The number of daily transactions on the Bitcoin network has fallen to a level not seen since August 2018.
According to The Block’s Data Dashboard, the seven-day moving average of daily bitcoin transactions dropped to 217,000 yesterday. The last time this number was so low was August 31, 2018.This drop in daily transactions comes as bitcoin’s price hovers around the $36,000 mark, down 44% from its recent high of $64,000. Speculation over the causes of the price drop have ranged from Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweets to a crackdown on bitcoin miners in China.
Other on-chain metrics have been impacted too. The number of daily active addresses on the Bitcoin network — also a seven-day moving average — has fallen to 940,000 as of yesterday, in line with levels last seen in May. The number of new addresses per day has also dropped to 372,000, back to March levels.source

Bitcoin has often been projected as the digital equivalent of gold as it acts as a store of value and inflation hedge quite similar to the functions associated with gold. However, if you ask any Bitcoin proponent about the parallels, most would say Bitcoin would rather displace gold and act as an independent asset class rather than digital gold. The recent data from Kaiko paints a similar picture as Bitcoin’s correlation with gold has reached a new 3-year low moving into negative territory.A negative correlation suggests the two asset classes would not follow the price pattern for each other while a positive correlation indicates the asset class would follow each other’s price movement. The negative correlation suggests Bitcoin and Gold are least co-related as an asset class.source

The warning comes as everything that could go wrong for Bitcoin is going wrong. This morning, Elon Musk posted a “heartbreak” tweet that coincided with a 3% fall on the hour. Bitcoin continues sliding as the morning wears on.
After Bitcoin’s 54% crash a little under a month ago, talk of a return to crypto winter dominates. With a death cross on the cards, does this mean the end of the bull market?read more

Son of legendary Beatle John Lennon, Bitcoiner Sean Ono Lennon, has taken to Twitter to point out another issue the world's flagship cryptocurrency can solve: "the missing underwear problem." Sean Lennon is a Bitcoin supporter. In November of last year, he tweeted that Bitcoin had given him more optimism about humanity and the future overall than anything else in 2020—what with the pandemic, massive FED dollar printing and more. Several commentators in the community have posted a GIF based on the South Park cartoon about gnomes stealing underpants (phase 1) and then earning profits (phase 3), with phase 2 missing. Nobody can explain exactly what it means, believing it somehow to explain the musician's tweet.source

Have you heard that the biggest name in crypto is also a media company now?

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said so himself. In a blog post this week, Armstrong declared that “every tech company should go direct to their audience, and become a media company.” Coinbase, Armstrong says, will now start posting fact checks in this “age of misinformation,” and aims to “publish the truth.”

Well then. Guess it's time for us at Decrypt to close our laptops and find something else to do. Maybe we can open a coffee shop or try goat herding. Or peddle shitcoins for a living. No need for the media if tech companies will kindly do our work for us, right?Information

During a recent interview with Bloomberg, Lars Rohde, the governor of Danmarks Nationalbank, took a few stabs at the cryptocurrency sector. Despite their recent growth and the total market capitalization’s 10x increase in a year, the central banker still remains skeptical by calling the industry “speculative fad.”
As with most of his colleagues, Rohde outlined the infamous volatility and lack of a central authority as the primary reason for his dismissal. Consequently, he noted that he is “tempted to ignore” BTC and the rest of the market.siurce

Tesla boss Elon Musk's tweets about cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are annoying their devotees and raising eyebrows among market watchers.

The saga started in February when Musk's company Tesla announced it would buy $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and later said it would accept the virtual currency as payment for its electric cars.

Binance and Coinbase are rivals in the cryptocurrency exchange business. But that doesn't mean Binance won't take a page from its competitor's playbook. According to Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, Coinbase’s direct listing on the Nasdaq last month gave other crypto companies a “very clear playbook” for the future.

"Now, in the U.S., in one of the world’s most advanced economies, a cryptocurrency exchange can IPO on the Nasdaq," CZ told Decrypt editor in chief Daniel Roberts during this year’s Ethereal Virtual Summit. "That's humongous.source