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Cash and сoronavirus: how to stay safe when dealing with banknotes and bank cards

During the pandemic, when it is of the utmost importance to be very careful about your health and follow good hygiene practice, BestChange team wishes to remind you the necessary precautionary measures when dealing with cash and bank cards.

We already wrote that cash is one of the dirtiest things in the world and a carrier of many diseases. Various microbes live on the banknotes for quite a long time – from one up to two months. Paper money has a lot of cellulose which is the perfect media for the development of bacteria. Plastic and metal money have much fewer microorganisms, and their life is much shorter.

Speaking about COVID-19 specifically, the virus stays up to 5 days on metal materials, 4 days on wood and glass. Paper exposed to coronavirus remained safe after 4-5 days, and the virus stays on plastic for no more than 5 days.

Besides coronavirus, many other bacteria can be found on banknotes: causing skin inflammation, microorganisms associated with the vaginal tract, Escherichia coli and staphylococcal bacteria can be found – they cause intestinal diseases. Besides bacteria, fungi spores and helminthiasis (simply put, worm infections) pathogens can be found on money.

Many infectious disease specialists around the world approve of decreasing the usage of cash in favor of contactless. However, please keep in mind that the direct contact between the bank card and the terminal or touching the terminal when pressing the PIN can be also dangerous in terms of contracting the infection.

We would like to remind you recommendations of WHO: wash your hands, do not touch your face when using cash. WHO does not say that cash must be totally avoided, but theoretically, it can be a channel to contract the virus.

Please remember, that the notion “dirty money” has a real basis behind it and before biting into a snack you have just purchased with some cash, remember what is at stake. Always thoroughly wash your hands or sanitize them after being in contact with cash or touching any surfaces in public spaces, including ATMs.

Modern problems require modern solutions, electronic money and cryptocurrency get another advantage as a safer payment means of the future.

BestChange team asks everyone to follow the advice of doctors and professionals, take care of yourself and your close ones and keep your spirits up!

 

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Cash turnover hits record high in the U.S. and altcoins mentions on Twitter drop to a minimum

USD banknote turnover hits a 20-year high

From March 11 to March 18, the turnover of cash dollars in the United States increased by $34 billion, shooting up from $1.809 trillion to $1.843 trillion.

This is the largest growth in the last 20 years, economist John Paul Coning points out: the U.S. citizens are withdrawing money from banks amid the coronavirus epidemic. Last time a similar situation was observed in 1999 when people were afraid of digital devices failure due to the "Y2K bug"

It is noteworthy that the current increase in cash circulation is happening despite the WHO recommendations to avoid contact with banknotes, as COVID-19 can be distributed through them.

Twitter's altcoin mentions drop to a minimum

Twitter users now write about main altcoins less often - the number of mentions per day has dropped to a three-year low.

The number of posts about XRP has decreased by 60% in two months to 2,542. Ethereum was talked about slightly less — the number of tweets with the hashtag #ETH fell to 2,500, which has become the lowest engagement level since February 2017. For comparison: in December 2017, when the altcoin set a maximum price, the number of tweets about it exceeded 51,000.

Bitcoin’s “little brother” LTC has been completely forgotten —Twitter users mentioned the coin only 350 times a day. The popularity of BTC, on the contrary, has grown, its mentions have doubled since the end of January.

Small miners shutting off will help the price of bitcoin

Blockware CEO Matt D’Souza said. He analyzed the periods of decline of the network’s hash rate and noted that they were followed by a prolonged increase of cryptocurrency price. In his opinion, now the situation may be repeated.

At the moment, the computing power of the BTC blockchain has dropped to 93 EH/s. In mid-March, when the bitcoin exchange rate sank below $4,000, small miners were forced to turn off the equipment, which led to a sharp drop in the hash rate and the difficulty of mining cryptocurrency.

Matt D’Souza notes that this will benefit the price of bitcoin, as private miners quickly sold their coins to not work at a loss.

 

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Miners will start to switch off after the halving, and Bitstamp plans to expand its listing

Some miners will stop working after the halving

States a report by an analytic company Coin Metrics. Despite the fact that Bitcoin price has recovered to the level of $6,300, for many miners the breakeven point is higher than that.

“We expect miners to follow a cycle of decreased profit margins, increased selling, capitulation, and a culling of the least efficient miners from the network. Once this cycle is complete, the miner industry should return to a healthier state that is supportive of future price increases,” the analysts say,

Last week, Bitcoin mining complexity fell by a record 16%, according to BTC.com forecasts, after the next eight-day cycle, it will decrease by another 12%. This will also reduce the profitability of mining for inefficient equipment, according to Coin Metrics.

Bitstamp may launch trading Ethereum Classic, Zcash and Stellar

Bitstamp, one of the first European cryptocurrency exchanges, is considering listing Ethereum Classic (ETC), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Zcash (ZEC), Basic Attention Token (BAT), Paxos Standard (PAX), USD Coin (USDC) and 0x (ZRX).

The platform’s specialists will thoroughly study the technical characteristics of these cryptocurrencies, as well as their compliance with the security requirements of the exchange and the legislation of some countries. It is worth noting that Bitstamp is extremely cautious about listing coins. Currently, only five crypto assets are traded on the platform: Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash.

Cryptocurrency trading volume on exchanges increased by 60%

Trade turnover at 22 popular crypto platforms grew by 61% in Q1 of 2020, according to the report of The Block media.

In the last quarter of 2019, the figure was $96 billion, and currently, it has increased to $154 billion — almost the same level as in Q3 of last year.

The volume of transactions in the Bitcoin network increased by 11% to $ 178 billion, while the amount of commissions remained virtually unchanged at $20.12 million. The average BTC block size has slightly increased: from 1.14 MB to 1.17 MB. In January, the share of SegWit transfers exceeded 70%, and the number of public Lightning channels increased by 3%.

 

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Bitcoin is again trading above $7,000, and the ETH exchange balance reaches its maximum since 2016

Bitcoin has gone up to $7,000

BTC price today has gone over the mark of $7,100 —over the past 24 hours, cryptocurrency has strengthened by 5%.

Since March 13, bitcoin has grown in price by more than 80%. Most of the crypto assets from TOP-20 also added in value: Stellar (11.69%), TRON (9.51%) and Ethereum (6.42%) have demonstrated the highest growth.

Earlier we noted that the capitalization of the USDT stablecoin exceeded $6 billion for the first time. A number of analysts attribute the increase of the number of Tether tokens to the rise in bitcoin price.

ETH exchange balance reaches its maximum since 2016

Since the end of last year, the volume of ethereum stored on trading platforms has increased by 21% to 18.187 million ETH.

According to Glassnode, this is the highest level since December 2016 and it accounts for 16% of all circulating coins. Interestingly, the indicator is inversely correlated with the price of ETH. Thus, for 12 months from December 2016, Ethereum has risen in price from $6 to $ 1,350 — at the same time, the cryptocurrency exchange balance has decreased from 18 to 8 million coins.

On March 13, the ETH price fell to $95, which was the lowest since December 2018. Now the coin is trading near the $154 mark.

 

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Bitcoin Cash undergoes halving

On April 8, in the Bitcoin Cash network block reward was halved. It was reduced from 12.5 BCH to 6.25 BCH at block height 630’000. The night before halving, the coin went up from $251 to $275, but today it has again dropped in price to $257. In about 12 hours, halving of Bitcoin SV, another fork of the first cryptocurrency, will happen. According to BSV developer Bat Jasper, this will negatively affect cryptocurrency as it will make its mining less profitable than mining bitcoin. We would like to remind that halving in the network of BTC itself is expected on May 13, the reward will drop from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC.

U.S. national debt hits a record $24 trillion

According to Trading Economics, the U.S. public debt is currently $24.018 trillion. It grew by an additional $4 trillion over 4 years under Donald Trump. The sharp increase of this figure was caused by the U.S. Federal Reserve program to support the economy during the financial crisis brought about by coronavirus. The regulator intends to print $6 trillion worth of banknotes. Earlier, TV presenter Max Kaiser called the dollar “debt coupons,” and popular writer Robert Kiyosaki called for investing in bitcoin and gold: “IF US Debt to GDP ratio 60% world sound. Today US Debt to GDP 110% and climbing. US bankrupt”, he tweeted.

The number of ETH addresses has exceeded 70 million

The number of addresses in the Ethereum network has reached 70 million, the Glassnode service draws attention.The figure began to sharply grow in November 2017 before the coin set a price record of $1,300. Since that time, the cost of ETH was mostly falling and today it is $171. Despite this, the number of addresses has increased 8.2 times since November 2017. The number of active addresses in March was about 230 thousand - the figure correlates with the price of ethereum. The maximum at the level of 715 thousand was set in January 2018, when the cryptocurrency price reached a historical record.

 

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China has published a new cryptocurrency rating

Bitcoin is only ranked 14th in the rating. BTC has lost three more positions, giving way to Cosmos (ATOM), Stellar (XLM) and Dash. TOP 3 remains the same since the February ranking: EOS is in the first place, followed by TRON and Ethereum. Lisk, IOST, NULS, Qtum, NEO, XLM and Dash are in top ten. This is already the seventeenth evaluation made by the China-based Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (CCID). Projects are evaluated on three parameters: basic technology, applicability and creativity.

Binance exchange launches mobile bitcoin options

Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange services, announced launching bitcoin options. The function is only available in the latest version of the exchange’s mobile app. At the moment, users can trade bitcoin options paired with USDT - in the future, the platform plans to expand the list of instruments. Binance chose the American version of options in which the deal can be closed before the contract expiry date. The exchange’s statement states that their options provide “a shorter time frame compared to traditional options”, ranging from 10 minutes to 1 day.

 

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BTC and S&P 500 correlation hit a nine-year high

Bitcoin price and the S&P 500 index have been changing most correlated for 9 years, said eToro analyst Mati Greenspan. The correlation of the prices of the two assets reached 0.6, whereas before it did not exceed 0.3 - with a value of 1, the charts move completely identically. The analyst explained this by the coronavirus pandemic. Bitcoin is still considered a risk asset and hasnt achieved the safe haven status that gold has taken thousands of years to build up, Greenspan summed up. However, he added that the profitability of BTC is still higher than the stock market: since the beginning of the year, BTC added 7% in price, while at the same time, the price of oil collapsed to the levels of the 2000s.

Opinion: only large miners will survive halving

Representatives of the mining industry believe that only large and effective miners will remain after the halving. F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun said that due to a decrease in rewards from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC, unprofitable operators could be absorbed by larger players. A similar position was expressed by Alejandro de la Torre, Poolin Vice President. In his opinion, miners using old equipment will have to disconnect after halving. The head of New Mine, Ibrahim Alkurd, noted that one should not hope for a rise in the price of bitcoin after halving. Miners hoping that the BTC price will jump up after halving the block reward, making their operations profitable, are in trouble, he said. Wang Chun added that after halving, those farms will stay that are capable of mining bitcoin at a cost of $3,500.

 

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The balance of bitcoins on exchanges fell to a minimum

The number of BTC that users store on exchanges has dropped to a 6-month minimum. According to Glassnode, the current balance is 2.36 million coins. The indicator has been declining since March 13, when the price of bitcoin fell below $4,000. At the same time, the network activity has grown to record levels since 2017. According to TokenAnalyst analysts, investors are withdrawing cryptocurrency from exchanges, since they are considering long-term storage of coins.

65% of Twitter users believe in the strengthening of BTC after halving

The topic of halving is growing in popularity on the social network Twitter along with increased Google searches. Over the past two weeks, the number of posts mentioning the word "halving" has grown tweets-fold, reports The TIE. On May 6, users posted 2,500 tweets: 65% of them are positive, that is, their authors expect that the event will positively affect the value of bitcoin. The TIE notes that the topic of halving at the end of April surpassed the popularity of coronavirus among crypto enthusiasts.

Ex-President of Bank of China: digital yuan will replace cash

The digital version of yuan, which is already being tested by the Chinese authorities, may completely replace cash in the future, said Li Lihui, the former President of the Bank of China. He noted that unlike traditional currencies, CDBC will not depend on a third-party bank or payment system. In this case, the virtual currency must meet four key conditions: “Whether the digital yuan can become the dominant form of currency and mainstream payment means, depends on whether it has greater efficiency, lower transaction costs, enough economic scale with commercial value, and people’ acceptance,” said the former President of Bank of China. He added that CDBC will have anonymity, like Bitcoin, but the regulator will set limits on the number and frequency of operations without confirming the identity.

 

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The profit of miners fell by 44%. Halving is to blame

Daily earnings of miners fell from $16 to $9 million after halving on May 12. Obsolete equipment, for example, Antminer S9, has now become unprofitable. At the same time, the bitcoin hash rate fell by 16%, and the block mining time increased to 10 minutes 32 seconds. The problem should be fixed by a correction of complexity, which is expected in 5 days. The estimated difficulty will decrease by 2%.

Stablecoin capitalization exceeded $10 billion

The volume of all existing stablecoins reached $10.4 billion, having updated the historical maximum. Tether holds 85% of the market, second place is occupied by USDC, which accounts for 7.2% of capitalization. Since February, the total supply of stable coins has grown by 79%, and the share of USDT has increased by 3%. Most USDT tokens were issued on the Ethereum blockchain - $5.73 billion, $1.8 billion are working on the Tron network, $1.3 billion use the Omni blockchain.

Pavel Durov announces the closure of the TON crypto project

Pavel Durov, co-founder of VK social network and Telegram messenger, announced the closure of the Telegram Open Network blockchain project. The reason, he said, is the decision of the American court. "Unfortunately, a US court stopped TON from happening. How? Imagine that several people put their money together to build a gold mine – and to later split the gold that comes out of it. Then a judge comes and says: 'These people invested in the gold mine because they were looking for profits. And they didn't want that gold for themselves, they wanted to sell it to other people. Because of this, they are not allowed to get the gold," Durov wrote. He noted that the court banned the use of GRAM cryptocurrency in the whole world since a US citizen can get access to it. According to the businessman, this is a paradox decision, because it implies control of the American authorities over the sovereignty of other countries. “Unfortunately, we – the 96% of the world's population living elsewhere – are dependent on decision makers elected by the 4% living in the US,” concluded Durov. The businessman said that his team is stopping work on the platform and urged not to be fooled by fraudsters using the name of the project.

 

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Andreessen Horowitz: the cryptocurrency market is growing randomly but steadily

Venture Fund Andreessen Horowitz from Silicon Valley has analyzed the cryptocurrency market and came to the conclusion that it has been showing a “choppy yet consistent growth” since 2010. Experts studied four metrics: the price of bitcoin, activity in social networks, developer activity and startup activity. All four parameters showed positive cumulative annual growth rates. The company noted the importance of the 2017 cycle, which became the reason for the launch of “dozens of interesting projects” from various business areas. “Even though crypto cycles look chaotic, over the long term they’ve generated steady growth of new ideas, code, projects, and startups — the fundamental drivers of software innovation. Technologists and entrepreneurs will continue to push crypto forward in the coming years. We are excited to see what they build,” Andreessen Horowitz concluded.

Miner hackers attacked supercomputers

Last week, a number of supercomputers from the UK, Germany, Switzerland and Spain were attacked by crypto miners. The University of Edinburgh, Leibniz Computing Center, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the Swiss Center for Scientific Computing are among the victims. Experts from Cado Security examined samples of malicious code and concluded that hackers gained access through compromised user data and SSH keys. There is no official evidence that the attacks were carried out by one group of attackers, but Cado Security pointed to similar virus file names and network identifiers.

Cardano creator: misinformation prevents bitcoin from spreading

Cardano founder and Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson suggested that bitcoin is misunderstood due to the abundance of false information and fears. “I started with Bitcoin and started with something called the Bitcoin education project. The goal there was to try to bring as many people as possible into our ecosystem and to also dispel a lot of the common myths, fear, uncertainty, disinformation, and misnomers and things that have been cropping up. In 2013, there was certainly a lot of them, and unfortunately today there’s even more,” the businessman said. Hoskinson created a 40-minute video in which he explained the essence of the first cryptocurrency and called for similar actions by all industry participants. The reason was the tweet by the writer Joan Rowling, who asked to tell her what Bitcoin is. Having received many answers, including from Ilon Mask and Vitalik Buterin, the author of Harry Potter books has not understood the idea of cryptocurrency and expressed her disappointment.