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.”

Bitcoin is currently trading right around the $44k level. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization had a slow last 24 hours or so but just before press time, the cryptocurrency began to record a price drop below key support. While the move itself wasn’t exactly too convincing and the cryptocurrency is still within reach of recovery, the easiest past forwards is downwards and bears are on the move. Altcoins also posted losses of their own. More on that later on.

In other news, Goldman Sachs has stated that Bitcoin could reach $100k in the future but only if it can continue to eat into the share of Gold, the top asset in the store of value sector. This prediction by Goldman Sachs is for the coming years but may be relevant the most in this year only as Gold’s price also fluctuates a lot. More on that later on.

Bitcoin’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) is now at lowest levels since September 2020 after which it rose to new heights within no time. This considerably a big indicator that shows that despite the current bearish setup, Bitcoin can still bounce back. 

In a bizarre incident, the second largest Bitcoin mining nation in the world Kazakhstan caused a commotion in the crypto world and politics when it blocked its internet. The country was facing mass-level protests that ultimately led to the resignation of the besieged government. The situation got so out of hand that the government had to put internet curbs on the general population. That dealt a significant blow to the crypto mining sector as the country has a whopping 18% of the entire crypto hash rate which took a considerable hit in the process. 

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has once again postponed its decision on a new Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). The latest application was from the powerful New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) and even then it was delayed to March 16 later this year. While the SEC has allowed Bitcoin Futures ETF in the country, the much awaited Bitcoin ETF itself is still nowhere close to happening as it has rejected two of them in the last few months. 

The EU is calling for public input on how to best incorporate Decentralized Ledger Technology (DLT) into trading and settlement. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is calling out for this public participation. 

A Twitter poll by Airbnb CEO shows that users overwhelmingly want crypto payment options in the application. The popular renting service has no such option available at the moment but is likely to take some time in adopting Bitcoin.

Cryptocurrency network Solana (SOL) is facing yet another performance issue that could take some days to fix. The Proof of History network has been facing network slowdowns for quite a while and the latest is yet another question mark on the overall progress of the network. 

Bitcoin Drops Below $43k

Bitcoin dropped below $45k just before press time and kept dropping till it was below $44k. However, the bearish move is taking a breather at that level but they are expected to be back in no time.

The last 24 hours started with Bitcoin at around $46.2k value. It traded sideways for much of the last 24 hours until at 8 PM when the price began to go downhill aggressively. The index dropped to as low as $44k at one point but further price drop has stopped for now. 

Going forward, the bears are now angling in for the attack. While many indicators are flashing green, the ultimate one of them is the price and the price suggests that the bears can still pull the price below. However, considering many of the long-term indicators and short-term signals that are flashing green, the move below could easily be a bear trap and the index could recover yet again. 

The total market capitalization of Bitcoin was around $830 billion at press time and its share of the proceedings was 39.68%.

Altcoins Post Some Losses

Other cryptocurrencies aka altcoins also posted some losses at the end of the last 24 hours. Some bigger losers include Solan (SOL, -7%), Terra (LUNA, -8%), Polkadot (DOT, -8%), Avalanche (AVAX, -7%), Polygon (MATIC, -8.5%) and Crypto.com Coin (CRO, -9%).

In Other News….

Bitcoin Can Reach $100k Valuation: Goldman Sachs

Premier investment bank Goldman Sachs has predicted in a recent note sent to its investors that Bitcoin could reach a $100k valuation, provided it continues to eat away into the store of value market. 

According to Goldman Sachs note, Bitcoin’s adjusted market cap is around $700 billion while Gold’s is around $2.5 trillion. If Bitcoin gains around 50% of the entire market dominated by Gold, it can rise to just above $100k. However, the estimate is for the next five years and since a lot can change in that time including Gold’s own price, for Bitcoin bulls, it is relevant for the next few months as it tries to re-ignite the bull run. 

It certainly wasn’t a good start of the year for crypto investors. Instead of a massive bull run we all hoped for, the first week of 2022 brought us a huge crash on the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin has fallen to the lowest level it has been since July 2021, and many popular altcoins have followed its course. But while most altcoin enthusiasts don’t have much to be happy about, some alternative cryptocurrencies managed to make impressive gains despite the bear market.

Let’s take a look at what the altcoins have been up to in the first week of 2022!

Best Performing Assets of December Erase Most of Their Gains

The Bitcoin crash affected almost all altcoins, but the cryptocurrencies that were hit the hardest were the ones which were making the most spectacular gains in the last couple months of 2021. It seems now that the bull run in these assets was very short lived, and that the price increases from November and December of the past year are soon to be reversed, or in some cases have already been reversed.

Among the coins which were affected the most are gaming-related tokens. Gaming cryptos have rallied massively in the last quarter of 2021 fueled by metaverse hype, but plummeted in prices drastically in the last 7 days. The price of Gala (GALA) decreased by almost 22%, Axie Infinity (AXS) by 17.5%, The Sandbox (SAND) by over 15%, and Decentraland (MANA) by over 12%.

Other altcoins which have previously been the best performers are now the biggest losers. SushiSwap (SUSHI) has depreciated by over 18%, Polygon (MATIC) by almost 14%, Loopring (LRC) by over 13% and Zcash (ZEC) by almost 11%.

A word of mention should go to Shiba Inu (SHIB), which has consistently been one of the worst performing assets in the ecosystem over the past couple months. This week has not been different: the SHIB price has decreased by 11% to less than $0.00003, making the dream of “losing a zero’” a distant memory for the meme token’s fans that are still trying to cope with their losses.

Cosmos Rallies Massively, But Can It Enter the Top 10?

Despite the bear market, some altcoins managed to grow massively over the last 7 days. The most successful one was Cosmos (ATOM). The ATOM price has increased by over 32%, which made Cosmos one of the top 25 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

The success of Cosmos proves that projects with strong technologic fundamentals and effective development process can thrive even if the market sentiment is bearish. Unlike many rallies which are motivated mainly by hype, the ATOM price increase is caused by important technological breakthroughs.

Recently, Cosmos users were introduced to Evmos - an EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) providing the Cosmos ecosystem with cross-chain interoperability that allows easy asset transfer between Cosmos and Ethereum. But that’s not the end of good news for ATOM investors - Cosmos plans to roll out a massive upgrade called Theta soon, which will greatly increase the functionality of ATOM (including NFT support), and can very likely send the Cosmos price even higher.

What’s Actually Going On With SOL? Solana CEO Denies the Reports of a DDoS Attack

On Tuesday, January 4th, Solana users experienced massive problems in many cases making them completely unable to send any SOL transactions. Coinbase, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, warned its customers that Solana is having ”network-wide degraded performance.”

The situation was resolved after 5 hours. In the meantime, Solana users were speculating that the cause of the problems might have been a DDoS attack. However, the CEO of Solana Labs Anatoly Yakovenko has denied it: according to Yakovenko, Solana was down due to “some congestion due to mis-metered transitions”.

The outage on Tuesday was the second SOL downtime in the last few months. Previously, Solana was down in September 2021, when the network was completely unusable for over 18 hours.

According to blockchain experts, the root of all of Solana’s problems is the same: sacrificing decentralization to gain faster transactions and lower fees. As one of the most highly centralized corporate blockchains in the world, SOL seems to be much more vulnerable than traditional decentralized networks like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Whether Solana Labs will be able to resolve the problems or not, it definitely seems like the reports of SOL being the “Ethereum Killer” were greatly exaggerated.

Bitcoin is currently stuck below $47k. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization had a slow day overall as the index struggled to post some meaningful change. Altcoins also followed it apart from a few exceptions. More on that later on. 

In other news, Bitcoin’s flight from top cryptocurrency exchange is continuing on into the new year. After achieving historically low exchange reserves near the end of 2021, the trend is continuing on after a brief pause. More on that later on.

The Kosovar government (of the tiny Balkan country named Kosovo) has decided to halt crypto mining projects in the country. The move comes after increased demand from the mining sector practically created a shortfall of power for the country in peak winter. 

Two Russian-origin twins who were the subject of a famous crypto meme back in 2015 have died after contracting the Covid-19 virus. The Grichka and Igor were two twins with peculiar body and face characteristics and were french TV presenters back in the 80s and became the subject of a popular crypto meme just six years back. The twins were presented as a kind of crypto enforcers who could crash a token with a single phone call. The twins didn’t know they were subject to such a meme but when they found out, they acted as good sport and became quite famous within the early crypto industry. It is sad to see them die of this wretched disease. 

Next co-founder Antoni Trenhcev believes that Bitcoin is set for a major pump to around $100k by the mid of this year. He believes that despite recent troubles, the cryptocurrency shouldn’t be ruled out and may bounce back strongly. 

The Chinese Central Bank has released a pilot version of the Digital Yuan wallet it had been working on for a long while. China aims to present this digital central bank token to replace cryptocurrencies. However, this is still a digital form of the Yuan and the currency’s fundamentals remain unchanged, which could prove problematic for such big aspirations as no one likes an infinitely inflatable currency.

Former US first lady Melania Trump has congratulated Bitcoin on its 13th birthday. She did through Twitter and was a surprising move from her considering her own husband named and shamed Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies throughout his tumultuous 4-year rule. It is not yet clear whether she is involved in the crypto sector in any capacity.

The number of countries in direct confrontation with Bitcoin has increased three times this year alone and many of them have declared a ban on it. The move coincided with mass-level adoption of the digital currency. The nine countries including China, Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, Bangladesh, Oman, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia have banned it. An added 42 more countries have it placed in an implicit ban. However, as time has proven, these bans have proved to be futile in curbing its use. 

Bitcoin Stuck Just Below $47k

Bitcoin is currently stuck right below $47k and has remained there for much of the day. The cryptocurrency actually tried once again to make a move below $46k but fell short yet again.

The last 24 hours started with the BTC price at around $46.7k. It immediately came under a bearish spell and dropped to as low as $45.8k in a matter of minutes in a single move. However, further bearish progress was stopped dead in its tracks as the digital currency mostly recovered from there onwards, albeit slowly. It recorded a maximum valuation of around $47.4k just before press time and eventually, the index closed at around $46.8k.

Moving forward, short-term bears are trying hard to make a move but keep falling short. The support above $45k, however, is not as strong as you might think and can melt away with a big high volume bearish charge. The slow start to 2022 has also been disconcerting for the bulls and they might just give in for the short-term. However, long-term indicators including accumulation outside exchanges is nearing record levels and open interest on futures is also increasing considerably. So, a possible price breakout can happen as well but several key resistances need to be overcome by the bulls to make that happen and the crypto has faltered around them during the last two months. 

The total market capitalization of Bitcoin was around $877 billion and its share of the proceedings was 39.44%, back below 40%.

Altcoins Remain Largely Steady but Some Continue On

Other cryptocurrencies aka altcoins remained steady for most of the last 24 hours but some did manage to post gains. Ethereum (ETH, 2%), Chainlink (LINK, 3%) and Uniswap (UNI, 1.5%) all posted slight gains. Most of the other altcoins remained steady. 

In Other News….

Bitcoin Exchange Reserves Reaching New Lows

Bitcoin exchange reserves are reaching new lows according to analytics from CryptoQuant. The levels stabilized around the New Year but are now continuing on with their negative trend. This outflow of Bitcoin from major exchanges shows that investors are still snapping it up and putting it into long-term wallets. 

This, coupled with increasing open interest on futures, major whale buying and enthusiasm from traders show that a considerable price rally can be expected. However, the current setup is quite bearish overall.