suggested that Bitcoin was here to stay.

He said,

“I don’t think that the whole thing is going to collapse. I think that having run up and then run way down, and then move back, it looks much more resilient, and therefore I think people are going to move towards it, and as people move towards it, given the finiteness of its supply, that’s going to be a factor working to raise prices.”

While the endorsements for the king coin kept coming in, it staggered at $35K and didn’t seem to leave that zone.

Bitcoin Futures Open Interest Skyrockets To $13B; CME Tops Chart

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Bitcoin continued to break new records as it oscillated back and forth a little below $40k. Following the price recovery in the spot market, optimism was also noted across the derivatives sector.

According to the latest stats compiled by Skew Analytics’ data dashboard, aggregated open interest [OI] in Bitcoin futures across the 12 biggest cryptocurrency exchanges surpassed a whopping $13 billion.

With this, OI hit a fresh ATH yet again on the 14th of January as interest in the market continued to soar high.

CME Tops The Chart For Bitcoin Futures OI

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Out of the total OI figure, CME Group’s bitcoin futures accounted for $2.39 billion as the platform continued to soar in popularity as more institutional investors flock to the sector.

CME was followed by OKEx with $2.08 billion, Binance with $2.05, and Huobi with $1.04 billion. The once leading derivatives giant BitMEX was in the 8th position on the Skew charts amassing an OI of $0.88 billion.

Unlike CME which went on to become the largest market for Bitcoin Futures, ICE’s crypto venture, Bakkt has been laying low in terms of the OI numbers recording a mere $0.05 billion on the same day.

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The latest news comes after a large liquidation event following the biggest price dump of the year. Despite more than $1 billion buy liquidation, the appetite of the futures contract trades appeared to be bullish as depicted by the OI figures. It was clear that the impact of the recent liquidations was in no match for the bullish outlook among the market participants.

Optimism From Professional Traders: Strong Bullish Projection For Bitcoin

The above charts also evidenced more and more inflow of money into the market, as traders expect a near-term rise in the crypto-asset’s volatility which was indeed a positive development for its spot price. Noting the rising optimism, prominent analyst Joseph Young tweeted,

“Bitcoin futures open interest is back to an all-time high once again. Open interest = the sum of all futures contracts in the market. When the market crowded, massive price swings like the Jan. 12 20% drop become more likely. Another flush drop above $42k could happen again.”

Coinbase’s Latest Initiative To Spruce Up Listing Process

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The growth in popularity of cryptocurrencies has been forcing crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, and several others to keep up with the demand. While exchanges are venturing into new markets across the globe, a few others have been onboarding different fiat as well as crypto. Recently, Huobi Global revealed that the Russian ruble was the latest fiat currency to enter their platform. Now, Coinbase seems to be steering people’s attention away from the constant outages to its latest initiative.

Coinbase Rolls Out Asset Hub

The San Francisco-based exchange managed to stay relevant throughout the year, with several developments, but the constant outages it faced during Bitcoin’s most volatile stages, caused a commotion. However, the platform is out and about with its latest initiative. Coinbase in a recent blog post announced the launch of Asset Hub. With this program, issuers will be able to list their currencies on to the exchange in a much easier way.

While the platform already entails over 40 cryptocurrencies and 90 cryptocurrencies on Coinbase Custody, with its latest platform, the exchange hopes to onboard more assets.

The Chief Product Officer of the crypto exchange, Surojit Chatterjee further wrote,

“It’s important for issuers to know we want to work with them and that our door is open. With that in mind, we are excited to introduce Coinbase Asset Hub — a simple, streamlined product for issuers to list their assets and do business with Coinbase.”

Retaining the goal to offer a single interface at the platform, it intends to allow issuers to accomplish the full lifecycle of their assets. Furthermore, the exchange reportedly aspires to aid its 35 million verified user base in gaining access to an array of cryptocurrencies.

Listing an asset on Coinbase was considered immensely beneficial. DeFi platform, Compound’s COMP token is a substantial example. Despite the fact that the token had a steep fall, the initial growth or boost the token got from the listing stood out to the community.

Gemini Follows Coinbase’s Trail; Winklevoss Twins Affirm Going Public Is An Option

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The cryptocurrencies paved the way for an array of benefits to people. Crypto exchanges like, Gemini, Coinbase, Bitfinex, and many more made immense profit over the years while generating jobs for several. Now, while the crypto industry is worth $1 trillion, the globe is taking interest in it. As the demand for exchanges has been surging amidst this highly volatile period of crypto, prominent digital asset platform, Gemini revealed that it was considering going public.

Gemini Considers Going Public

Recently, Bloomberg reported that the Winklevoss twins, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss were contemplating taking their crypto platform, Gemini public. The duo was reportedly yearning to take the Gemini Trust Co. public either by signing a merger with a special-purpose acquisition firm or via an initial public offering [IPO].  Speaking about the same, Cameron Winklevoss said,

“We are definitely considering it and making sure that we have that option. We are watching the market and we are also having internal discussions on whether it makes sense for us at this point in time. We are certainly open to it.”

It wasn’t long ago that Coinbase revealed it was prepping to go public. The exchange even wanted banking giant, Goldman Sachs to spearhead its IPO.

The Winklevoss twins have been widely endorsing Bitcoin for several years now. While people have been cribbing about the king coin’s volatility, the founders of Gemini revealed that they were HODLers. Cameron Winklevoss said,

“We are very much ‘hodlers’ at this price. We have a lot of exposure as it is, so we are not actively looking to increase our position.”

While this news surfed the crypto industry, Gemini made an announcement regarding the launch of the Gemini Credit Card. The card will reportedly allow users to garner crypto rewards on everyday purchases. Users would have to join the waitlist to bag one of these credit cards after which users would be able to acquire up to 3% back in Bitcoin as well as other crypto-assets.

Tim Draper, Winklevoss Twins, Matthew Roszak Bag Big Gains During Bitcoin Rally

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Bitcoin’s upward trajectory was lauded by many. The king coin seeped through the bears and got onto the bulls for a long ride ahead. This crypto rally proved to be beneficial for many. While some just started investing in the industry, the ones who had bagged the asset when it was worth a pittance, seem to have been making tremendous profits. The ongoing bull run seems to have birthed new billionaires in the crypto-verse. 

Bitcoin’s Latest Billionaires

Institutional investors poured in huge funds into the asset and pushed its price to a new high. In a recent list, curated by Forbes, several prominent figures of the crypto-industry were the most significant victors of the recent bull run. The list was topped by the Winklevoss twins who have been in the industry for quite a while now with their cryptocurrency exchange, Gemini. Steering away from Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, the duo decided to invest in Bitcoin and reportedly hoard over $1.4 billion in virtual assets. Cameron Winklevoss even went on to take a dig at Facebook after Bitcoin overhauled the formers market cap. His tweet read,

“#Bitcoin has surpassed Facebook $FB in market cap. Makes sense that a money network would be more valuable than a social network.”

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Matthew Roszak, the co-founder of Bloq stood second as his crypto net worth was about $1.2 billion. Last year, Roszak had about $300 million, however, the latest Bitcoin rally aided his journey on becoming a Bitcoin billionaire. Venture Capitalist, Tim Draper wasn’t far off as his crypto net worth was noted at $1.1 billion. Draper has time and again expressed his interest in Bitcoin. He even predicted that the king coin could go to $250K by the end of 2022. He tweeted,

Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin along with Mike Novogratz as well as Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy also made it to the list as millionaires.

Bitcoin, however, seems to be on a downtrend. The asset fell from a high of $40K, all the way down to $30K. At press time, The king coin was trading for $34,255.50 with a 2.88% dip in the last 24-hours.

PayPal Sees $242 Million In Crypto Trading Volumes As Retail Interest Spikes

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Paypal’s cryptocurrency transaction trading volume just hit a new all-time high of a whopping $242 million. Interestingly, this coincided with Bitcoin’s short-lived but biggest dip of the year so far all the way to $30.5K in a weekend dump. As noted by many industry experts, the dip was crucial and healthy which strengthened the said level as a crucial support threshold for the crypto-asset’s price in the coming days.

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PayPal’s Record-breaking Numbers Imply Retail Adoption?

The payment giant’s surge to the record level essentially signaled the arrival of the retail players in the market who were left out in the bull run that was mainly led by the institutional investors.

The latest plunge thus gave the retail investors yet another chance to stack Bitcoins who rushed PayPal to join the bandwagon. According to the stats, Bitcoin continued to remain the leader, whereas Ethereum followed suit and was the second choice by retail.

A similar sentiment was noted by the popular crypto trader, Alex Saunders who tweeted,

“Retail has arrived. PayPal cleared $242M in crypto sales yesterday. That’s nearly double the previous record.”

The figure was accessed through Paxos’ itBit exchange which PayPal uses to source liquidity. PayPal selected the platform to handle its crypto transactions upon launching digital asset trading services back in October 2020.

Thanks to the ongoing bull run, the crypto business has been booming to levels not seen in a long time. Prior to the current volume, the previous high for the exchange was found to be at $128 million volume on the 6th of January.

PayPal announced the launch of crypto service last year after witnessing the demand for the sector heating up among the traditional finance circles. It is important to note that this development was seen as an important event for the ecosystem which woke Bitcoin, and the cryptocurrency market by extension, from a deep slumber of price inaction.

Several well-known proponent had gone on to remark that the phase potentially bolstered the first stage of the 2020 bull run. The American fintech player’s crypto business had recently noted that it would further plan to let customers leverage cryptocurrencies to pay for items from its network of a massive 26 million retailers.