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April 19, 2024 Coin Telegraph

XRP jumps then dumps on faked BlackRock XRP trust filing

November 14, 2023 Coin Telegraph

blackrock

XRP’s price surge was short-lived and has almost returned to its original price.

A BlackRock filing suggesting the asset manager was creating an XRP (XRP) exchange-traded product caused a 12% spike in XRP, which it quickly lost after the filing was confirmed as fake.

The saga lasted an hour late on Nov. 14 as X (Twitter) users picked up on a Delaware filing showing BlackRock filed to register the “iShares XRP Trust” — a precursor to launching an exchange-traded fund (ETF).

XRP gained 12%, spiking to $0.73 within 30 minutes of the news of the filing. However, it lost all its gains in half an hour after it was confirmed a fake by Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, who spoke with BlackRock.

*XRP's price spike Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro*

Balchunas speculated someone listed the XRP trust on the Delaware list of corporations website by impersonating BlackRock managing director Daniel Schwieger.

This is false! Confirmed by BlackRock by me. Some whacko must have added using BlackRock executive name etc. Cmon man. pic.twitter.com/cDpnycYwjQ
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) November 13, 2023

Bitcoin Magazine analyst Dylan LeClair was one of the first to initially break the news. Balchunas and The Block also shared news of the listing on X in now-deleted pos.

BlackRock signaled its intention to expand beyond Bitcoin with its ETF aspirations after the firm filed for a spot Ether ETF on Nov. 9.

In light of the faked listing, Seyffart iterated that the spot Ether ETF is real as it was officially confirmed via a 19b-4 submission by Nasdaq to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Lot of people now asking if the Ethereum trust filing was real after seeing the XRP trust was fake.

YES. The ishares #Ethereum trust filing is real and was confirmed via 19b-4 filing on Thursday. Only the XRP trust filing was fake. https://t.co/Lqhj8p91NO
— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) November 13, 2023

Magazine: Crypto regulation: Does SEC Chair Gary Gensler have the final say?

Bitcoiner drops BitVM paper — bringing Ethereum-like contracts to Bitcoin

October 10, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Adam Back

The author of the white paper, Robin Linus, based BitVM’s architecture on Ethereum’s optimistic rollups with fraud proofs and recent Merkle tree developments.

A Bitcoin developer has proposed a new way to bring more expressive off-chain smart contracts to Bitcoin (BTC) without needing a soft fork.

Announced in an Oct.9 white paper titled “BitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin” by ZeroSync’s project lead Robin Linus, BitVM enables Turing-complete Bitcoin contracts without altering Bitcoin’s consensus rules.

"Any computable function can be verified on Bitcoin"https://t.co/Itf9UHos0C pic.twitter.com/CLQv49Ydsg
— яobin linus (@robin_linus) October 9, 2023

A Turing Complete system is one which can theoretically provide an answer to any computational problem.

With BitVM, the “logic” of Bitcoin contracts would be executed off-chain but verification would be made on Bitcoin — similar to Ethereum’s optimistic rollups.

BitVM’s architecture is based on fraud proofs and a challenge-response model where a “prover” can make claims and a “verifier” can perform a fraud-proof to punish the prover when false claims are made.

Linus explained that Bitcoin, in its current form, is limited to basic operations, such as signatures, timelocks, and hashlocks — but that can now be broadened with BitVM, which Linus says can compute a host of interesting applications.

“Potential applications include games like Chess, Go, or Poker, and particularly, verification of validity proofs in Bitcoin contracts.”

“Additionally, it might be possible to bridge BTC to foreign chains, build a prediction market, or emulate novel opcodes,” said Linus.

Linus said a limitation of the model is that it is limited to a two-party setting with a prover and a verifier and that a significant amount of off-chain computation and communication is needed to execute programs.

Linus said the next “milestone” is to fully implement the BitVM in addition to Tree++ — a high-level programming language to write and debug Bitcoin contracts.

BitVM is enabled by the Taproot soft fork which took place in November 2021.

Linus cited Ethereum research into optimistic rollups and a study on Merkle Trees in contributing to the eight-page white paper.

Bitcoiners respond to BitVM

Prominent Bitcoiner Eric Wall posted on X (Twitter) that the concepts outlined in the BitVM white paper “check out” and is “cautiously excited” to see what real-world experiments stem from it.

Bitcoin analyst Dylan LeClair is also impressed with BitVM’s white paper. But Adam Back, a Bitcoin Core contributor suggested that people shouldn’t get too excited about the development just yet.

for people getting (over) excited, this is cool but effectively a generalization of a two-party game - it says right in the abstract - so it's a bit like Greg Maxwell's 2016 ZKP contingent payments implemented example https://t.co/OeHRsbFjud
— Adam Back (@adam3us) October 9, 2023

One builder in the blockchain space, “dotta,” noted that there is already a proof-of-concept on GitHub.

Another X user, Sam Parker, attempted to resolve a common fear among Bitcoin maximalists by explaining that BitVM won’t force Bitcoin’s to be “locked” into these contracts.

“Finally, this is opt-in. If you don’t trust your coins being locked to some Turing complete contract (totally reasonable) then don’t lock them to a Turing complete smart contract. One of [the] beauties of the UTXO system is security sandboxing.”

Others, such as “psage” say BitVM adds to the list of things that will push Bitcoin’s price forward in the next bull market.

The bullish stuff around #Bitcoin is snowballing, lots of them controversial, nevertheless a few off my finger tips:
- BitVM
- Ordinals
- Multiple Pres Candidates talking about it
- ETF
- Halving
- Privacy improvements
- Exponential Hash Rate increase
- Countries mining
....
— psage (@perspiringsage) October 9, 2023

Cointelegraph contacted Linus for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

Magazine: Wolf Of All Streets worries about a world where Bitcoin hits $1M: Hall of Flame

Bitcoin miner Marathon mines invalid block in failed ‘experiment’

September 27, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Block

Marathon said the bug emanated from its experimental mining pool used to research ways to optimize operations.

Bitcoin mining firm Marathon Digital has confirmed it mined an invalid Bitcoin (BTC) block during an “experiment” aimed at optimizing the firm’s operations.

In a Sept. 27 post, Marathon said it utilizes a small percentage of the firm’s hashrate toward these experiments and stressed they weren’t trying to alter the network in any way:

“In no way was this experiment an attempt to alter Bitcoin Core in any way.” Marathon said, emphasizing that they corrected the error as soon as they noticed the invalid block.

We can confirm that Marathon did mine an invalid block. We utilize a small portion of our hash rate to experiment with our development pool and research potential methods to optimize our operations. The error was the result of an unanticipated bug that came from one of our…
— Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) (@MarathonDH) September 27, 2023

Marathon said the bug, which emanated from the firm’s internal development environment, wasn’t related to Marathon’s Bitcoin production pool or Bitcoin Core — the leading software used to connect to the Bitcoin network and run a node.

The incident occurred on Sept. 26 at 9:42 pm UTC on block 809478, according to mempool.space.

Several Bitcoin developers, along with BitMEX Research attributed the invalid block to a “transaction ordering issue.” Bitcoin developer “mononaut” believes Marathon mistake came from resorting the transactions in order of ascending absolute fees.

This is what MARA's invalid block at 809478 looks like:

- pink transactions no longer exist in the main chain
- blue transactions are invalid due to ordering (they spend an output from a transaction included later in the block) https://t.co/SJI1azOB5Z pic.twitter.com/5gY9TRA2eG
— mononaut (@mononautical) September 27, 2023

Bitcoin analyst Dylan LeClair suggested that Marathon should have conducted this experiment on a testnet before attempting it on Bitcoin’s mainnet.

In reflection, Marathon said Bitcoin “functioned exactly as designed” by excluding the invalid block:

“This incident, while unintended, underscores the robust security of the Bitcoin network, which rejected and rectified the anomaly.”

Cointelegraph reached out to Marathon for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

Marathon’s (MARA) share price fell 2.91% to $8.01 during opening hours on Sept. 27, according to Google Finance.

Magazine: ‘Elegant and ass-backward’: Jameson Lopp’s first impression of Bitcoin

‘The Great Accumulation’ of Bitcoin has begun, says Gemini’s Winklevoss

June 22, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Anthony Pompliano

With spot Bitcoin ETFs filings helping boost the price of Bitcoin, some suggest the “window to front-run institutional demand is closing.”

Recently renewed optimism for an approved Bitcoin (BTC) spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) is igniting “The Great Accumulation Race” for Bitcoin, according to industry pundits.

Over the past week, Fidelity, Invesco, Wisdom Tree and Valkyrie have followed investment giant BlackRock in applying for a Bitcoin spot ETF with the United States Securities Exchange Commission, which some analysts believe is the reason for Bitcoin’s 19% price surge to $30,240 since June 16.

5 Bitcoin ETF applications in 5 days!
- Blackrock
- Fidelity
- Invesco
- Wisdom Tree
- Valkyrie
— Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) June 21, 2023

Cameron Winklevoss, the co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, stated on June 21 that he believe“The Great Accumulation” of Bitcoin has begun between institutions and retail investors.

He suggested that buying Bitcoin prior to the ETFs hitting the public market is akin to that of a pre-Initial Public Offering purchase and suggested that the “floodgates” for buying Bitcoin are “closing fast.”

The Great Accumulation of bitcoin has begun. Anyone watching the flurry of ETF filings understands the window to purchase pre-IPO bitcoin before ETFs go live and open the floodgates is closing fast. If bitcoin was the most obvious and best investment of the previous decade, this…
— Cameron Winklevoss (@cameron) June 21, 2023

MicroStrategy Chair Michael Saylor weighed in on the subject in his own post, suggesting that retail investors may soon be pushed aside by increasing institutional demand:

“The window to front-run institutional demand for Bitcoin is closing.”

Bitcoin is currently trading hands for $30,240, while the Crypto Fear and Greed index has skyrocketed from 49 (Neutral) to 65 (Greed) in just the last two days.

*Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index at 65 as of June 22. Source: Alternative.me*

In a June 21 interview with CNBC, Bitcoin investor Anthony Pompliano said he expects a tug-of-war to play out between retail investors and Wall Street:

“We have institutions and individuals scrambling to try to get their share of the 21 million Bitcoin that will ever be in existence. The retail investor for 15 years now has a head start and has accumulated all the Bitcoin that’s been mined and put into circulation, but 68% of that hasn’t moved in a year.”

“People forget that bitcoin went from $0 to nearly $1 trillion market cap with almost no institutional participation,” said Pompliano in a June 21 Twitter post.

So when “Wall Street and BlackRock show up to the market,” Pompliano expects Bitcoin to become “highly illiquid” because retailers “don’t want to sell to Wall Street,” he added during the CNBC interview.

BlackRock shows up and bitcoin is up 20% for the week.

People forget that bitcoin went from $0 to nearly $1 trillion market cap with almost no institutional participation.

If retail investors were good for $1T, what do you think happens when the deep pockets come play?
— Pomp (@APompliano) June 21, 2023

Meanwhile, Dylan LeClair, a Bitcoin analyst and founder of 21st Paradigm explained that Bitcoin’s price is now “extremely inelastic” — “more so than ever” — amid the recent ETF filings, which are serving as a “catalyst” for large amounts of new flows into the market.

However, LeClair predicts that no ETF application will be approved by the SEC until January or February 2024 at the earliest.

Bitcoin's supply is extremely inelastic, more so than ever currently.

A spot ETF is obviously a catalyst for a large amount of new flows to come into the market, which not only has changed the narrative but has prompted others to front run said future flows.

TLDR: Send it. pic.twitter.com/Jd8Gm8o3Mx
— Dylan LeClair (@DylanLeClair_) June 21, 2023

Magazine: Hall of Flame: William Clemente III tips Bitcoin will hit six figures toward end of 2024

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao denies rumors of selling Bitcoin to bolster BNB

June 14, 2023 Coin Telegraph

bnb

While several theories emerged, the Binance CEO asserted that no BTC or BNB trading activity is happening behind the scenes.

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has refuted accusations that Binance has been secretly selling Bitcoin (BTC) to artificially stabilize the price of its native token Binance Coin (BNB).

The rumors have come from several market commentators, including analyst Dylan LeClair and Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten, who have accused Binance of intentionally manipulating the market to artificially inflate the value of BNB.

In a June 13 tweet, CZ said that Binance had not sold any of their BTC or BNB, adding that the crypto exchange still held “a bag” of FTX Token (FTT) — the native token of the now-defunct crypto exchange FTX.

4. Binance have not sold BTC or BNB. We even still have a bag of FTT.

It is amazing they can know exactly who sold based on just a price chart involving millions of traders. FUD. ‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/M3MUH2bFRE
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) June 13, 2023

“It is amazing they can know exactly who sold based on just a price chart involving millions of traders. FUD,” he added.

CZ’s post was direct response to a June 14 post from technical analysis platform Skew, which accused Binance of manipulating the market through a series of trades involving BTC, BNB and Tether (USDT):

“Binance is definitely up to something here to prevent BNB from crashing as well as BTC.”

In the same thread, Bitcoin analyst Dylan LeClair claimed that “BNB is clearly a fake market” which is trading with less realized volume than BTC.

In a June 13 tweet, Cory Klippsten, the CEO of Swan Bitcoin also alleged that Binance was engaging in “wash trading,” and claimed that Binance is “trying to pretend” there’s support for BNB:

Wash trading like craaaaaazzzzyyyyy on Binance right now trying to pretend there’s support for BNB. This looks sooooooo bad for CZ.https://t.co/qCHjQCSXwD
— Cory Klippsten ️ Swan.com #Bitcoin (@coryklippsten) June 12, 2023

Wash trading is a market manipulation tactic where a trader sells an asset and then buys it shortly after to inflate its demand or make it look like there's more activity in the marketplace.

Analyst Joe Consorti from The Bitcoin Layer also described BNB’s price action as “unusual” with the “$220 level” being “staunchly defended.” He suggested that it may be a liquidation level for a BNB-collateralized loan.

Unusual price action on Binance.

Loads of selling pressure on bitcoin not present on other exchanges.

More cannon fodder that they may be selling spot BTC to prop up BNB.

The $220 level is being staunchly defended — may be a liquidation level for a BNB-collateralized loan. https://t.co/EYfLJ1KIcX pic.twitter.com/7XGNLlzcpf
— Joe Consorti ⚡ (@JoeConsorti) June 13, 2023

In response to CZ’s post, Consorti asserted that Binance should publish an audited statement proving that Binance has no BNB-collateralized liabilities in order for the “FUD” to end.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission sued Binance.US on June 5 for allegedly breaking securities laws in addition to engaging in wash trading through its “primary undisclosed ‘market making’ trading firm Sigma Chain,” which is owned by CZ.

CZ and Binance.US have denied any wrongdoing and intend on “vigorously” defending the charges laid against them in the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C.

Magazine: US and China try to crush Binance, SBF’s $40M bribe claim: Asia Express