May 28th, 2024

Mt. Gox moves $9.6B worth of Bitcoin. Are creditors finally being repaid?

Collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox moved $9.62 billion worth of Bitcoin into a new wallet, raising hopes among creditors.

The 141,686 Bitcoin was consolidated into wallet “1Jbez” from several other cold wallets associated with Mt. Gox.

These transfers are seen as a potential indication that users who have been unable to access their funds since 2014, when Mt. Gox suspended trading and withdrawals, might finally be repaid.

The transfers represent the first on-chain movement of funds from the exchange in over five years and seem in line with Mt. Gox’s plans to repay creditors by the end of October 2024.

*Mt. Gox wallet ‘”1Jbez” Source: CoinStats*

The near $10 billion Bitcoin consolidation likely points to Mt. Gox’s plans to repay its users, according to Anndy Lian, intergovernmental blockchain expert and author of NFT: From Zero to Hero. Lian told Cointelegraph:

“This is the first movement of assets from Mt. Gox’s cold wallets in over five years and is likely part of the plan to distribute the assets back to creditors before the promised deadline of Oct. 31, 2024, in my humble opinion.”

Shortly after the reports, Mt. Gox rehabilitation trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi has confirmed that the consolidation is part of the exchange’s plans to start repaying creditors, without mentioning when the repayments will start to occur. Kobayashi wrote in a May 28 announcement:

“The Rehabilitation Trustee is preparing to make repayment for the portion of cryptocurrency rehabilitation claims to which cryptocurrency is allocated… As the Rehabilitation Trustee is proceeding with the preparation for the above repayments, please wait for a while until the repayments are made.

However, the current deadline could face further delays, as it was set in September 2023 — a month before Mt. Gox was initially scheduled to repay the exchange’s creditors by Oct. 31, 2023.

Over $9.4 billion worth of Bitcoin is owed to some of Mt. Gox’s 127,000 creditors who have waited to get it back for over 10 years after the exchange collapsed in 2014 after multiple unnoticed hacks.

Mt. Gox was one of the earliest cryptocurrency exchanges, once facilitating more than 70% of all trades made within the blockchain ecosystem.

Following a major hack in 2011, the site collapsed in 2014; the fallout affected about 24,000 creditors and resulted in the loss of 850,000 BTC.

Markets are pricing in a Mt. Gox repayment

Following the first batch of Mt. Gox transfers, Bitcoin price dipped 2% on May 28, to a daily low below $67,500, before recovering to just above $68,000, according to CoinMarketCap.

*BTC/USDT, 4-hour chart. Source: CoinMarketCap*

The BTC dip could be a sign of markets pricing in a potential repayment by Mt. Gox, according to Lian:

“The market has reacted to these movements with a slight bearish sentiment, as Bitcoin’s price dropped around 2.1% to as low as $67,505 after the transfer. This could be due to expectations of selling pressure from the creditors once they receive their repayments.”

Despite the slight price dip, Lian said that a potential repayment would resolve one of the most pressing, long-standing issues of the crypto industry.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/mt-gox-bitcoin-transfer-9-6b-creditor-repayment-2024

Anndy Lian

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com

j j j

April 2nd, 2022

STRONG coin price prediction: Can token regain growth?

StrongBlock is the first of its kind decentralised platform attempting to make launching nodes, necessary for the smooth running of blockchains, cheaper and easier.

Its native cryptocurrency, STRONG token, has had quite the journey since launching in 2020, enjoying a rather fruitful 2021. Yet since then, the coin started to dramatically fall in the second half of January 2021, unable to reach past heights.

Can STRONG rise back to its October 2021 value and which factors are driving the STRONG/USD forecast?

What is the STRONG coin?

StrongBlock was founded in 2018 by ‘blockchain pioneers’ David Moss, Brian Abramson and Corey Lederer with the goal to easily add secure, decentralised blockchains to any application.

It had taken the company, however, two years to launch its Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform.

By tackling one of the biggest problems new blockchains face, StrongBlock managed to become the first and only blockchain-agnostic protocol that rewards its users for running nodes.

Nodes, which are vital for the existence of any blockchain, keep full copies of blockchain transactions but are hard to create and pricey to operate. This leads many nodes to run outdated software, store incomplete blockchain histories and be intermittently offline.

StrongBlock’s Nodes-as-a-Service (NaaS) function lets cryptocurrency miners create nodes in seconds. In turn, miners are rewarded in the form of the blockchain’s native cryptocurrency, STRONG, for maintaining the node without having to run their device 24/7.

Rewards can be boosted with StrongBlock non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that are available in four categories: bronze, silver, gold and platinum.

Once a node is launched, it can be used by anyone to access the blockchain the node was built for. So far, StrongBlock supports hundreds of nodes built for Polygon, Ethereum and Sentinel. The approximate amount to set up and run a full Ethereum node is $113.11 per month.

Being listed as an eligible node on StrongBlock is free, however, users should expect a mining deposit to amount to 10 STRONG tokens.

STRONG is an ERC-20 cryptocurrency built on the Ethereum network. Its original supply amounted to 10 million, however, after launching the second version of its Decentralised Finance (DeFi) protocol, StrongBlock ended up burning 94% of the original tokens limiting the supply to around 535,000 STRONG coins.

In the second version of its tokenomics paper, StrongBlock noted that the token:

Is primarily used for rewards.
Supports a low-inflation model with rewards mostly generated through node participation that may adjust in accordance to token valuation over time. In addition, deflationary measures will also be used including the burning of STRONG tokens in some transactions.
Establishes governance, which will eventually determine how StrongBlock works as a decentralised network.
Is helping the project reach a model of long-term, self-sustaining growth.

As of the time of writing (1 April), StrongBlock is rewarding 444,676 nodes.

Over 138,000 coins are currently in circulation, according to data provided by CoinMarketCap at the time of writing. STRONG currently has a market capitalisation surpassing $16m (£12.2m) and is ranked as the 828th largest cryptocurrency.

STRONG price analysis: Bear trend

The STRONG cryptocurrency embarked on quite the journey during its two years in circulation. After reaching a record high of $1,193.31 on 28 October 2021, the StrongBlock coin failed to regain those levels, slumping to the $116 mark, as of 1 April 2022.

After a mini peak of $708.97 on 14 January 2022 the STRONG token started to drastically drop, losing 35.48% of its value in 10 days. Throughout February 2022, the STRONG coin value lost 47% amid broad negative market sentiment as tensions rose on the Russia-Ukraine border.

In the most recent STRONG coin news, the project announced that the StrongBlock had reached 270,000 nodes on 27 January 2022.

The number of nodes being activated on StrongBlock drastically increased in February 2022 from 285,000 on 3 February to 350,000 on 27 February. In addition, the token celebrated great success as it debuted third on the top 10 US trending coins for the week chart on CoinGecko on 18 February. This gave investors hope that the token’s price could still resurface.

STRONG’s price continued to decrease in the next couple of weeks, falling to $113.62 on 26 March 2022, its lowest value that month.

Last year STRONG’s price action seemed hopeful as it surged to a record high of $1,193.31 on 28 October 2021 as the blockchain announced the start of its metal NFT lottery where miners would be eligible to qualify to purchase one StrongBlock metal NFT for its original price in STRONG.

In terms of STRONG technical analysis, the short-term sentiment for the token was largely bearish as at the time of writing (1 April).

A Relative Strength Index (RSI) reading of 31 was extremely close to the oversold territory. A reading of 30 or below would indicate that the asset has become undervalued and a trend reversal is likely. Meanwhile, the token was trading below its three, five and 10-day moving averages, indicating a bearish trend.

STRONG token price prediction: Key drivers

On 28 February 2022, StrongBlock published its roadmap for 2022 underlining some key goals including:

The launch of its new token, STRONGER, which plans to solve a number of problems that followed the success of the NaaS DApp.
The release of several new features including two new, different types of nodes, a node marketplace and node transfer.
The platform’s intention to build a Layer 1, EVM-compatible blockchain protocol that will be known as StrongChain with the bigger goal in mind of moving its NaaS platform to StrongChain and creating a community-oriented model that will unlock new economic layers, increase sustainability, make STRONG more resilient, and lay a new foundation for growth.

BigONE Exchange chair in Asia, Anndy Lian, told Capital.com that the token’s price could be struggling due to the platform being unable to gain retail investor understanding.

“STRONG brings more decentralisation to the current decentralised space by offering multi chain third party external nodes and other data oracles to build robustness and efficiency,” Lian exclusively told Capital.com.

“They believe the best way to adopt blockchain is through DAO governance and reward the community sufficiently. This idea works well on the paper but may not be well understood by the retail investors as a whole. Things might change when they list in the more major exchanges,” he added.

Thus far, the STRONG token has been listed on ChainSwap and Poloniex Exchange.

In the recent announcement by the project, StrongBlock warned investors to beware of scams, suggesting it has been prone to attacks in the past.

StrongBlock (STRONG) price prediction 2022 – 2025

Despite the latest downward price action, algorithm-based forecasting service WalletInvestor gave a bullish STRONG crypto price prediction at the time of writing (1 April). The site noted that STRONG is “an awesome long-term investment”, adding that it has a long-term earning potential amounting to 1,343.3%.

Based on its analysis of past price performance, Wallet Investor predicted that STRONG could cost $460.507 in 2023 and reach $1,751.200 by 2027.

DigitalCoinPrice supported the positive STRONG/USD forecast but saw a much slower pace of growth in the following years, expecting the token to grow to $167.83 by the end of 2022 and reach $248.68 by the end of 2025.

By the end of 2027, the site predicted that the price of STRONG coin could reach $376.08. Its long-term STRONG token forecast showed the cryptocurrency reaching $553.34 by 2030.

Note that predictions about the future of STRONG can be wrong. Forecasts and analyst expectations shouldn’t be used as a substitute for your own research. Always conduct your own due diligence and rely on your own projections, and never invest or trade money you cannot afford to lose.

Original Source: https://capital.com/strongblock-strong-coin-price-prediction

Anndy Lian

www.anndy.com

j j j

October 26th, 2021

China’s Cryptocurrency Ban: Is FOMO Gradually Being Replaced by FUD?

After the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) prohibited cryptocurrency transactions and mining the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fell as a result. In the last 12 years, China has banned cryptocurrency around a dozen times. Every time they impose a ban on crypto currencies, they instil FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) in the crypto community within China and abroad. Is the recent decision to impose another ban on crypto activities shifting the market’s current state from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) to FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt)? I would like to discuss this with the BigONE community.

China FUD vs. Crypto

Going down memory lane, China has taken several anti-crypto stances since the early days of Bitcoin following its launch in 2009. China’s Ministry of Commerce banned virtual currencies from paying for goods and services in June 2009, just a few months after the first Bitcoin transaction. The decision was reportedly made to limit the use of video game currencies, which were allegedly devaluing the Yuan at the time.

Since then, China has taken many hostile stances toward crypto activities. At first, it was stated that it was not a “real currency.” Another instance of FUD that stood out in this back and forth was false news published by Weibo in March 2014. According to reports, the “PBoC has imposed an outright ban on Bitcoin transactions”. This false news completely destabilized the market, causing thousands of traders and investors to liquidate their holdings, and Bitcoin, which was trading at around $1k at the time of the news, fell in value by half in just three months. Fast forward to 2021; China has stepped up its anti-crypto campaign in the last four months. First, regulators launched a massive crackdown on Bitcoin mining operations. The crackdown had a significant impact on the cryptocurrency scene because China housed 75% of the world’s Bitcoin miners at the time.

Then in July, it was revealed that the PBoC had shut down a tech firm that provided software services to cryptocurrency firms. The price of Bitcoin immediately dropped because of this news. Finally, on September 24th, the PBoC announced that all cryptocurrency transactions in China are illegal. As a result, the price of Bitcoin fell by more than 5%, causing traders and investors to liquidate their positions. Ironically in the US, where talk of crypto regulation from the SEC has been spreading its own FUD, the news from China could slowthe drive to clamp down on Crypto. Notably Senator Pat Toomey tweeted that, “Beijing is so hostile to economic freedom they cannot even tolerate their people participating in what is arguably the most exciting innovation in finance in decades. Economic liberty leads to faster growth, and ultimately, a higher standard of living for all.”

While this appears to be, to coin a phrase conjured by a recent Bloomberg article, a “peak FUD moment for crypto” the fact is the actual impact on Bitcoin’s value for these government actions may be over-exaggerated. As the article in Bloomberg went on to say: “The remarkable thing is that — like the proverbial “wall of worry” that never seems to hurt the stock market — growing FUD never seems to do much damage to the value of crypto assets. At least, not for long.

“Yes, Bitcoin is down 5% following China’s latest ban on all crypto transactions and vow to root out mining of digital assets, but that’s just another day in the virtual office for this volatile asset class. Bitcoin and other coins actually were hit harder earlier this week when concerns over China Evergrande Group spread throughout all manner of global markets,” the article noted.

The rise and fall of FUD

FOMO has increased in the crypto scene due to the rapid growth of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in recent years. To put it simply everyone wants to profit from cryptocurrency price increases. As a result, as new users enter the crypto scene, the adoption rate rises. At the same time the emergence of cryptocurrencies has also resulted in regulatory scrutiny and crackdowns. Despite several hostile actions from China and other regulators, we’ve seen that this caused FUD but for a brief period as the cryptocurrency market always finds a way to recover. I believe that ignorance of the intrinsic value of cryptocurrencies also contributes to FUD, which is why perceptions and news coverage continues to influence the market significantly. After each crypto crackdown by regulators, you have no doubt noticed that Bitcoin often goes on a bull run following a brief price drop.

“The China news is not surprising to those of who’ve been in the cryptocurrency space for some time, and as with most FUD, I believe the decentralized crypto market and community is resilient enough to get through this. From an exchange perspective, the other side of the coin is to stay regulated and follow the rules.” Anndy Lian, Chairman of BigONE Exchange commented.

Writing in Forkast, Lily Z. King suggests an upside to all the FUD caused by the ban, will drive a significant decentralization of crypto power from China to other markets, particularly Southeast Asia. “As the economy of Southeast Asia has been heavily impacted by the Covid-19 crisis, the new inflow of crypto capital and technology might bring a much-needed boost for their digital economy. Taking the long-term perspective, this diffusion is good for the builder-type among Chinese crypto entrepreneurs and is good for the crypto movement globally,” she concluded.

Although digital currencies may survive China’s recent crackdown on cryptocurrencies, I believe correct information and knowledge about cryptocurrencies and the market are essential for long term success. Still, if news and perceptions continue to influence the market, it is difficult to predict whether FOMO will always triumph over FUD. Will the latest crackdown on cryptocurrency activities lead to another Bitcoin all-time high? The only way to find out is to wait. In the meantime, the knock-on effect in the region may end up benefiting Southeast Asia.

Original Source: https://london-post.co.uk/chinas-cryptocurrency-ban-is-fomo-gradually-being-replaced-by-fud/