Blockstream CEO and Bitcoin (BTC) advocate Adam Back says that the flagship crypto asset can explode to a $200 trillion market cap in the next nine years, meaning a price tag of about $10 million per coin. In a tweet thread, Back says that based on historical performance, BTC is still on track to continue […]
The post Adam Back Says Bitcoin Could Explode to $200,000,000,000,000 Market Cap by 2032 – Here’s Why appeared first on The Daily Hodl.
Members of the crypto community have been discussing the number of bitcoins that have been bridged over to the Avalanche network, which is now larger than the total value locked on the Lightning Network. At the time of writing, there are 5,493 bitcoins circulating on the Avalanche blockchain, while the Lightning Network holds 5,248 bitcoins. […]
Is the U.S. investment bank looking to buy up distressed crypto firms amid the bear market?
One of the oldest pieces of contrarian investment wisdom is to buy when there is blood in the streets. If it were that easy, crypto investors would be euphoric at all the buy opportunities right now. If you’re rattled by the bear market, which has been especially brutal even by crypto standards, don’t beat yourself up over it. Cryptocurrency is still an unproven asset class that operates in the shadow of regulators. I don’t blame you for not buying an asset class that’s down over 70% this year.
With those caveats in mind, a quiet herd of smart money investors believes that now is the best time to invest in Bitcoin (BTC), digital assets and crypto infrastructure companies — even after the monumental collapse of FTX. Although nothing is confirmed yet, United States investment giant Goldman Sachs is also signaling that crypto is evenly priced after the year-long bear market.
This week’s Crypto Biz explores Goldman’s intrigue with crypto, a new cold wallet design from Ledger, Blockstream’s plunging valuation amid the bear market and the latest news surrounding Three Arrows Capital.
Goldman Sachs’ embrace of crypto appears to be growing, even during the bear market, as the U.S. investment behemoth looks poised to acquire distressed firms in the wake of FTX’s collapse. In an interview with Reuters, Goldman executive Mathew McDermott said crypto companies are “priced more sensibly” today than they were over a year ago and that calls to regulate the industry will ultimately be a positive catalyst for adoption. Although FTX has become the “poster child” for crypto, and not in a good way, the underlying technology behind the industry “continues to perform,” McDermott said.
The collapse of centralized platforms has been a boon for Ledger, the hardware company known for providing cold-storage crypto devices. After an influx of new orders for its Ledger Nano devices, the hardware company announced this week that it has partnered with Tony Fadell, the inventor of the iPod Classic, to design its newest wallet device. The new wallet, known as Ledger Stax, is said to be about the size of a credit card and features a large E Ink display, wireless charging and Bluetooth support. Remember: Not your keys, not your Bitcoin.
Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream is reportedly looking to raise fresh financing — but it, too, acknowledges that won’t be easy during a bear market. The Adam Back-led company is prepared to raise capital at a valuation of less than $1 billion, which is 70% below its $3.2 billion valuation in August 2021. According to Back, the additional financing will go toward scaling the company’s mining capacity. As Cointelegraph reported, Blockstream is working with Jack Dorsey’s Block to develop a solar-powered Bitcoin mining facility in Texas.
The disgraced founders of Three Arrows Capital, Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, will be required to give up financial information related to their failed hedge fund, a federal judge has decreed. The approved subpoenas to be delivered to the founders require that they give up any “recorded information, including books, documents, records, and papers” in their custody relating to 3AC’s financial affairs. Once valued at $10 billion, 3AC essentially blew up in the wake of Terra Luna’s infamous death spiral earlier this year. Arrogant as they once were, Zhu and Davies were exposed for a series of horrendous trades that eventually bankrupted their firm.
Bitcoin’s price has been fairly stable over the past few weeks, even as the FTX contagion continued to spread. The flagship digital asset scraped above $17,000 earlier this week, raising cautious optimism that the worst of the market downturn has passed. In this week’s Market Report, I sat down with Marcel Pechman and Joe Hall to discuss whether BTC can expect a relief rally soon. I also broke down the so-called “Santa Claus” rally, which many expect to play out later this month. You can watch the full replay below.
Crypto Biz is your weekly pulse of the business behind blockchain and crypto delivered directly to your inbox every Thursday.
CEO Adam Back said the fresh funding will be invested into expanding the firm’s mining capacity.
The depths of a bear market may not be the best time to raise funds but that is exactly what Blockstream is doing.
The crypto infrastructure firm is seeking fresh funding, but at a much lower valuation than previous rounds, according to a Dec. 7 Bloomberg report.
Blockstream was valued at $3.2 billion when it held its last Series B funding round raising $210 million in August 2021. Today that valuation may have fallen almost 70% to below $1 billion according to the report.
The company, founded in 2014, has raised a total of $299 million in funding over four rounds, according to CrunchBase.
Blockstream CEO and cryptographer Adam Back did not share details of the latest funding round but did reveal that the capital will be invested into expanding the firm’s mining capacity.
“We rapidly sold out all of the capacity and have a big backlog of existing and new customers with miners seeking large-scale hosting with us.”
The firm is working with Jack Dorsey’s Block (formerly Square) to develop a solar-powered Bitcoin mining facility. The mining farm will have 3.8 megawatts (MW) of electrical capacity using Tesla’s solar technology and its Lithium-ion 12 MWh ‘Megapack’, as reported by Cointelegraph in April.
Back acknowledged that BTC prices and mining profi tability were down but added “hosting rates have risen over the last quarters and our mining services are a rapidly expanding, high-margin enterprise business for us.”
Bitcoin miners are currently suffering a triple whammy of high hash rates and difficulty, high energy prices, and low BTC prices. This has caused profitability, or hash price, to fall to near-record lows of around $0.064 per TH/s per day, according to Hashrate Index.
Related: Blockstream CEO Adam Back talks Bitcoin over a game of Jenga
In its monthly newsletter on Dec. 5, Blockstream revealed that its Blockstream Mining Note (BMN) token has earned around 5.37 BTC cumulatively in returns nearly halfway into its three-year term.
BMN is an EU-compliant security token that provides qualified investors access to Bitcoin hash rate at the firm’s U.S. enterprise-grade mining.
The firm has also been promoting a new limited edition ‘Jade Transparent’ hardware wallet claiming that it is “hodling our Bitcoin into the 2090s and beyond.”
Back was one of the few people cited in the original Bitcoin whitepaper.
Ever since his childhood years, Adam Back, now CEO of Blockstream, would spend his time fidgeting with programming code to look for encryption keys embedded in the software. Born in 1970, the London native completed his A-levels in mathematics, physics, and economics before focusing on computing science and earning a Ph.D. from the University of Exeter. Having devoted his career to applied cryptography, Back invented HashCash in 1997, a proof-of-work system used to limit email spam and denial-of-service attacks that later became more renowned for its use in Bitcoin. In fact, Back was one of the few people to be cited in the original Bitcoin whitepaper.
Nowadays, Back manages his digital asset custody firm Blockstream based in Victoria, Canada, which raised $210 million in a Series B round last August. During an interview with Cointelegraph reporter Joe Hall, Back explained what fascinated him so much about Bitcoin at first was its fertile ground for a lot of applied research and development. "It covers lots of interlayer topics or people, like mathematics, computer science, and programming," he said.
When asked what advice he could give to the new generation of Gen Zs and Boomers approaching Bitcoin alike, Back suggested first getting to know the people in the industry. "I think the good way to get involved is to sort of try to contribute to something as a volunteer, as you learn things when you get to interact with people. You know there could be many different things to come across, like user interface, documentation, or educational materials."
The 52-year-old cryptographer is also exploring new physical boundaries for the use of Bitcoin, literally. For a few years now, Back has been operating the Blockstream Satellite Network, which broadcasts the entire Bitcoin blockchain around the world 24/7 through its leased satellites. "You could sync a node from scratch by the satellite; it will take a week or two," he said, continuing: "but it actually fetches all the history as well and reassembles it. And it's some pretty cool kind of tech in terms of error correction and redundancy." According to Blockstream, the setup can "protect against network interruptions" and "provide areas without reliable internet connections access to Bitcoin." Though, for the privilege of not needing internet to use Bitcoin, one would need a satellite kit in order to receive transmissions.
In an exclusive interview with Adam Back at Bitcoin Amsterdam, the co-founder of Blockstream shared his vision for the Bitcoin space.
Adam Back, the co-founder of Blockstream, took a timeout from the mainstage of Bitcoin Amsterdam, a three-day Bitcoin conference in the Netherlands, to talk with Cointelegraph.
Perched at a park table amidst tulips and bicycles, the man behind the Proof-of-Work algorithm challenged Cointelegraph to a game of Jenga and made a case for beaming Bitcoin into space. One of the few people to be cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper, (BTC) Back also discussed his childhood and his first interactions with computers. The video will soon be published on Cointelegraph's Youtube channel.
But why do we need the Bitcoin blockchain–a decentralized peer-to-peer network already secured by nodes on earth–in space? Do aliens need Bitcoin the way humans do? Back joked with Cointelegraph nonchalantly:
“Well, I mean, there are a few reasons [to having Bitcoin in space]. One because it’s cool, and you can.”
However, it also brings benefits such as privacy: “You can receive the data anonymously because it's broadcast, and basically nobody can tell you're receiving it. So that's good for privacy,” Back continued, moments before winning the game of Jenga.
Furthermore, having Bitcoin in space is also “Good for companies because they really need to make sure they're on the right blockchain. If there's a local network issue or if a router is hacked,” then the satellite Bitcoin connection ensures that companies can continue to transact and use the Bitcoin blockchain without hindrance.
Indeed, the news is awash with governments and groups intent on inhibiting access to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency-related activities; so having a connection to a satellite Bitcoin protocol is invaluable and enables greater censorship resistance.
For the global south, the argument for connecting and downloading the backlog of Bitcoin data in order to synchronize a node is the price. Whereas in the developed world, the cost of downloading and synching Bitcoin core could be negligible:
“For emerging markets, the cost of an Internet connection fast enough to keep up with Bitcoin is actually expensive compared to salaries.”
Back explained that you can sync a node at no cost in the developing world using Blockstream satellites. While the process is undoubtedly slower–taking a week or two to update–it means that the barrier to entry for participating in the Bitcoin protocol trends lower and lower.
Related: Adam Back Denies Having a Beer With Satoshi Nakamoto
Finally, Back is still very bullish on Bitcoin. In a tweet on Monday morning, the mathematician shared that Bitcoin will “conservatively” do a 10x in the next five years. That means the Bitcoin price would reach over $200,000 before 2027.
The launch of El Salvador’s bitcoin bonds, issued to finance part of the construction of the Bitcoin City in the country, will be delayed again. In a recent interview Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Bitfinex, the exchange in which these bonds will be offered, stated that the law framework needed for the issuance of these digital […]
The chief executive officer of blockchain technology company Blockstream says people are better off using fiat currencies or stablecoins than holding central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Adam Back warns his 487,800 Twitter followers that CBDCs allow the powers that be to seize and control a person’s wealth. “Bitcoin is apolitical, bearer, unseizable money, and that […]
The post Central Bank Digital Currencies Worse Than Bank Accounts and Cash, Says Blocksteam CEO Adam Back – Here’s Why appeared first on The Daily Hodl.
In particular, ROAST has been posited as a signature standard that could work with, and improve, threshold signature schemes such as FROST (Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures).
The research unit of Bitcoin (BTC)-focused blockchain tech firm Blockstream has published a proposal for a new type of multisig standard called Robust Asynchronous Schnorr Threshold Signatures (ROAST).
It hopes to avoid the problem of transaction failures due to absent or even malicious signers and can work at scale.
The term multisig or multisignature, refers to a method of transaction in which two or more signatures are required to sign off before it can be executed. The standard is widely adopted in crypto.
According to a May 25 blog post from Blockstream research, the basic idea of ROAST is to make transactions between the Bitcoin network and Blockstream’s sidechain Liquid more efficient, automated, secure and private.
In particular, ROAST has been posited as a signature standard that could work with, and improve, threshold signature schemes such as FROST (Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures):
“ROAST is a simple wrapper around threshold signature schemes like FROST. It guarantees that a quorum of honest signers, e.g., the Liquid functionaries, can always obtain a valid signature even in the presence of disruptive signers when network connections have arbitrarily high latency.”
The researchers highlighted that while FROST can be an effective method for signing off on BTC transactions, its structure of coordinators and signers is designed to abort transactions in the presence of absent signers, making it secure but suboptimal for “automated signing software.”
To solve this problem, the researchers say that ROAST can guarantee enough reliable signers on each transaction to avoid any failures,and it can be done at a scale much larger than the 11-of-15 multisig standard that Blockstream primarily utilizes.
“Our empirical performance evaluation shows that ROAST scales well to large signer groups, e.g., a 67-of-100 setup with the coordinator and signers on different continents,” the post reads, adding that:
“Even with 33 malicious signers that try to block signing attempts (e.g. by sending invalid responses or by not responding at all), the 67 honest signers can successfully produce a signature within a few seconds.”
To provide a simple explanation of how ROAST works, the team used an analogy of democratic council responsible for legislation of “Frostland.”
Essentially, the argument is given that it can be complicated to get legislation (transactions) signed off in Frostland as there are a myriad of factors at any given time which can result in the majority of council members suddenly being unavailable or absent.
A procedure (ROAST) to counteract this, is for a council secretary to compile and maintain a large enough list of supporting council members (signers) at any given time, so that there is always enough members to get legislation through.
“If at least seven council members actually support the bill and behave honestly, then at any point in time, he knows that these seven members will eventually sign their currently assigned copy and be re-added to the secretary’s list.”
“Thus the secretary can always be sure that seven members will be on his list again at some point in the future, and so the signing procedure will not get stuck,” the post adds.
Related: ‘DeFi is not decentralized at all,’ says former Blockstream executive
ROAST is part of a collaboration between Blockstream researchers Tim Ruffing and Elliott Jin, Viktoria Ronge and Dominique Schröder from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and Jonas Schneider-Bensch from the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security.
Accompanying the blog post, the researchers also linked to a 13 page research paper which gives a run down of ROAST in greater detail.
The date of the launch of the Salvadoran bitcoin bonds, the instrument that would serve to build the announced Salvadoran Bitcoin City, is still unknown. Announced to be released earlier this year, the launch has been affected by the current war in Ukraine, and the deceleration of global markets. According to Treasury Minister Alejandro Zelaya, […]