More Than 90% of All Bitcoin Is Now in Circulation – Crypto Weekly Update

This week, the total market capitalization exceeded 1.84 trillion EUR. The decrease at the 7-day interval is 4.66%. Bitcoin decreased by 8.99% during the week to a current value of over 39,900 EUR. Bitcoin dominance is 41.2%.

More Than 90% Of All Bitcoin Is Now In Circulation

Last Friday, the bitcoin blockchain hit perhaps one of the biggest milestones of recent months.

In the block 730 002, mined by the SBI Crypto pool, the 19-millionth Bitcoin entered circulation. With the total bitcoin supply set at 21 million, only the last two million bitcoins remain to be mined. This will not be easy. Because of the increasing difficulty, and especially bitcoin halving, the last two million BTC will be mined for the next 120 years.

Bitcoin halving is a process that periodically reduces the base block reward by half each time a new block is mined. In addition, halving ensures that the rate of inflation in the bitcoin network continuously decreases. Thanks to halving, bitcoin has a precisely planned schedule for issuing new bitcoins into circulation until all bitcoins are mined. 

Halving is carried out on average every four years, every time 210,000 blocks are mined. In the beginning, the block reward was 50 BTC. In 2012, after 210,000 blocks were mined, the reward was reduced to 25 BTC, in 2016 to 12.5 BTC and in 2020 to the current 6.25 BTC per block. The Bitcoin network has only completed three halvings so far, but there will be 32 halvings in total. 

However, there is no need to worry that miners will no longer be interested in mining new blocks once all the bitcoins have been mined. In addition to new bitcoins, each block also includes transaction fees from the transactions included in the block. This means that even if all bitcoins are mined, miners will still collect rewards in the form of transaction fees. Source

Starbucks Plans to Enter the NFT business

Billionaire Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, announced on Monday at the Open Forum conference that his company is planning to enter the NFT business by the end of 2022. This company itself confirmed the news a few hours later.

Although Schultz did not provide an exact date when the company would move into the NFT world, he assured us that it would be “sometime before the end of this calendar year.”

As Schultz pointed out in his talk, Starbucks is not just a beverage brand but also a company with years of tradition, history, and collectibles scattered around the world. That is to say, if the company sets its mind to it, it could create one of the largest NFT marketplaces in the world.

The valuation of Starbucks is currently approximately $96.7 billion, while the valuation of OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace founded in 2017, already exceeds $13.3 billion. It is no surprise that large companies with a long history want to invest in this innovative technology. Source

The Number of Bitcoins on Exchanges Continues to Stagnate

After the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, something interesting happened in the world of cryptocurrencies that was utterly unprecedented. Ultra-accommodative monetary policy, coupled with the purchase of bonds and the issuance of huge amounts of money into circulation, caused investors around the world to start accumulating bitcoin and sending them from the exchanges to their private wallets.

This trend is still here. With Bitcoin net outflows averaging 96,200 coins per month for the past two years, exchanges’ cumulative Bitcoin balances have hit the lowest level since August 2018.

As a result of bitcoin outflows from exchanges, there is a growing number of so-called HODLers – who periodically purchase Bitcoin but don’t spend it. The trend of growing HODLers is not only among retail investors but also among institutions. For example, Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) already owns more than 30,000 bitcoins, while Microstrategy owns more than 125,000.

Still, Glassnode points out that the amount of Bitcoin being accumulated each day is much higher than the amount of new BTC being created. In general, what is limited is rare. Let it be a surprise how soon bitcoin reaches its all-time highs again. Source

Lightning Labs With a Successful Funding Round

Bitcoin software firm Lightning Labs raised $70 million in its latest funding round to enable and further develop the Lightning Network (an L2 solution) for faster and cheaper bitcoin transactions.

According to reports, the funding will be channeled into a new protocol it has developed called Taro, which will enable stablecoins to be transferred using the LN. Lightning Labs will not issue stablecoins, but the infrastructure will allow them to be sent over the network.

Lightning Labs believes that Taro will enable the next global adoption of Bitcoin. Its innovation will allow nonbank entities in developing countries to send money using stablecoins to anyone, anywhere in the world. The main advantage of stablecoins is that they are immune to volatility – their price is pegged to the US dollar at a 1:1 ratio, so there is no need to worry about volatility.

The LN is currently being used extensively in El Salvador, the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender. The current network collateral is 3,693 BTC, worth around $167 million, a 5.8% increase over the past month. Source

Hackers started moving tokens

In last week’s market review, we informed you about a hack on the Ronin Network, where 173,600 ETH and $25.5 million in total of $615 million were stolen.

The attacker(s) behind the crypto industry’s largest exploit have started to move some of the stolen loot through anonymizing services.

On Monday morning, hacker(s) moved 1,000 ETH worth about $3.5 million to another address. Several more transactions of 100 ETH subsequently followed, all of them going to Tornado Cash, an Ethereum service focused on mixing transactions to maintain anonymity. 

Tornado Cash has become the weapon of choice for crypto hackers and scammers. It provides private and anonymous Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens transactions by breaking the on-chain link between source and destination addresses. A perfect solution for someone wanting to move stolen assets. Source

Elon Musk Acquires Stake in Twitter

Tesla CEO and founder of SpaceX Elon Musk has taken a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc.

According to a filing with the SEC, Elon Musk bought 73,486,938 shares of the company’s common stock at a market value of $39.31 per at Friday’s close. Elon Musk thus paid more than $2.8 billion for his stake.

Following the news, $TWTR stock jumped more than 25%. On the other hand, Dogecoin, one of Musk’s favorite cryptocurrencies, was up more than 10% almost immediately after the news was announced.

The Tesla CEO’s purchase of a stake in Twitter comes as the social media platform is exploring the possibilities of decentralization. Twitter Crypto is currently led by Tess Rinearson, who is tasked with setting the strategy for the future of crypto on Twitter. She is also tasked with exploring ways to incorporate decentralized technologies into Twitter’s infrastructure itself. Source

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