Ever since the news about Bitfinex’s recent $850 million suspected cover-up involving Tether, the company’s brand image has been tainted in the eyes of both its traders and investors. In an effort to reduce the negative publicity surrounding the matter and regain public confidence, Bitfinex recently announced that it has repaid $100 million of its outstanding loan that was provided by Tether earlier in the year.

The whole debacle started when Bitfinex found itself in hot waters after Wells Fargo, who was acting as a correspondent bank, locked the exchange out of nearly $180 million by suspending its wire transfer.

During this period, Bitfinex turned to Puerto Rican bank Noble Bank International, who were processing payments for Bitfinex for more than a year via Crypto Capital. Shortly after, Crypto Capital had its accounts seized by Polish and American government officials, resulting in $850 million belonging to Bitfinex being locked up at the same time.

Naturally, having such a huge proportion of its cash reserves locked up made operations a challenge for Bitfinex since the exchange lacked the funds necessary to fulfill customer withdrawal requests in a timely manner.

To temporarily rectify the issue, Bitfinex borrowed around $850 million money from Tether’s cash reserves as a line of credit. Bitfinex claims that the $100 million it repaid to Tether was actually a prepayment since it was not actually due to be paid yet. Bitfinex also notes that it had also repaid all of the interest accrued on the same loan up to June 30, 2019.

In total, Bitfinex owes Tether around $900 million. The loan reportedly has an interest rate of 6.5 percent and a term of three years — with this line of credit being secured using 60,000,000 shares in iFinex Inc., the company behind Bitfinex and several other exchange platforms.



As of yet, it remains unclear exactly how much of the original loan the exchange has paid back or whether the company will be able to complete repayment within the agreed timeframe. However, after recently raising one billion USDT in its Unus Sed LEO token sale, it doesn’t seem likely that Bitfinex will default on its loan.

source: https://beincrypto.com/bitfinex-repays-100-million-tether-debt/

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume Binance is now planning to offer Bitcoin futures trading option.

During the Asia Blockchain Summit in Taipei on Tuesday, July 2nd, Changpeng Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance revealed this by showcasing a futures trading interface on the exchange in his presentation.

Zhao said:
Binance will be launching a futures platform very soon. I don’t have the exact date yet. The simulation test version will be live in a few weeks.”

Referring to the screenshot that shows features of long and shorts on crypto assets further added, “This is an actual screenshot of the working system. So Binance futures is coming.”


Back in March, the exchange announced that it will offer margin trading service and now the introduction of leverage on Bitcoin future, as part of its expansion plan will only propel the exchange to greater heights while providing it the edge on its competitors.

What’s more, is the leverage could be up to 20 times.

Indicating to the presentation slide, Zhao also shared that the futures trading will be initially offered on Bitcoin with 20 times leverage. This will allow users to maximize their profits.

No release date is set as of yet, however, a Binance Spokesperson told CoinDesk that the futures testnet will be launched in the coming weeks after the margin trading is rolled out to all of its users by July 11 or so.

source: https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/binance-futures-is-coming-largest-crypto-exchange-launching-a-trading-platform-with-20x-leverage/

It’s been known that the cryptocurrency market tends to be more volatile during the weekend, but analysts are confused as to why.

The cryptocurrency market is unique in that it is on 24/7. Unlike traditional markets like stocks, cryptocurrency trading never sleeps. If you’ve been around since 2017, you might also have noticed that it is during the weekends that volatility tends to be more apparent. In fact, it was commonly called the inevitable “weekend dip.”

The truth is, however, this assumption is actually not based on reality. The only consistency has been that weekends are usually a time of great volatility — with no way to predict it. Take, for example, just the past few months: 40 percent of Bitcoin’s price gains have occurred on the weekends since May. In 2017, Bitcoin reached its all-time-high on a Saturday in December 2017. Both of these examples point to more than mere coincidence.

Read more : https://beincrypto.com/why-is-the-cryptocurrency-market-so-volatile-on-the-weekends/

Do you agree that weekends tend to especially volatile for the cryptocurrency market?

2019 Bitcoin (BTC) Rally Will Be Better Than In 2017, Digital Currency Group CEO Affirms
Barry Silbert, known as the CEO and founder of the Digital Currency Group (DCG), is currently one of the most important venture capitalists in the crypto market today. He has recently affirmed that the current Bitcoin rally is certainly very different from the one we saw two years ago.

The prominent venture capitalist affirmed that there is a noticeable advancement in the infrastructure of Bitcoin today. According to him, there are more trusted custodial solutions than ever and this allows a very special kind of investor, the institutional ones, to be able to participate more in the market.

The Recovery Of Bitcoin Is Only Beginning
This year, Bitcoin has, just like it did in 2017, outperformed all the other more traditional indices and investments, like S&P 500, considered one of the best assets to have. The token grew 96% against the USD so far.

However, it should be noted that BTC is far away from its all-time high, which was achieved in 2017 when the price of the asset skyrocketed to over $20,000 USD. Now, BTC is around $7,200 USD, decreasing from the $8,000 USD mark, which the token achieved recently.

According to Silbert, the price recovery of the tokens and the peak of $8,000 USD were fundamental to differentiate this current bull market from the one which happened two years ago.

He affirmed that both sentiment and technicals currently look awesome for the market. The market has certainly capitulated and the market is getting more used to how this all works.

Also, there was a clear bubble in 2017 while today things are fairly different. The market has grown and became more stable and you have several custodians, trading bot software and people are more educated and less naive. This time, he affirmed, things are different.

For instance, most of the volume that the market achieved in 2017 was reported as fake. Fake volumes exist up until today, as Bitwise Management has recently revealed that 95% of all the market volume in BTC is fake of inflated.

The hype surrounding this emergent market, together with unreliable market data basically put major investors in fear of missing out (FOMO) mode. This year, however, the market is getting considerably more reliable than it was before.

Groups like the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Fidelity Assets, CME Group and TD Ameritrade are in the market now. Most of these groups will deal directly with institutional investors, so they will certainly become more comfortable in the market, too.

The TD Ameritrade executive VP Steven Quirk, during Consensus 2019, affirmed that over thousands of the clients of the company are somewhat invested in cryptos. Everybody is now. Cryptos may slowly but finally reaching a more mainstream audience. As soon as the door is open, Quirk affirmed, people will come in, this bull market will be way better than the last one.

As a comparison, you should know that Fidelity Digital Assets recently affirmed that 22% of its institutional investors are dipping their toes in Bitcoin and other cryptos. The team also affirmed that a survey revealed that at least four in every ten clients were open to the idea of starting crypto investments in the future.

Will The Bull Run Continue?
While Bitcoin had a flash crash recently due to a major sell movement after it reached the $8,000 USD price, prices went up again and now they are around the $7,200 USD mark, which is considerably high, considering the first three months of the year.

As both the technicals and the sentiment are pretty good right now, it is widely believed that there is the chance of major developments of the token on the short to medium term range.

source; https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/2019-bitcoin-btc-rally-will-be-bigger-than-in-2017-digital-currency-groups-barry-silbert-affirms/

The Stellar network experienced downtime of around two hours on Wednesday as network validators went missing.

The network deploys a proprietary consensus mechanism called the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), in which a subset (quorum) of validators is selected from the pool of total nodes in order to reach consensus.

While the downtime had gone largely unnoticed, the network hadn’t registered any transactions during that time frame. Since validators are selected by the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) and the biggest validator nodes are maintained by the SDF itself, the network has lately been scrutinized for being too centralized — especially when many XLM proponents claim the project is more decentralized than its primary competitor, XRP.

https://twitter.com/ofnumbers/status/1128866873318223872

The Stellar Network’s Single Point of Failure
In this instance, the network stopped due to some validators of the SDF going down, bringing the whole network to a halt. Previous analysis by Minjeong Kim, Yujin Kwon, and Yongdae Kim has highlighted the single-point-of-failure risk Stellar is under. In many cases, the network stops when two or three validator nodes go down.

For this particular incident, it remains unclear what caused the SDF validators to go down at the same time. Since the network was not used frequently, the community and many others failed to notice it.




Is Stellar’s Network Unsafe?
This latest network halt highlights the risks of having a few critical validator nodes that, when disabled, can jeopardize the entire network. This opens up a few potential vectors for an attack on the network.

Another key takeaway is that the on-chain activity is relatively low for a network of Stellar’s size, in terms of market capitalization.

source: https://beincrypto.com/binance-coin-tron-reached-peak-after-sruge/

Tron just keep growing (in marketcap and popularity.) The world famous web browser Opera announced that very soon it will introduce native support for the Tron blockchain. The browser will have a TRX wallet able to store not only this cryptocurrency but also all TRC tokens running on the Tron mainnet.

Opera is known for its efforts to help the ecosystem grow. Last year the browser became the first one to have a native ETH wallet, compatible with ERC20 and ERC721 tokens. This gave Opera the distinction of being the first browser with Web3 capabilities.

Opera + Tron : A Partnership Focused on Dapps
Opera will  support a Tron (TRX) Wallet


Thanks to this decision, Opera gives over 300 million users around the world the possibility to use TRX without having to configure a separate wallet. The fact that it has native compatibility makes it extremely easy for inexperienced users to get involved in the world of cryptocurrencie

The Opera team is not just looking to exploit the financial potential of a token, it seems that they hope to boost the use and development of DApps. Right now, Ethereum is the blockchain with the most DApps in the ecosystem but Tron holds the title of having the fastest growth of all Dapp-oriented networks.

“TRON is a popular, quickly developing blockchain with a swiftly growing DApp ecosystem. We are happy to open our browser to it,” said Krystian Kolondra, EVP at Opera, Head of Browsers. “By opening products to multiple blockchains, we are accelerating the mainstream adoption of Web 3.”

Justin Sun, CEO of Tron, shared his enthusiasm. For the well-known crypto influencer, this partnership with Opera can be very positive for the growth of not only TRX but the entire Tron ecosystem.

“We are excited that Opera, a mainstream browser with hundreds of millions of users, will now seamlessly support TRX and other TRON tokens … Soon, Opera users will be able to use dApps on the TRON blockchain.”

Browsers and Blockchains Can Grow Together
According to official information, Opera is working hard to back multiple blockchains. The idea is to expand these features within 12 months. That Tron was the second blockchain supported after Ethereum shows not only Opera’s confidence in this project but also Justin Sun’s success in promoting his platform among the entire developer community.

TRON has over 2.7 million active accounts with more than 3 million transactions per day.

Currently, there is also a boom in the development of internet browsers focused on the use of blockchain technologies. The three most famous; Opera, Brave, and Dissenter are growing in popularity every day, every one thanks to its own characteristics.

source: https://ethereumworldnews.com/opera-announces-support-for-tron-trx-wallet-300-million-users-will-be-able-to-effortlessly-store-trx-and-trc-tokens/

With cryptocurrency prices finally showing signs of improvement over the past few weeks, the privacy-focused coin Monero (XMR) has found itself inexplicably surging in popularity and transaction count.

While the digital currency’s valuation has only risen by roughly 10 percent over the past week, the number of successful transactions per day has shot up four-fold.

While there is no way to accurately pinpoint the source of this sudden influx, the Monero community unanimously believes that Minko.to, an online Monero-based gambling platform, is responsible.

Gaming: Monero’s Silver Bullet?
According to data from BitInfoCharts, the XMR network recorded a whopping 15,325 transactions on May 2, 2019. Exactly one month prior, that figure was within the 3,000-4,000 range, with a few rare spikes beyond 5,000.

Towards the end of April, however, the number of transactions began ballooning and approaching the 10,000 transactions per day mark. Given that Minko.to made its debut on April 18, it is easy to see why many are giving it credit for the increased blockchain activity.

The gaming platform in question, Minko, was first introduced to the Monero community on Reddit as a ‘social gambling’ experience with a strong emphasis on privacy. The platform was deliberately released on April 18 to coincide with Monero’s fifth birthday.

While Minko was developed in part by a member of the Monero Core Team, the post clearly disclaims that no direct affiliation is intended. For the first month of the platform’s existence, all profits are reportedly being funneled to the Monero general donation fund to support future development efforts.

While gambling platforms are relatively common adopters of cryptocurrencies, the popularity of Minko is undeniable. On the day of Minko’s release, the total transaction count nearly doubled from 3,700 to 7,100. Two weeks later, the Monero network recorded more transactions than any previous day. The previous all-time high count was 10,800, observed on December 6, 2017, notably at the peak of the cryptocurrency industry's popularity and valuation

Positivity Ahead for Privacy Coins
In the past, privacy-focused cryptocurrencies such as Monero have attracted a bad reputation as they have been known to enable illicit activities and empower malicious actors.

A press release issued by law enforcement agency Europol today confirmed that illegal darknet marketplace, Wall Street Market, was found to be in possession of Bitcoin (BTC) and Monero (XMR) in six-digit amounts.

Regardless, in spite of the increased transaction count and activity, the Monero network clearly has sufficient capacity. This is largely thanks to a recent protocol upgrade, codenamed ‘Beryllium Bullet,' which reduced transaction size and subsequently, transfer fees by over 90 percent.

According to a tweet by CoinMetrics.io, the average size dropped from 18.5kb to 3kb shortly after the update went live.

https://twitter.com/coinmetrics/status/1053650856980242432


source: https://beincrypto.com/monero-records-new-transaction-all-time-high-network-shows-no-signs-congestion/

Scottish entrepreneur, designer, innovator and parliamentarian, Baroness Mone currently faces a pause in a bitcoin-focused development, with her goals becoming unattainable.

As per news outlet, CCN Mone was in the works of selling two-bedroom apartments for 185,000 pounds worth of Bitcoin [BTC]. However, government officials have supposedly stopped the construction process and it still remains only 25% completed, which is a problem considering the fact that it was supposed to be ready for the summer.


 
Interestingly, this isn’t Mone’s first failed attempt at becoming something within the crypto sphere, but her second. CCN reported that her first endeavor involved the hopes of raising $80 million via Initial Coin Offering for a cryptocurrency that was supposedly “disguised as an investment clearinghouse [called EQUI].” With all the hype she enforced into the project, it only managed to raise funds of $7 million.

The project, as Mone called it, “Bitcoin of Britain” did not last because “EQUI was not the ‘Bitcoin of’ anything,” reports CCN, adding that it was founded more on hype than it was on a strong foundation that could potentially make a difference.

It has also been argued that Mone simply tried her attempts at the market, without having sound knowledge on it. That is, she focused primarily on making gains from the hype surrounding Bitcoin, but not so much because of a burning passion for the technology. Another term for such an approach has been compared to Andreas Antonopoulos’,

“corporate exploitation”.

In other words, telling everyone that Bitcoin’s underlying technology will be implemented, but in reality, carries no similarities and doesn’t aim to resolve current issues in both the use of cryptos and blockchain technology and today’s society.

source: https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/parliamentarian-baroness-mone-adds-to-her-tails-within-blockchain-and-crypto-bitcoin-development-goes-on-hold/