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StarkWare has verified the first zero-knowledge (ZK) proof on the Bitcoin. It’s part of the core Starknet developer’s plans to scale Bitcoin for mass adoption. StarkWare has achieved a historic feat by completing the first zero -knowledge proof verification on the Bitcoin network, according to the details posted on X on Wednesday. The blockchain developer revealed that after months of exploring, its developers have managed to verify the first ZK proof using a new STARK verifier, Stwo Verifier on OP_CAT-enabled Bitcoin Signet. It’s the first of many steps in the quest to scale Bitcoin. Scale Bitcoin for mass use StarkWare announced in June that the company was looking to scale Bitcoin for mass adoption using ZK proof s. With the new scaling solution, dApps can decide to settle on Bitcoin or Ethereum. “Starknet will become the first network to settle simultaneously on Bitcoin and Ethereum and scale Bitcoin to many thousands of trans...

TLDR Bitcoin’s track record and exciting future developments offer investors hope. Solana and NuggetRush are undervalued cryptocurrencies to consider for investment. NuggetRush is a promising ICO project, expected to increase by 100% during its presale phase and by 2,000% after launch. Bitcoin (BTC) is often used interchangeably with cryptocurrency. This is because it is the first crypto in the world. However, since its inception, several other cryptocurrencies have been launched. Recently, investors have been turning their attention to competitive tokens like Solana (SOL) and NuggetRush (NUGX) . These coins are way cheaper than Bitcoin and have significant growth potential. NuggetRush (NUGX): A promising player NuggetRush (NUGX) is a new player in the crypto space. It is currently in its ICO (initial coin offering) stage, round one. However, it has significant growth potential, resulting in a frenzy in its ongoing presale. The token...

Four House Reps. wrote a letter to SEC Chair Gary Gensler on Wednesday. They dubbed Spot Bitcoin ETF “indistinguishable” from Crypto Futures ETF. Bitcoin is still trading around the $26,000 level at writing on Wednesday. All eyes are on Bitcoin today after the U.S. lawmakers urged the Securities & Exchange Commission to “immediately” approve applications it has received for a Spot Bitcoin ETF. House Reps. wrote a letter to Gary Gensler today On Wednesday, four members of the House Financial Services Committee wrote a letter to Gary Gensler in which they argued that a Spot Bitcoin ETF is not particularly different from a Crypto Futures ETF that the regulator has already approve d. And so, they urged Chair of the SEC in their letter to allow the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity and several others to list a Spot Bitcoin ETF . SEC’s current posture is untenable moving forward … there is no reason to continue to deny such ...

Arkham announced it identified nearly $25 billion in Bitcoin in crypto exchange Coinbase’s portfolio. The BTC holdings are approximately 948,000, closer to the 1 million BTC of Satoshi Nakamoto. Coinbase is thus the world’s largest known Bitcoin entity, Arkham analysts said on X. Blockchain intelligence firm Arkham has reported that Coinbase holds Bitcoin (BTC) worth about $25 billion, making the cryptocurrency exchange the world’s largest entity holding the flagship digital asset. Arkham says Coinbase holds nearly 1 million BTC Arkham’s announcement on Friday was that it had identified nearly 1 million BTC on-chain for Coinbase reserves, with this making the US-based crypto behemoth “the largest Bitcoin entity in the world on Arkham.” The holdings account for about 5% of all bitcoin in existence and means the exchange’s BTC is nearly as much as that attributed to Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto....

Source: Adobe/Christophe Fouquin   The crypto market saw losses across the board on Wednesday as bitcoin (BTC) once again dipped below the USD 20,000 mark, and some analysts pointed to a risk of further downside. On Wednesday at 10:30 UTC, BTC stood at USD 20,123, down by 4% for the past 24 hours and by 3% for the past week. At the same time, ethereum (ETH) traded at USD 1,133, down by 7% for the day and up by nearly 1% for the week. Other popular altcoins, including Binance ’s BNB, FTX ’s FTT, and Avalanche ’s AVAX token all saw 24-hour losses of between 7% and 8%. Notably, the market sell-off on Wednesday came as news emerged that a court in the British Virgin Islands has ordered the liquidation of the crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital , which has for some time been rumored to be insolvent. Sky News said it has learned that partners from Teneo in the British Virgin Islands has been lined up to handle the insolvency of the fund. It was un...

Source: Adobe/chromatika   The crypto market fell on Tuesday ahead of a US inflation report for June that is feared to show that consumer prices have continued to rise at a faster pace despite interest rate hikes. Meanwhile, more on-chain signs are now indicating that a bottom for bitcoin (BTC) could be about to form. As of Tuesday at 11:20 UTC, bitcoin stood at USD 19,672, down 4% for the day and 3% for the week, after falling below the key USD 20,000 level in early European trading. At the same time, ethereum (ETH) traded at USD 1,065, down 7% for the day and 8% for the week. BTCUSD Chart by TradingView   The moves happened ahead of the release of June inflation figures in the US on Wednesday, with expectations being that inflation will have increased even further from 8.6% annually in May. Fears that inflation will come in higher increased on Monday, when White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said she expects inflation to be “highly e...

Dr. Adam Back. Source: video screenshot/YouTube The market capitalization of Bitcoin (BTC) could reach as much as $200 trillion over the next nine years, if the legendary bitcoiner Adam Back is to be believed. “Early this year I was curious of the claim ‘bitcoin 2x's per year on average’,” the early Bitcoin user and founder of Bitcoin development firm Blockstream wrote in a Twitter thread posted this weekend. He went on to say that the claim “checks,” and that BTC in fact has risen by 2.036 times per year on average between January 2013 and December 2022. If the trend continues, the price for each bitcoin will reach $10 million by the end of the next two halvings, while the asset’s total market cap will reach a massive $200 trillion, Back wrote. Bitcoin halving occur roughly every four years, with the reward paid out to miners being cut in half. The halvings have historically been catalysts for major bull markets in the coin,...

The bitcoin price is consolidating below the important $23,000 level and is still up almost 50% from its 21 November lows, despite pulling back 1.5% in the past 24 hours to $22,600. If the largest cryptocurrency by market cap can successfully challenge resistance between $23k and $25k, that will be key to sustaining its uptrend revival – it could also signal the end of the bear market. If and when bitcoin breaks through the $23,000-$25,000 resistance region, there is, arguably, an open road ahead to $30,000. But it is worth dwelling on the fact that $23k is such an area of strong resistance.  We can identify three discernible challenges to the $23k level that failed to hold between July and August last year (see chart annotations below). The three failures decisively broke down when bitcoin plummeted $2,000 on 19 August.  Expectations of a rapid and successful assault on this important price level has proved a bridge too far for bulls, for now. Bitcoi...

In our Asian session Bitcoin price prediction, we predicted BTC would fall further to complete a 61.8% Fibonacci retracement at $17,440 before rebounding. BTC has dropped to trade near $17,500; closing candles above this level can cause a bullish bounce. The aggressive FOMC and Fed rate hike decisions may be one of the main causes driving a bearish trend in Bitcoin.  After seeing inflation rise, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates again on Wednesday to 4.5%. Interest rate forecasts from the Fed may be more optimistic than expected. Almost everyone on the board agrees that an interest rate of just above 5% is reasonable for next year. Even though Powell has acknowledged that no one can predict when a recession will hit, the Federal Reserve has been more hawkish than many had anticipated. The news from the Fed seemed to have a negative impact on markets and bitcoin. A hawkish Fed might prompt a temporary sell-off in the markets as things stand.  EC...

Source: Adobe/Mihail Disgraced biotech entrepreneur and hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli has published a finding that appears to prove who the real person behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto is. But the Bitcoin community is not yet convinced. The finding was shared in a blog post published on Tuesday, where Shkreli decrypted a signature from the first Bitcoin transaction ever made. The decryption can be done using “any decryption tool,” Shkreli wrote in the comments section. As has been known for since the early days of Bitcoin, the first transaction was sent from Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto to the American programmer and cypherpunk community member Hal Finney. Shkreli’s blog post said: The following is the Bitcoin wallet Hal Finney used to receive the first Bitcoin transfer from Satoshi. 1Q2TWHE3GMdB6BZKafqwxXtWAWgFt5Jvm3 The following signature HM7vpPSUbNsfDHRX6gv8xxWcVNHEc/3pOk0YrVehaGoUdbWizznfzOdELkLd1EjSXsW1oE5vHAkNAPzrAVzhuoI= decrypt...

Following the bearish breakout of the upward channel on December 12, the Bitcoin price prediction turned bearish. It was supporting Bitcoin near the $17,000 level, and now, following a bearish breakout, Bitcoin price is vulnerable to the $16,750 level. Ark Invest's CEO Cathie Wood recently tweeted her admiration for Bitcoin's resiliency, noting that the flagship cryptocurrency "didn't skip a beat" amid a recent crisis. She goes on to say that Bitcoin's "transparency" and "decentralization" are reasons why disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried didn't care for it. He was helpless, the well-known investor said. The latest tweet from Wood is in response to Ark Invest, the investment management firm she runs. This week, the market's attention is focused on the high-impact economic events coming out of the United States. Let us take a look. Upcoming FOMC on the Docket Market participants are concerned about the next ...

Source: AdobeStock / fotokitas Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news. __________ Legal news Ex-CEO of Alameda Research , the parent company of the collapsed FTX exchange, Caroline Ellison, hired Stephanie Avakian, former enforcement division chief at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to represent Ellison along with other lawyers at Avakian’s firm, WilmerHale , Fortune reported, citing people familiar with the matter.  Police in Inner Mongolia have arrested 63 people for laundering 12 billion yuan ($1.7 billion) of cryptocurrency, the South China Morning Post reported. Starting in May 2021, the group collected illicit funds from online pyramid schemes, fraud, and gambling, and converted the proceeds into tether (USDT), it said. Exchange news Audit firm Mazars released a report about KuCoin ’s Proof of Reserves ...

Source: AdobeStock / alison Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news. __________ Investment news Financial services firm Goldman Sachs plans to spend tens of millions of dollars to buy or invest in crypto companies following the FTX collapse, Reuters reported. Executive Mathew McDermott is quoted as saying that the company is on the lookout for opportunities that are "priced more sensibly" and is doing its due diligence on some crypto firms. The Panoptic team has raised $4.5 million in seed funding, led by gumi Cryptos Capital , with contributions from Uniswap Labs Ventures , Coinbase Ventures , Jane Street , Blizzard ( the Avalanche Ecosystem Fund ), Zee Prime Capital , and others, including strategic founders in the DeFi space. The press release stated that the Panoptic team has been building for the past six months to create “an innov...

Source: Andy/Adobe Russian lawmakers are inching closer to legalizing crypto mining – and could begin allowing industrial miners to operate as bona fide “entrepreneurs” as early as next month. Anatoly Aksakov, the head of the State Duma’s Committee on the Financial Markets, last month claimed that a bill would be read in parliament “in December.” MPs have previously rejected a similar draft law. But the new draft law appears to be very different. While the previous bill was drafted by a small group of opposition MPs, this bill appears to have the blessing of most major ministries – as well as the staunchly crypto-skeptic Central Bank. The bank has repeatedly called for crypto to be banned from Russian soil, but appears to have been convinced that miners should be allowed to operate in the nation. The bank has accepted, but only on the condition that miners do not “bring” their tokens “into the Russian econom...

On Monday, Bitcoin price prediction is bullish because BTC has already broken through a major resistance level of $17,200, and closing candles above this level keeps BTC bullish.  The BTC/USD opened trading on December 5 at $ 17,128 and has since risen by more than 2% to $17,398. The BTC/USD pair is trading in a narrow range of $17,420 to $16,096. In addition, its value has increased by nearly 6% in the last week. Let's look at the major fundamentals that are driving the price action. US Senator intends to Convert Texas into a Bitcoin-based Oasis Ted Cruz, a US senator, wants to turn Texas into a haven for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. During a speech at the Texas Blockchain Summit 2022 in late November, the lawmaker expressed his understanding of how the cryptocurrency sector may be significant for US energy supply and technological advancement. The senator also emphasized the bitcoin sector's potential benefits for US energy supply and technological...