Tag: crypto news

Monero (XMR), the once favorite privacy coin of the darknet, has disappeared from the main pages over the past years. Despite that, XMR still sits among the 30 most valuable cryptocurrencies and is favored by those who prefer untraceable transfers. 

DailyCoin looked to various parameters and darknet marketplaces to check whether there is still a demand for Monero and its status today. 

Monero (XMR) is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that offers fully anonymous and virtually untraceable transactions. Unlike Bitcoin or other decentralized cryptos, it uses enhanced privacy features that hide participants’ public wallet addresses and payment amounts.

These unique features made XMR the favorite coin of dark web black markets in 2016. Monero multiplied its value by almost 2700% and outpaced all other decentralized currencies.

The story repeated in 2020 and 2021 when Monero increased by 242.7% and 83.3%, respectively, and spiked again to $483.7 in May 2021.

Last year was hard for the financial markets due to increased energy prices, rising inflation, and a threatening global economic slowdown. The cryptocurrency market declined by 64.5% from $2.3 trillion to $828.7 billion by January 1, 2023. 

Monero’s (XMR) price dropped by 40.6% over the calendar year, showing higher resistance than Bitcoin’s (BTC), which lost 65% of its value over the same period. 

Monero trading volumes have gradually declined since the historically active 2021. As seen on the charts that track the activity on crypto exchanges, daily trading volumes of XMR hardly surpassed $200 million by the end of 2021 and during 2022.

At the same time, regulatory oversight tightened around privacy coins. Governmental authorities suspected that Monero (XMR) and other privacy-centered cryptos were used for money laundering, tax evasion, and other criminal activities.

Coinbase, Kraken, Huobi, and Bittrex delisted Monero fully or for separate jurisdictions that applied stricter regulations against XMR. Since then, Binance, KuCoin, and Crypto.com have been the biggest centralized exchanges supporting Monero and witnessing XMR trades against Tether (USDT) and Bitcoin (BTC) mostly.

The official numbers of XMR trading volumes declined. Meanwhile, the anonymous team behind Monero reported growth in XMR transfers in 2022. As stated on the project’s website, daily Monero transactions increased by 73%, from 23K to 40K daily.

In addition to that, malicious XMR mining intensified in 2022. According to the Kaspersky cybersecurity firm, more than 153,000 new illegal crypto malware cases were spotted last year. Nearly half (48%) of them were secretly mining Monero.

At the same time, the interest in XMR has returned to social media, where Monero has one of the biggest communities. 

As data from LunarCrush shows, Monero-related online activity intensified over the past year. On most popular social media channels, Monero was mentioned 143% more often in 2022 than the previous year, says social intelligence platform.

The number of people talking about Monero increased by 234%, respectively, while interactions across XRM social posts expanded more than five times (574%) to 1.6 billion cases last year. 

2022 also marked one of the biggest steps in Monero’s development. The decentralized privacy coin completed its long-awaited hard fork last August, boosting XMR’s privacy and anonymity features.

As an anonymity-enhanced cryptocurrency (AEC), Monero uses advanced features to obscure transactions and prevent parties from being identified. Features like ring signatures and stealth addresses make it extremely difficult to track the source and destination of XMR funds.

After the protocol upgrade, Monero increased the base anonymity set, reduced the transaction size, and improved verification performance, making transactions lighter and faster.

Monero allows shady actors to remain elusive more easily than public and traceable coins like Bitcoin. For years it has been a favored payment method of the dark web and for other illicit purposes.

In 2022 illicit transaction volume rose for the second consecutive year, reaching $20.6 billion in total, said Chainalysis in its 2023 Crypto Crime Report.

A major portion (43%) of all illicit volume came from activity associated with entities sanctioned after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Meanwhile, ransomware and darknet market sectors saw declining value received. A few years ago, both were tightly related to high XMR usage.

Criminal groups prioritized Monero as a payment method for ransomware attacks in 2021. At least 22 ransomware groups were reported to accept XMR only, and seven more dealt with Bitcoin and Monero. 

Last year the situation drastically changed as more than half (59%) of victims refused to pay the ransom. “Total ransomware revenue fell from $765.6 million in 2021 to at least $456.8 million in 2022,” reported Chainalysis.

Following the general downturn in cryptocurrency markets, illicit revenue dropped on dark web marketplaces. The numbers declined from $ 3.1 billion in 2021 to $1.5 billion in 2022.

Major darknet marketplaces like Hydra were shut down, and new ones emerged, with Bitcoin and Monero remaining the preferred currencies for trading on the dark web.

Two out of three dominant darknet marketplaces that benefitted the most after Hydras’s collapse still prefer Bitcoin over Monero. Only the biggest accept payments in Bitcoin, Monero, and Tether.

Bitcoin and Monero payments are more often accepted on smaller darknet marketplaces. However, as their revenue volumes stay relatively low, according to Chainalysis’ data, Bitcoin seems to be the most influential cryptocurrency on the darknet marketplaces at the time of publishing.

2022 was an extreme year for digital currencies, featuring historic collapses of algorithmic stablecoins, crypto lenders, and crypto empires. The regulatory scrutiny on digital assets intensified.

Privacy-centered projects also received unprecedented attention from the authorities. The US Treasury Department sanctioned the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash for laundering billions of dollars.

Monero (XMR) and other privacy coins seem to be under pressure. At the same time, they are still a part of the darknet ecosystem, which acts on its own rules and cares little for legal regulations.

Before MicroStrategy became one of the world’s biggest Bitcoin bulls, the software company was relatively unknown outside big tech and traditional finance. That changed in 2020 when the Fortune 500 enterprise added Bitcoin holdings to its balance sheet.

MicroStrategy is one of the key players in the cryptocurrency market and the wider blockchain industry. Led by chairman Michael Saylor, they were among the first corporate entities to consider BTC as a store of value. This paved the way for other notable companies, like Tesla, to make their Bitcoin purchases.

We know MicroStrategy is an avid supporter of digital currency, but what is the company behind the internet fame? Do they hold any other digital assets, like Ethereum or NFTs?

Founded by Michael Saylor in 1989, MicroStrategy is a software company that provides powerful analytics and business intelligence tools. MicroStrategy products are used by some of the world’s largest companies and household names, such as Visa and Porsche.

Of course, developing data dashboards can only take a company so far. As part of its expanded offering, MicroStrategy provides cloud computing services.

But is the relationship between MicroStrategy and Bitcoin?

According to Coingecko (as of Feb 2023), MicroStrategy owns more Bitcoin than any other public company, including some leading exchanges like Coinbase. Unfazed by events like the FTX crash and crypto bear markets, MicroStrategy sees BTC as a long-term investment.

MicroStrategy first expressed interest in Bitcoin in mid-2020 as a hedge against inflation. The United States Dollar (USD) was rapidly losing value following the economic fallout of the pandemic.

In a June earnings call with the company’s CFO, Phong Le, Saylor mentioned that “it makes sense to shift our treasury assets into some investments that can’t be inflated away…”. By August 2020, MicroStrategy announced they’d acquired 21,454 BTC at a market value of over $250M. The price of BTC at the time was around $11,000.

Since then, MicroStrategy has routinely added to their bitcoin holdings, regardless of the volatility in the crypto market. As of February 2023, the tech giant’s average price of Bitcoin purchases is roughly $30,415 per BTC.

After a challenging year for Bitcoin, mainstream media and crypto news outlets eagerly shared the trending story: MicroStrategy sells. It seemed like following the last year’s crypto winter, Saylor and Co needed to cut their losses.

Despite what the headlines suggested, MicroStrategy explained in an SEC filing that they planned “to carry back the capital losses resulting from this transaction against previous capital gains… which may generate a tax benefit.”

While this may have spread brief fear and doubt in the crypto market, MicroStrategy has since repurchased bitcoin. The company’s conviction in digital currency runs deeper than ever. Per a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, MicroStrategy plans to sell its other assets to fund further BTC investments.

According to Binance, MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin investment has been partly funded by Silvergate loans. Additionally, one of the tech firm’s subsidiaries, MacroStrategy, has a leveraged position in Bitcoin.

In a significant crash, MacroStrategy would need to add additional collateral to its position to avoid liquidation. If the price of bitcoin were to drop to $13,644, Macrostrategy would receive an unwelcome margin call.

When will MicroStrategy be forced to sell? Hopefully, not anytime soon. MicroStrategy’s BTC position comes under threat of liquidation at a much lower price of around $3,561.

Despite being undoubtedly bullish on BTC and blockchain technology, MicroStrategy does not officially hold any other cryptocurrencies. Altcoins like ETH are not listed on the MicroStrategy balance sheet.

Being a bitcoin maximalist does have its drawbacks. Ironically, if MicroStrategy had bought Ethereum instead of Bitcoin, they would’ve seen better returns. By purchasing ETH, as opposed to BTC, MicroStrategy would hold 3,540,000 ETH.

Adding Bitcoin to the company’s balance sheet has drawn mixed responses from MicroStrategy (MSTR) investors. Holding BTC has exposed the company’s treasury to greater volatility, which appears to coincide with the performance of the MSTR stock.

Bloomberg suggests that MSTR stock hit its lowest price since 2020 following MicroStrategy’s BTC purchases in December 2022. It’s important to note that, at that time, MicroStrategy had lost over one billion USD through its Bitcoin investments.

In August 2021, MicroStrategy co-founder and CEO Michael Saylor stepped down. Saylor remains heavily involved with the company in his new role as executive chairman. The shift gives Saylor greater flexibility to pursue MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin strategy.

Saylor’s position as CEO was replaced by the former CFO and President, Phong Le.

MicroStrategy is the largest Bitcoin holder amongst corporate entities. Their belief and support of BTC and the blockchain industry represent the arrival of institutional investment into the crypto space.

This improves the image of cryptocurrency and Web 3.0 technologies in the view of both traditional finance and the general public. MicroStrategy’s investment is a step toward the mass adoption of bitcoin and blockchain technology.

How Many Bitcoins Does MicroStrategy Own?

As of February 2023, MicroStrategy owns 129,699 bitcoins. This represents approximately 0.618% of the total BTC supply. Please check Coingecko’s dedicated page on public Bitcoin holdings for up-to-date readings of this statistic.

Is MicroStrategy the Largest Holder of Bitcoin?

The largest holder of BTC is the anonymous founder of Bitcoin themself, Satoshi Nakamoto. However, MicroStrategy is the largest corporate entity and public company with BTC on its balance sheet as of February 2023.

Did MicroStrategy Sell Bitcoin?

In December 2022, MicroStrategy sold 704 BTC, marking the first time the company has sold bitcoin. The sale was made to carry back capital losses against previous capital gains. MicroStrategy remains bullish on bitcoin long term and has since repurchased BTC.

Why Does MicroStrategy Have So Much Bitcoin?

According to Michael Saylor and Phong Le, Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation. MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin investment aims to retain value on the company’s balance sheet rather than lose value to inflation.

What Did MicroStrategy Do Before Bitcoin?

Before buying bitcoin, MicroStrategy was a software company that engineered sophisticated data tools. This is still the company’s primary business.

Will MicroStrategy Be Forced to Sell Bitcoin?

MicroStrategy is expected to be issued a margin call if the spot price of Bitcoin falls to $3,561. Before then, MicroStrategy will need to add additional collateral to support its position or be forced to sell bitcoin.

How much has MicroStrategy Lost in Bitcoin?

As of February, MicroStrategy’s average purchase price is approximately $30,415 per bitcoin. At the time of writing, this puts MicroStrategy’s bitcoin investment at an unrealized loss of roughly $1B.

The final day of our ‘12 days of Cryptomas‘ feature series is upon us. There have been times this year when 12 days felt like 12 months, so it’s only appropriate that we take a look at the year ahead. Next year could potentially be make or break for crypto, but within that, there is a lot to be excited about.

This year has been full of uncertainty and disappointment for crypto enthusiasts–prices crashed, companies went bankrupt, and the momentum generated in 2021 was significantly blunted. 

But it’s not all doom and gloom–far from it! Here are ten things to be excited about in the crypto space in the next 12 months.

Most analysts agree that there will be a global recession within the next 12 months; the only question is what form of economic downturn will hit.

While doom and gloom might seem to dominate the markets, the world may experience only a mild recession. At least, that’s what JP Morgan predicts for the United States.

A mild recession would mean a risk-on environment, which would be more conducive to encouraging investors and institutions alike to invest in riskier assets like crypto. If this were to pair with a truce in Ukraine, the industry could see a new bull run forming in the second half of 2023.

If the global economy suffers only a mild recession, it becomes more likely that the U.S. Federal Reserve will look to cut interest rates.

It’s no secret that the Fed wants to kill demand to win its war against inflation. And it seems that it’s already winning. The November CPI print saw inflation easing at an accelerating rate, 7.1% vs. the 7.3% expected—the fifth-straight monthly decline.

A lower rate environment would mean that crypto would receive more attention from investors and more access to funding for crypto startups.

It is possible that, even if inflation is tamed, interest rates are cut, and the looming recession is less severe than projected, crypto will not see sustained price growth within the next 12 months. The events of 2022 proved that what crypto needs the most right now is clear regulation if it wants to attract the big players.

Some leaders in the space, like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, believe only centralized crypto entities like exchanges and stablecoin issuers need to get properly regulated. He said that decentralized finance and other blockchain-enabled spheres should be left to innovate.

Some work is already underway in this regard. The European Union’s MiCA legislation, a landmark crypto regulation framework in the region, is expected to go into effect sometime in 2023. The stipulations can set the standard for other nations worldwide to propose their own legislation, including answering the question of what constitutes a security and what does not.

If 2022 taught us anything, traditional centralized social media platforms are not entirely trustworthy. The Twitter File debacle that followed Elon Musk’s takeover of the company showed that even seemingly unimportant and ordinary accounts are monitored and policed by the FBI and other government agencies. Furthermore, unwarranted tweet deletions and account suspensions have become far too common.

On the other side, decentralized social media protocols and applications have been developed throughout 2022 and are set to shake things up next year. 

Protocols like Lens allow its users to own, transfer, and use their data across multiple applications. Lenster, Phaver, and Lensta are just some examples.

In the next 12 months, we’ll likely see a higher adoption rate among decentralized social media applications, regardless of whether centralized apps up their game.

The next Ethereum upgrade, Shanghai, just got a little bit spicier. While one particular highlight is that stakers can unstake and withdraw their ETH, an even more interesting Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) is included in the upgrade.

EIP-4844, also known as proto-danksharding, is an improvement proposal aiming to include sharding elements in the Ethereum design. Sharding is a scaling method that breaks up a blockchain into several pieces, or shards, to increase its capacity and significantly reduce gas fees.

Many see proto-danksharding and zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) as the killer duo that will scale Ethereum to billions of people. While the timeline for implementing Shanghai and EIP-4844 is still unclear, it makes the next 12 months as exciting as when the Ethereum community waited for the Merge.

Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) is the holy grail of Ethereum scaling technology. Its goal is to use zero-knowledge proofs–a proving method that enables one party to prove something to the other without disclosing any information about the matter – to verify all EVM processes, increasing privacy and reducing costs.

While zkEVMs are notoriously hard to build, mainly because the architecture of the EVM is rather unfriendly to zero-knowledge proofs, multiple teams have made enormous progress over the last few years.

For example, Matter Labs has deployed its zkEVM solution zkSync for developers on the Ethereum mainnet this year and is aiming for a full release next year. Polygon has also launched its zkEVM on testnet. StarkWare, Taiko, Consensys, and others are also building zkEVMs.

As crazy as it sounds, 2023 can be a year of zkEVMs.

Web3 gaming has been on everyone’s “it’s going to the moon” list for the last year, but it has yet to happen. 2023 has the potential to be the year that chances, as the blockchain gaming studios that received funding in 2020 and 2021 are finally putting the finishing touches on their games.

One such game is Illuvium. Illuvium is a fantasy play-to-earn NFT game that features a decentralized in-game economy built on ImmutableX with StarkNet’s Layer-2 scaling technology. It’s set to be the first AAA Web3 title.

Illuvium has been in the works for the last few years and is currently in private beta testing. More than 130 people have been working on making Illuvium the game that opens the floodgates to Web3 gaming.

Gaming studios like Animoca and Horizon will release their games in 2023. It’s going to be a gamer’s paradise.

Following the dramatic fallout of FTX, Guggenheim Partners CIO Scott Minerd said there would be more “shoes to drop.”

And he’s probably right. Digital Currency Group, Genesis Trading, Grayscale, Binance, Nexo, Crypto.com, and other crypto entities have experienced different financial instability or at least rumors of it. The question here, perhaps, is not “if” but “when.”

Why’s that a good thing? Crypto is not unlike traditional financial markets, where each credit cycle ends with final washouts of companies that were insolvent or built on a flimsy or otherwise illegitimate premise. To Minerd’s point, looking at crypto price and volume charts, it would be hard to believe that the washout has already happened.

The potential price dump resulting from such an event would present a unique opportunity to purchase deeply discounted assets in preparation for the next cycle. As Crypto Twitter likes to say: “a few more bankruptcies and then up only.”

Account abstraction is something Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin has called “a dream” for developers. But what is it?

Account abstraction seeks to eliminate the existence of externally owned accounts (EOA) and contract accounts (CA) by unifying them. This would open the door to features such as multi-signature security, social recovery, and allow and block lists for addresses, to name a few. This would also eliminate the need for a recovery phrase.

While it’s unclear whether account abstraction will be added to the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade, a few protocols already work on account abstraction solutions. Projects like Loopring, zkSync, StarkWare, and Argent will undoubtedly take account abstraction to the next level in 2023.

It’s the moment that Ethereum proponents have been dreaming about since the inception of Ethereum itself. 

Can it happen in 2023? Bitcoin has been steadily losing its market dominance over the past few years. If nations worldwide recognized Ethereum as a commodity rather than a security, it might be the event that sparks an unprecedented Ethereum rally. Combining this with Layer-2 scaling technology, there is a reality in which Ethereum could dethrone Bitcoin in 2023.

On the other hand, if U.S. regulators officially deem Ethereum a security it is unclear whether the same could be said. Chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Commission Gary Gensler has repeatedly reiterated his position that ETH is a security, especially following the network’s transition to Proof-of-Stake. In this case, ETH may follow in the footsteps of Ripple (XRP).

Whichever way the pendulum swings, an answer will likely be determined within the next 12 months.

Crypto in 2023 has a lot of things to offer. From technological developments to increased adoption to a potential bull market, investors and everyday users will have plenty of opportunities to participate in the crypto industry.