Colin Harper
Colin is a journalist based in Nashville, TN whose work has appeared in Bitcoin Magazine, Venture Beat and various cryptocurrency news sites. He's been covering Bitcoin since 2017 and also writes about privacy, the debt bubble, and general fintech trends. If it wasn't obvious, he holds bitcoin.
Stories by Colin Harper
Bitcoin hits all-time high realized price as holders spread the wealth
The "realized price" of Bitcoin just hit an all-time high, coinciding with its circulating supply being bought up by smaller account holders now more than ever before. Per data from crypto analytics firm Glassnode, Bitcoin’s realized price has never been greater, today hitting a new milestone of $6,000 per coin. All–time high: #Bitcoin's realized price hits $6,000 for the first time.https://t.co/0M9yBxx4GN pic.twitter.com/MdMCllnKtp — glassnode (@glassnode) August 6, 2020 Realized price (as o...
Activity on Bitcoin's regulated futures exchanges has never been greater
Open interest on Bitcoin’s regulated derivatives markets have surged past all-time highs as institutional players continue to take interest in the young asset. Per data from Skew analytics, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s Bitcoin futures have roughly $830 million worth of outstanding contracts. Currently, only OKEx and BitMEX have more open interest on their derivatives platforms, making CME’s open interest the third largest in Bitcoin’s derivatives market. CME Bitcoin futures: Total open inte...
Huge US travel company pays hackers $4.5 million Bitcoin ransom
Per Reuters, travel management firm CWT, which pulls in annual revenues of $1.5 billion, paid anonymous hackers 414 bitcoin this week in response to a ransomware attack that led to the theft of piles of company documents and left tens of thousands of company devices offline. The attackers used a ransomware technology known as Ragnar to encrypt company files, rendering them inaccessible to the company’s employees, according to documents seen by Reuters. CWT paid the ransom on July 28 to decrypt...
Tampa Teen and two others arrested in Twitter "BitCon"
An early morning raid staged by a joint task force of federal law enforcement officers nabbed a Tampa, Florida teenager who they claim pulled off the biggest hack in Twitter’s history. Two other teens—one from Naples, Florida, and the other from Bognor Regis, a seaside resort on the southern coast of England—were subsequently arrested. Investigators said that KYC records obtained from Binance and Coindesk, which showed stolen Bitcoin moving into customer accounts, led them to the suspects. Flori...
US GDP takes historic hit in Q2 as Bitcoin, crypto markets rise
The gross domestic product of the United States just had its worst quarter-to-quarter drop in history. But the economic slump hasn’t had an adverse effect on Bitcoin and its related crypto market, which has grown considerably during the same time period. According to the US Department of Commerce’s Q2 report, US GDP fell 32.9% in Q2, the worst quarter-to-quarter change in the country’s history. The second worst plunge came in 1921, when GDP fell some 28%. For comparison, the most drastic hit to...
Here’s what Bitcoin wallet Ledger plans to do about its data hack
Benoit Pellevoizin, the VP of Marketing at Ledger, joined Matthew Aaron for the latest episode of The Decrypt Daily to discuss the details of its recent data leak and what the hardware wallet company will do to address the breach and prevent similar ones in the future. Earlier today, Ledger revealed that its ecommerce database was hacked last month after an attacker gained access to the database via a faulty third party API key. The breach resulted in the hacker gaining access to some 1 million...
Bitcoin futures volume soars to $40 billion, highest since March crash
Bitcoin’s recent price surge has been accompanied by explosive volume in its derivatives markets. According to data from Skew analytics, aggregate open interest across Bitcoin futures markets (or the total value of outstanding trades) is broaching $5 billion, the most since before Bitcoin’s price tumbled during the Black Thursday mid-March crash. Since open interest reflects the total value of all active derivatives contracts in a given market, high open interest generally denotes healthy inve...
Only 13 crypto exchanges provide ‘trusted’ trading volume: report
The team at crypto analytics firm Coin Metrics has architected a new framework for evaluating how reliable exchange volume data really is. And based on the firm's methodology, real crypto trading volumes are close to one tenth of those reported by most exchanges. The Coin Metrics Trusted Volume Framework is a new way to more accurately measure trading volumes across crypto markets. Many exchanges, particularly those which list illiquid altcoins, have a reputation of falsifying volumes in a bid t...
Who’s really using DeFi? New report shines a light
The meteoric rise of new Ethereum platforms such as Compound and Uniswap have put decentralized finance use cases (or DeFi) front and center in the crypto landscape in 2020. A new report by Codefi, a subsidiary of the Ethereum software development firm ConsenSys, shines a light on how many unique users are leveraging these and other DeFi services. Even as the value locked in DeFi applications has nearly tripled from April of this year, the report concludes, most of the DeFi activity isn't coming...
‘Historic’ Twitter hack good for Bitcoin? It’s complicated
Roughly two dozen high-profile, verified Twitter accounts were compromised yesterday after hackers socially engineered their way into one of Twitter’s admin accounts. The hacked accounts tweeted out a Bitcoin scam, exposing the world of crypto to fresh eyes—for better or worse. From the attack, the hackers filched roughly $120,000 worth of Bitcoin using a scamming tactic the cryptocurrency community has long been familiar with: the “double money” trick wherein an attacker asks victims for Bitcoi...
How a Bitcoin dev hub is building a future for free software
It took Christopher Allen, one of the forefathers of the modern cryptographic protocols, longer than you might think to discover Bitcoin. A co-author of the OpenSSL/TLS protocol for encrypting and sending data over the web, first developed in the late 1990s, the crypto pioneer didn’t become involved in Bitcoin until 2014. Having been familiar with the concept of digital cash (and even trying to crack the problem himself way-back-when), Allen made Bitcoin the focus of his work soon after discover...
Bitcoin data not protected by 4th Amendment, appeals court rules
A panel of judges in for the US fifth circuit court has ruled that Bitcoin account balances are not protected by the 4th Amendment. In an ongoing case against one Richard Gratkowski, the Louisiana court issued a ruling on July 1 that reaffirmed the view that Bitcoin account balances should be treated like bank account balances in criminal proceedings. Gratkowski, who last year was convicted on child pornography charges, argued that law enforcement’s seizure of his transaction records on crypto...
Bitcoin demand will outpace supply within 8 years: report
Retail investors are clamoring for Bitcoin, and if demand stays steady, this could cause a demand shock after the next two Bitcoin halvings. Why? The daily mined supply of Bitcoin will drop below the daily buyer demand, according to research from cryptocurrency derivatives exchange ZUBR. ZUBR crunched numbers provided by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis to forecast what Bitcoin’s market demand may look like over the next eight years. According to the firm, when Bitcoin’s daily supply issuan...
Demand for Tether drives USDT market cap above $10 billion
Tether just joined crypto’s 10-figure club. The most-used stablecoin in the cryptocurrency market now has $10 billion worth of its USDT coins circulating through crypto’s various markets, according to data from Messari. This $10 billion dollar valuation puts it in the company of Bitcoin and Ethereum as one of three cryptocurrencies with a 10-figure market cap. It also further cements Tether as the clear market leader in the realm of stablecoins—meaning cryptocurrencies that are “pegged” to a f...
Satoshi purposely mined less Bitcoin than possible, new research claims
New evidence from ongoing research into early Bitcoin mining activity suggests that Satoshi Nakamoto may have intentionally mined fewer blocks than he could have in Bitcoin’s first days. A fresh blog post from Sergio Demain Lerner, co-founder of Bitcoin startup RSK, suggests that “Patoshi,” a pseudonym for a 2009-2010 Bitcoin miner assumed to be Satoshi, may have kept his mining equipment off for the first 5 minutes of every “block interval” (or, the time between one block in Bitcoin’s blockchai...
$1 billion in Bitcoin options expire tomorrow. Here’s what that means
A billion dollar batch of Bitcoin options is set to expire tomorrow—and that means a $1 billion question mark on where the price of Bitcoin is headed next, depending on whether traders decide to take their options or walk. Data from Skew indicates that some 114,000 options contracts from across Bitcoin’s regulated and unregulated derivatives markets are set to expire tomorrow. This could mean Bitcoin’s markets could be in for some volatility starting tomorrow, as traders decide to either sell,...
ISIS shuns Bitcoin, embraces privacy coin Monero for donations
Only terrorists use Bitcoin, cry the staunchest naysayers. Well, not ISIS—not anymore. The infamous terrorist group has reportedly chucked Bitcoin in favor of its “privacy focused” cousin, Monero. According to Israeli blockchain analytics firm Whitestream, the syndicate has updated one of its onion address websites to indicate that it will now exclusively accept Monero for cryptocurrency donations. (Whitesteam is the same firm that told the New York Times last year that terrorist groups were inc...
Chinese ‘Ponzi scheme’ moves $185 million worth of Ethereum
Funds from the alleged PlusToken ponzi scheme are on the move again. 789,534 ETH was transferred today from a wallet containing Plus Token funds. The amount, worth some $185 million at today’s prices, hadn’t moved since December 2019, a few months after the ponzi scheme exit scammed following the arrests of some of its operators. PlusToken, which operated largely out of China and South Korea, was accused of running a cryptocurrency ponzi scheme in July of last year. In its heyday, it attracte...
Why the 'Coinbase effect' on crypto is a temporary high
“When Coinbase?” This rhetorical question is a relic from the 2017 cryptocurrency bull run, when it was a foregone conclusion that coins listed on Coinbase would surge in price. And while the potential for the “Coinbase effect” to boost prices still persists among some crypto traders, it’s something they might want to look more closely at if they really want to chase and catch profits, according to a new report from data analysts at Coin Metrics. Whenever Coinbase plans on listing an altcoin, t...
North Korea to target stimulus checks in weekend cyberattack: report
The infamous North Korean Hacking syndicate Lazarus Group may be targeting Americans who are expecting stimulus payouts—among other beneficiaries of government stimulus from around the world. According to a report by internet security research firm Cyfirma, Lazarus Group has devised a phishing scheme with some 5 million individuals and businesses in mind, spanning across the US, UK, Singapore, Japan, India and South Korea. Cyfirma expects the attack to come this weekend over a two-day period an...
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