Beonwise

🤔 Bitcoin 'good to go up' after BTC price hits lowest since Terra crash
📊 A wick to $28,000 sparks hopes of multi-week highs but caution remains over thin order book liquidity.

✅ Bitcoin (BTC) recovered from a major dip at the May 26 Wall Street open as the market quickly exhausted buy support.

💭 Bitcoin volume surges with more expected
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD dropping to $28,000 on Bitstamp — its lowest since May 12 and the Terra LUNA implosion.

➡️ Progress had already accelerated to the downside on the day, this culminating in a liquidity grab that sent 24-hour BTC liquidations to $117 million.

— A subsequent bounce saw a recovery above $29,000, where Bitcoin traded at the time of writing.
For Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe, the swoop to fill bids was enough to ensure some fresh upside.

— He added that his existing targets for BTC/USD — $32,800 and $35,000 — remained in force.

💭 Analyzing order book data, meanwhile, on-chain monitoring resource Material Indicators warned that given the thin liquidity remaining at lower levels, a future dip could encounter less resistance.
«We are seeing A LOT of Bitcoin liquidity changing hands today. Everywhere a bid wall appears, it gets absorbed, » it told Twitter followers alongside a chart from major exchange Binance.
«Currently there are no more huge bid walls and there is only ~$122M between $28k — $25k. Expecting to see more BTC move on chain.»

💭Fellow trading account Il Capo of Crypto, continuing a conservative outlook on near-term price action, predicted that the current bounce would be the «last bull trap» before a return to $25,000 based on order book performance.

💭May 26 thus stood out from other trading days during the week, thanks to volume returning to BTC/USD markets. As Cointelegraph reported, its absence was becoming a source of concern for analysts.

💭Bitcoin’s «most important chart» gives hope of recovery
Casting the net farther out, market commentators were keen to see signs of an overall change in trend on Bitcoin.

🤔 Billionaire Bill Miller calls Bitcoin 'insurance' against financial catastrophe
💼 Miller said Bitcoin «functioned without the Fed and without any interference» during times of market turmoil, concluding that «it’s an insurance policy, the way I look at it.»

🗣 Bill Miller the billionaire founder and Chief Investment Officer of investment firm Miller Value Partners, has said he considers Bitcoin (BTC) an «insurance policy against financial catastrophe.»

💭 Appearing on an episode of the «Richer, Wiser, Happier» podcast on May 24 Miller backed the cryptocurrency as a means for those caught in conflict to still access financial products. He used the collapse of financial infrastructure in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal in August 2021 as an example.

💭 «When the US pulled out of Afghanistan, Western Union stopped sending remittances there or taking them from Afghanistan, but if you had Bitcoin, you were fine. Your Bitcoin is there. You can send it to anybody in the world if you have a phone.»
Miller said examples of how the crypto can function as insurance don’t «have to be all or nothing» and noted how Bitcoin performed during the early stages of the pandemic and the Federal Reserve’s reaction to it.

💭 «When the Fed stepped in and started gunning the money supply and bailing out, in essence, the mortgage rates […] Bitcoin functioned fine. There was no run on Bitcoin. The system functioned without the Fed and without any interference. Everybody got their Bitcoin, the price adjusted, and then when the Bitcoiners realized, ‘Wait, we’re going to have inflation down the road, ’ Bitcoin went through the roof.»
— «It’s an insurance policy, the way I look at it, ” he added.

👋 Dear Friends!
💼 The government and the Central Bank of Ireland require us to fully legalize all assets by paying 20% income tax. According to this, now, when processing any withdrawal transaction from Beonwise, we must pay income tax to the tax office. To do this, we have allocated separate accounts and to legalize our cryptocurrency assets, each of our investors must pay a tax of 20% of the total volume of his assets to Beonwise.

🤔 We all know that all over the world cryptocurrency is a «gray» financial area, the government wants to regulate it, so paying tax now — a necessary measure to fully legalize all your assets in this area of financial activity.
On behalf of Beonwise, all investors of the company must pay the tax within three banking days from May 26 to May 30 inclusive. Or you will only be able to do this later on your own in Ireland, after full verification of identity and full proof of origin of funds.

📃 Please, let’s band together and do it now as quickly and as easily as possible, so that Beonwise can continue to withdraw funds to all our partners. Together with Beonwise!

🔥 eBay drops first NFT collection to non-crypto mainstream buyers
🗣 “You don't have to be a crypto expert to buy, sell, and collect NFTs. OneOf and eBay are bringing transformative Web3 technology to the next 100M non-crypto-native mass consumers,” said OneOf CEO Lin Dai.

✅ E-commerce giant eBay has officially launched its first nonfungible token (NFT) drop with a series of tokenized collectibles featuring National Hockey League (NHL) legend Wayne Gretsky that went live on Monday.

💭 The NFT collection depicts animated versions of Gretsky that were inspired by Sports Illustrated magazine covers. They come in four different tiers of rarity including green at 299 editions each, gold at 199, platinum at 99 and diamond at 15.

➡️ The collection is up for sale on eBay’s marketplace now. However, the limited-edition diamond, platinum and gold tiers worth $1,500, $100 and $25, respectively, have already sold out.

💭 According to the announcement from eBay, the collection was developed in partnership with environmentally focused NFT platform OneOf, which supports multiple “energy-efficient blockchains” to provide sustainable NFT collections.

💭 eBay initially enabled NFT listings around mid-2021 but hasn’t integrated blockchain tech to support the sales on its marketplace. In terms of this official drop, users are sent a redemption link via in-platform messaging or email to receive their NFT outside of the platform.

💭 The NFTs were minted on Ethereum scaling platform Polygon and can be put up for secondary trade on OneOf.

💭 Secondary trade for the NFTs on OneOf has been minimal so far, however, with only three users listing platinum tiered tokens at a floor price of $199, while one user has listed a gold tier NFT for $69.

🗣 Dear partners!
💳 Due to the continuation of the process of connecting / payment systems until May 26, the company's management decided to financially compensate for temporary inconveniences by accruing a bonus🔥 of 10% to all balance replenishments from 23 to 26 May. From May 26, withdrawals will be restored to normal mode, and these bonuses will help our partners to reimburse this weekly system update

📃 Tether reports 17% decrease in commercial paper holdings over Q1 2022
💭 “This latest attestation further highlights that Tether is fully backed and that the composition of its reserves is strong, conservative and liquid," said Paolo Ardoino.

🔥 USDT Stablecoin issuer Tether (USDT) has reported it cut its reserves allocation to commercial paper investments and increased that of United States Treasury bills over the first quarter of 2022.

➡️ In a Thursday blog post, Tether reported its reserves were “fully backed,” seemingly in an effort to assuage many users’ fears around USDT briefly depegging from the dollar on May 12. According to the stablecoin issuer, its commercial paper holdings over Q1 2022 decreased 17% from roughly $24 billion to $20 billion, with an additional 20% reduction to be reflected in the firm’s next quarterly report. Tether also increased investments in money market funds and U.S. Treasury bills by 13% over the same quarter, from roughly $34.5 billion to $39 billion.

💭 “Tether has maintained its stability through multiple black swan events and highly volatile market conditions and, even in its darkest days, Tether has never once failed to honor a redemption request from any of its verified customers,” said Tether chief technical officer Paolo Ardoino. “This latest attestation further highlights that Tether is fully backed and that the composition of its reserves is strong, conservative and liquid.“

💭 As part of an $18.5 million settlement with the Office of the New York Attorney General in February 2021 — in which authorities alleged the firm misrepresented the degree to which its USDT stablecoins were backed by fiat collateral — Tether is required to disclose its reserves every quarter. In February, the company reported it had cut its reserves allocation to commercial paper in Q4 2021 from roughly $30 billion to $24 billion, a 20% decrease.

🔥 Ethereum devs tip The Merge will occur in August ‘if everything goes to plan’
💭 Core Ethereum developer Preston Van Loon says that the network’s long-awaited transition to proof-of-stake will most likely happen this August.

✅ Ethereum’s long-awaited migration to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, which has been pushed back time and time again, looks set to occur sometime in August. Hopefully.

📃 Preston Van Loon, a core developer of the Ethereum (ETH) network, told attendees at the Permissionless conference that the transition, known as the Merge, would occur sometime in August if everything plays out according to plan.

➡️ Van Loon told the 5000 attendees that the team was looking to make the transition before the so-called «difficulty bomb» would degrade the network as scheduled.

🗣 «As far as we know, if everything goes to plan, August—it just makes sense. If we don’t have to move [the difficulty bomb], let’s do it as soon as we can.»
Echoing this sentiment was fellow Ethereum researcher Justin Drake stated that ensuring the Merge went ahead quickly was a top priority, sharing his «strong desire to make this happen before difficulty bomb in August.»

💭 The «difficulty bomb» refers to the program coded into the Ethereum blockchain that intentionally slows down the network. It was designed to encourage the transition to PoS by making it more difficult for miners to stay behind on the proof-of-work (PoW) chain after the Merge.

💭 On April 11, Ethereum developer Tim Beiko announced that The Merge had once again been delayed. Despite a successful «shadow fork test», Beiko said that The Merge would not be implemented in June as expected. According to Beiko, developers need to act quickly to avoid the difficulty bomb, otherwise, they will need to introduce yet another update to delay the bomb.

💭 «If client developers do not think they can deploy The Merge to mainnet before block times are slowed too much, it will need to be delayed again.»

🎶 Spotify reportedly tests NFT galleries on musician profiles
🤔 The platform explores the possibilities to «improve artists' and fan experiences,» conveying the survey among users.

💭 Major music streaming platform Spotify is reportedly testing the option of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) galleries on musicians’ profiles. Should the tests appear successful, the embedment of NFTs would serve to improve artist and fan experiences.

🗣 Reports surfaced on Friday that Spotify is running a test for select users of the platform’s Android app in the United States. These users can see the NFT previews on the artists' profiles. Currently, there are only two such artists, DJ and producer Steve Aoki and indie rock band The Wombats — both are known for their adoption of NFTs.

💭 There is no possibility for a direct buy, but after reading about the NFT and getting the enlarged preview, the user can tap to be redirected to the OpenSea page where he could purchase the item. Spotify doesn’t support videos or GIF formats, according to reports, showing only a static image without any sounds.

💭 As the company’s spokesperson told journalists, the tests are being conducted «in an effort to improve artist and fan experiences», and while some of them will end up «paving the way for a broader experience», others «serve only as an important learning». Some Spotify users told about the NFT-related survey, they’ve been receiving from the streaming service.

💭 According to Music Ally, Spotify is not taking any cut of NFT sales during the testing. Cointelegraph didn’t receive a response from the company by press time.

⛏🔥 China returns as 2nd top Bitcoin mining hub despite the crypto ban
🇨🇳 China still hosts 21% of the total global Bitcoin hash rate after the local government banned all crypto operations in the country last year.

💭 The Chinese government has not managed to take down cryptocurrency operations as part of its crypto ban last year as China has re-emerged as one of the world’s largest Bitcoin (BTC) mining hubs, according to a new report.

💭 China became the second-largest Bitcoin hash rate provider as of January 2022, months after the local government banned all crypto operations in the country, according to the latest update from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) shared with Cointelegraph on Tuesday.

📊 Bitcoin miners in China accounted for 21,1% of the total global BTC mining hash rate distribution as of early 2022, following only the United States, which produced 37,8% of the total hash rate as of January, according to the data.

➡️ China was once the world’s largest Bitcoin mining country, with the local BTC hash rate power accounting for more than 75% in 2019. The hash rate then plummeted to 0% in July and August 2021, following a series of crypto mining farm shutdowns in the country.

➡️ Despite the crypto ban in September 2021, the hash rate share surged to 22,3% that month and did not drop below 18% over the analyzed period.

➡️ CBECI project lead Alexander Neumueller told Cointelegraph that the new data is enough to conclude that Bitcoin mining is still live in China, stating:

🗣 «Our data empirically confirms the claims of industry insiders that Bitcoin mining is still ongoing within the country. Although mining in China is far from its former heights, the country still seems to host about one-fifth of the total hash rate.»

💰 Robinhood shares spike 30% after Sam Bankman-Fried buys $650M stake
🔥 Shares in the popular online brokerage Robinhood have spiked over 30% in after-hours trading following billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried acquiring a 7,6% stake in the company.

✅ Sam Bankman-Fried, the billionaire founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has acquired a substantial 7,6% stake in the popular online brokerage, Robinhood.

📊 The news was well-received by the market, with Robinhood’s stock price initially soaring over 30% in after-hours trading. At the time of writing, the price has settled to a 24% overall gain.

💭 According to a securities filing made with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday, Bankman-Fried purchased a total of $648 million in Robinhood shares at an average price of $11.52. The purchases disclosed by Bankman-Fried reportedly began in mid-March and continued until Wednesday.

💭 In the securities filing, Bankman-Fried made it clear that he had «no intention of taking any action toward changing or influencing the control of [Robinhood], ” and that the move was simply because he saw Robinhood as an «attractive investment.»

💭 Robinhood’s communications team took to Twitter to emulate what Bankman-Fried said in his securities filing — tweeting to their 82,000 followers, «Of course we think it is an attractive investment too.»

➡️ The transaction was executed by an Antiguan firm called Emergent Fidelity Technologies Ltd, of which Bankman-fried is the sole director and majority owner.

💭 The announcement seems to have provided Robinhood investors with some short-term relief, after its stock price reached a new all-time low of $7.73 on March 12, just one day after the brokerage firm revealed that its crypto transaction revenue fell 39% year-over-year (YOY).

🔥 Terra to burn $1.4B UST and stake 240M LUNA to ‘stop the bleeding’
🤔 The Terra Money Twitter account shared the finer points of Do Kwon’s initial rescue plan: expanding the base pool, burning UST and staking LUNA.

➡️ The Terra rescue story continues to unravel. In a tweet thread, the Terra Money Twitter account went into greater detail regarding the CEO of Terraform Labs, Do Kwon’s, rescue plan for UST.

💰 The thread sheds light on Proposal 1164, Do Kwon’s initial strategy for Terra from May 11. The proposal would better balance the algorithmic stablecoin Terra USD (UST) by expanding the base pool for the currency. The proposal has received 220,000 votes, at over 50%.

➡️ The tweet thread also explains that there is a «supply overhang» of UST which explains Terra’s (LUNA) «dilution, ” or price depreciation. As a result, now they must burn more UST:

💭 «The primary obstacle is expelling the bad debt from UST circulation at a clip fast enough for the system to restore the health of on-chain spreads.»
Consequently, there are three emergency measures to be implemented, one of which focuses on burning more UST.

▪️ The so-called Agora Proposal vote is imminent, shared by user The Intern on the Terra Research forum. In total, the burn should take the total amount of UST burned to 1.4 billion UST, or «11% of the outstanding UST liabilities, ” the site details.

▪️ In summary, the team hopes that expanding the base pool for the coin and burning more should save UST.

▪️ Point three, concerning the staking of 240 million LUNA, will reportedly strengthen the network governance of the TERRA ecosystem.

📊 However, for some observers, staking 240 million LUNA, or roughly equivalent to $200 million dollars, is not enough to save the project.
Other commentators have suggested that Proposal 1164 will actually accelerate the ongoing «death spiral» of LUNA and UST.

Dear partners! 👋
— As we improve and develop our trading techniques and strategies, we additionally developed, tested and approved a new weekly trading strategy. ◼️ This strategy is similar to Intraday Trading, but in this strategy we conduct a holistic trading session during the week, in the process of which, traders make hundreds of short-term and arbitrage transactions, with the help of software. We use, and intend to continue to use, this profitable strategy at work.

🔥 In this regard, the Beonwise team decided to temporarily include an additional investment area «Crypto Lux» in the marketing of the company for our customers and partners.
💭 This investment direction is available as of today, May 11, and will remain available for some time. Now these are limited rates, and you have the opportunity to increase your profits with us, because the company takes care of each of its partners, earn not only us, but also all our clients, this is how the team works.

💣 Invest wisely together with us, together with Beonwise!

🔥 Top Shot creator unveils $725M fund to support Flow ecosystem
💶 The new ecosystem fund will be used to support the 7,500 developers on Flow to build new gaming, infrastructure, DeFi, and content creator products on the NFT blockchain.

💰 The Flow ecosystem is set to get a boost in support from a new $725 million fund that will be used to invest in the growth of the nonfungible token network.

🤔 Flow (FLOW) is a layer-1 blockchain developed by Dapper Labs and purpose-made for NFTs. Dapper Labs also created the popular NBA Top Shot NFT collection. Flow utilizes an eco-friendly proof of stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.

💭 The new fund was backed by 17 firms that have experience backing other Web3 companies, including large investment firms a16z, Spartan Group, and CoinFund. The funds will be used to attract developers to bring their work onto Flow as opposed to competitor Ethereum (ETH) which still dominates NFTs despite high gas fees. Within the Flow ecosystem itself, the funds will provide support for gaming, infrastructure, decentralized finance (DeFi), content and creators.

👀 Projects awarded grants through the ecosystem fund will be supported by FLOW tokens investments, and what the fund’s webpage calls «in-kind support.»

➡️ Flow CEO Roham Gharegozlou clarified that the majority of the fund will be used as investment capital rather than grants for developers in a May 11 tweet.

💭 Flow is currently the third largest blockchain by NFT sales volume behind Ethereum and Solana (SOL). Not including May, throughout 2022, Flow has averaged $50.3 million in monthly NFT sales according to CryptoSlam, an NFT market tracker.

💭 Host of the NFT-focused podcast The First Mint LG Doucet tweeted on Tuesday a list of five new products he believes should be supported through the funds. They include a whitelist app to help users get whitelisted for a mint, a mobile app, video education, wallet integration on Shopify, and non-cartoon, animal, and athlete art. He added that Flow needs «actual INNOVATION, not just roadmaps that copy ETH projects.»

👀📊 NFT markets slump as weekly sales volume dives 30%
💭 MAYC, BAYC and Otherdeed trading volumes are all way down, as are volumes in the entire NFT market, possibly signaling a general cooldown in the industry.

✅ The nonfungible token (NFT) collections by Yuga Labs have experienced a dramatic downturn in transaction volume over the past 24 hours.

📉 Otherdeed is down just over 50%, Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) is down 46% and Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is down 25%, according to data from NFT market tracker NFTGo.

🤔 Over the past 24 hours, general NFT market activity has mirrored Yuga’s collections, where volume has dropped 31% to $113 million. However, prices have not yet followed suit, as the total NFT market cap has dropped marginally to $19.5 billion in the same period.

➡️ Those collections comprise three of the top five traded collections globally. Each collection except Otherdeeds has seen nearly 50% drop-offs in volume over the past seven days as well, possibly indicating the NFT market is cooling off.

📊 Among the top ten collections by sales volume, only three are in the green. CyberBrokers is in second place and is up 4,124%, Azuki is in fifth place and is up 7,5% and ninth-place Doodles is up 22,74%, according to NFT market tracker CryptoSlam.

➡️ In addition to collections from Yuga Labs, which are all traded on Ethereum, sales volume across eight of the ten most active blockchains for NFTs has suffered double-digit losses over the past seven days.

➡️ On average, sales volumes are down 22,5% among Ethereum, Solana, Flow, Avalanche, Ronin, BNB Chain, WAX and Panini. Only Polygon and Tezos sales volumes are up 16,5% and 58,8%, respectively, according to data from CryptoSlam.

➡️ Active market wallets that have made an NFT trade over the past seven days have been dropping steadily along with the total number of unique buyers since May 1. Active market wallets have fallen 69% to 16,792 and unique buyers have fallen a shocking 84% to 10,503, according to data from NFT market analysis tool NonFungible.

💰 Argo Blockchain facility in West Texas expects to start mining Bitcoin in May
⛏ The company expects a hash rate of 5.5 EH/s by the end of 2022, anticipating that access to an additional 600 MW of power capacity «in the coming years» will produce 20 EH/s.

➡️ Crypto mining company Argo Blockchain’s plans to open a data center in West Texas are likely nearing completion following an inauguration ceremony.

📈 In a Thursday announcement on Twitter, Argo said it expects to begin mining operations at its Helios facility in Dickens County, Texas starting next week. The announcement came more than a year after the mining firm purchased a 320-acre land plot to construct the facility, first breaking ground on the 200-megawatt data center in July 2021.

💭 Argo CEO Peter Wall told Cointelegraph the facility was built in Dickens County due to access to renewable energy sources in the company’s aim to «mine Bitcoin in the most eco-friendly way possible.» As of August 2021, the company said that its crypto operations had become «climate positive» for some classifications of greenhouse gas emissions, with a plan to eventually become carbon neutral.

🗣 «A lot of [the available power] is somewhat stranded, meaning there is not a lot of local demand or local load to use that power, so we felt that this was a strong opportunity to help stabilize the grid, ” said Wall.

💭 The mining facility will be running with 20,0000 Bitmain S19J Pro rigs, which Argo said will be installed and made operational in stages between May and October. Argo’s initial power capacity at the data center will be 200 MW, with access to an additional 600 MW «in the coming years.» The company expects a hash rate of 5.5 exahashes per second by the end of 2022, anticipating the additional power capacity introduced later will produce 20 EH/s.

💰 NFT collectors sent $37B to marketplaces in 2022, nearly equaling 2021 already
🤔 Despite sporadic market conditions NFT collectors are on track to spend more on NFTs in the first half of this year than in all of 2021.

➡️ Collectors of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have already sent more than $37 billion in value to NFT marketplaces this year (as of May 1), a figure that nearly exceeds the total amount in all of 2021.

🔥 According to a report from Chainalysis, investors sent $40 billion worth of cryptocurrency to smart contracts associated with NFT collections and marketplaces throughout 2021.

➡️ Since the beginning of last year, NFT transaction volume has grown considerably, but the overall growth of the industry has been inconsistent.

✅ The report outlines that NFT transaction volume occurs sporadically, and has been in a downturn since mid-February. The NFT market has since made a brief recovery as of mid-April — most likely due to the recent hype around Moonbirds and the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s metaverse project, Otherside.

💭 Despite the short-term fluctuations in NFT transaction volume, the number of people around the world buying and selling NFTs remains strong, with 950,000 unique addresses buying or selling NFTs in Q1 2022.

💭 As of May 1, Q2 2022 491,000 unique addresses have transacted with NFTs, putting the market on track to continue its growth trend in the number of participants.

💭 By analyzing the web traffic of the major NFT marketplaces, Chainalysis determined that NFTs attract users from all corners of the globe, with Central and Southern Asia leading the charge, followed closely by North America and Western Europe.

📊 More than $1.6 billion exploited from DeFi so far in 2022
💭 The amount exploited this year so far surpasses the total amount stolen in all of 2020 and 2021 combined, with the month of March alone beating 2020 by over $200 million.

🗣 The decentralized finance (DeFi) space has been rife with hacks, exploits, and scams so far this year with over $1.6 billion in crypto stolen from users, surpassing the total amount stolen in 2020 and 2021 combined.

💳 Analysis from blockchain security firm CertiK revealed the statistics on May 2 showing the month of March having the most value stolen at $719.2 million, over $200 million more than what was stolen in all of 2020. The March figure is largely due to the Ronin Bridge exploit where attackers made off with over $600 million worth of crypto.

➡️ April was a busy month for attacks with CertiK recording 31 major incidents, an average of nearly one a day. The most valuable was the $182 million siphoned from Beanstalk Farms using a flash loan attack.

➡️ CertiK noted the nearly $80 million lost by Fei Protocol, the second most valuable heist last month, and the $10 million lost from automated market maker protocol Saddle Finance which both took place at the end of the month.

💭 Both protocols took to Twitter to offer their respective attackers a bounty in exchange for returning the stolen funds. Whilst the chances of that happening may be slim, it’s not unheard of as the Poly Network hacker in 2021 returned nearly all of the $610 million stolen from the network along with refusing a $500,000 bounty reward.

💭 CertiK said that April 2022 «holds the record for highest dollar amount losses in flash loan attacks ever recorded by us» with losses from that type of exploit reaching $301.4 million. In comparison, flash loan attack losses in January, February, and March 2022 combined were only $6.7 million.