Cryptocurrency This Week: Bitcoin Halving, TRON’s Sun To Donate $1 Mn To Greta Thunberg & More

Bitcoin is set to have another halving on May 6, 2020. Despite a poor show in recent weeks, Bitcoin enthusiasts and experts are counting on halving for the price surge. While US Presidential candidate in exile and tech entrepreneur John McAfee had earlier predicted that Bitcoin will hit $1 Mn by 2020-end, investor Tim Draper appears to be more realistic in his prediction.

In a recent interview with The Daily Exchange, Draper predicted that Bitcoin would hit $250K by 2023. He said, “What I didn’t realize was that so many of the cryptocurrencies would be sort of marginalized, where they would lose their backing or the entrepreneur who was driving them, and that consolidates more of that activity around Bitcoin. So I actually think $250,000 may be a little bit light. It may actually be more like the beginning of 2023, but all systems seem to be ‘go’ for a real Bitcoin – a lot of excitement around Bitcoin.”

Currently, Bitcoin is trading at $7.3K.

Meanwhile, Australian scientist Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto who claimed that Bitcoin won’t exist after December 31, 2019 due to a fatal flaw, has yet again been caught lying. The nChain developer was supposed to receive 1 Mn Bitcoin which would be worth $7 Bn, according to a Tulip Trust contract theory.

As of now, neither of two claims have come true.

What Is Bitcoin Halving?

Bitcoin halving is an inherent part of the technology behind Bitcoin. Essentially, to keep inflation under control, the Bitcoin protocol was programmed with a hard limit of 21 Mn BTCs, with new Bitcoins entering the system as an incentive for miners in a gradual and controlled rhythm. The Bitcoin creation rate is reduced by half every four years, which makes it harder to mine and reduces the reward for miners. The first halving occurred in November 2012, and then again in July 2016. The next reduction is expected in May 2020. after which the network incentives will be 6.25 Bitcoins per block.

The most obvious impact of halving is on the miners who get less for their efforts. For Bitcoin traders, the market is expected to be volatile in this period, with many casual investors likely to sell off Bitcoin.

Cryptocurrencies Have A Short Future, Says The Man Behind India’s Draft Crypto Bill 

India’s former finance secretary and executive director of World Bank Subhash Chandra Garg, the man who chaired the Inter-Ministerial Committee which drafted the Banning of Cryptocurrencies and Regulation of Official Digital Currencies Bill 2019) has now opened up about his view on cryptocurrencies in general.

After asserting his views about cryptocurrencies, currencies in general, Garg in his blog wrote, “I am convinced that private cryptocurrencies would have a very short future. However, some people will make profits and a lot of gullible people would lose. It is generally the small persons who suffer. If today’s valuation is anywhere close to $200 Bn, the cryptocurrency magic must have made some billionaires, obviously at the cost of a lot of people who have purchased these essentially worthless codes.”

Reading the article, it seems that Garg has tried to explain the currencies and payments from the existing conventional practices followed world over. Cryptocurrencies, however, need to be looked from a different perspective.

This is important as and when paper currencies and coins were first introduced in China, people had little faith in that. Similarly, during American Civil war counterfeit notes were rampant. It took the US Treasury department a decade to prevent counterfeiting.

The need of the hour is to look cryptocurrencies from a fresh angle. The law should be made in order to prevent the wrongdoings associated with the technology and not the technology itself.

Justin Sun To Donate $1 Mn to Greta Thunberg

TRON founder and BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun in a tweet pledged to donate $1 Mn to environment activist Greta Thunberg to help raise global awareness of the climate crisis.

Sun also advocated that increased use of cryptocurrencies will help reduce the carbon footprints.

Sun later told Cointelegraph,

“Decentralized settlement and decentralized finance are completely run by computers on cloud computing systems, thus eliminating the need for ledger documentation and management records kept on paper.”

On Bitcoin consuming huge energy, Sun said that it is based on Proof-of-Work, instead of PoW, Proof-of-Stake could be adopted to reduce the energy consumption in crypto.

Binance Futures Trading Platform Launches Isolated Margin Mode

Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange Binance recently launched an isolated margin mode on the Binance Futures trading platform. The new feature will help traders allocate a precise amount of margin for an open position and isolate it from all other open positions, reducing potential losses in case the market goes against an open position and allowing for overall better risk management.

With this isolated margin mode, traders can execute different strategies across various open positions, with the aim of further increasing potential profits and reducing losses. The cross margin mode will be retained on Binance Futures to provide traders with more options.

Binance launched its futures trading platform last September with a cross margin mode, providing traders with a platform to hedge positions and manage risk. To date, Binance Futures has launched BTC contracts with max leverage of 125x, the highest among major crypto exchanges, as well as ETH and BCH contracts with max leverage of 75x.