BitPinas Crypto News Roundup (May 5, 2020)

As of May 5, 2020, 3:22 pm (PH Time):

• Bitcoin is $9,021.66 (+3.70%)
• Ethereum is $209.75 (+4.09%)
• XRP is $0.22 (+3,25%)

Read a roundup of cryptocurrency news today, May 5, 2020.

7 Days Before the Bitcoin Halving

Taking place around May 2020, the Bitcoin halving is a significant event wherein the number of bitcoins given during block rewards will again be reduced in half. Previously, it was 12.5. After halving, it will only be 6.25. This event happens every 4 years until all 21 million bitcoins are mined in the year 2140.

We have an article written about it here. You can also check out this excellent article from The Block as to what happens in the Bitcoin network during the event.

Telegram Will Not Be Repaying Investors in Gram Tokens

Telegram raised around $1.7 billion for its TON blockchain project in 2018. It was supposed to go live but the US Securities and Exchange Commission (US SEC) sued the company for violating securities laws. With the delay, the company is obligated to pay 72% of the investors’ funds back to them immediately. However, the company now offers to return 110% of the investment if they wait for a year for the network to go live.

The offer is only for non-US customers as American investors are required to accept the 72% payout.

CZ: DDoS Attacks Were Done by Binance Competitors

Binance faced a series of DDos (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks on its Chinese domains on April 29, 2020. On May 4, Binance CEO Changpeng CZ Zhao said he suspects these attacks were done by competitors looking to damage their reputation rather than stealing cryptocurrency.

Zhao said the attacks focused on the public endpoints in the target regions simultaneously.

Zhao also accused these competitors of paying the so-called “black media” in the Chinese industry to write negative articles about Binance. He explained that just around 5 minutes after the attacks, long articles were already published citing how Binance’s services are unreliable.

Ripple Co-Founder Sold 1.8 Million XRP a Day in April 2020

Ripple Co-founder and now Stellar CTO Jeb McCaleb has sold 54 million XRP just this April 2020, as per an analysis done by news site The Crypto Associate. He was selling 1.8 million XRP a day during that time period.

As to how much McCaleb was selling, The Crypto Associate analyzed his wallet address, which has 69.9 million XRP as of press time. (Note than when The Crypto Associate published their news, McCaleb had over 76 million XRP in his wallet.)

The Crypto Associate found out that all outgoing transactions are going to a BitStamp exchange address. Additionally, XRP was being traded for USD.

Antminer S9s Produce 23% of Bitcoin’s Current Hash Rate

A Coin Metrics report found out that Antminer S9s by Bitmain produces around 23% of Bitcoin’s total network hash rate.

With the bitcoin halving just around the corner, many miners are upgrading their equipment to more efficient models to counteract the expected drop in revenue. After the halving, the per-block reward will be reduced from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC.

S9s will be considered outdated at that time, but right now, S9s contributing this much to the hashrate will be interesting going forward. It’s possible that some might choose to increase their S9s holdings for profits to remain sustainable.

(Philippines) PDAX x Shopee Promotion

Local crypto exchange Philippine Digital Asset Exchange (PDAX) partnered with e-commerce platform Shopee to allow users to buy cryptocurrency using vouchers sold at Shopee.ph. The vouchers will be available from May 1 – 31, 2020. There are Bitcoin and XRP vouchers and users can redeem each of them once.