Bitcoin Cash

Over 67,000 Fusions: Cashfusion Participants Have Fused Billions of Dollars in Bitcoin Cash

10/05/2021 by Idelto Editor

While some crypto users have been leveraging privacy-centric digital assets like monero, others still use mixing protocols that shuffle unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) from coins like bitcoin, ethereum, and bitcoin cash. Participants using the Bitcoin Cash network utilize applications like Cashshuffle and Cashfusion. Since Cashfusion was introduced in November 2019, there’s been 67,845 fusions or $5.9 billion worth of bitcoin cash that’s been fused.

Cashshuffle Still Gets Use With 65K Shuffles Since 2019

During the bull run of 2021, Bitcoin Cash network users are using Cashfusion and Cashshuffle a great deal these days. The elder and sister protocol of Cashfusion, Cashshuffle still gets used today and at the time of writing, there’s been 65,682 shuffles with 283,217 BCH shuffled in total since the protocol’s inception.

Now, of course, the UTXOs were not shuffled at the current exchange rate, but that’s around $377 million in shuffled BCH using today’s exchange rates. People have been leveraging Cashshuffle with bitcoin cash (BCH) since March 27, 2019, according to stats.devzero.be/#/shuffle data.

But since Cashshuffle was released in March 2019, months later at the end of November, developers introduced Cashfusion to the BCH community. Currently, people can leverage bitcoin (BTC) using the Wasabi Wallet or Samourai, and ethereum (ETH) users can utilize the tornado.cash app. However, shuffling coins with BTC and ETH is harder because of the current fees both networks impose and it’s a lot more costly to use these protocols.

Stats from bitcoinfees.cash shows that BCH network fees are negligible and mixing UTXOs doesn’t cost a user a lot of money using the Bitcoin Cash network. At the time of writing, the next BCH block fee is $0.0067 per transaction and the current median fee is $0.0032.

Cashfusion Users Fused $5.9 Billion Worth of Bitcoin Cash

Cashfusion saw a successful security audit from Kudelski Security just like Cashshuffle did prior to the official Cashfusion launch. Fusion tiers were expanded from 0.82 BCH to 8.2 BCH, which made it so whales can fuse coins together.

Bitcoin Cash users were also pleased when software engineer James Waugh tested Cashfusion with thousands of transactions and published a review. Waugh’s review highlighted that while combing through a large swathe of Cashfusion transaction inputs and outputs, the developer realized that it’s “not possible to establish a concrete link” between them.

Fast forward to May 2021 as BCH has rides above the $1,400 zone, Cashfusion is still getting lots of use from network participants.

Data from stats.devzero.be/#/fusion shows that Cashfusion has seen approximately 4,453,681 BCH worth of fusions since 2019. Using today’s BCH exchange rates shows that’s more than $5.9 billion worth of bitcoin cash stretched across 67,845 fusions.

The number of fusions and shuffles since 2019 indicates that people using BCH enjoy privacy-enhancing techniques and these tools. The average fee per satoshi using Cashfusion with BCH is only 168 satoshis and users have spent 750,533,047 satoshis for fusing since the app was invoked.

What do you think about Cashfusion and Cashshuffle users mixing billions of dollars in bitcoin cash UTXOs? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Bitcoin Cash Slated for May 15- Upgrade to Bring Improvements for Users and Merchants

05/05/2021 by Idelto Editor

Bitcoin Cash May 15 Upgrade Brings Improvements for Users and Merchants

On May 15, 2021, the Bitcoin Cash network will undergo the process of an upgrade that will bring a handful of improvements. These updates include the removal of the unconfirmed transaction limit, enabling multiple OP_RETURNS, the implementation of double-spend proofs, and the inclusion of a new mining block default limit size of 8 MB, as the inclusion of CHIPs (Cash Improvement Proposals) to introduce new specification changes to the protocol.

Bitcoin Cash May 15 Upgrade: What You Need to Know

The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network will experience an upgrade on May 15th that will bring a series of simple, yet interesting changes focused on usability and quality of life improvements instead of hard changes to the consensus algorithm. Most of the important changes are destined to improve the experience of users and merchants when using bitcoin cash to make online or in-store payments, reaffirming the commitment the currency has with becoming a peer-to-peer cash-focused tool.

Documentation for the May 15, 2021, Bitcoin Cash network upgrade.

The first important change proposed is the removal of the unconfirmed chained transaction limit, which will allow users to do more than 50 chained unconfirmed transactions at a time. This was a highly requested feature for a long time by gambling sites and other high volumes, quick transaction apps that relied on Bitcoin Cash as a payment solution. Satoshi Dice, a dice-playing app, even offered a bounty of 1000 BCH last year to get rid of this limit. Now, its users will be able to enjoy a more streamlined experience without having to wait for a block to be mined every 50 transactions.

Another important update is the introduction of double-spend tests, that will allow nodes to message certain wallets when an attempt of double spending is happening with a transaction. This will improve the security of 0-conf transactions for applications that use high-volume, high-value transactions commonly.

Other important updates include changing the default block mining max size to eight megabytes, something that will allow new installs and lazy operators to include mine bigger blocks without having to configure this parameter by themselves (but the option can be changed), and the inclusion of more than one OP_RETURN statement in each transaction, offering programmers the choice of using this space for other different purposes while still preserving its use for the SLP token protocol.

CHIPs and the New Upgrade Schedule

One of the most criticized aspects of the upgrade/ hard fork the process of Bitcoin Cash was the centralization and transparency of what was going to be included in each upgrade and what was definitely left out. For past updates, there was no standard to follow and goalposts and objectives were often moved with no definition. To solve this particular problem, the node programming community introduced the concept of CHIPs.

CHIPs (Cash Improvement Proposals) are standardized proposals that seek to modify or improve certain aspects of the Bitcoin Cash environment. These CHIPs would have to be first presented to the community to be considered by full node client programmers, who will try to find consensus to include (or reject any significant modification. Most of the CHIPs presented till now are hosted on the Bitcoin Cash Research page, which serves as a sort of hub for these considerations.

All of this will need a longer period to take care of and examine each one of the proposals before an update; this is the reason why this upgrade is also modifying the schedule for upgrades to happen once every year. This is a more stable approach that now allows for more experimentation and careful consideration of more radical changes to the protocol for future upgrade cycles.

Meanwhile, bitcoin cash (BCH) markets have seen significant gains during the last 48 hours, jumping over the $1,200 per unit range on Wednesday morning (ET).

What do you think about the Bitcoin Cash May 15 network upgrade? Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments section below.

The Benefits of Coupling Ethereum With Bitcoin Cash: Smartbch Sidechain Testnet Is Now Public

30/04/2021 by Idelto Editor

On Thursday, the Smart Bitcoin Cash team announced the launch of the Smartbch testnet explaining that developers and decentralized app makers can now experiment and develop with the high-performance, EVM-compatible Bitcoin Cash sidechain. Further, Bitcoin.com News spoke with Wang Kui the lead developer of the Smartbch project. The Smartbch tech lead told our newsdesk about the inner workings of the sidechain that can connect with the Ethereum network.

Testnet for Smart Bitcoin Cash, a Bitcoin Cash Layer-2 Project Is Live

During the last few weeks, the Smartbch project has been a topical conversation within the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) community. The reason for these conversations is because the Smartbch team has revealed a project that is EVM and Web3 compatible, but far cheaper in terms of transaction fees. This is because the Smartbch project is a sidechain built on Bitcoin Cash and it leverages the BCH chain’s lower transaction fees. Bitcoin.com has reported on the project on a few occasions since it was announced and on April 29, the team has revealed the Smartbch testnet is now live.

The Smartbch testnet will allow decentralized application (dapp) creators and programmers the ability to test and deploy experimental projects using the testing framework. Developers should read the recently published Smartbch testnet documentation before getting started. The team’s testnet announcement notes that the BCH community has been waiting for this project to go live, and said the project Telegram channel has swelled with members.

For instance, the Coinflex exchange has had its development team testing the testnet of Smartbch while it was still private. “Metamask is connecting without issue and solidity code is working well. We set up a DEX on our private testnet, created tokens…and it’s all going smoothly,” Mark Lamb, CEO of Coinflex said. The Smartbch team says the concept is the first-of-its-kind sidechain for Bitcoin Cash and there are many benefits BCH offers.

“Bitcoin Cash itself is not specifically equipped for smart contracting functions, preferring use cases centered around peer-to-peer cash,” the Smartbch team said on Wednesday. “However, as a sidechain to Bitcoin Cash, Smartbch aims to build a new playground for the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem and enlarge the user base.” Wang Kui the lead developer of the Smartbch further discussed the protocol with Bitcoin.com News this week.

Wang Kui stresses that the protocol provides an EVM and Web3 compatible sidechain for Bitcoin Cash, staking its hash power while utilizing BCH as the native gas-paying token. “What’s more, by incorporating hardware-friendly components, vastly increased scalability is unlocked,” Kui remarked. Moreover, the Smartbch tech lead discussed the project in great detail with Bitcoin.com News in an exclusive interview transcribed below.

An In-Depth Interview With the Smart Bitcoin Cash Tech Lead Wang Kui

Bitcoin.com News (BCN): What made you decide to start such a venture and why did you choose to leverage the Bitcoin Cash network?

Wang Kui (WK): I have been talking about the project background, since the second half of 2018, I have been working on how to maximize TPS (Transactions Per Second). But the work has been on and off as I was assigned with other tasks. By the second half of 2020, I finally found a feasible way after many failures. After discussing the idea with industry leaders, we decided to deliver my research results by launching Smartbch.

The main reason for choosing the Bitcoin Cash network is that it features big blocks. Based on my professional background and work experience, I think optimization measures should be taken to give full play to the ability of the computing system itself. You can call it ‘brute force.’ However, Ethereum prefers ‘subtle’ ways like sharding and layer2. The reason I choose to leverage the Bitcoin Cash protocol is because I’m a big supporter of Bitcoin Cash, and I think it is the most in line with the original vision of Satoshi, which is to “serve as many people as possible.

BCN: Can you explain to our readers how Smartbch aims to enhance EVM throughput and Web3 apps?

WK: First we abandoned the single-thread semantics defined in Ethereum’s yellow paper. Single-thread semantics is not a must to support EVM and Web3 and it blocks many optimizations. Second, we developed a lot of low-level libraries which support parallel execution of EVM transactions to exploit the potential of modern CPU and SSD. Last but not least, we optimized the EVM execution engine and storage engine, which makes each EVM instruction run faster.

BCN: Have third-party BCH developers been looking into the SmartBCH protocol?

WK: Yes, we will have several companies confirmed and will join our testnet and participate to be the validator. And we have several new applications developed and dedicated for Smartbch and several existing applications being ported to Smartbch.

BCN: The throughput is quoted as being “one billion gas every 15 seconds.” Can you explain how that will work?

WK: Ethereum’s consensus engine and execution engine must be run in serial and in the block interval the new block must be executed several times on different peer-to-peer nodes, because it uses the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm. By optimizing the consensus algorithm and allowing the consensus engine and execution engine to run concurrently, we must speed it by about five times.

By executing the EVM transactions in parallel, we can speed up the execution by about ten times. And by reducing each EVM instruction’s time consumption, we can further speed it up by about two to three times. So overall we are confident to speed up ethereum by 100 times.

BCN: How will Bitcoin Cash miners be affected by Smartbch?

WK: Bitcoin Cash miners can vote for their validators on Smartbch and get gas fee rewards, such that they can benefit from decentralized finance (defi) applications on Smartbch.

BCN: Would you say that Smartbch will be able to produce the same results as a myriad of the defi apps built on Ethereum? Like Stablecoins, AMMs, liquidity pools, decentralized exchanges (DEXs), and tools of that nature.

WK: All the Ethereum defi apps can be ported to Smartbch with negligible efforts. Also, we are expecting new applications which require high-throughput and low-gas-price to run will emerge on Smartbch.

BCN: When you say “Smart Bitcoin Cash’s innovation lies in libraries” what does that mean?

WK: Instead of inventing fancy consensus and cryptographic algorithms, we decided to adopt another methodology: to develop low-level libraries with an aim to fully uncover the hardware’s potential, especially its inherent parallelism. Ordinary users and developers are provided with a compatibility layer supporting EVM and Web3, so the optimized low-level ‘close to the metal’ libraries themselves remain concealed by this layer of abstraction. During the implementation, we used the codename ‘Moeing,’ which is added to the libraries’ names as prefix.

These libraries follow the UNIX philosophy: simple, short, clear, modular, and extensible. Other projects can reuse them and benefit from them.

BCN: As far as cryptocurrency in general, do you envision the industry seeing exponential growth going forward as we have seen during the end of 2020 and into 2021?

WK: I am not sure about what will happen in the near future. But in the long run, the population of the cryptocurrency community will surely grow exponentially. And Smartbch is getting ready for the next 100x growth of onchain users.

What do you think about Smartbch launching its testnet this week and the interview with the project’s tech lead Wang Kui? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Tether Market Cap Swells Past $50 Billion, USDT Stablecoin Gets Listed on Coinbase Pro

26/04/2021 by Idelto Editor

The blockchain stablecoin issuer Tether Operations Limited has recently surpassed a $50 billion market valuation after seeing exponential growth during the last few years. Furthermore, the stablecoin tether has launched on the trading platform Coinbase Pro this week marking the San Francisco-based exchange’s first time supporting the dollar-pegged token.

Tether Market Cap Increases by 170% in 6 Months

The blockchain company has reached a milestone this week as the firm’s dollar-pegged token USDT has surpassed a $50 billion market capitalization. Back in November 2020, Bitcoin.com News reported on how USDT towered over the stablecoin competition, as the market cap grew by 2 million percent in four years. At that time, records had shown tether’s (USDT) market valuation was around $18.5 billion. At $50 billion today, the USDT market valuation increased by 170.27% since November.

Tether Operations Limited says that the skyrocketing market cap stems from a myriad of use cases including spot exchanges leveraging tether and decentralized finance (defi) applications using the stablecoin. Data from Messari.io shows that reported daily volume for tether is around $117 billion and usually reported daily USDT volume is over the $100 billion mark every day. 24 hour “Real Volume” stats from Messari.io indicate that USDT volume could really be around $38.80 billion on April 26. This is still the largest crypto in terms of traded volume on a daily basis, in comparison to top crypto assets like ETH and BTC.

“Crossing a market cap of US$50 billion represents an incredibly important milestone for Tether,” Paolo Ardoino, the CTO at Tether explained after reaching the $50 billion market cap milestone. “When the group of visionaries that created Tether in 2014 first launched the stablecoin they could not have dreamt that it would have grown so exponentially. Tether’s success is a blueprint for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and a banking system of the future. We are truly humbled by the pivotal role that Tether now plays in the digital token ecosystem across myriad protocols and applications.”

Coinbase Pro Starts to List Tether Trading Pairs in Phases, Stablecoin Is Not Supported on Coinbase.com Yet

When tether (USDT) first came out, the stablecoin was issued via the Bitcoin (BTC) network by using the Omni Layer Protocol. Since then, the token has branched off into multiple blockchains and USDT has been issued on blockchain networks like Ethereum, Solana, Tron, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, Liquid, and Algorand. Moreover, tether’s ERC20 version is leveraged on various defi applications and decentralized exchange (dex) platforms. USDT is used on a myriad of centralized spot exchanges all across the globe and just recently the token was added to Coinbase Pro.

“Starting immediately,” Coinbase said. “We will begin accepting inbound transfers of USDT to Coinbase Pro. Trading will begin on or after 6 p.m. Pacific Time (PT) Monday, April 26, if liquidity conditions are met. Please note that Coinbase only supports ERC20 USDT.”

If everything works out and a sufficient supply of USDT is established on the Coinbase platform, the exchange will offer tether pairs in BTC, ETH, EUR, GBP, USD, and USDC. But if there is not enough liquidity for one pair, the pairing may get removed. Coinbase says that it will announce each tether pair listing in phases and USDT will not be available yet on Coinbase.com.

“We will make a separate announcement if and when this support is added,” the San Francisco exchange’s announcement concludes.

What do you think about tether’s market cap mushrooming to a whopping $50 billion this week? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Bitcoin’s Market Dominance Slides to 50%, While Ethereum’s Valuation Climbs Higher

24/04/2021 by Idelto Editor

Bitcoin dominance, the metric that measures bitcoin’s overall market capitalization against all the other crypto asset valuations has dropped considerably in recent weeks. At the end of February, bitcoin dominance levels started sliding downward from 61% to today’s 50%. Meanwhile, from the same point in time ethereum’s market capitalization has increased from 11.8% to today’s 14.5%.

Bitcoin Dominance Sinks to 50%

Ever since the birth of alternative crypto assets, people have used a metric called bitcoin (BTC) dominance, a measurement that records BTC’s entire capitalization against all the market capitalizations held by other coins.

Interestingly, minus a few small dips, BTC’s dominance was above the 80% range from the day it was conceived to February 2017.

During the first week of January 2018, BTC’s dominance dropped to an all-time low of 33%. This year, bitcoin dominance levels have been mostly above the 60% region and in January 2021, it neared 70%.

However, since February 28, BTC dominance has slid from 61% to a low of 50% on April 23. At the same time from February 28 until now, ethereum (ETH) has climbed from 11.8% to 14.5%.

A Myriad of Competitors Push Bitcoin Dominance Levels Lower

Ethereum’s market cap is not the only coin eating away at BTC’s dominance levels. Binance coin has captured the third position in terms of crypto market valuations and commands 4.33% of the crypto economy’s entire $1.87 trillion market cap.

The stablecoin tether (USDT) holds 2.8%, XRP has 2.25%, and cardano (ADA) has 1.9% today. The top 15th position held by solana (SOL) and all the way to the seventh position dogecoin, commands .50% of the entire crypto-economy or more.

From October 2020 until today, the overall crypto capitalization excluding bitcoin has increased a great deal from $145 billion to close to a trillion. A great number of coins have seen gains alongside BTC’s climactic bull run, but a few coins, in general, have eaten a lot more than most.

Tokens like ethereum, binance coin, cardano, XRP, and tether (USDT) as well have done the most damage to BTC’s dominance levels.

What do you think about BTC’s dominance levels dropping to record lows for 2021? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.