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Cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex has announced it is adding withdrawal support for native SegWit (bech32) addresses, which will start with the characters "b1."  Native SegWit is a more weight-efficient address format than Wrapped SegWit (P2SH) addresses which start with "3."  Bitfinex's new address format will enable cheaper transactions for its users looking to withdraw bitcoin from the exchange.  Additionally, according to the exchange, "as bech32 addresses only exist on the Bitcoin network, our new support for Bitcoin withdrawals to bech32 addresses removes the possibility of our clients experiencing any cross-chain mix-ups."  Earlier this month, Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, indicated on Twitter that the cryptocurrency exchange could add SegWit support to its platform by the end of Q1 2020. According to Segwit.space, SegWit adoption on Bitcoin hovers around 50%. Follow me on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/cryptoexpert20

The Litecoin Summit is unfolding in Las Vegas, and MimbleWimble is center stage.  Litecoin is on its way to becoming a privacy coin, which for Charlie Lee is about fungibility.  The privacy push is a risky one that could cost the coin exchange listings in some countries.  It’s no secret that Litecoin wants to become a privacy coin.  Litecoin Creator Charlie Lee made that clear when he revealed a change in direction for the project, chief among which involved partnering with a Grin developer David Burkett to implement the MimbleWimble protocol and use extension blocks for privacy and scalability on the network.  Privacy has been a major theme in the cryptocurrency market, one that has cost some high-profile coins, including Zcash and Monero, exchange listings in Japan.  Charlie Lee is willing to take that chance, saying at the Litecoin Sumit in Las Vegas: “There’s definitely a risk, but I think the way we’re approaching it is pretty safe.”  For Lee, however, it’s really about

China teams up with Russia and India to ditch SWIFT Ripple community hopes China and Russia will use XRP for liquidity China is about to launch its own digital currency As reported by Russia Today (RT), three major players, China, Russia and India, intend to avoid using the SWIFT system of funds transferring and create their own network for fast payments by connecting the already existing systems of electronic payments.  Some members of the Ripple community hope that the new payment system used between three biggest countries is going to utilize XRP for liquidity.  China teams up with Russia and India to ditch SWIFT  RT’s report has it that the Russian-based system of payments, SPFS, is going to connect with the Chinese system of payments CIPS.  India has not launched a similar project yet, however, local engineers are working to build it. Meanwhile, India intends to connect to the Russian-based transnational payments system.  Back in 2014, Russia started working on its SPFS

Enterprises that are building on Ethereum have a reason to celebrate, as the new-and-improved Ethereum 2.0 is moving forward.  Just a couple of weeks ago, the largest Ethereum development event, DevCon 5, was held in Tokyo and more details about the upcoming protocol upgrade were announced.  The changes are significant and will improve important properties like transaction speed, scalability, and finality.  However, they also present some risks related to building on open-source technology developed by multiple teams.  What exactly is Ethereum 2.0, why is it necessary, and can this risk of breaking existing applications and wiping out the current $19B market cap be avoided? The current Ethereum protocol, while considered successful so far, has been prone to several major issues.  Specifically, its increasing storage requirements and performance degradation are raising red flags on CIOs’ decision charts.  The newly proposed Ethereum 2.0 upgrade will eliminate many of the exist

After Litecoin founder Charlie Lee teased new privacy features early this year, it has finally published the first draft plans.  Litecoin has proposed MimbleWimble (MW) transactions to bring on updated scaling and privacy features.  Litecoin launched in 2011 after forking from Bitcoin. Since then, the cryptocurrency has been trying very hard to differentiate itself from Bitcoin.  Litecoin’s latest proposal for implementing MimbleWimble could be a huge game-changer. Litecoin Improvement Proposals  Litecoin has proposed two improvement proposals, LIP 2 and LIP 3. The first proposal, LIP 2, introduces extension blocks (EB) to Litecoin.  It allows Litecoin to implement new protocols such as MimbleWimble without altering consensus rules.  It is similar to a block size increase and runs alongside the main chain’s canonical blocks. The second proposal, LIP 3, deals with the implementation of the MimbleWimble protocol.  It uses the extension blocks proposed in LIP 2 and users can

Bitcoin Price  We closed the day, October 25 2019, at a price of $8,660. That’s a major 15.61 percent increase in 24 hours, or $1170. It was the highest closing price in thirty-one days.  We’re still 56 percent below Bitcoin‘s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017).  Bitcoin market cap  Bitcoin’s market cap ended the day at $156,006,603,607. It now commands 69 percent of the total crypto market.  Bitcoin volume  Yesterday’s volume of $28,705,065,488 was the highest in one hundred and six days, 85 percent above the year’s average, and 36 percent below the year’s high.  Bitcoin transactions  A total of 328,460 transactions were conducted yesterday, which is 2 percent below the year’s average and 27 percent below the year’s high.  Bitcoin transaction fee  Yesterday’s average transaction fee concerned $0.36. That’s $3.35 below the year’s high of $3.71. Bitcoin distribution by address  As of now, there are 13,507 Bitcoin millionaires, or addresses containing more than

Cardano is exploring zero-knowledge proofs, which allow transactions to be authenticated without divulging any of the personal information of either the sender or receiver.  Cardano creator Charles Hoskinson says his company, IOHK, has been researching Electronic Coin Company’s zk-SNARK proofs, which enable Zcash to have transactions that retain verifiable validity while simultaneously remaining fully encrypted on the blockchain. Hoskinson expanded on the subject during a recent AMA when he was asked whether IOHK planned to analyze ECC’s new Halo project, “a technique for creating practical, scalable and trustless cryptographic proving systems, ending an almost decade-long pursuit by the cryptography community.”  Says Hoskinson, “We are definitely following the latest and greatest state of the art – we’re doing a lot of SNARK work under the hood. We have some cool ideas.  We’ve implemented Sonic. We’re looking at Marlin, we’re looking at other things 2020 is going to be the yea

Bitcoin’s price bounce has shed some of the recent bearish pressure, but there’s still a way to go before a bullish reversal is confirmed.  After hitting $8,314 on Sunday, the top cryptocurrency by market value is now trading around $8,200 on Bitstamp, representing a 3 percent gain on a 24-hour basis.  BTC was operating on slippery grounds last week with the Chaikin money flow index, used to gauge buying and selling pressure, reporting the strongest bearish bias in eight months.  The downside, however, was restricted near $7,800 on Friday and prices bounced back above $8,000 over the weekend.  The latest bounce from that level is the fifth since Sept.  26 and indicates seller exhaustion. The immediate bearish case, therefore, stands neutralized.  Other key indicators like the relative strength index are also reporting early signs of a bullish reversal.  That said, BTC is yet to invalidate the most basic of all bearish technical indicators, a lower high, lower low, as seen b

Saturday, so far, has been a relatively neutral day for the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a majority of other large caps saw effectively zero losses or gains on the day, while trading volumes across the board tanked. Related Reading: Crypto Tidbits: Fidelity Expands Bitcoin Ops, Ripple’s XRP Sales Fall, Grayscale Sees Growing Altcoin Demand Despite this non-action, analysts are currently charting a move lower for Ethereum (ETH/Ether), citing bearish technicals and an overall lull in the broader crypto industry.  Ethereum Price Looks Weak, Analysts Reckon Prominent trader Jacob Canfield recently noted that Ethereum’s chart looks rather weak, looking to the fact that it fell out of a bear flag, failed to break above the upper bound of a falling wedge, and is looking to retest a key horizontal support.  He claims that a move to and consecutive break of $165, the horizontal support aforementioned, may result in a 15% to 20% collapse to $142, which is where ETH’s next k

Blockchain payments network Ripple has announced that it sold $66.24 million worth of XRP in Q3 2019  down a staggering 73.66% compared to the record sale worth of $251.51 million in the previous quarter.  According to the third quarterly report released on Oct. 18, Ripple had previously announced the plan to sell XRP tokens slower in Q3.  Ripple’s XRP sale rate is lower than ETH’s inflation Ripple also stated that “XRP distribution rate since the beginning of the quarter has been lower compared to the inflation rates of ETH and LTC, and similar to BTC.”  The company also addressed the allegations that it is dumping XRP on the market and manipulating its price, claiming that a significant portion of such ideas was spread by bot accounts on Twitter. Accusation of dumping reportedly often pointed to large movements of XRP as proof, but those “were in fact transfers between Ripple treasury and escrow management accounts.“  Such transactions have no direct impact on the market, si

Litecoin prices declined in September, enjoying notable gains earlier in the month and then falling sharply as traders sold off the altcoin (cryptocurrency other than bitcoin).  The digital currency, which is very similar to its digital sibling bitcoin, climbed to nearly $80 on September 18, up more than 22% since the start of the month, before falling roughly 35% from that point to $51.84 on September 26, CoinMarketCap data shows.  The cryptocurrency, which has frequently been called the silver to bitcoin’s gold, then recovered, bring September’s monthly loss to 12.4%, additional CoinMarketCap figures reveal.  [Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated.  Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.] Notable Losses The digital asset suffered some declines last month, after rallying more than 500% between December 2018 and June 2019.  Litecoin prices rose ahead of the halving in Augu

The Zcash community has plans to develop a ZEC token that can operate on the Ethereum blockchain, thereby partaking in the network’s decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.  According to Josh Swihart, VP of marketing and business development at Electronic Coin Company (ECC), Zcash developers hope to launch a wrapped token within the next six months.  Swihart made his comments to news outlet CoinDesk at the Devcon developer conference held last week in Osaka, Japan.  With integration onto the DeFi platform, there is hope that the privacy-focused ZEC token will be able to provide anonymous, automated loans and transactions via Ethereum’s network.  Zcash developers are also hinting at the possibility of interoperability, allowing the privacy features of ZEC to be applied to smart contracts.  ECC is reportedly targeting ETH interoperability and DeFi as a way to boost ZEC usage and purchase on exchanges.  Sources familiar with the coin’s exchange performance say ZEC has been stal

The number of Bitcoin (BTC) addresses containing more than 1,000 BTC ($8.3 million) is growing at the same pace in 2019 as before 2014, new data shows.  Woo “super bullish” on wallet trend Uploaded to social media by Bitcoin statistician Willy Woo on Oct. 11, a chart of Bitcoin address growth by balance shows the network is now repeating a trend from its earliest years. “The rate of growth of 1000BTC addresses now matches the early growth in Bitcoin's network,” he summarized.  Woo was expanding on original data from blockchain analysis resource Glassnode. According to him, fresh desire for major Bitcoin balances at vastly higher prices than five years ago speaks to wealthier individuals coming into the space.  If those generating addresses with over 1,000 BTC at that time were doing so out of technical curiosity, the incentives in 2019 are purely financial. Woo concluded: “IMO we're likely in a new renaissance of Bitcoin, this one is powered by capital influx of h

 Buterin has voiced this opinion during Devcon 5, the Ethereum developers conference that took place in Osaka on Oct. 811.  He specifically noted that  after the transition to PoS  higher cost of a potential attack would make Ethereum the safer network of the two.  Some men just want to watch the blockchain burn  Buterin started his presentation by talking about Bitcoin and paying homage to its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, noting that he created crypto economics to motivate people to maintain the network.  The way the system was designed ensured that attackers would need to spend a great amount of money to successfully compromise the blockchain.  Still, Buterin claimed that there was a problem with this architecture, explaining: “What about attackers who have a really large, extra protocol incentive, or just want to watch the world burn? Could be a government.  Or hackers that want to have some fun.  The critique here says we’re assuming we have these participants

Mobile wallet provider BRD is partnering with Ripple’s Xpring to boost XRP adoption.  The companies announced Friday that Xpring would invest some $750,000 into BRD as part of its efforts to “build the internet of value. ” As part of this new “strategic partnership,” BRD will integrate XRP and begin building on Xpring’s developer platform. “The partnership and investment will enable BRD users to hold, buy, sell and send XRP to anyone in the world,” a press release noted. Ethan Beard, senior vice president of Xpring, praised BRD as “one of the oldest and most respected” mobile wallet providers in the space.  He said in a statement that the wallet is aiding in mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies, adding: “The BRD team has helped consumers on-ramp $6 [billion] worth of traditional currencies into digital currency, making them an ideal partner to continue the proliferation and adoption of cryptocurrencies like XRP to solve real-world problems.”  “We’re incredibly excited abou

Litecoin falls below 57 USD over the last 24 hours.  The next major resistance may come at 60 USD.  Litecoin’s dismal performance in the past few days has been the talk of the town. A few months ago, LTC price used to mount as high as 100 USD but now it is struggling to keep its head above 56 USD.  Litecoin Price Analysis: Litecoin (LTC) opened the day trading at 57.57 USD and the first swing of LTC to USD started at 02:08 UTC and within no time it fell to 56.71 USD after a 3.01% decrement. It was followed by a hike of 0.95% that added 0.54 USD to the value and this swing pushed the value to 57.25 USD.  The last swing happened over the next 4 hours and 38 minutes, and this swing took 0.62 USD from the value and made it roam around 56.60 USD. Litecoin’s last 50-days’ performance is worse than its last 20 days’.  The current price trend is above its 50-day and 20-day MA. It hints at the upcoming strength of LTC in the upcoming few days.  The next resistance is expected

The UN children’s agency, Unicef, has announced it is accepting and disbursing donations through cryptocurrencies ether and bitcoin. Unicef’s new Cryptocurrency Fund is the latest in a series of efforts by aid organisations to experiment with “blockchain” currencies, which have the potential to transform charitable giving and increase financial transparency.  Cryptocurrencies are virtual currencies that can be cashed in for real money, and are not linked to any single country or central authority.  Instead, a ledger of transactions is maintained by a decentralised network of computers.  This system of decentralisation offers non-profit organisations the advantage of bypassing expensive fees and middlemen traditionally required to move large amounts of cash overseas quickly. But the virtual currencies have also been divisive. They are associated with huge price fluctuations, and have been previously used as a mechanism to support illicit activities such as money laundering and

2020 will be the year proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains finally break out. Maybe. Two of the industry’s most hotly anticipated PoS networks are scheduled to (re)launch in Q1 – namely ethereum and Cardano.  The second largest blockchain platform in the world by market capitalization, ethereum has been looking to shift to PoS since 2014.  Co-founder Vitalik Buterin sees PoS as key to ethereum reaching maturity. “Ethereum 1.0 is a couple of people’s scrappy attempt to build the world computer; Ethereum 2.0 [with PoS] will actually be the world computer,” he has said. Conceptually, PoS has been around since 2012, but its applications thus far on blockchain platforms, such as EOS, Tezos, Cosmos and others, haven’t been proven to outperform proof-of-work (PoW) platforms in usage or market value (bitcoin or ethereum, for instance).  With PoS, validators must own currency they are verifying: “forgers” always own the coins being minted. There is no mining, meaning no heinous use of elec

United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is currently discussing the possibility of hiring the engineering team of Ripple-backed storage and rental startup Omni Rentals, tech news outlet TechCrunch reported on Oct. 5.  Not the only company interested Per the report, two unspecified sources familiar with the situation told the outlet that Omni is currently struggling with layoffs and just lost seven operations team members.  Besides Coinbase, the startup is also in talks with professional hiring intermediary Thumbtack for the same reason.  Coinbase would reportedly employ the engineering team to further develop its Coinbase Earn education platform that is currently available in over 100 countries.  It was first announced in December last year and lets users earn crypto for studying the ecosystem. Still, an official Coinbase spokesperson told the outlet that no deal took place so far and there’s nothing official to share.  Not many customers TechCrunch explains that