Bitcoin Miners’ Profits Increased at least 150% in Two Years, Although they Generate Less BTC

Jenson Nunez
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Bitcoin Miners’ Profits Increased at least 150% in Two Years, Although they Generate Less BTC

Miners make more than double what they did before the last halving. The Bitcoin hash rate has continued to expand, despite bearish market moments.

Despite the automatic reductions in BTC, Bitcoin miners today see a significant increase in their profits if they convert to USD. Miner revenues currently hover around $207,000 per exahash (EH) of power contributed to the network.

Bitcoin allocation gets halved for every 210,000 mined blocks, which gets achieved every four years, approximately. This action, which takes effect automatically in the Bitcoin network, is called halving.

The last Bitcoin halving took effect on May 11, 2020. The reward miners received for adding a new block of verified transactions to the blockchain was 12.5 BTC. After the halving, this incentive ended up being 6.25 BTC.

Although just after the decrease in block rewards, miners also experienced their profits decline at the end of 2020; the landscape started to bring various changes for these Bitcoin network workers.

In 2021 there were points in which Bitcoin miners’ income was even higher than the actual one. The earnings per exahash of power contributed to the Bitcoin network surpassed $400,000 multiple times.

Why are USD Bitcoin Miners’ Profits Going Through this Situation?

Some reasons have benefited the profit of Bitcoin miners, despite the decay in rewards on this network. The first of these reasons is the deflationary effect of the halving.

The fact that less availability of a resource makes it more valuable to those who own it than to those who wish to have it. Therefore, as less BTC gets mined, its supply gets reduced, and its market price theoretically enjoys more benefits. However, it is crucial to note that many causes impact the cost of an asset in the market, and scarcity is just one of these causes.

Another relevant situation that applies direct influence over the earnings of Bitcoin miners to look so bulky today is the price of BTC in the market.

Bitcoin Miners’ Profits are Higher Despite the Adversities

Bitcoin miners got favored by the rise of BTC in the market compared to the prices of two years ago and the development of more effective and efficient devices for mining. However, some factors work against them, such as the increasing difficulty of mining and the cryptocurrency market’s bearish waves.

Although the price of BTC is five times higher than two years ago, it is currently crumbling down. In the last week, the average cost of bitcoin fell from USD 46,000 to USD 40,000, equivalent to 15%. The current cryptocurrency market depends on the increase in the difficulty of mining, and the problem of mining in Bitcoin increases as the hashrate of the network increases.

By: Jenson Nuñez

IMF Associates Bitcoin’s Popularity with Corruption

Jenson Nunez
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IMF Associates Bitcoin’s Popularity with Corruption

The body requests stronger international regulation for the digital currency industry. It ensures that residents of advanced nations use less bitcoin and other digital currencies.

The International Monetary Fund expressed that cryptocurrencies get positively linked to higher perceptions of corrupted activities and more rigorous capital controls. The entity highlighted this information in a report in which it studies the results of a survey of 110,000 people on the use of bitcoin (BTC) and other digital assets.

Surprisingly, the study centered its efforts on how cryptocurrency can serve as a tool in corrupted nations and not on the progressive increase in their use as a cover against the high rate of corruption that affects many countries worldwide.

To determine what is behind the fame of bitcoin and other digital assets, the IMF surveyed thousands of people in 55 countries. And later, in his report Crypto, Corruption, and Capital Controls: Cross-Country Correlations, he determined that one of the crucial facts is that in nations with more substantial capital restrictions, the number of digital currencies users increases exponentially.

The agency points out in the document that citizens of nations in which the traditional financial sector is well developed may have less need for digital assets to boost their economic structure.

The entity also added that the personal data protection brought by the bitcoin platform makes it a vital resource for camouflaging illicit financial behaviors, including proceeds that come from corrupted activities.

Exchanges Without Any Intervention

In the bitcoin network, two parties can exchange their digital assets without the intervention of a third party and without revealing their data. When it comes to the first digital asset, users play a vital role in the network by concealing their true identities.

This situation happens under a pseudonym that is nothing more than the set of random numbers and letters that make up a public address.

However, the protection of privacy that bitcoin currently offers is not an action that many governments, institutions, and private entities have agreed with, mixing already combined efforts to de-anonymize trading operations.

The IMF joins this cause by arguing that stricter international regulation got needed for the digital asset industry. With this, he asks that the surveillance that entities like Chainalysis, Blockseer, CipherTrace, and Elliptic, among others, already carry out in the bitcoin network.

His idea is to deepen the analysis of blockchains to track the publicly available information. They are methods used by administrations and their security entities to keep surveillance alive and enabled in the ecosystem.

Stepping up surveillance on the bitcoin blockchain means it will expand its control over users with the Financial Action Task Force.

This regulation forces exchanges and other service providers in the cryptocurrency industry to exchange clients’ data if the amount of the transaction surpasses USD 1,000; this measure is also about to get executed in the European Union with a new regulation that Parliament has currently under study.

By: Jenson Nuñez

What Happens to Bitcoin as It Approaches USD 40,000

Alexander Salazar
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The support level of BTC fell from USD 45,000 to USD 40,700, pulling back after two weeks of highs. The price of Bitcoin has maintained a high correlation with Nasdaq’s tech stocks, showing it has matured.

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped from USD 46,900 to around USD 40,700 over the last week. In that way, it has gone back to the value it had three weeks ago, creating uncertainty about where it will head next.

The behavior of BTC indicates that it did not defend the support at USD 46,000, although bullish traders have bought at that value. Publicly-traded company MicroStrategy, founded and led by Michael Saylor, recently purchased USD 190.5 million worth of BTC.

However, some traders sold to take profits after Bitcoin reached its 2022 high in late March when it traded at USD 47,500. Sales and the non-consolidation of the bullish demand caused the price to drop closer to USD 40,000. That has triggered fear among investors, breaking the calm and neutrality existing in the market earlier last week.

Higher prices have led to weakness in the demand for Bitcoin, which does not help the market grow. Analysts predicted that the market would bid lower if the pullback were significant and support did not return to USD 45,000.

They doubt whether the value will continue to decrease or whether holders and buyers will maintain support above USD 40,000. Market analyst Alex Kuptsikevich recently said that fixing below the current price may open a path to the area close to USD 38,000.

Matt Maley, another market specialist, does not consider liquidation to be worrying, showing that he is more bullish. He explained that the pullback from the high in late March was more technical than anything else.

Maley stated that Bitcoin became very overbought after its 35% rally from January to late March. He said that its multi-month bullish trend would stay intact if it could remain above USD 40,000.

The Price of Bitcoin Correlates with Nasdaq’s Tech Stocks

The situation of Bitcoin is similar to what the shares of technology companies under the NDXT code on Wall Street’s Nasdaq stock exchange reflect. Although Bitcoin distinguishes itself by its volatility, it has behaved like those traditional assets during the last month.

However, the rise in the price of Bitcoin has been higher than Nasdaq’s tech stocks in that period. Despite the current drop, BTC has maintained a growth of 3.83%, while NDXT has risen by 1.05% in the last month.

Market specialist Joanna Ossinger recently stated that expectations of an announcement of higher interest rates by the Fed had affected the demand for risk assets. She clarified that this includes cryptocurrencies and tech stocks, which increasingly move in tandem.

That proves that the government decisions of the United States have influenced the price of BTC significantly. That has happened despite millionaire purchases by companies like MicroStrategy and Terra, which many expected to impact the market more.

Although the correlation with Nasdaq’s tech stocks is a sign that BTC has matured over the years, analysts consider it detrimental to its price. During war conflicts and economic crises with rising global inflation, investors view it as a highly volatile speculative asset.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia caused the price of gold and oil to grow by around 2% and 16%, respectively. Some analysts have predicted that BTC would have to overcome the current pullback and exceed USD 50,000.

By Alexander Salazar

Blockchain in the EU Healthcare Report: Six Key Points

Audy Castañeda
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Blockchain in the EU Healthcare Report: Six Key Points

The EU Blockchain Observatory of the EU predicts that distributed ledger technology will deliver the era of Healthcare 4.0.

The EU Blockchain Observatory has published its fifth report under the title “Blockchain Applications in the Healthcare Sector”. The paper highlights the importance of distributed ledger technology for the European healthcare sector, which is facing a number of challenges on its way to the “Healthcare 4.0” revolution.

There was an announcement of the 66-page document on the EU Blockchain Observatory’s Twitter on April 11. Its authors adopt an optimistic perspective on the implementation of Blockchain technology in the health sector, pointing out its compatibility with the basic principles of “health 4.0”, such as interoperability, virtualization, decentralization, real-time capacity, orientation to service, and modularity. Below are 7 key points from the report.

Old System, New Challenges

As the health sector becomes more knowledge-based, it has become more complex; the abundant variety of tools and methods also makes it prone to errors. Hence, it is essential to have flexible and digitized knowledge, as well as a data management system. This system must provide easy and simple access to patients, whose interest in accessing their own health information is growing rapidly.

In addition, an old problem has not gone away. Data stored in today’s healthcare systems is often isolated. According to the report, a properly designed healthcare application on a distributed ledger can address many of these issues.

Centralization, Well Served

When it comes to healthcare, some centralization is preferable, but efficient centralization is hard to come by. DLT technology thus becomes an almost unavoidable solution. For example, as the report highlights, distributed ledgers could help monitor the use of medical equipment by healthcare facilities and identify device shortages or excesses in different geographic locations, or direct patients to facilities better equipped to treat them.

The Fight against Counterfeiting

Perhaps one of the most recognized advantages of Blockchain technology in relation to health care is its ability to fight counterfeiting – a traditionally very sensitive problem for the sector – by tracking the data of each of the items in the supply chain. The report once again confirms this characteristic, also highlighting the logistical benefits:

“Using Blockchains as a ledger to record provenance, vaccines and other life-saving medicines could be monitored and traced from their origin to their current location, thereby reducing the loss or mistaken qualification of medicines and the risk of counterfeiting.”

In the midst of epidemic outbreaks such as the one humanity has recently experienced, this capability could become crucial for both national and global health systems.

Blockchain Technology Necessary to Ensure Global Reach

Human health is a key concern on which the broadest possible global collaboration can be expected. Blockchain technology also comes in here with its ability to streamline the exchange of information on a large scale.

As in any other high-tech sector, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are the future of healthcare. As the report indicates, “Blockchain mitigates the problems of federated learning and helps achieve fairness, process accountability, and threat mitigation, as well as encouraging collaboration between organizations, serving as a global model from locally trained models, allowing the exchange of models without transferring the dataset”.

Data Security

The report challenges the argument that Blockchain technology does not support the necessary privacy of patient data, due to the immutability of data recorded in distributed ledgers. According to the authors, it is possible to combine the application of Blockchain technology with an off-chain solution:

“To comply with the GDPR, products can use Blockchain in a layer above databases, so it is possible to monitor transactions in the exchange of data and access information, while all personal health data are stored off-chain”.

An Encouraging Conclusion

In general, the authors of the report encourage the European Commission to facilitate future legislation that enables innovation in health information technologies, including Blockchain. They underscore the potential of DLT technology to be not just a technology infrastructure, but also a new way to govern data relationships and a conduit for economic development.

A potential threat to Blockchain-powered innovation could come from lawmakers, who could stall the technology’s rollout by introducing overly conservative regulatory measures. For this reason, the report advocates a periodic review of the regulations in terms of their adaptation to the most recent debates and developments around DLT technology:

“Overseeing decentralized Blockchain technologies requires a fresh perspective and ongoing education of advancements to determine how to integrate this technology into current and future regulatory frameworks.”

The European Blockchain Observatory is a European Fee initiative designed to facilitate Blockchain innovation and spur the dialog on distributed ledger expertise amongst European stakeholders.

By Audy Castaneda

Five Years in Prison for Ethereum Developer who Gave Talks in North Korea

Jenson Nunez
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Five Years in Prison for Ethereum Developer who Gave Talks in North Korea

Virgil Griffith violated US sanctions on North Korea by participating in an event. He got sentenced to a 5-year sentence and a fine of USD 100,000.

Virgil Griffith, the developer of Ethereum, received a sentence of at least 63 months in prison in the United States of America for having infringed government punishments applied to North Korea by educating about digital currencies in that nation.

The Asian country is one of the most prominent political adversaries of the United States of America. Justice firmly thinks that the specialist exclusively traveled to encourage procedures that can help nations avoid sanctions.

The sentence against this computer expert came from Judge Kevin Castel, of Manhattan, in the southern district of New York. In addition to suspending his liberty, the magistrate decided to charge him at least USD 100,000 for playing a significant role in training activities on technology and digital assets in the Asian nation.

Griffith and his defense fought to achieve at least a 24-month sentence at trial. However, it ended up facing the sentence the American authorities applied. The entire process got observed through Twitter in real-time, hosted by the Inner City Press.

Judge Castel assured during the trial that it was unreal that Mr. Griffith had to get prosecuted for encouraging digital assets. The case was about a violation of sanctions applied to avoid military clashes between nations. In addition, he assured that Griffith has no ideologies or preferences for the United States of America or North Korea.

However, Griffith’s past public statements appeared to highlight otherwise since, on his LinkedIn profile, the expert shows himself as a “scientific researcher” with expertise on Ethereum. A girl with a Chinese flag in her hand appeared on her cover image recently. The photo got cropped, and that national symbol is no longer visible.

Background to the Case

Virgil Griffith got detained in November 2019 after participating in the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference. The procedure took place in the US city of Los Angeles.

Despite being released a month later, even with the backing of Ethereum’s co-creator and his personal friend Vitalik Buterin, he got detained again in July 2021 for infringing his probation by breaking into his account at the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange.

Almost two years later, this developer got found guilty of taking part in disclosure events in North Korea and conspiring so that the Asian country could circumvent US economic punishments.

North Korea has had the “obligation” to embrace the use of digital assets due to various economic blockades that weigh on its government. At the time, events on digital currencies and technology were encouraged in the nation, to which multiple specialists from various countries got invited to share their expertise on the matter.

The United Nations Organization recommended not attending these meetings because they represented an infraction of international punishments on the region ruled by Kim Jong-un.

By: Jenson Nuñez

The Bitcoin Whales Have Moved 30,904 BTC over the Last Week

Alexander Salazar
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The Bitcoin Whales Have Moved 30,904 BTC over the Last Week

The whales transferred 30,904 BTC from unknown wallets to exchanges and 21,004 BTC vice versa. However, those long-term holders moved 17,266 BTC between the latter platforms and only made peer-to-peer transfers of 17,266 BTC.

Over the last week, the Bitcoin whales have moved 71,074 BTC through 38 transactions. The following daily analysis shows the details and the influence that this may have had on the price of Bitcoin.

It is necessary to contextualize that activity to better dig into the status of the whales and the market as a whole. However, this is just a micro approach to one of the many factors that can influence the performance of BTC.

Daily Analysis of the Activity of the Bitcoin Whales

The predominant trend in the activity of the whales was the introduction of liquidity into the market. They moved 30,904 BTC from unknown wallets to exchanges, equivalent to 43.48% of the weekly total.

The second-highest trend was accumulation, as 21,004 BTC went from exchanges to unknown wallets, representing 29.55% of the weekly total. It is relevant to note that this trend was insignificant during the weekend.

The transfer between exchanges was the third-highest trend, as they moved 17,266 BTC, equivalent to 24.29% of the weekly total. Finally, the whales only moved 1,900 BTC between unknown wallets, representing 2.67%.

The Performance of Bitcoin over the Last Week

The amount of BTC in the reserves of exchanges has been in the red throughout the last week. On April 5th, BTC was trading at USD 47,600, but it is currently worth around USD 42,025, a 15.21% loss.

The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization ignored a brief rally on April 10th to settle below its USD 42,500 level of April 8th.

That setback has occurred amid growing economic uncertainty due to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the imminent interest rate hikes by the Fed.

BTC might remain under pressure until significant momentum takes the price above USD 48,000. The recent performance of the cryptocurrency has coincided largely with leading stock markets, which have also dropped.

For example, on April 8th, the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite Index closed down by more than a percentage point. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average also fell as investors processed various historical events that could drive the global economy into recession.

For those reasons, BTC may need a catalyst to maintain upward momentum, like more interest rate hikes and monetary policy changes. The whales may have introduced liquidity into the market as they may want to collect profits from the rise in BTC. They might be worried that its price could go even lower in the coming days.

Bitcoin is trading at around USD 40,356 and has accumulated a 1.7% loss over the last 24 hours. Its daily trading volume is above USD 31.69 billion, and its market capitalization is about USD 762.25 billion, according to CoinGecko.

By Alexander Salazar

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