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

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 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”.

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NFTs Finally Infiltrated AAA Gaming

NFTs Finally Infiltrated AAA Gaming

The NFT market seems to be heading towards another month of consecutive dip. Based on the figures obtained from Crypto Slam, the dip started in April 2022 with a sales volume of $3,806,346,613.84 in total. Followed by May- $3,184,422,599.20, June- $879,080,400.63, July- $682,104,319.50 and August- $633,988,424.51. The number of unique buyers has dropped by 42% since April. While many of the NFT holders were expecting “The Merge” will lift the markets up, it did not happen that way. In fact, Ethereum’s price has dropped around $1,347.98 at the point of writing.

“The NFT market is flushing out bad assets and keeping the good ones. This might prompt a revaluation of the true value of the NFTs, and alter how they are used. As mentioned previously, NFT is the new asset in the digital world, and NFT marketplaces should start to strategize and embrace traditional AAA games into this space. The bearish market allows all of us time to build, and we create new opportunities. We have to do it the right way.’ Anndy Lian, thought leader and best-selling book author “NFT: From Zero to Hero” added.

Anndy is correct. We are at a point where the crypto industry is all very cautious. The NFT sector is at its all-time low. Web2 and AAA gaming are finding their way to us. We have to take this opportunity.

Here are some AAA games that I have been keeping an eye on.

Epic Games Store Launches First NFT Game

According to a press release, Epic Games’ game marketplace has included Mythical Games’ Blankos Block Party as its first non-fungible token (NFT)-powered Web3 title. The announcement comes less than a year after Mythical Games received $150 million in a Series C fundraising round valued at $1.25 billion.

Blankos Block Party is a free-to-play multiplayer party game based around unique collectible digital vinyl toys known as Blankos, which may be purchased, updated, and sold inside the game. Mythical Games and Third Kind Games collaborated on the game’s development.

Epic Games are open and has left the door open for developers who want to build around NFTs. This is a positive sign.

NFT Games on Minecraft

Despite Mojang Studios’ opposition to the incorporation of NFTs, MyMetaverse was able to incorporate NFTs into multiple games, including its own Minecraft server.

“We wanted to show Mojang that it could be done in a way that benefited them and benefited their player base,” said MyMetaverse CEO Simon Kertonegoro.

According to Simon, multiple servers have violated the Minecraft NFT restrictions, which were designed to protect players from unwanted interactions. The CEO did point out that they are able to implement NFTs on their own servers without violating the game’s regulations. They accomplish this by removing all pay-to-win NFTs and making their best NFTs fully free to play.

Ubisoft is working on integrating NFTs

Ubisoft is a French video game company headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, For Honor, Just Dance, Prince of Persia, Rabbids, Rayman, Tom Clancy’s, and Watch Dogs.

In an interview with Axios, as far as NFTs are concerned, the CEO still believes there is a possibility in the company’s future work on it. He says: “If we find something that will be very interesting and will please players, we’ll work on it.”

More to come

Immutable co-founder Robbie Ferguson stated on September 13, 2022, that two AAA studios had begun developing on the Immutable X platform. Ferguson said the first game would be shown within a month. This implies that before the middle of October, we should know which triple-A developer is joining the NFT movement. This is less than a month from now.

Last but not least, Kakao Games and XL Games are already preparing a new game, ArcheWorld, integrating NFT and Play-to-Earn game mechanics. Representing Bybit NFT Marketplace, I will be on the same panel with XL Games at Blockchain Gaming 2022 organized by ABGA on September 27 on “What Blockchain Technology Can Bring to Traditional Gaming Giants.” I will let you know more about the discussion after the conference.

 

Source: https://hackernoon.com/nfts-finally-infiltrated-aaa-gaming

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”.

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XRP to USD forecast: Can Ripple price finally reverse long-term downward trend?

XRP to USD forecast: Can Ripple price finally reverse long-term downward trend?

Ripple is one of the most talked about coin.

– What has been affecting the Ripple coin price recently?

The on-going, never ending and changing lawsuit is one of the key uncertainties. SEC has a different angled strategy against Ripple through Wahi complaint. This added insider trading allegations against 2 other Coinbase employees and putting 9 other cryptocurrencies as securities. If the SEC wins the case, this would set a precedent and would cause more problems for the crypto industry as a whole.

This outcome for Ripple might affect their On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service. And if U.S. banks are not going with the ODL plans, this will then weaken Ripple’s CBDC setup and investors will not be very happy.

– Where could the token be headed in the future

According to CoinMarketCap price prediction function, 1222 users voted and predicted that the price of XRP will be around $0.4905 by 30 September 2022. This is a 47.86% increase in the current price. I must say that the supporters are still considerably bullish on the coin and hope they can get out of the lawsuit quickly.

I am more realistic at this point. I hope to see more signed partnerships that are actually useful, not for PR purposes and see more real implementations in a larger manner, not purely news on how they help streamline Japan-Thailand money transfers. I hope to see more details. I am sure the investors at large want to see more too.

 

XRP to USD forecast: Can Ripple price finally reverse long-term downward trend?

 

Ripple (XRP/USD) is among the top 10 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation. Dubbed a “better alternative to bitcoin”, Ripple aims to futurise global payments.

However, in recent years the company has been caught in the midst of a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, with its native cryptocurrency, XRP, struggling to reach past highs…for over four years.

Down by 90.3 % since its 2018 all-time high of $3.3778, at the time of writing (5 September) the XRP to USD exchange rate stood at $0.3275. Can the token repeat the record levels, and what is the latest news on the SEC case?

What is XRP/USD and Ripple?

Ripple was created in 2011 by engineers David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto. They began developing the XRP Ledger (XRPL),  a decentralised, permissionless, open-source, public blockchain.

The Ripple platform is a payment settlement system and currency exchange network using XRP Ledger Consensus Protocol. The network prides itself in its transaction speed, which according to its website, can take between three and five seconds and has low transaction fees that are “typically” under $0.01.

Ripple’s distributed consensus mechanism uses designated servers called validators, who have to agree on the order and outcome of transactions on the platform to enable them. Transactions are made in XRP coins, the platform’s native cryptocurrency.

The token can be sent to other users directly without the need of a central intermediary. XRP coins are freely exchanged on the open market and used in the real world for enabling cross-border payments and microtransactions.

Upon the token’s launch, XRPL’s founders gifted 80 billion XRP to the company. Ripple has since put the majority in escrow. As of August 2022, 44bn tokens remain in escrow.

 

What is your sentiment on XRP/USD?

XRP/USD price analysis

Unlike many of its rival cryptocurrencies that gained popularity in late 2021, XRP achieved its first success in the early months of 2018 as it was teaming up with a number of legacy financial institutions, like American Express and Santander. The token spiked to the all-time high of $3.3778 in January 2018, yet the rally was short-lived as XRP fell below $1 in late February. XRP to USD chart, September 2013 – September 2022

After two years of fluctuating between $0.60 and $0.10, the XRP coin price rebounded to $1.8391 on 14 April 2021 amid wider cryptocurrency bull run.

Throughout the remainder of 2021, the XRP to USD chart suffered fluctuations, rising as high as $1.3894 at the start of September 2021 and dropping as low as $0.7993 by mid-December.

At the start of 2022, XRP was holding steady at $0.80. It dropped to $0.30 as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and surging inflation started to affect broader cryptocurrency sentiment. As of 5 September, the current exchange rate of XRP to USD stood at $0.3275.

 

SEC’s case against Ripple

In December 2020, Ripple found itself in the midst of a SEC filing, which accused the company’s top executives, co-founder Christian Larsen and CEO Bradley Garlinghouse, of misleading XRP investors by selling $1.3bn worth of coins without reporting to the commission. The SEC had also accused the executives of profiting from the trade by around $600m.

In March 2022, the court denied the SEC’s request to strike Ripple’s fair notice defence, which argued that contrary to the case, the company did not receive a fair warning that its sales of XRP coins could be in violation of security laws.

In July 2022, Ripple won a ruling that will allow the company to access emails from the SEC about a 2018 speech where a former official declared that Ethereum was not a security. The evidence could help Ripple in arguing that XRP cannot be labelled as such. The SEC, however, continued to battle this ruling and filed a brief arguing that the speech drafts “are not relevant to any claim or defense in this case”.

On 19 August, Ripple filed a motion to seal the identities of non-parties, some company employees and the personal financial information of employees. The SEC replied, clarifying that in doing so, it “does not concede that the above categories of information should properly be sealed for summary judgement briefing, and reserves its rights to oppose similar sealing requests for summary judgement.”

The judge granted the SEC’s request to file a 90-page long reply to its motion that seeks to exclude the testimony of Ripple Labs’ witnesses.

The outcome of the court proceedings could remain the key factor affecting the movements on the XRP chart. As of 5 September, analysts and investors await 9 September, when both parties are expected to seal any portion of the filings together with proposed redaction.

Responses to the motion must be submitted by 16 September. Motions for summary judgement are expected by 15 September,  and any opposition to that must be received by 18 October and answered by 15 November. The coming months will be of great importance for Ripple enthusiasts.

“The ongoing, never ending and changing lawsuit is one of the key uncertainties. SEC has a different angled strategy against Ripple through Wahi complaint. This added insider trading allegations against two other Coinbase employees and put nine other cryptocurrencies as securities,” said Anndy Lian, chief digital advisor of the Mongolian Productivity Organisation.
“If the SEC wins the case, this would set a precedent and would cause more problems for the crypto industry as a whole,” he told Capital.com.

On 21 July, the SEC filed a complaint against Ishan Wahi,  Coinbase’s manager in its assets and investing products division, and two other employees, accusing them of insider trading and securities fraud. In the filing, the commission noted that the nine coins Wahi and other defendants traded were “crypto asset securities”.

 

XRP to USD forecast for 2022 and beyond

Despite the latest downward price action, algorithm-based forecasting service Wallet Investor gave a bullish XRP to USD crypto exchange rate prediction as of 5 September. The site noted that XRP is “an outstanding long-term investment”, adding that it has a long-term earning potential amounting to 284.71%.

Based on its analysis of past price performance, Wallet Investor predicted that the token could trade at $0.517 in 2023 and reach $1.258 by 2027.

DigitalCoinPrice supported the positive XRP to USD future exchange rate forecast at the time of writing, expecting the token to grow to $0.48 by the end of 2022 and reach $1.50 by the end of 2025.

By the end of 2027, the site predicted that the exchange rate of XPR to USD could reach $1.63. The website’s long-term forecast for the token showed that the cryptocurrency could surge to $4.63 by 2030.

Mark Fidelman, founder of SmartBlocks, was bullish on XRP to USD exchange rate, yet noted that the outcome of the SEC case will play a crucial role in shaping Ripple’s future.

“If [Ripple wins] the lawsuit, it should be heading back up to over a buck by the end of year, maybe more…It’s more effective and more efficient than anything that the banks are doing, so it should scare the banks and should help crypto,” he told Capital.com.

Note that predictions about the future of XRP can be wrong. Forecasts and analyst expectations shouldn’t be used as a substitute for your own research. Always conduct your own due diligence looking at the latest news, price charts.  technical and fundamental analysis.

Remember that past performance does not guarantee future returns. And never trade money that you cannot afford to lose.

 

Source: https://capital.com/xrp-usd-forecast-dollar-ripple-price

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”.

j j j