Bitcoin addresses surge as volatility drops to 15-month low
This week the price of Bitcoin (BTC) started trading around $9,150 and quickly moved up to $9,250. The cryptocurrency’s price then plummeted again making it clear its range narrowed down from $9,000 to $10,000 to its lower end.
Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, started the week trading close to $224 but over time its price moved up in an attempt to breach the $230 barrier. At press time, it’s trading at $233.
Bitcoin’s price and on-chain indicators suggest that BTC investors are accumulating as much as possible, and historical data combined with low trading volumes point to a potentially significant price move coming in the near future.
The number of hourly new Bitcoin addresses being created has hit a two-year high of 22,390, above the previous peak of 22,387 seen in June 2019. The number of hourly active bitcoin addresses has also moved up to 60,379 – the highest recorded in over a year. These figures suggest demand for BTC is growing, even if it isn’t being reflected on the cryptocurrency’s price.
Bitcoin’s 30-day volatility index has, meanwhile, dropped to a 15-month low as according to available data it’s currently below 2%. The last time the index dropped below 2% it went all the way to 1.25% in March 2019. The drop preceded a bull run that saw the price of bitcoin move from $4,000 all the way to $13,000 by July 2019. By then, the index had moved to 6.94%.
In November 2018, it’s worth noting, bitcoin’s 30-day volatility index dropped below 1.5%, preceding a price drop from over $6,000 to a $3,200 low in December 2018.
While the data points to a potential big move in the future and ongoing accumulation, a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows that the New York Digital Investments Group (NYDIG) has raised $190 million for a bitcoin fund called the NYDIG Institutional Bitcoin Fund.
The fund has 24 unnamed investors and was originally registered with the SEC in 2018. The NYDIG has in March closed a $140 million fund the Bitcoin Yield Enhancement Fund, although it isn’t clear whether the new fund is a rebrand, or if NYDIG is now one of the largest institutional investors in the cryptocurrency space in the United States, with $330 million invested in bitcoin across both funds.
Research conducted by the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has also found 1.9 million residents currently own cryptocurrencies, while 2.6 million are estimated to have bought crypto “at some point.” Out of the country’s general adult population, estimated to be of 50 million people, 3.86% own cryptoassets.
To the FCA there was a “statistically significant increase” in cryptocurrency holders throughout the UK, as the percentage of people who at some point owned cryptoassets is now at 5.35%, up from 3% in 2019. Most, the report said, “seem to understand the risks associated with the lack of protections, the high volatility of the product and have some understanding of the underlying technology.”
Those who do not understand cryptoassets could run into trouble, as research crypto cryptocurrency startup ZenGo recently unveiled a vulnerability affecting major cryptocurrency wallets that left them vulnerable to double-spend attacks.
The attacks would leverage bitcoin’s Replace-by-Fee feature, which lets a user send a bitcoin transaction with a low fee, and send the same bitcoin in another transaction with a higher fee. This cancels the original transactions, replacing it with the one with the higher fee. The vulnerability was found in wallets that accepted the unconfirmed transactions too quickly, as it left users vulnerable to attackers where the funds would be moved somewhere else before they received them.
Crypto-powered Social Media Platform Voice Launches
The cryptocurrency-powered social media platform Voice has opened its doors to the public. Anyone can now request access to the platform, which is essentially a decentralized version of Medium or Facebook. Until August 15, requesting access will still be required.
However, it is now already possible to see posts on the EOSIO-powered social media platform. Users are rewarded with Voice tokens for posting quality content, incentivizing good contributions. The company behind Voice, Block.one, ran a year-long ICO in which it raised $4 billion to launch EOSIO, the technology that powers the EOS blockchain.
According to a DappRadar report, EOS is one of the top three decentralized application blockchains in the world, behind TRON and Ethereum. Ethereum, the report shows, was behind 85% of the $12 billion moved across decentralized applications in the second quarter of this year.