Binance Drills Over $2 Billion Into Bitcoin,
Analysts Divided On How Fed’s Decision Affects Bitcoin
Mozilla Forced To Stop Accepting BTC Donations After Seven Years
A Bitcoin wallet belonging to Binance, the leading cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, has drilled more than $2 billion into the leading coin. The amount translated to 43,000 Bitcoins at an exchange rate of roughly 46,553 US dollars.
At the time of writing, the Bitcoin stash was worth approximately 1.7 billion USD at a price of $41,763 per coin.
The addition of 43K BTCs brought the address’s total holding to 116,601.13 BTCs worth 4.8 billion USD at press time. In the past, the crypto community was divided on who owns the wallet. However, in June 2019, the crypto exchange posted the wallet as their “reserve address.”
Over time, the address has turned into Binance’s Bitcoin storage. The exchange has used the address to mint more than 13K Bitcoins on Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and no BTC has ever left the wallet since its creation in 2019.
Binance’s move to accumulate more BTC coincided with Bitcoin dipping to 41,000 USD, a level last seen towards the end of September last year. Currently, BTC has a weekly decline of above 12.5 percent.
The king coin manifested a weakened spirit mid this week when the United States Federal Reserve revealed plans to increase the interest rate, among other measures likely to affect liquidity negatively.
Analysts Divided On How Fed’s Decision Affects Bitcoin
Laurent Kssis, an analyst, told Coindesk that BTC traders exited long positions worth around 200 million USD within hours.
The analysts added that the price of Bitcoin is likely to dip below $40K if bonds fail to recover from the Fed’s decision.
According to Kssis, “if the Fed allows equity to fall, it will increase the borrowing costs of the governments because as bond prices fall, yields rise! That could trigger more selling in BTC.”
But some observers disagree with Kssis. Jeff Dorman, Arca’s CIO, tweeted that the interest rate hike by the Fed is not to blame for “long-lasting market selloffs.” Dorman pegs long periods of bear dominance to “very long Fed hike cycles.”
The CIO added that “If digital assets fall, it’s not going to be because of the Fed.” Others like Bloomberg’s Mike McGlone consider the Fed’s rate hike a golden opportunity for Bitcoin and the wider crypto market.
According to McGlone, BTC is part of the “early reversion leaders” when it comes to “stretched markets.” Apart from a plummeting price, Bitcoin’s dominance level is also spiraling. In its early days, Bitcoin ruled more than 90 percent of the total market capitalization.
Firefox Forced to Stop Accepting BTC, ETH, and DOGE Donations
The dominance level remained over 80 percent until early 2017 before starting to decline. According to CoinMarketCap, the king coin now controls 39.9 percent of the 1.9 trillion USD crypto market.
As Binance buys the Bitcoin dip, Mozilla has been forced to stop accepting Bitcoin donations. The move comes after widespread criticism from its community.
In a statement on Thursday, the firm which runs the Firefox browser project cited Bitcoin and other cryptos’ negative impact on the environment as the main reason for halting the donations.
Mozilla admitted that it halted accepting crypto donations after listening to its community on how crypto impacts the environment. According to the Firefox creator, the move has offered them a chance to relook its crypto policy, especially how it fits into its overall climate agenda.
“As we conduct our review, we will pause the ability to donate cryptocurrency. […] In the spirit of open-source, this will be a transparent process, and we’ll share regular updates,” Mozilla tweeted.
Don’t “Partner with Planet-Incinerating Ponzi Grifters”
The Mozilla community started airing their grievances on the last day of 2021 when the company posted a tweet reminding them that the crypto donations option was still active.
In the Twitter post, the company said that the Mozilla Foundation accepts donations in leading virtual currencies such as BTC, Dogecoin (DOGE), and Ethereum (ETH).
Judging by the responses to the tweet, some Firefox users were unaware that the company behind their beloved web browser accepts BTC. Some were even shocked to learn that the option has been active since 2014. Unhappy Mozilla community members included Jamie Zawinski, a Mozilla co-founder.
According to Zawinski, the project’s team “should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters.”
However, Bitcoin supporters such as Blockstream’s Adam Back mounted strong support for the leading coin. Replying to the Mozilla co-founder’s comment, Back said that it “turns out some early coders have been living under a rock about Bitcoin.”