Category Bitcoin News

Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq GOOGL) announced Thursday the launch of its Google Cloud Blockchain Node Engine. Google released the engine because it believes that self-managed nodes can be difficult to deploy and need constant management.

The Blockchain Node Engine product can be used by both crypto companies and Web3 service providers. It is a fully managed node-hosting platform that can be used to leverage the blockchain. On Thursday, the company explained that the new node-engine service will be available to support Ethereum, the second largest crypto asset network according to market capital.

The tech company stated that Ethereum will be the first blockchain to be supported by Blockchain Engine. This allows developers to create fully managed Ethereum nodes with secure blockchain access.

This news comes after Google’s recent collaboration with Coinbase to promote Web3 innovation. The latest blockchain engine product allows Web3 companies to relay transactions, deploy smart contract, and read and write blockchain data with the reliability and performance they expect from Google Cloud compute.

A Blockdata study also shows that Google is a top investor in blockchain technology, having invested in companies like Fireblocks and Digital Currency Group (DCG), Dapper Labs and Vultage. The tech giant’s entry in the world of decentralized financial (defi), and Web3 was announced last May, when it created a Web3 team within their cloud unit.

A spokesperson for Google stated that they were providing technologies to companies in order to take advantage of Web3’s distributed nature in their businesses and enterprises. According to the latest announcement, the service will offer’streamlined provisioning’,’secure development’ and ‘fully-managed operations’.

Google’s blog concludes that Blockchain Node Engine reduces the need for dedicated Devops teams and offers Google Cloud’s service-level agreement (SLA) so your team can focus on your users, not your infrastructure. We are excited to support organizations with a reliable and easy-to-use cloud node hosting service that allows them to focus on developing and scaling Web3 applications.

According to a Tuesday note by Fairlead Strategies, the crypto bear market will continue until bitcoin confirms that it has fallen below $20,000

According to the technical analysis-focused research company, bitcoin is currently testing support levels of $18,300 and $19,000. This was in response to last week’s CPI-induced selloff.

Fairlead’s Katie Stockton says that a confirmed break below this support range (two consecutive weekly closes below $18,300) increases the downside risk for bitcoin to secondary resistance near $13,900. This represents a potential downside of 29% compared to current levels and would likely spread bitcoin’s weakness to other cryptocurrencies.

According to the monthly MACD histogram, negative long-term momentum is increasing which allows for long-term oversold conditions. As it stands, it could take months for a meaningful shift,’ Stockton said, referring to the Moving Average Convergence-Divergence indicator. “Short-term momentum has changed to negative per a new daily MACD signal’sell’, increasing risk when long-term support tests are tested.

Stockton says that Bitcoin’s long-, medium-, and short-term momentum signals are all bearish amid ongoing decline. The rollover of its 50 day moving average suggests that momentum could continue to the downside.

A negative sign for crypto markets as a whole is that bitcoin has outperformed ether relative to ether since September.

Ether was in sell-off mode after its successful merger, which made the Ethereum blockchain a proof-of–stake system instead of proof-of–work. Stockton believes that ether will fall to $1,000 support and could be a downside of 27%.

Stockton stated that the shift in favor of bitcoin was a bearish indicator for cryptocurrency markets generally, reflecting defensive rotation as altcoins and bitcoin get into support retest’ mode.

She said that bitcoin could alter its bearish trend if it avoids a confirmed break below support and reclaims resistance around $22,000. The crypto bear market will continue until then.

Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced Monday that his department is preparing for ‘token mapping’ as part of his efforts to adopt rules in the cryptocurrency sector. Reuters quoted his statement.

This initiative will catalog all digital currencies used in the country. It is considered a first step towards identifying the crypto assets that need to be regulated.

Chalmers highlighted that Australia will be the first country in the world to stocktake crypto holdings.

We need to ensure that customers who engage with crypto are properly informed and protected, given the increasing popularity of crypto assets.

After years of debate on how to regulate decentralized cryptocurrency like bitcoin, has been announced. Since the home-office work and stimulus payments that were made during the pandemic have led to an increase in crypto investments, the calls for regulation have grown in recent years.

An inquiry by the Senate under the former conservative government recommended that wide-ranging regulations be adopted to protect cryptocurrency owners last year. The election of May this year resulted in a center-left cabinet.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission ( ASIC), also stated that the increasing popularity of cryptocurrency makes it a strong case for regulation. According to the watchdog, 44% of country’s retail investors owned crypto by 2021.

Jim Chalmers, while he did not give any details about any future rules, described token mapping as “the first step in reform.” He made these comments in response to the Australian Taxation Office’s announcement earlier this year that it would concentrate on capital gains from cryptocurrency assets. This is one of many priority areas where the authority believes more effort is needed to ensure accurate reporting.

Willy Woo, a well-known expert on Bitcoin, addresses the claim that bitcoin is harmful to the environment. He claims that BTC mining would be a crucial part of a shift towards renewables.
He also revealed that BTC miners will need to use more energy than they consume to have a meaningful effect on the transition to renewables.

Bitcoin Mining: Environmental Controversy

Willy woo’s tweet was a response to a thread from Daniel Batten, another Bitcoin influencer. Batten believes that criticisms of Bitcoin mining’s effect on the environment stem from the misconception that more energy consumption is bad and less is good.

Batten states that any scalable, renewable shift must generate at least three times as much power. Batten introduces demand response, which is a concept that allows consumers to be more flexible with their energy use by adapting their needs. According to the IEA, achieving net zero would require ten times more demand response.

Batten believes grid operators need more customers who can adapt to changing demands and be flexible. This is what he believes bitcoin mining fulfills. Batten mentioned the Texas Winter Storm and Summer Peak Demand instances, where BTC miners were forced to shut down their operations by grid operators.

BTC Mining Progress Towards Renewables

According to the second quarter survey by bitcoin mining council, the sustainable electricity mix for BTC mining is 59.5%. It is the fifth consecutive year that BTC mining has been dependent upon renewables for more than 50% of its power.

MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor stated that there is no industry that is more efficient or cleaner than MicroStrategy. Elon Musk, who recently suspended BTC payments from Tesla also stated that bitcoin’s energy source had made significant progress towards renewables. Tesla may therefore resume BTC payments.

A chart created by Dominic Chu of CNBC shows that Bitcoin’s correlation to Invesco QQQ (a popular ETF that tracks the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index) has reached a score of 0.894. This is the highest score in almost three years.
It is important to note that 1 would indicate an exact correlation.

The fact that the flagship cryptocurrency trades almost as a stock in tech stocks undermines the ‘inflation-hedging’ narrative that helped propel the asset to record highs last year.

Bitcoin is now being seen as a speculative investment, rather than a legitimate store-of-value. This is a complete contradiction to the claims made by those who marketed Bitcoin as a revolutionary asset.

Tech stocks were also affected by the cryptocurrency’s massive plunge. Recent losses of 22.4% in value have seen the Nasdaq Composite suffer its worst quarter since 2008. Bitcoin has recently posted its worst quarterly performance in over a year after it collapsed by 58%.

The graph above shows that convergence with the Nasdaq began rapidly increasing after institutional investors bought into the ‘inflation-hedge’ narrative following unprecedented monetary support by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

The double whammy between the ominous technical signs, and the unfavorable macro background is expected to cause Bitcoin’s price to continue falling.

It is widely believed that the Fed will announce another jumbo rate increase this month, following the surprise jobs report. This should reduce unfounded recession fears.