Bitcoin: Interest in Bitcoin Spikes Worldwide During COVID-19 Crisis, Binance Officially Launches Mining Pool With Bitcoin As Its First Product, MakerDao Brings Bitcoin to the Ethereum Blockchain, Pre-Halving Excitement, dYdX Launches Decentralized Perpetual Swaps For Bitcoin
Biweekly update 19th April — 3rd May
“Every informed person needs to know about Bitcoin because it might be one of the world’s most important developments.” — Leon Luow
In this report:
— Financial metrics & analysis;
— The ‘Great Lockdown’ is boosting demand for Bitcoin custody solutions — Thanks in part to the uncertainty of the coronavirus crisis and rising bitcoin prices, bitcoin wallet startups have seen a sudden uptick in activity;
— Bitcoin wallets are adopting this tech to simplify lightning payments;
— US Bitcoin holders worry about chinese control of the mining network;
— Stock-to-Flow creator says Bitcoin is ’not a toy anymore’ — PlanB, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow model, explained Bitcoin’s journey from a proof-of-concept to a mainstream financial asset;
— Bitcoin Halving History: hash rate as a clue to what will happen;
— Markets Daily Crypto Roundup by John Biggs and Adam B. Levine at Coindesk;
— dYdX launches decentralized perpetual swaps for Bitcoin;
— MakerDao brings Bitcoin to the Ethereum blockchain;
— Bitcoin miners usually create 6 blocks per hour. They just banged out 16;
— Binance announced the launch of Binance Pool, its cryptocurrency mining service. At launch, Binance Pool will support Bitcoin mining as its first product offering;
— Chinese city known for Bitcoin mining seeks blockchain firms to burn excess hydropower;
— Upcoming Bitcoin events;
..and a lot more!
Disclaimer
Trading and investing in digital assets like Bitcoin is highly speculative and comes with many risks. This article and information below and above are for informational purposes and should not be considered investment advice. They should not be construed as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.
Development
News & Updates
- Interest in Bitcoin Spikes Worldwide During COVID-19 Crisis — Bitcoin might not be the most stable asset out there, but it is more stable than some economies. The demand for cryptocurrency in certain countries is growing amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Bitcoin (BTC) peer-to-peer trading volume in Argentina, Chile, Venezuela and Morocco has peaked over the past few weeks, marking new all-time highs. Additional reports suggest that traffic on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges has also peaked within the past few weeks, while major trading platforms such as Kraken and Coinbase have commenced hiring sprees due to increased customer interest.
- The ‘Great Lockdown’ Is Boosting Demand for Bitcoin Custody Solutions — Thanks in part to the uncertainty of the coronavirus crisis and rising bitcoin prices, bitcoin wallet startups have seen a sudden uptick in activity. For example, over the past two months the Austin, Texas-based bitcoin startup Unchained Capital, with over $50 million in assets under management and $150 million worth of bitcoin transactions processed, garnered several dozen new institutional clients, representing hundreds of individuals. Will Cole, Unchained’s chief product officer, said the custody product Vault saw 340% growth in Q1 2020 as compared to the previous quarter.
“We’ve seen a big uptick in the creation of Vaults,” Cole said. “An event like that [pandemic] makes people think about how they are storing their bitcoin.”
The Bitcoin Association has announced its certification as a non-profit organization based in Zurich, Switzerland and aims at preaching the gospel of Bitcoin and blockchain technology all around the world. The association registered as a not-for-profit body in Switzerland will increase the visibility and acceptance of cryptocurrencies not only in Switzerland but elsewhere in the world. Besides, the legal recognition of crypto-focused companies and organizations by governments is a step forward to realizing more crypto and blockchain awareness, investment, and support.
The Lightning network might be key to the future of bitcoin, but it still has a long way to go in terms of user experience.
To tackle this issue, the standard known as Lnurl is quietly gaining ground. Without much fanfare, it’s been adopted in some of the most popular Lightning wallets including Zap, Phoenix, Breez, Blue Wallet and Wallet of Satoshi, as well as dozens of other apps.
- US Bitcoin Holders Worry About Chinese Control of the Mining Network — Could China take over the Bitcoin ecosystem? It’s a very real possibility, and it could happen very quickly because China controls more than half of the world’s Bitcoin mining operations — upward of 65% of the computing power to mine Bitcoin. No other country is anywhere near that number. Additionally, according to Genesis Mining’s recent “The State of Crypto Mining 2020” report, 60% of Bitcoin owners have a real concern about that Chinese majority and what it could mean for the stabilization of the cryptocurrency. And they should be worried. China owning more than half of mining operations could result in a disruption to the system, instability to the Bitcoin blockchain or even a takeover of the entire system. Bitcoin was not built to be a controlled currency.
- Coinbase: Bitcoin Is Superior to Gold — Coinbase published a report arguing that disruptions during the pandemic highlight Bitcoin’s advantages over gold. A report published by leading U.S.-based crypto exchange, Coinbase, has argued that Bitcoin offers a distinct advantage over gold. They state that Bitcoin is afforded these advantages by its lack of dependence on physical supply chains. While the report’s authors assert that “Bitcoin and gold are fundamentally similar as scarce and globally accessible units of value,” Coinbase advances that gold’s recent supply squeeze, resulting from the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, has highlighted Bitcoin’s superior global accessibility.
- Meltem Demirors: “Bitcoin is not a F*cking Systemic Hedge If You Hold Your Bitcoin at a Financial Institution” — Venture capitalist Meltem Demirors explains how the oil market crash and the broader turmoil in financial markets are reshaping the Bitcoin narrative. According to Demirors, the recent crash in oil prices is a watershed moment which will change forever the narratives in the investment world. As she points out, the COVID-19-induced crisis “has defied all our expectations on what normal is” which is why expecting to go back to the status quo is “preposterous.”
“We’re not just seeing a repricing of oil. We are seeing a thinking of the entire energy value chain.”
Following this event, Demirors argues that geopolitical interests will increasingly shift from access to energy to the access to “compute and connectivity.” She also discusses China’s efforts “to win the digital race” as an example of this shift. Turmoil in traditional markets is also changing the concept of risk, which is likely to play in Bitcoin’s favour.
- Stock-to-Flow Creator Says Bitcoin Is ’Not a Toy Anymore’ — PlanB, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow model, explained Bitcoin’s journey from a proof-of-concept to a mainstream financial asset.
“This thing is not a toy anymore,” PlanB told Peter McCormack in a May 1 podcast episode. “It’s maybe not an asset anymore as well,” he said, adding, “It is going to be much bigger than that.”
With Bitcoin off on an upward rally, many are pointing to the upcoming halving, due on May 12, as the underlying reason. Not unfairly, either. Precedent demonstrates that Bitcoin’s price usually ends up higher after a halving, even if it takes several months.
After the first halving, the price rose from $12 in November 2012 to a peak of $1,100 in November 2013. Similarly, the second halving saw a sharp increase 11 months later, rising from around $650 in July 2016 to over $2,500 in May 2017. The most straightforward interpretation of this is that the halving introduces a constraint on supply, driving demand.
However, the last halving was in 2016, before the initial coin offering mania, before the evolution of cryptocurrency derivatives, and a long time before the coronavirus started disrupting the global economy. Thus, because Bitcoin’s price is rumored to strongly correlate with the hash rate of the network, can the previous halvings be an indication of what to expect from the next one? Find out in the article.
- In a blog post released on 27th April, Binance announced the launch of Binance Pool, its cryptocurrency mining service. At launch, Binance Pool will support Bitcoin mining as its first product offering. Binance plans to offer Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) services for a variety of coins and tokens. Binance CEO CZ had previously unofficially announced the offering in a tweet on April 1. On April 24, CZ revealed that Binance’s mining pool mined its first block.
Why it matters:
- Binance continues to launch new products at a blistering pace. The latest product will allow miners to directly access exchange liquidity for their freshly mined coins
- Binance joins exchanges Huobi and OKEx, who have also launched Bitcoin mining pools. Huobi and OKEx mining pools control a combined 10% of Bitcoin hash rate.
- Markets Daily Crypto Roundup by John Biggs and Adam B. Levine at Coindesk:
- Bitcoin News Roundup for April 27, 2020 — The halving is driving up BTC’s price while regulators around the world are looking more closely at crypto.
- Bitcoin News Roundup for April 28, 2020 — Bitcoin could hit $8K soon while Indonesia has created a thornless durian.
- Bitcoin News Roundup for April 29, 2020 — BTC prices rise as experts agree the halving isn’t that big a deal.
- Bitcoin News Roundup for April 30, 2020 — Here comes the BTC bump while Telegram pulls back on its token sale.
- Bitcoin News Roundup for May 1, 2020 — Bitcoin beats the markets while wallet demand rises.
dYdX, a margin trading platform for Etherum, announced they are launching a market for perpetual contracts offering up to 10x leverage on bitcoin. The contracts will utilize a similar funding mechanism to centralized exchanges where longs and shorts pay each other based on existing interest. A key difference is that liquidations will occur on-chain rather than through a centralized entity, a mechanism that has been plagued with issues in the past.
Why it matters:
- Popularized by BitMex, the “perp” has become the most liquid market in all of crypto trading billions of dollars every day, however, there is no way to trade this contract in a decentralized manner. By automating this market through smart contracts, it should become more transparent and trustworthy.
- DeFi applications have mostly centered around trading or lending Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens while financial applications using bitcoin have remained on centralized exchanges. By offering a product geared towards those looking for bitcoin exposure, dYdX could onboard a new set of users into DeFi.
- MakerDao Brings Bitcoin to the Ethereum Blockchain — MakerDAO governance token holders voted to accept wBTC as the fourth collateral asset in the Maker DeFi Protocol. MakerDao governance, a decentralized community of MKR token holders that govern the Maker Protocol, has voted to pull Bitcoin onto the Ethereum blockchain by accepting Wrapped Bitcoin as a new collateral asset in the Maker Protocol, according to the official announcement on May 3. For the uninitiated, wBTC is the first ERC20 token backed 1:1 with Bitcoin. WBTC marks the fourth collateral asset type to be added to the MakerDAO DeFi ecosystem. The former three included ETH, BAT, and USDT. wBTC will now be able to open Maker Vaults in order to generate Dai. The report added that:
“WBTC will help bring greater liquidity to the Ethereum and decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems, and to decentralized exchanges (DEXs).”
In an unusual deviation from the norm, bitcoin miners just produced 16 blocks in 63 minutes, according to the Blockstream bitcoin block explorer. Four of the new blocks were reported within 46 seconds at 19:02 UTC on Friday, 1st May 2020. Bitcoin’s anomalous spree of new blocks was first noticed by Étienne Larrivée, bitcoin developer at Satoshi Portal, a Canadian bitcoin financial services company.
- Bitcoin Whale Addresses Hit Highest Number Since August 2019 — Large crypto investors, popularly known as “whales,” seem to be accumulating bitcoin amid the ongoing price rally.
- Chinese City Known for Bitcoin Mining Seeks Blockchain Firms to Burn Excess Hydropower
A Chinese city in the world’s bitcoin mining hub is publicly encouraging the blockchain industry to help consume excessive hydroelectricity ahead of the summer rainy season.
Ya’an, one of the many cities in China’s mountainous Sichuan province, a region that’s estimated to account for over 50 percent of the Bitcoin network’s computing power, has recently issued public guidance — likely in its first — to seize the “strategic opportunity of the blockchain sector” so that they can help consume the area’s excessive hydropower electricity.
Although not specifically mentioned in the guidance, bitcoin mining is an activity in the blockchain industry that is notable for its reliance on the intensive usage of electricity.
According to a local daily’s report on April 20, the government seeks to make the city a high-quality example for consuming excessive hydropower electricity and build itself into “an impactful blockchain industry hub” in the country.
Upcoming events
- 15th -21st June 2020- Korea Blockchain Week 2020 (KBW2020), Seoul, South Korea
- 22nd July 2020- Mining Disrupt 2020, Miami, US
- 28th August 2020 — BitBlockBoom, Dallas, US
- 16th September 2020 — Sep 19 2020 — Nomad Capitalist Live, Playa del Carmen, Mexico
- 25th October 2020 — Portland Bitcoin Conference, Portland, US
Finance
Bitcoin Block Reward Halving Countdown — As part of Bitcoin’s coin issuance, miners are rewarded a certain amount of BTC whenever a block is produced (approximately every 10 minutes). When Bitcoin first started, 50 Bitcoins per block were given as a reward to miners. After every 210,000 blocks are mined (approximately every 4 years), the block reward halves and will keep on halving until the block reward per block becomes 0 (approximately by year 2140). As of now, the block reward is 12.5 coins per block and will decrease to 6.25 coins per block post halving.
- Bitcoin’s hashrate, which measures the cumulative computational power within the network, has reached a new all-time high. It has surged above the 140 EH/s level, with a little more than 8 days left until the much-hyped May halving.
While analyzing Bitcoin’s finance, it should be admitted that there is a lot of fundamental parameters that can help an investor make a decision. However, they are just metrics, and the risks associated with investing in crypto assets exist. All indicators can only show general market and user sentiment in the past and present, not in the future — no bulletproof predictions. We use fundamental analysis as one of several aspects of the approach to investment-making. For instance, we use some of the following indicators and ratios.
- Active Addresses (Daily) — indicator
The graph above shows the average number of active addresses used on the Bitcoin blockchain in the last 30 days. It is obvious that the increase in the number of active addresses reflects the growth of the activity of the entire Bitcoin network. Over the last period, it was possible to observe the graph fluctuations in the average range of 450k to 750k. As for today, 3rd May, there are 791,979k active Bitcoin addresses. To recall, by the moment of our last update (19th April) there were 576,161k active addresses. This increase can be possibly caused by the growing interest among new crypto investors, attracted by the uprising price trend.
This graph reflects the average transaction value in the previous 30 day, and, as previous graph, shows a slight rise in network activity. The graph peaked on 21/08/2019 reaching the point of 812,025k then getting back to average. It exists, the undeniable trend change, as transaction value is rising — more affluent users want to buy and hold it, expecting the uprising price. Today, 3rd May, Bitcoin Average Transaction Value is 16,975k. By the moment of our last update (19th April) the Average Transaction Value was 15,082k
Proof-of-work is a consensus algorithm for blockchain networks where miners find blocks by solving cryptographically hard puzzles. Thus, the mining profitability can at some point indicate the interest of miners. Essentially, Bitcoin miners were responsible for nearly 83 percent of the total mining rewards paid across major PoW blockchains. Since mid-2017, bitcoin miners’ salary share has increased by 250 percent, while that of Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, has dropped significantly. Bitcoin’s share of PoW mining could grow even larger in the future as Ethereum and other blockchains begin shifting to proof-of-stake, which is less energy-intensive consensus mechanism.
- Network Value to Transaction Value
NVT Signal (NVTS) is a derivative of NVT Ratio which provides more emphasis on predictive signaling ahead of price peaks.
NVT ( Network Value to Transaction Value) = Network Value (Market Cap.) / MA 90-days Transaction Volume
This differs from Standard NVT Ratio which is simply the Network Value divided by Daily Transaction Value and then interpolated using forward/backward moving averages to create a smooth line.
On-chain volume are estimates from:
This indicator should not be considered as just a technical one — it is a fundamental indicator that shows the overbought of Bitcoin on the market because NVT displays that the value exceeds the usage.
By May 2020, NVTS is 85.
Every bitcoin transaction must be added to the blockchain, the official public ledger of all bitcoin transactions, in order to be considered successfully completed or valid. The work of validating transactions and adding them to the blockchain is done by miners, powerful computers that make up and connect to the network. Miners have a financial incentive to prioritize the validation of transactions that include a higher fee. For someone looking to send funds and get a quick confirmation, the appropriate fee to include can vary greatly, depending on a number of factors. While the fee does not depend on the amount you’re sending, it does depend on network conditions at the time and the data size of your transaction. On the graph above, the fluctuations of the average transaction fee are depicted. The current fee size for 3rd May is 2,108.
- Realized Value to Transaction Volume Ratio
RVT Ratio was first created in-house, undisclosed, inside Adaptive Fund by David Puell, but later created in parallel by Checkmate and publicly presented. RVT is short for “Realised Value to Transaction Volume ratio” and as such is a derivative of MVRV Ratio. Where MVRV is a ratio of the market cap to realized cap (that is the total value the market paid for their coins), RVT uses transaction volume. Since transaction volume tracks market cap to a very high correlation the results a similar. RVT creates a useful signal for macro market tops and bottoms and also can be used to locate what phase the market is in between these two transition points. On-chain volume estimates provided by Coin Metrics. By May 2020, RVT is 0, 0168.
- Bitcoin 60-day Volatility — 11.74%
Red — BTC/USD Volatility, Blue — USD/EUR Volatility
Volatility is a statistical measure of the dispersion of returns for a given security or market index over a given period of time. Generally, this measure is calculated by determining the average deviation from the average price of a financial instrument in a given time period. We use standard deviation whose using is the most common, but not the only, way to calculate historical volatility. The higher the historical volatility value, the riskier the asset (in our case, Bitcoin). However, that is not necessarily a bad result as risk works both ways — bullish and bearish. But there is an important point for long-term crypto-investors — Bitcoin volatility is decreasing, however USD/EUR volatility does not change accordingly.
- Bitcoin Inflation — 3.6%
Talking about Bitcoin Inflation Rate, we do not mean the purchasing power of money, but the average mined Bitcoins. There is a fixed amount of 21 million Bitcoin that can be minted, which implies that no coins can be produced once this point is reached. Approximately 80 percent of the total amount of Bitcoin has already been minted. Bitcoin’s algorithmic inflation rate since 2010 is displayed in the figure above and is explained in the original Bitcoin white paper. On July 9, 2010, Satoshi wrote: “When someone tries to buy all the world’s supply of a scarce asset, the more they buy the higher the price goes.”
In 2011, BTC’s inflation rate was between 30–50% and between 2011 and 2014 it dropped to 12%. After the halving in 2016, when the block reward was cut from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC, the inflation rate kicked down to 5–4%. Today, throughout the month of February 2020, the BTC network’s inflation rate is between 3.59% and 3.86%.
- Inflation Rate Over The Period
The difficulty re-adjustment makes it impossible to simply mine more Bitcoin by allocating more computer resources to the network. As more people try to mine Bitcoin, the software automatically increases the difficulty of successfully mining a Bitcoin and vice-a-versa.
Once the inflation rate reaches zero, miners will no longer be able to earn money from minting newly created bitcoins. Instead, transaction fees will have to increase or the number of transactions will have to increase.
As we’ve already mentioned Bitcoin Block Reward Halving Date approaches. According to the history prices and previous halving, we believe that after this date Bitcoin’s price will incredibly rise because the inflation rate will drop by half.
First created by Twitter user @icoexplorer, VWAP stands for volume-weighted average price. In effect VWAP is an alternative method to Realised Price in determining average price the market paid for their coins. VWAP to Price ratio is therefore similar to MVRV Ratio and can be used to find market tops and bottoms. The shorter range VWAP Ratios for example over 7 or 90 days can be used to signal ideal top and bottom points for swing trading while the global VWAP signals the macrocycle top and bottoms.
When calculating VWAP, the standard method uses the commodity unit (i.e. BTC) for volume weighting, this chart deviates by using USD units. For Bitcoin due to its exponential rise in price, the two methods create different charts. These differences are small in shorter time cycles, but on longer time cycles the USD method has the effect of putting greater emphasis on more recent historical activity.
Source: Data for macro markets is from the US Federal Reserve. Bitcoin price data is from Blockchain.com
Risk-adjusted returns is defined as the ROI / Risk. Where risk is calculated as the changeability (volatility) of ROI. This is officially known as the Sharpe Ratio. In this chart it is used, a 4 year HODL period to run the Sharpe Ratio calculation, this seems a sensible choice as it is sufficient time to cover a full bear to bull cycle.
- Bitcoin Future on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange
The CME was created in 1898 as a commodities exchange for butter and eggs. It is now one of the biggest financial exchanges in the world, specializing in futures and options across industries, from agriculture to metals to real estate. The CME launched Bitcoin futures trading in December 2017, and volume on the exchange has been rising since then.
On May 13, 2019, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) reported a daily volume of over $1.3 billion in notional value for Bitcoin futures contracts traded. The CME is a regulated exchange based in the United States, but unregulated exchanges outside of the U.S. report even higher volumes for futures trading. On the same day, BitMEX reported $13 billion in notional value traded. However, on May 28, 2019, the volume raised 21 thousand futures. On 18th June 2019, it was only 8 thousand futures. The current point is 5,635.
Above is the line break chart of Bitcoin’s average daily computing power representing substantial fluctuations. For example, the hash rate 101.23 EH/s on September 16, 2019, dropped to 88.96 EH/s on September 17, 2019 — a decline of 12 percent. Increases or decreases of about 10 percent are very common. The reason for such a phenomenon is pretty explainable? As we mentioned above, the hash rate is the sum of all computing power. It does not necessarily mean that thousands of mining machines are switching on and off every day. In fact, the hash rate cannot be accurately counted. The data depicted by the chart above is not the actual computing power, but an estimate based on the difficulty and the time of block confirmation. Mining difficulty and computing power, together with luck, will affect this time. The luck of the whole network fluctuates greatly on a 24-hour scale, so the average daily computing power on a single day does not have much reference value. We must take a dimensional view of the computing power to reduce the deviation brought on by this luck. That is to say, the average seven-day computing power may have exceeded 100 EH/s, but the average daily computing power has not yet broken it.
For Bitcoin or all PoW-based cryptocurrencies, security does not depend on the hash rate but on the cost of 51 percent attacks. The higher the attack cost, the safer the network will be. The current increase in Bitcoin’s hash rate means that the requirements for 51 percent attacks on the network are correspondingly extended, but this does not mean that the cost of 51 percent attacks has grown as the unit cost of computing power should be taken into consideration.
Furthermore, there is no direct relationship between the Bitcoin hash rate and bitcoin’s price. Hash rate by no means determine the price. On the contrary, the price will more likely affect the hash rate. With the rise of the price, the miners’ profits are liable to grow, which consequently attracts more miners to join the network, thus increasing the cumulative hash rate.
Ecosystem
Bitcoin ATM Network
A Bitcoin ATM is, as the name implies, is a special type of ATM that is specifically designed for buying and selling bitcoin. Bitcoin ATMs allow you to insert cash and buy BTC on the spot, or sell BTC and take out cash. The majority of customers around the world use them to buy bitcoin rather than sell it. Because of this, it would not be inaccurate to say that for most customers, using a bitcoin ATM is more like using a vending machine than a traditional ATM.
First, there is the robust growth in Crypto ATM Installations.
There is the pie chart above which reflects the distribution by manufacturer. The biggest players are General Bytes and Genesis Coin. Must admit, the average transaction fee continues to be pretty high — about 8%.
Moreover, most of them are located in North America, namely in the United States.
Lightning Network
The Lightning Network is a “Layer 2” payment protocol that operates on top of a blockchain-based cryptocurrency (like Bitcoin). It enables fast transactions between participating nodes and has been touted as a solution to the Bitcoin scalability problem. It features a peer-to-peer system for making micropayments of cryptocurrency through a network of bidirectional payment channels without delegating custody of funds. Lightning Network implementation also simplifies atomic swaps.
Normal use of the Lightning Network consists of opening a payment channel by committing a funding transaction to the relevant base blockchain (Layer 1), followed by making any number of Lightning transactions that update the tentative distribution of the channel’s funds without broadcasting to the blockchain, optionally followed by closing the payment channel by broadcasting the final version of the transaction to distribute the channel’s funds.
- Nodes — Number of nodes with and without channels.
This chart shows the number of nodes with and without channels. Lightning nodes open payment channels with each other that are funded with bitcoin. When transactions are made across those channels, the channel balance is reflected without having to broadcast a transaction on-chain. This creates a second layer on top of the bitcoin network that expands its capabilities.
Blue — with channels. Red — without channels.
- Channels
Unique (blue) = channels connecting nodes directly for the first time. Duplicate (red) = channels between nodes that are already connected.
- Network Capacity
This chart shows cumulative bitcoin capacity across all channels. Lightning nodes open payment channels with each other that are funded with bitcoin. When transactions are made across those channels, the channel balance is reflected without having to broadcast a transaction on-chain. This creates a second layer on top of the bitcoin network that expands its capabilities.
- Network Capacity per Channel
Daily median capacity per channel statistics. Blue — average, Red — 90th percentile, Green — 50th percentile, Yellow — 10th percentile.
- Network Channels per Node
These and other graphs can be found here.
Rumors
There are roughly 15 known entities sponsoring Bitcoin Core developers in 2020, and the Wyoming-based startup CardCoins just became one of the smallest industry players to join the pack. CardCoins has helped “over 10,000 unique users” convert gift cards into bitcoin, according to a spokesperson, with “millions of dollars of volume” last year. That healthy-yet-modest traction, which increased slightly since the recession hit, is dwarfed by incumbent crypto exchanges and custody providers.
Out of the most well-capitalized crypto companies, BitMEX, Bitfinex, OKCoin and Xapo are the few that help support developers working full time on bitcoin’s fundamental software. This is the trunk and roots of the crypto industry.
Social media metrics
Google Trends
Another one symptom of a bullish trend, in our point of view, can be an increasing Google Trends Score (0–100). Apparently, after the pump, there is a dramatic decrease again with slight fluctuations over the last period. A correlation between Google Trends and BTC price may exist.
“Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of 0 means that there was not enough data for this term. “
- Tweets
The graph above reflects the number of tweets with the hashtag #bitcoin. We consider that this index shows the popularity of Bitcoin and the rise, observed nowadays, could predict the larger demand for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Currently, there is an uptick trend, possibly associated with the upcoming halving.
The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of BTC Reddit subscribers and Facebook likes. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
