News

BENQI Closes $6M Round to Create Algorithmic Liquidity Market on Avalanche

14/04/2021 by Idelto Editor

PRESS RELEASE. BENQI, a liquidity market operating on the Avalanche network, has completed a private funding round. A total of $6 million was raised in a round led by Ascensive Assets.

A number of leading investors on blockchain and the emerging Avalanche ecosystem also participated. These include Mechanism Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Arrington XRP Capital and The Spartan Group. Other backers were Morningstar Ventures, Vendetta Capital, TRGC, Genesis Block, Woodstock and Rarestone alongside Ava Labs and leading liquidity provider Skynet Trading.

Built on Avalanche’s highly scalable network, BENQI combines elements of defi and tradfi to create a liquidity protocol in which idle assets can be utilized. By locking these assets into the BENQI protocol, Avalanche users will be able to earn interest on their assets and obtain credit through over-collateralized loans.

The decision to build on Avalanche was influenced by its high degree of decentralization, scalability, and low fee environment, particularly when compared to Ethereum. BENQI ultimately aims to become a cross-chain defi hub that will bridge Ethereum, Polkadot, and Binance Smart Chain through Avalanche’s subnets.

Assets that are locked into the BENQI protocol can be used to generate yield-bearing tokens or to issue assets that are borrowed and locked into other defi protocols to generate additional yield.

Governance of BENQI’s native protocol will be overseen by QI token holders, who will have the ability to determine key matters pertaining to risk policies, fiscal management, and platform upgrades. 50% of all QI tokens will be issued through liquidity mining, giving participants an opportunity to earn rewards commensurate with their efforts.

The BENQI mainnet is scheduled to launch in Q2, 2021 accompanied by a public sale of the QI token on Pangolin exchange.

About BENQI

Developed by an experienced team of blockchain designers, BENQI is a protocol to unlock greater liquidity within the defi market. BENQI enables defi users to make their assets work harder to generate additional yield. Built on Avalanche’s high speed smart contract network, BENQI will evolve into a cross-chain defi hub that’s positioned at the heart of decentralized finance.

Learn more:

https://t.me/BenqiFinance

https://twitter.com/BenqiFinance

https://medium.com/@benqifinance

[email protected]

https://benqi.fi/

This is a press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release.

Over $750 Million in Bitcoin from the 2016 Bitfinex Hack Moved Today

14/04/2021 by Idelto Editor

On Wednesday, after bitcoin prices touched a new all-time high, thousands of bitcoins from the August 2, 2016, Bitfinex hack were transferred to unknown wallets. The exact count of BTC moved from the hack is not entirely clear, but one blockchain parser shows that over 12,208 BTC from the 2016 Bitfinex breach worth $754 million today was moved to various addresses.

On August 2, 2016, the exchange Bitfinex was hacked for approximately 119,756 BTC, which is worth $7.5 billion using today’s exchange rates. That day, the price per bitcoin (BTC) slid 22% but the exchange managed to pay customers back using another token.
During the last year, a number of stolen bitcoins from the Bitfinex hack have been moved. As BTC’s price grew higher, Bitfinex hacker coins have moved more regularly.
Leveraging a blockchain parser, Btcparser.com, Bitcoin.com News discovered 11,799 BTC from the 2016 Bitfinex hack transferred at block heights 679,205 all the way until 679,214.
The number of BTC moved from the hackers’ stash today could be much larger. And there could be more movements today, as BTC from the Bitfinex 2016 hack was transferred while this report was written.

Using today’s exchange rates, the 11,799 BTC is worth more than $742 million today. These transfers of more than 30 transactions, is one of the largest moves the Bitfinex hackers have done to date. The blockchain parser Whale Alert also caught the transactions that started after 1:00 p.m. EST.
Members of the Telegram channel Goldfoundinsh*t believe “this awakening was done in purpose to dump the price a little bit. Since Coinbase has been listed and many people want to go long with it.”

“We assume the hackers may try to manipulate the price, thus it’s not an ordinary hacker,” a member of the Telegram channel Goldfoundinsh*t said.
Following the 11,799 BTC cleared between block heights 679,205 to 679,212, another 409 BTC from the Bitfinex hack moved. This brought the estimated total to 12,208 BTC worth over $754 million.
“Our Btcparser has just signed several bitcoin movements from the Bitfinex exchange hack. Just in time, I would say,” Taisia, the leader of the Goldfoundinsh*t told Bitcoin.com News. “Traditionally, such news causes a dump, and, holding in mind the current euphoria about the Coinbase direct listing on the Nasdaq, it was a great temptation to clip the wings of the ‘longs.’”
Coinbase shares (Nasdaq: COIN) are currently trading for $332 at the time of publication.

What do you think about the 12,208 bitcoin that moved from the Bitfinex hackers’ wallets to unknown wallets? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Bitcoin: The Ultimate Opportunity Cost

14/04/2021 by Idelto Editor

Upon realization of Bitcoin’s true value, one must reconcile their economic opportunity cost with their new reality.

Attention, fellow bitcoin wealthy plebs; I’ve been summoned to write about the corn, and there is one topic that’s constantly in the back of my mind, creeping into every decision:

The Bitcoin opportunity cost.

Whether you’ve just started your journey down the rabbit hole or you’re already telling billionaires to “have fun staying poor,” by now, you’ve learned about the functions and characteristics of money. This is one of the first things about Bitcoin that stood out to me, as I hadn’t learned about it before. The money a society uses should function as a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a unit of account. Diving deeper, I learned about money’s different characteristics (scarcity, divisibility, transferability, etc.) and started to understand how societies grade money based on these characteristics to decide which forms of it are more desirable than others.

Many have come to the conclusion that Bitcoin earns the best overall grade on the characteristics-of-money test, and this makes it the best form of money ever (cc: @thisisbullish). I fully subscribe to the thesis that bitcoin the asset is currently functioning as the best store of value in existence, and that this delays bitcoin from fulfilling the other two functions of money. Why would people use bitcoin to exchange value at scale when it is serving as the best store of value right now? In the future, when Bitcoin’s volatility calms down and global adoption is above 80 percent, people won’t feel like they’re giving up generational wealth when they use bitcoin as a medium of exchange, and then Bitcoin the network will shine. This is all to say that we are still very much in the adoption phase, and we are lucky to be here this early.

If you agree with that thinking, you may have entered into a new wormhole mindset in the last few years, as I did. When you go down this wormhole, you stop thinking about bitcoin as an investment, which implies you’re trying to exit at some point after squeezing out more money than you put in. Instead, you start to think about Bitcoin as the money, which exists in a better system that improves incentives, trade, friction, efficiency, saving, time preference, freedom, innovation, politics, and community. Once you get to that point, the opportunity cost of not owning Bitcoin creeps into every single decision.

Today, money managers use the risk-free rate of treasury bills to calculate opportunity cost of financial decisions. This calculated yield basically represents the maximum amount of money you could make without taking any risk, and decisions should be weighed against this.

If you factor in the 2.3 percent annual government-targeted inflation rate via the Consumer Price Index (CPI), then most interest rates are already negative.

Now factor in the CPI being a farce.

Now factor in that nothing is risk-free and this yield is subject to a counterparty that operates like a failing business.

Finally, you have an opportunity cost that can’t ever be verified or agreed upon. As a result, we can’t trust the benchmark against which most investment decisions are calculated, and this leads to complete mispricing of assets.

Say you’re a bank and your group of investment analysts, pictured below, ignore all of that.

You are using the absolute worst-performing “risk-free” investment available as your opportunity cost. Bitcoin is basically a social experiment to see what happens if you try using the best-performing asset of all time as your opportunity cost instead.

Bitcoin Magazine’s @nikcantmine wrote about how he weighed his personal Bitcoin opportunity cost against college tuition. I went to college, and I can justify it because, in my opinion, it was a great time and I hadn’t heard of Bitcoin yet. But if I had, I probably would have made the same decision as Nik. In my mind, most purchases won’t outperform Bitcoin, so if I’m buying something, it better give me a large amount of enjoyment, and if I’m ever selling Bitcoin, it better be in exchange for large amounts of time. I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or curse to be at the point where every single decision, financial or otherwise, comes down to “Hey man, you should probably have more bitcoin instead.”

In summary: enjoy the ride, $500,000 is bearish, pleb forever, team surferjim, pray for Miami.

Thanks to @BTCization for the nod.

Play me off.

This is a guest post by Chad_Capital. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

Analysis: Jerome Powell On “60 Minutes”

14/04/2021 by Idelto Editor

In this episode of “Fed Watch,” the hosts listened and reacted to several clips from the Jerome Powell “60 Minutes” interview.

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In this episode of Bitcoin Magazine’s “Fed Watch” podcast, hosts Christian Keroles and Ansel Lindner listened and reacted to several clips from the Jerome Powell “60 Minutes” interview. All audio is used under fair use and they added their commentary to it. You can get the full interview here and the YouTube playlist of clips here.

Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, appeared on “60 Minutes” this week. The interview seemed to be a public relations attempt by the Fed. It fell one year after the Corona Crash of 2020.

Lindner and Keroles took three clips and broke them down in unapologetic fashion. The first clip is amazing because Powell said that the Fed sees the same persistent issues today which were present back during the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), and if they keep coming up they might as well fix them. This comment got the hosts’ blood boiling. It was not as if they did not try their best to fix it back after the GFC. What makes them think they’ll be able to fix it this time?

The second clip they tackled is one where Powell addressed the U.S.’s unsustainable debt. He drew a distinction between an unsustainable “path” and an unsustainable “level” by saying the U.S. is on an unsustainable path, but is currently not at an unsustainable level of debt. He’s really splitting hairs because the path has not changed for 40 years. There’s one way out of the debt and that is default.

The last clip they looked at was about the digital dollar. They feel this was a topic they must cover on “Fed Watch” because it is a very large topic when people discuss the future direction of central banking in regards to central bank digital currencies (CBDC). Powell’s comments here are no surprise, pouring cold water on the idea of digital dollar. The Fed has no intention of being first in the CBDC race and Powell offered a skeptical approach that is missing from many other central banks.

The last few minutes of this episode consisted of a discussion on the Coinbase direct offering happening today and a whirlwind macro summary. Overall, this was a very fun and informative episode once again from “Fed Watch.”

Gryphon Raises $14 Million For Zero-Carbon Bitcoin Mining Operation

14/04/2021 by Idelto Editor

Gryphon Digital Mining has raised $14 million for a zero-carbon bitcoin mining operation.

According to a release, Gryphon Digital Mining has raised $14 million in a Series A fundraise for the launch of a zero-carbon footprint Bitcoin mining operation.

“At Gryphon, our long-term strategy is to be the first vertically integrated crypto miner with a wholly-owned, 100 percent renewable energy supply,” said Rob Chang, CEO of Gryphon Digital Mining, per the release. “Our vision is to further develop and use economically viable, renewable, off-grid energy.”

The announcement noted that institutional investors made up more than 30 percent of the Series A and it closed in a little over two weeks. It also noted that Gryphon has partnered with a data center that grants it access to electricity costs as low as $0.013 per kilowatt hour (kWH). At launch, it expects its mining operation to have 730 petahashes per second (PH/s) of processing power which it thinks can grow to more than 2,000 pH/s by the end of the year.

The release did not detail the specific energy sources that Gryphon expects to leverage, but it did position the firm as one that sees opportunity in fueling the practice through green energy.

“Gryphon has the opportunity to become a market leader by providing reliable, low-cost mining while relying on renewable energy to minimize Bitcoin mining’s carbon footprint,” according to the release.

While there is a popular belief that bitcoin mining is a waste of energy that unduly contributes to issues like climate change, projects like this are demonstrating that Bitcoin mining can actually incentivize and drive use of renewable energy sources.