Users will have complete access to simulations of the odds of winning with each bet. Apart from cryptocurrencies, users could now earn fiat money, virtual currencies, and NFT.

The electronics manufacturing company, Sony Group Corporation, made a petition in parallel with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to register a patent for a platform that will grant its users access to bet on eSports with Bitcoin (BTC).

In addition to using the main cryptocurrency, there will also be the chance of completing the bet with cash, elements of various games, virtual currencies, or even digital rights, such as non-fungible or NFT tokens.

Specifically, it would be a system in which viewers of an electronic sports game can bet on its outcome while checking up the entire evolution of the matches in real-time. They could place a certain amount of money to the winner of a game or the next victim in a multiplayer game, among other options.

PatentScope recently published that the registration request occurred in November 2019, even though the application’s release happened on May 13, 2021.

Regarding other technical details, the system would focus its functions on an automated platform that could be accessed through a PlayStation console or other video game consoles (such as Nintendo or Microsoft) to place bets and claim rewards. It would also provide the chance of analyzing data and statistics on past games or those in progress.

In this sense, the system would add a feature to access simulations on the possibilities of success of each play or bet. Another alternative would be to make group bets so that several participants contribute to a common fund and the profits get shared once the results are known.

Other Sony Initiatives with Digital Currencies

Besides this betting platform, Sony has investigated without much success at the moment, other ways to explore the world of cryptocurrencies in the past. For example, as CriptoNoticias reported in October 2018, he worked on a project to manufacture cold wallets for crypto assets, although this idea never materialized.

Similarly, in April of that year, the company had requested the patent registration of a blockchain platform for digital rights and its proper management. However, as with the hardware wallet, the initiative did not make further progress in this regard.

The so-called “rights blockchain” originally contains the genesis block, which includes the data of the authorized owner and the content, according to Sony in the patent application. When total or partial use rights are acquired over the stored content, blocks are added to the chain that indicates the new rights to use one or more items of the content, as well as a reference to the previous block.

Access to each user’s blockchain content receives its verification process through digital rights management (DRM) technology to ensure that they have the rights to the data. This same DRM is responsible for granting easier access to the data saved after decrypting them.

By: Jenson Nuñez

The new season of the series mentions pyramid scams, including the Bitconnect case. Each chapter of the documentary series explains different concepts around money.

Netflix recently released a new season of its mini-documentary series focused on money issuing, which is also part of the series «In a few words» launched back in 2018. In the recent instalment of five episodes, they detail concepts around the credit card business and gambling, including famous scams that happened to cryptocurrencies.

Quick Money is the name of the first chapter in this series; this episode explains how different these kinds of scams are. The documentary is based on the idea that the promise of easy wealth has always been something very tempting.

The easy wealth promise is always attractive even if it’s under a cloak of mystery, as can be the case with cryptocurrencies. The chapter directly mentions the OneCoin scam, a supposed cryptocurrency that promised to be the ultimate executor of bitcoin, according to its biggest sponsor, Ruja Ignatova, “The Queen of cryptocurrencies.”

OneCoin is a pyramid scam that offered great benefits with a supposed cryptocurrency that would change everything. The main goal was to increase the initial investment twice. The more people someone brought, the more “onecoins” they would get.

The scandal came to light in 2019 when the “Crypto Queen” disappeared completely, and his brother, who would have been leading OneCoin at the time, admitted his guilt in the fraud with the alleged cryptocurrency.

In addition to OneCoin, within the chapter viewers can also find another mention of a famous Ponzi scheme called Bitconnect, along with a clip where investor Carlos Matos can be seen shouting his famous phrase “BitConnect!”

How Scams Work in Times Like These

In January 2009, a worldwide event occurred, Bitcoin began its functions, a cryptocurrency that came to turn the wheel in the financial world.

Bitcoin brought different ways of handling money, but also new and confusing concepts.  These concepts, “Blockchain”, “Mempool”, “Public and private keys” were some of the names that new users had to understand to use this new currency.

As the series explains how scams use uncertainty as an advantage to develop their fraudulent web. All of them tend to thrive in certain moments where a change can happen. When something new paves its way to users. When this new thing approaches, and reaches users with low knowledge on the matter, then the greatest proliferation of deceptions occurs.

scams are becoming a common activity, and although the method seems to always be the same, the vehicle to make this crime happen changes. More than 100 years ago Carlos Ponzi popularized his infamous fraud.

 Four decades after the fall of the original scam in 1920 Bernard Madoff would create the largest Ponzi scheme in all of history, which worked for more than 40 years. At the time of his arrest in 2008, this scam was responsible for generating a total capital of 650 million dollars.

By: Jenson Nuñez

Bitcoin’s dominance in the market has fallen by 30% so far in 2021. Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency Ether (ETH) and other projects are trading at significant levels.

There is a growing decline in the dominance of Bitcoin (BTC) in the market and the crypto asset already stands at 40%. The main cryptocurrency on the market had not recorded such a low figure since June 2018. On that date, its market capitalization represented between 39% and 41% of the entire market.

So far this year, Bitcoin’s dominance has fallen by 30%. Taking into account that its dominance was almost 70% on January 3rd, that is a significant figure. The percentages make it clear that the market is in a full season of alternative cryptocurrencies or altcoins.

The Dominance of Bitcoin Is Approaching All-Time Lows

Many traders and investors are putting their funds in other projects hoping to get higher returns. Those who invest in altcoins believe that these cryptocurrencies could grow much more than Bitcoin. The pioneering cryptocurrency is currently trading at around USD 46,000 per unit, according to data from CoinGecko.

Due to the current drop in Bitcoin’s dominance, the cryptocurrency is approaching its all-time lows relative to this metric. Data from CoinMarketCap indicates that Bitcoin’s dominance fell to 32.8% in January 2018. At the time, Ether (ETH) was the main rival of Bitcoin, following it with 18.7%.

The situation with these two cryptocurrencies is repeating itself today, but the total market capitalization is much larger. It is currently between USD 2.2 trillion and USD 2.5 trillion. Right now, Ether exhibits a dominance of 18.4% while Binance Coin (BNB) is in third place with 4%.

These Are Some Tokens and Altcoins That Have Outperformed Bitcoin

According to metrics from the Blockchain Center service, at least 45 altcoins have outperformed Bitcoin in the last three months. The main cryptocurrency on the market has advanced by 3.1% in this period while other tokens and crypto assets show advances of three to four digits.

For example, MATIC has risen by 1,370%, going from USD 0.019 per unit on January 1st to USD 1.71 on May 16th. The crypto assets Dogecoin (DOGE) with 819%, Ethereum Classic (ETC) with 581%, and BitTorrent with 459% have also attracted significant investments. When it comes to ETC, the cryptocurrency is taking advantage of the rise of Ether. Even though their names are similar, the former is a forked project.

Bitcoin has accumulated a total of five and a half months in decline in the market. In April, the dominance of BTC dropped from 50% for the first time after almost three years. Although the cryptocurrency that Satoshi Nakamoto created has lost dominance, its price has reached new all-time highs since October 2020. Bitcoin’s rally peaked on April 14th, leading the cryptocurrency to trade at USD 64,863.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk announced that his electric car company would no longer accept payments with Bitcoin. He argued that he made that decision because of the alleged environmental impact of Bitcoin mining.

By Willmen Blanco

The analysis does not minimize the energy consumption of BTC, it compares it to other industries. The researchers stated that Bitcoin has balanced requirements when it comes to energy consumption.

The international banking system and the gold industry use more than twice the energy that the Bitcoin (BTC) network needs to function. An investigation by the financial services firm, Galaxy Digital, estimated that banks and activities to generate the metal require more than 500 terawatt-hours (TW / H) per year, that is, the same amount of energy that Germany needs per year.

In the case of banks, analysts talked about the energy required to keep ATMs, branches, data centers of card issuers, and the banking data centers themselves operational. In total, this traditional finance sector needs around 238.9 TW / H per year, which is equivalent to the annual consumption in countries like Spain.

Gold production, ranging from mining, milling, to smelting, would consume about 240.6 TW / H per year, the same amount that Australia consumes, roughly. In the case of gold, analysts also included other polluting emissions such as jewelry, use in electronic devices, and even how these activities are creating a vast impact on world business.

Bitcoin Energy Consumption When Compared to Other Consumptions

The energy consumption of the network for Bitcoin would be about 113.9 TW / H, a little less than the annual consumption of nordic countries like Sweden. For BTC, the energy use of the miners, mining pools, and participating nodes were the samples to achieve such conclusions.

Given the transparency of Bitcoin, its energy use is easier to study and measure. This gives rise to frequent criticisms, but these criticisms are rarely made of other traditional industries. Bitcoin is compared to the traditional banking system and gold, but the energy use of these industries is opaque as they do not publicly disclose their energy footprint, ‘the researchers noted.

One aspect to consider is that the researchers do not minimize the energy consumption that Bitcoin needs to exist. The data collected serves to set better comparisons between BTC and other industries, which are related to the first cryptocurrency and its decentralized digital system.

The report highlighted that in the future humans will keep creating new and better technologies that require more energy and that Bitcoin is proof of this. The Galaxy Digital study was part of the debate on energy use in Bitcoin. Recently the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, announced that the company will no longer accept bitcoin as a means of payment because it is causing serious damage to the environment.

This shift on Bitcoin, as a digital system and cryptocurrency, not only questions Musk’s head-on after praising it, but it would also displace it from his plans, as Tesla will study the use of other digital assets with less energy consumption.

By: Jenson Nuñez

Market sentiment went from greed to extreme fear in a matter of a week. Users see the moment of “extreme fear” as a buying opportunity.

Investors’ thoughts towards bitcoin are not as nice as it was before. According to the Fear and Greed (fear and greed) index, the stance on bitcoin (BTC) reached a point of “extreme fear”, crumbling down to levels like the ones in the 2020 crisis, which happened right after the start of the COVID pandemic. 19.

This Sunday, May 16, said index reached 20, a mark that indicates the “extreme fear” towards investing in BTC according to the Fear and Greed Index. This Monday’s update places the index at “fear”, with the mark at 27.

The Fear and Greed Index measures market sentiment. In the case of cryptocurrencies, the behavior is closely related to emotions, which explains alternative.me, in its section dedicated to this index.

This index usually works as a buy or sell indicator, depending on general market sentiment. For this reason, data such as the dominance of bitcoin in the market, appearances in social networks, volatility, trade volumes, and search interest on the subject on Google are under analysis.

The index reached levels not seen since last year’s crisis, amid the controversy sparked by Elon Musk’s criticism of bitcoin and its alleged energy expenditure, which has caused the price of BTC to fall above 20% in the last seven days.

Musk’s apparent war against Bitcoin seems to have quickly taken a toll on investment interest. Just a week ago, the general sentiment was one of “greed,” with a 72 on the index.

According to the Description of the Index, there is More Greed

This index’s “extreme fear” is seen more as a buying opportunity than a bearish sign. The description of the index also states that when there is more greed, the market must correct.

Historical data shows that there has been a correlation between the Fear and Greed Index and the price of bitcoin. In fact, about the crisis of February-March 2020, users hit the point of greatest fear in the market, at least since 2018.

From that point to the present, the price of bitcoin came to multiply up to 17 times. And right now, despite the decay in recent days, it remains 11 times above its price at that time.

At least, so far in 2021, as it has moved from maximum greed to fear, the price of bitcoin has been climbing, with ever higher support, even taking into account market corrections.

The graph, published by Ilia Sakowski in response to a post about the moment of “extreme fear” on Twitter, shows how bitcoin has performed in the market, in contrast to the drop in greed among investors. This behavior seems to relate to the view of ‘extreme fear’ as a buying opportunity for BTC, waiting for a price recovery.

Expectations for this year are also high, according to some analysts. These analysts talk about bitcoin not just surpassing $ 100,000, but approaching $ 300,000. Right now, those predictions seem far off, although the re-live pandemic fears floor could indicate otherwise.

By: JensoN Nuñez