Bitcoin price – live: Crypto market recovers after yet another crash

A cautionary tale here from the BBC, which has spoken to man who is currently achieving support for an addiction to trading digital currencies. Everything started with a big win that led to him trading more and more, the BBC reports.

While some specific coins are still suffering, the crypto market as a whole is up on Sunday.

Bitcoin is up 2 per cent on the day, and has gained roughly the same over the week. Cardano and dogecoin were up too.

Not all have been quite so positive: Ethereum is down ever so slightly, but that counts as positive news in a week and month that has been filled with lots of negative moves. And it is still up considerably over the week.

The market as a whole is up just under 1 per cent, according to CoinMarketCap, with less trading than usual.

While some altcoins – such as the rapidly rising DubaiCoin – are doing well, most aren’t. The cryptocurrency market is down 2.12 per cent as a whole, and all of the big coins are down.

Bitcoin, for instance, is down almost 3 per cent; ethereum is down 3.3 per cent. Even the smaller coins that have sometimes defied the problems faced by bitcoin – such as dogecoin and cardano – have suffered losses.

An illicit crypto mining operation has been uncovered in the West Midlands after police mistook it for a cannabis farm.

A drugs warrant was issued for an industrial estate after significant electricity consumption was spotted in the area. A police drone picked up a considerable heat source, which they described as “classic cannabis factory signs”.

It turned out to be a huge bank of around 100 mining machines, understood to be churning out bitcoin. According to the West Midlands Police, the set-up was “stealing thousands of pounds worth of electricity from the mains supply”.

You can read the full story here.

The creators of DubaiCoin, the controversial new cryptocurrency that has risen more than 1,000 per cent over the last day, have denied any involvement in the “elaborate phishing campaign” that helped pump its price.

A bogus statement claiming that DubaiCoin was the official digital currency of the emirate was rejected by the government’s media office, who labelled it a “scam”.

ArabianChain Technology, the company behind the cryptocurrency, said the announcement was “fake”. It is now investigating the matter.

Joe Sommerlad has the full story right here:

New data has revealed that the majority of bitcoin investors are still in profit despite the recent price crash.

The old crypto adage ‘HODL’ (a miss-spelling of the word ‘hold’ that has since become an acronym for ‘Hold On for Dear Life’) appears to hold true, with 76 per cent of bitcoin investors remaining in profit according to market intelligence firm Glassnode. This is still down from last month, when a new all-time high brought that figure to 100 per cent, but it suggests a vast number of long-term hodlers are refusing to sell.

Renowned analyst PlanB, who is most famous for his stock-to-flow price prediction model, notes that anyone who has held bitcoin for over four years – at any point in its history – has never lost money.

New cryptocurrency DubaiCoin has managed to buck market trends by recording massive price gains over the last 24 hours.

While bitcoin, ether, dogecoin and others all dropped by around 10 per cent overnight, DubaiCoin shot up by nearly 1,000 per cent. The sudden interest in the new crypto led to an official warning from Dubai authorities that it has no involvement with the project, despite media reports to the contrary.

“Dubai does not have an official cryptocurrency,” the Dubai Media Office tweeted on Friday, claiming that it is an elaborate phishing scam.

It’s the final day of CoinDesk’s Consensus 2021 conference today, arguably the most important event in the cryptocurrency calendar.

A last-minute invitation from the aptly named crypto boss Sam Bankman-Fried means NFL legend Tom Brady will be appearing in the final keynote slot.

Brady made headlines earlier this month after changing his Twitter profile pic to include bitcoin laser eyes, and has also launched his own NFT platform. He’ll presumably be discussing this and more when he takes to the virtual stage at 8pm ET (1am BST, Friday).

The latest crypto sensation to make waves in the market is Chia, marketing itself as a green alternative to bitcoin due to the way it relies on digital storage space rather than electricity-guzzling processors to mine new units.

However this innovative “proofs-of-time-and-space” system has been accused of burning through hard drives at an astonishing rate, leading to device shortages and a threat of mounting e-waste.

According to some estimates, farming Chia on a 512GB hard drive can reduce its lifespan from 5-10 years, to just 40 days.

The cryptocurrency has received extra scrutiny this week after a new funding round doubled its valuation to $500 million, with a potential IPO around the corner. You can read Joe Sommerlad’s full story here:

After the dip down to $37,000 overnight, bitcoin is now back above $40,000 thanks to a succession of positive news stories in the space.

Market analysts have also made hugely positive predictions about bitcoin and other rival digital currencies, while MicroStrategy CEO has once again been cheerleading crypto by labelling bitcoin “the apex property of the human race”.

Perhaps most significantly, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria has said that Nigerians will be allowed to trade cryptocurrency – huge in a country that is one of the global leaders in terms of trading volume.