Users will prevent third parties from monitoring their addresses by conducting community transactions. The latest update also improved load times for the app and a Tor-based service.

Samourai Wallet team introduced Version 0.99.96 of its Samourai Wallet this week to the Bitcoin community. It is an update that focuses on improving the privacy of transactions, incorporating new ways of sending bitcoins with the Coinjoin protocol.

In a press release, the Samourai Wallet team highlighted the launch of its new privacy tool, called ‘Soroban’. This privacy tool is an independent encrypted communication project that works on the Tor network.

The new layer allows wallet clients to establish communication with each other outside of the blockchain, keeping and protecting every shared piece of information as secret data. Soroban entered into the private transactions of Samourai Wallet as «Cahoots»; this means in Spanish «confabulation» or «buddy».

A function that the company created in 2018, and incorporated into the operation of the wallet last year, with the new communication service, will allow users to negotiate bitcoin transactions and payments directly, without leaving traceable data on the blockchain.

In this way, with the introduction of Soroban, Samourai Wallet now enables private transactions to execute its functions in a faster and easier way.

This will bring advantages to two particular services: Stowaway (Stowaway) transactions, better known as PayJoin, which are also used by other wallets such as Wasabi or the BTCPayServer service, and the StoneWall transactions

Samourai Wallet will bring better “cops” and “stone walls”

The Samourai Wallet directive points out that Stowaway transactions “look like normal bitcoin transactions”, but are about Coinjoin operations between different users of the wallet.

The sender and the receiver would be collaborating to transfer an amount of money without third parties knowing the total amount, for which the negotiated amount is not registered in the blockchain, and the transaction is executed without intermediaries.

On the other hand, Stonewall x2 transactions are a Coinjoin operation that works thanks to two people and go to a third party outside of the Samourai Wallet system. The sender would collaborate with a third party (another Samourai Waller user) to send bitcoins to an external wallet. That is, private transactions can be executed even outside of Samourai Wallet.

By implementing Soroban in both transactions, users will no longer have to use multiple QR codes to transfer bitcoins with greater privacy all negotiation will happen through the Soroban tool, ensuring the entire operation. The team expects this change to reduce transaction time from 1 to 5 minutes to just 10 seconds; this is a very significant improvement.

To understand this new update in greater depth, it must be taken into account that Cahoots transactions are collaborative operations, where two or more people can participate to send information outside the blockchain.

That is, they are inspired by privacy protocols, such as CoinJoin, to make it difficult to monitor addresses and transactions on blockchain networks. The statement notes that Cahoots’ goal is to “undermine the common property heuristic”, where all money leaving an address belongs to a single individual.

Experts in the study of blockchains often use this principle to identify the monetary movements of an individual and even the identity of this person.

Anyway, when a transaction carries the money of several people mixed, it is much more difficult to know how much money goes by a single address and if the total amount belongs to a single individual.

In this sense, it is almost impossible to determine what are the movements of an individual on the blockchain; thus increasing the privacy of its users.

In addition to these changes, the developer team stated that the loading times of the app were also improved in this latest update, as well as simplified the functionality of their Paynym tool. A series of bets confirm that Samourai Wallet continues to be one of the bitcoin wallets with the higher interest in privacy services for its clientele, along with other projects such as Wasabi.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

Woo says that the market today, on average, has paid $ 7,456 per bitcoin. BTC inventory decline in this cycle is twice as long as in 2017.

Analyst Willy Woo published a new predictive model on the price of bitcoin, which predicts a price of $ 200,000 within a year for this cryptocurrency. He even qualifies this model as conservative and states that by the end of 2021 “$ 300,000 is not totally ruled out.”

Woo (@woonomic on Twitter) published his analysis in a thread on that social network last Monday. Woo uses a metric from his Bitcoin Price Models called Average Cap, which is a modified moving average. The average cap on any day is the average of all daily caps, divided by the market age in days.

Once you have the Average Capitalization, it multiplies by 35, so the result obtains the Cap or Top Cap Capitalization. This curve is always above price, but it coincides with successive all-time highs for bitcoin, Woo says.

The prediction for the current moment is above $ 87,000, more than four times the current price. Anyway, the two previous highs of $ 1,000 in December 2013, and the one close to $ 20,000 in December 2017, are part of the predictive curve. By the end of 2021, Woo expects the price to reach $ 200,000.

The price, which is the average of the different lots of BTC, valued at the price they had the last time they were moved, is currently above $ 7,000. Woo explains it another way: “The market today paid an average of $ 7,456 for its coins. You are all geniuses”.

The decline in BTC held in spot exchanges (spot) is used by Woo as an indicator before a bull cycle. Before the start of the bull run in 2017, there was an 11% decay in BTC inventory on exchanges; this happened over five month and reaching an end in January 2017.

Similarly, Woo highlights the BTC inventory drop on exchanges, almost double, 19%, during the current bull cycle. This decline lasted for more than 10 months, and the bull run began its cycle in late July this year.

Another aspect to take into consideration in the bitcoin price model is related to the return in dollars of the market capitalization per dollar invested in each cycle. “The HODLers are holding back more, the profit per dollar invested was $ 2 in the 2013 bull cycle, $ 2.50 in 2017, and it is estimated the investment of $ 3.50 or more for 2021.

Willy Woo made accurate predictions about the price of bitcoin, in which he used data from the Bitcoin blockchain and its pricing archetypes. After the price rally in late July, Woo maintained that this was the beginning of a major bull run.

In mid-September, amidst a period of bitcoin price deterioration, the analyst predicted a price rally in subsequent weeks as a major bitcoin trading cycle had been completed.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

S&P Dow Jones customers will be able to access custom benchmarks and indices. No one knows the exact date for the launch of cryptocurrency indices.

S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) is one of the leading providers of financial indices in the world. In recent days, the organization itself announced in a statement that it will launch a product that focuses on cryptocurrencies starting next year.

In that text, S&P DJI stated that its cryptocurrency index is based on data from the Lukka company. The latter is a provider of cryptocurrency price data based in New York, the United States.

This partnership will allow S&P customers to access personalized indices and establish a comparative analysis of the behavior of various cryptocurrencies, according to the statement.

“S&P DJI will provide customized indexing and benchmarking solutions. In addition, Lukka’s proprietary crypto asset price data will support the S&P DJI brand,” explained S&P Dow Jones Indices.

According to the press release, the growth in the popularity of cryptocurrencies has aroused greater interest from investors. For that reason, “indexing and benchmarking solutions based on crypto assets and blockchain technology has grown and reinforced the need for reliable price data,” the statement said.

S&P DJI Global Head of Innovation and Strategy, Peter Roffman, said that this is the right time for “independent, reliable and user-friendly benchmarks” that focus on cryptocurrencies. In his opinion, the launch of their new service allows for promoting greater transparency in the industry.

No one knows the exact date, or a tentative one, to make the new service available to customers of the pioneering financial indexing organization founded in the late 19th century.

The Dow Jones Transportation Index is the oldest in the world, and people in the financial world still use it. That index currently includes airlines, international courier companies, and others in the transportation sector, such as American, Delta and United Airlines, and FedEx.

Institutions Turn Their Attention to Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies

The provider of financial indices states that large investors and institutions are increasingly paying attention to cryptocurrencies. This has particularly happened in recent months.

MicroStrategy and Square, among other companies, have already made their investments in Bitcoin public. Guggenheim Partners, a global investment services and financial advisory company, recently showed interest in investing in Grayscale’s Bitcoin fund.

The Grayscale fund is a good example of this institutional interest. Just a few days ago, the amount of Bitcoin in that fund exceeded 500,000 units, equivalent to about USD 10 billion at the current price, which is around USD 19,300 per unit.

At the time of writing this article, the market capitalization of Bitcoin is close to USD 360 billion. Bitcoin’s recent rise has allowed it to become the equivalent of the second largest bank in the world, based on the total value of coins in circulation.

Once again, the interest of financial institutions in the pioneering cryptocurrency shows its supremacy as a store of value. It has also proved to be the best option for retail investors who want to safeguard their funds.

By Alexander Salazar

Satoshi Nakamoto presented his eCash proposal to Wei Dai via e-mail. The name eCash refers to a precedent that David Chaum created in the 1980s.

In 2009, a person (or group of people) behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto submitted a highly significant proposal. This would become a project that currently moves billions of US dollars around the world.

What many people do not know is that this project did not always have the name Bitcoin. Some e-mails between Satoshi and cryptographer Wei Dai, between 2008 and 2009, have the answer about the beginnings of the project. The creator of Bitcoin originally introduced it as “Electronic Cash without a Trusted Third Party.”

The first e-mail that Satoshi sent to Dai, which is available on the gwern.net website, sought to clarify the publication date of B-Money. Although Satoshi was not aware of B-Money before devising Bitcoin, this cryptographer’s electronic money proposal seems to be an antecedent to Bitcoin. Adam Back, a member of the cypherpunk movement, noted the similarities and notified Satoshi.

In his message to Wei Dai, he presented his project to the renowned cryptographer. Satoshi shared a first draft of the abstract or conceptual presentation of his proposal. Although it has differences beyond the name of the project, the text is the basis of the Bitcoin White Paper.

Satoshi shared the document with his counterpart in a link that is not accessible on the Internet, so it is impossible to corroborate its content with known versions where the term Bitcoin already exists. Among the few differences, the most prominent is the initial mention of “honest nodes” that would later be simply known as “nodes”. There is a correction of writing errors and minor changes in the formulation of the text.

eCash is an abbreviation of the first name Satoshi used to shape his proposal in the 1980s. David Chaum devised eCash as an anonymous electronic money alternative. It was not possible to apply it as he expected, and so he founded a firm that provided companies with electronic payments. Years later, Chaum himself would say that it was not the time to apply such an idea.

Identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin

There has been a lot of speculation, but no one knows for sure the identity of the person (or group of people) behind Satoshi Nakamoto. For that reason, the great mystery of Bitcoin is precisely in not knowing who created it.

Bitcoin shares several of its basic concepts with B-Money, which is why Dai has been one of the suspects of being behind that pseudonym since the beginning of the project.

However, the cryptographer has denied that theory. He has even argued that he would have tried to dissuade Satoshi from some wrong design decisions that he did not notice at first. In particular, he would have asked him to change the monetary policy of Bitcoin.

A few weeks ago, a group of researchers analyzed, in an attempt to look for clues, the identity of the creator of Bitcoin. Everything seems to point to London as Nakamoto’s operations center while he was developing his proposal.

The data that the analysts collected helps to discard some suspects or people who have tried to call themselves Satoshi, such as Australian businessman Craig S. Wright.

However, the findings do not shed any more light on the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, beyond placing him in a specific country between 2008 and 2009. Therefore, this remains a mystery to which there may never be a solution.

By Alexander Salazar

They made the purchases of Bitcoin between August and September 2020. The Coinbase exchange provides services to large companies, as well as to retail investors.

In recent days, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase revealed that it was responsible for purchasing USD 425 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) for the American company MicroStrategy. They made the purchases of the cryptocurrency between August and September 2020.

“Using our advanced execution capabilities, we were able to buy a significant amount of Bitcoin on behalf of MicroStrategy, and we did so without moving the market,” said Brett Tejpaul, director of institutional sales at Coinbase.

Because it is a large purchase, the Coinbase system divided it into many parts that ran on multiple trading platforms, according to the executive. When they did this, “they minimized the impact on the market and helped to disguise the size of the operation,” Tejpaul said.

This method allowed for an average strike price that was lower than the price at the time of purchase, Tejpaul added. “This strategy delivered savings of about USD 4.25 million to MicroStrategy,” revealed the director of sales.

Thanks to the purchase of Bitcoin, MicroStrategy made, in just two months, profits higher than those that it earned in its last three years of operations. According to the company, Bitcoin shows “persuasive evidence of its superiority as an asset class for those seeking a long-term store of value.”

Tejpaul believes that Coinbase is ready to serve other companies that “seek cryptocurrencies to hedge or diversify their excess cash.” Investing in the pioneering cryptocurrency allows them to increase their income, especially during bullish runs.

“In our mission to create an open financial system, getting companies like MicroStrategy to recognize the value of cryptocurrencies can be monumental in the growth of the crypto economy. We hope that this is a turning point for the crypto economy, and we look forward to helping more companies and corporate institutions,” said Tejpaul.

Small Investors Can Buy Bitcoin

The trading strategy of Coinbase aims at both large companies and retail investors who want to buy Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. At the time of writing this article, Coinbase allows acquiring 36 different crypto assets from its platform. In addition to Bitcoin, they include Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Chainlink (LINK), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Stellar Lumens (XLM), and the DAI Stablecoin.

According to Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, “the open nature of cryptocurrencies is what makes them powerful tools for innovation.” For that reason, although his platform complies with all the requirements to operate legally, he considers that excess regulation creates friction in the industry.

The growing investment from institutional entities makes the relevance of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as stores of value increasingly evident. The recovery of Bitcoin in recent days after an abrupt decline proves that it is capable of returning to its all-time highs even in the worst moments of crisis. Both wholesale and retail investors know this, which contributes to the rise of the foremost cryptocurrency in the market.

By Alexander Salazar

Guggenheim Funds Trust introduced an amendment to allow its $ 5 billion Macro Opportunity Fund to be exposed to Bitcoin.

Guggenheim Funds Trust applied with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allow its $ 5 billion Macro Opportunity Fund to be exposed to Bitcoin by investing up to 10% of the value of the fund’s net assets at the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).

The firm reserves the right to have its $ 5 billion Macro Opportunity Fund, which aims to achieve a total return through fixed income and other debt and equity securities, to invest in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.

The trust’s shares are invested solely in Bitcoin and track the price of the digital asset minus fees and expenses.

“The Guggenheim Macro Opportunity Fund is interested in seeking investment exposure to Bitcoin indirectly by investing up to 10% of its net asset value in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, a private investment vehicle that cares about Bitcoin.

To the extent that the Fund invests in the GBTC, it will do so through the Subsidiary”, said the firm in the document that serves as an agreement with the SEC.

Investments in Bitcoin would place Guggenheim and his chief investment officer Scott Minerd with the likes of Paul Tudor Jones and Stan Druckenmiller, who have already talked about the investment of money in the digital asset.

The first cryptocurrency has seen a strong rise in 2020, approaching its all-time highs of December 2017, currently being above $ 19,300.

How is Guggenheim facing the implied risks?

The Guggenheim application, which describes cryptocurrencies as “digital assets designed to act as a medium of exchange,” also lists a wide a diverse amount of risks.

These risks include prices that “can be highly volatile,” regulatory changes, a crisis of confidence, and a lack of trust in the Bitcoin network. Also, it includes a change in user preference for competing cryptocurrencies and the habit of trading on “largely unregulated” exchanges that may be more exposed to fraud and failure than other regulated exchanges that set up for other asset classes.

Even so, Guggenheim seems to show an interesting attachment to Greyscale as a potential source of exposure to cryptocurrencies.

“Except for its investment in GBTC, the Fund will not invest, directly or indirectly, in cryptocurrencies,” the document reads.

The Macro Opportunity Fund is a vital part of Guggenheim Investments, the global asset management, and an investment advisory division of Guggenheim Partners founded by the famous Guggenheim family.

Guggenheim Family is a family well-known for being the owners of several museums of the same name around the globe and for having more than USD 233,000 million in total assets in fixed income, variable income, and alternative strategies.

The fact that a family with this reputation is investing in Bitcoin, and more in these amounts, could create a noticeable increase in prices to cause them to grow even higher in the next year.

By: Jenson Nuñez.