A former winner of the game show Deal or No Deal has been scammed out of his retirement savings after investing in bitcoin through an ad on Facebook.

According to a Daily Record report on Tuesday, Scottish retiree Graeme Garioch was defrauded of £30,000 (US$39,400) by a phony investment company.
The former railway worker, who appeared on Deal or No Deal in 2007, clicked on a Facebook ad from a company called OMC Markets.
Interested in investing ahead of his retirement, Garioch agreed to invest after speaking to a company representative who claimed they were in London but were actually based in Bulgaria, according to the report.
Garioch deposited a total of £29,000 (US$38,090) into a bitcoin wallet and signed a waiver denying him access to his funds for six months.
The scammers also convinced Garioch to give them access to his bank account, supposedly so they could make bitcoin trades on his behalf.
After doubling his money, Garioch tried to pull out his funds in March 2019 but was told he needed to pay a further £6000 (US$7,880) in fees, to which Garioch complied.
Shortly after Garioch's funds were completely drained and OMC Markets ignored Garioch's email requests demanding an explanation.
"Facebook needs to do more," Garioch said who was planning on buying a house with his investment earnings, "you cry inside."

XRP, Stellar (XLM) and Cardano (ADA) are three altcoins that have unique growth potential on the crypto market.

Ripple, which owns more than half of the total supply of XRP and uses the crypto asset for remittances, has a rich history in e-payments dating back to the days of Ripplepay.com, as an early competitor to PayPal.

In 2011, crypto-mogul Jed McCaleb (more on him later) joined Ripple, and XRP was launched two years after. Ripple’s network is centralized and non-distributed, and, technically, not a true blockchain. While it has some skeptics in the community, Ripple also has vast support from top financial institutions (e.g., AMEX, Santander) through RippleNet.

Stellar Lumens (XLM), meanwhile, was created by McCaleb in 2014 after jumping ship from Ripple. The open-sourced coin is more community-oriented and focused on targeting the unbanked, making it different from FI-friendly Ripple. Stellar boasts its speed, claiming it can handle over 1,000 transactions per second.

Finally, Cardano (ADA) is viewed as a third-generation crypto after its 2015 launch. Built by a global team of leading academics and engineers, Cardano’s goal is to learn from past cryptocurrency mistakes with a big commitment to scientific philosophy and research.

Total ETH Options Open Interest. Source: Skew.com

Typically, when a cryptocurrency sees a major price movement, the open interest drops. This is because large moves often lead to short and long squeezes on the asset which are then followed by a period of consolidation.

For Ether, however, the open interest has climbed to over $1.5 billion, according to data from Skew. Huobi and OKEx alone have $761 million worth of ETH futures contracts currently open.

What’s next after a two-year high
Buoyed by various factors, including DeFi, institutional adoption, and an overall improvement in market sentiment, Ether has surged 235% year-to-date. The Cryptowatch team said:

“Ethereum breaks up to a new 2-year high of $444. ETH is up 87% in the last 25-days, nearly 400% since its March low and 235% year-to-date.”

In the medium-term, traders expect the altcoin to test higher resistance levels, especially if the Ethereum blockchain continues to see high user activity with sentiment driven by ETH 2.0.

The CEO of Ripple has firmly criticized the Financial Times for saying his company was moving away from wholesale cross-border payments.

On Twitter late Thursday, CEO Brad Garlinghouse said, "Ripple has absolutely no plans to ‘reset’ our strategy" and that banks around the world were already using the XRP token as a cross-border payment solution.

The FT reported Thursday that Ripple was ditching its solely bank-focused strategy for a more diversified approach – a platform offering payment services for financial institutions and everyday consumers.

Quoting Garlinghouse, the FT said Ripple would use its XRP token hoard to create whole new use cases and become the "Amazon of the cryptocurrency world."

Ripple's primary aim has been its blockchain interbank settlement layer, which makes cross-border transactions cheaper and faster than traditional wire transfers. Clients can optionally convert fiat currencies into XRP.

But the FT said Ripple's biggest partner, the Spanish bank Santander, recently decided against using XRP for its cross-border solution, supposedly because it wasn't sufficiently traded in some of its key markets.

All eyes are on Bitcoin (BTC), crypto's largest coin by market cap, and Tesla, a future-centric car company run by eccentric billionaire Elon Musk, thanks to a standout year for both assets.

Tradable equity in Tesla, under the ticker TSLA, has captured more of the American public's attention than any other investable asset, according to July figures from financial charting platform TradingView, posted on Aug. 13. Bitcoin held the spotlight as the second most popular asset charted on the platform.

TradingView also pointed out that Bitcoin interest is on the rise specifically in Washington, California and Oregon. "The west coast loves crypto the most," the article said. "Boeing was the third most viewed stock and American Airlines the 10th," the article added, detailing the airline sector — an industry that saw the brunt of COVID-19 restriction consequences.

Bitcoin and Tesla earned their spots in the limelight as both have rallied tremendously in price over 2020. Bitcoin hit a low near $3,800 back in March as COVID-19 fears were ramping up. The asset recovered fast, however, flying up past $12,000 in the following months, tallying a radical comeback.

Looking back on a similar story, TSLA's price fell down near $350 in March before flying up past $1,750 by July, as if riding one of its CEO's SpaceX rockets. 

Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is no stranger to the crypto space, although he reportedly only owns 0.25 BTC as of May.

Bitcoin market analyst filbfilb reveals key similarities between now and late 2016 as bullish sentiment keeps building for BTC price.



Bitcoin (BTC) is repeating the bull run that sent it to $20,000, chart data shows as a new report says $10,000 was an “entry point” for investors.

In a tweet on Aug. 13, Cointelegraph analyst filbfilb highlighted clear similarities between the past few weeks for Bitcoin and its run to all-time highs in 2017.

BTC price 20-week moving average hits key position
The key metric, filbfilb said, is the interplay between BTC/USD spot price and its 20-week moving average.

At present, the relationship between the two is copying that from late 2016, laying the foundations for the bull run which delivered returns of over 3,000% within the year.

In comments, filbfilb added that 2020 was giving signs of being different to bullish phases that had come since, specifically the three-month run last year which topped out at $13,800.

Focusing on the near-term, however, fellow Cointelegraph analyst Michaël van de Poppe argued that a failure to retain $11,200 would result in a correction towards $10,000.

“$11,200 is the support area. If that’s lost, we’ll see more ranging and look for $10,500-10,700 first,” he commented on Thursday.

Filbfilb had previously told Telegram trading channel subscribers that reaching $11,600 would fuel a return to $12,000, but that this level would “unlikely” be cleared.

BTC/USD weekly chart with 20-week moving average highlighted

BTC/USD weekly chart with 20-week moving average highlighted. Source: filbfilb/ Twitter

OKEx: $10,000 “deemed reasonable entry point”
Zooming out, other sources were likewise bullish. In a report released today, the research arm of cryptocurrency exchange OKEx, OKEx Insight and with blockchain analytics company Catallact, said its technical investigations revealed definitive support for Bitcoin at $10,000.

“In light of these insights, it would appear that the March 2020 crash saw weak hands pushed out of the market, allowing it to gradually recover and reclaim $10,000 — which put most open positions today in the green,” researchers concluded.

“Moreover, the position buildup leading up to current levels (between $10K and $12K), coupled with the current mildness of profit-taking, indicates that these prices were deemed reasonable entry points by participants. It also indicates that those in profit are willing to hold their coins for larger gains in the future.”

OKEx added that the possibility of BTC/USD returning below $10,000 may now be over.

As Cointelegraph reported, a consensus is already building around institutions digging in at current price levels, fuelled by buys from Grayscale and MicroStrategy which vastly outpaced newly mined BTC.

Bitcoin’s recent price rally has shifted to a sideways meander, possibly taking cues from gold’s drop from record highs.



The cryptocurrency is trading in the general range of $11,600–$11,900 for the fourth straight day.
Meanwhile, the precious metal is trading near $1,988 at press time – down 4.2% from the record high of $2,075 reached on Friday.
Both assets have recently developed a relatively strong positive correlation.
As such, gold's decline may have applied the brakes to bitcoin’s rally from lows near $9,000



Gold (above right) rallied from $1,800 to $2,075 in the three weeks to Aug. 7.
Over the same period, bitcoin rose from $9,100 to a peak of $12,118.
As a result, the one-month correlation between the two assets has strengthened to a record high of 68.9%, as noted by data source Skew.
While the growing correlation validates the"store of value" narrative surrounding bitcoin, it also makes the cryptocurrency vulnerable to sell-offs in gold.
“Gold is feeling the pull of gravity with U.S. Treasury yields showing signs of life," Singapore-based QCP Capital said in its Telegram channel.
QCP noted that investors should keep a close eye on developments in bond yields and gold because they may have a bearing on bitcoin and ether prices.
The U.S. 10-year bond yield is hovering near 0.6% at press time, representing a 10 basis point gain from the recent low of 0.5%.
Gold, which does not provide a yield, may suffer deeper pullbacks and potentially push bitcoin lower if bond yields continue to rise.
Joel Kruger, a currency strategist at LMAX Digital, believes a potential sell-off in stock markets is a bigger risk to bitcoin's upward trajectory than pullbacks in gold.
"A turnaround in stocks could threaten bitcoin, given risk for extended stocks to reverse and the potential to see what we saw back in March," Kruger told CoinDesk in a Twitter conversation.
Global equities could come under pressure if the U.S. Congress remains deadlocked on additional coronavirus stimulus.
Also read: After Falling 65% This Year in Bitcoin Terms, Do ‘Stablecoins’ Need a Rebranding?

An Australian woman is facing more than two years in prison after stealing more than $300K in XRP tokens in January 2018.
 
A judge has sentenced Australian citizen Kathryn Nguyen to a maximum time of 2 years and 3 months in prison for her role in stealing more than 100,000 XRP tokens in January 2018.

According to an Aug. 11 report in Australian publication Information Age, Nguyen was sentenced over the theft of more than $300,000 in XRP two years ago. She was initially charged in Oct. 2018 and pled guilty to fraud charges the following August.

Chris Craigie, the judge presiding over Nguyen’s case, said it was a “difficult and troubling decision” to send her to prison. The Australian national will reportedly be eligible for parole in October 2021.

First Australian crypto fraud case
Nguyen was one of the first people to be charged with the theft of crypto assets in Australia.

In January 2018, she reportedly hacked into the email of a 56-year-old man with the same last name as her and stole all his XRP holdings before releasing control of the account two days later. This was at a time when the crypto asset was near its all-time high of $3.84.

Nguyen reportedly transferred the XRP holdings to a Chinese crypto exchange where she swapped the tokens for Bitcoin (BTC), sending them to multiple wallets in what may have been an attempt to launder the funds. According to local news outlet 7News Sydney, authorities in China were only able to recover roughly $9,000.

XRP falls out of favor
The value of XRP has since dropped to $0.30 as of this writing, making the amount of crypto stolen now worth approximately $30,000.

my opinion xrp will touch 1$ there year end