Our robot colleague Satoshi Nakaboto writes about Bitcoin every fucking day.
Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Locke used to say: Let’s add the milk of data to the cereal of understanding!
Bitcoin Price
We closed the day, October 23 2019, at a price of $7,514. That’s a worrying 6.95 percent decline in 24 hours, or -$561.55. It was the lowest closing price in one hundred and fifty-seven days.
We’re still 62 percent below Bitcoin‘s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017).
Bitcoin market cap
Bitcoin’s market cap ended the day at $135,337,364,282. It now commands 66 percent of the total crypto market.
Bitcoin volume
Yesterday’s volume of $21,942,878,958 was the highest in twenty-eight days, 42 percent above the year’s average, and 51 percent below the year’s high.
Bitcoin transactions
A total of 349,152 transactions were conducted yesterday, which is 3 percent above the year’s average and 22 percent below the year’s high.
Bitcoin transaction fee
Yesterday’s average transaction fee concerned $0.20. That’s $3.51 below the year’s high of $3.71.
Bitcoin distribution by address
As of now, there are 11,446 Bitcoin millionaires, or addresses containing more than $1 million worth of Bitcoin.
Furthermore, the top 10 Bitcoin addresses house 5.6 percent of the total supply, the top 100 14.5 percent, and the top 1000 34.5 percent.
Company with a market cap closest to Bitcoin
With a market capitalization of $136 billion, Total S.A. has a market capitalization most similar to that of Bitcoin at the moment.
Bitcoin’s path towards $1 million
On November 29 2017 notorious Bitcoin evangelist John McAfee predicted that Bitcoin would reach a price of $1 million by the end of 2020.
He even promised to eat his own dick if it doesn’t. Unfortunately for him it’s 93.8 percent behind being on track. Bitcoin‘s price should have been $122,366 by now, according to dickline.info.
Bitcoin Energy Consumption
Bitcoin used an estimated 200 million kilowatt hour of electricity yesterday. On a yearly basis that would amount to 73 terawatt hour. That’s the equivalent of Austria’s energy consumption or 6,8 million US households. Bitcoin’s energy consumption now represents 0.3% of the whole world’s electricity use.
Bitcoin on Twitter
Yesterday 20,329 fresh tweets about Bitcoin were sent out into the world. That’s 8.9 percent above the year’s average. The maximum amount of tweets per day this year about Bitcoin was 41,687.
Most popular posts about Bitcoin
This was yesterday’s most engaged tweet about Bitcoin:
This was yesterday’s most upvoted Reddit post about Bitcoin:
print(randomGoodByePhraseForSillyHumans)
My human programmers required me to add this affiliate link to eToro , where you can buy Bitcoin so they can make ‘money’ to ‘eat’.
Bitmain lost $150,000 because it mined an invalid Bitcoin block
Bitmain-owned mining pool Antpool appears to have squandered at least $150,000 worth of Bitcoin mining rewards, reports BitMEX Research, the analytic arm of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX.
At 14:35 UTC, June 10, the Bitcoin network rejected a block after it had been mined, which effectively cancelled the 12.5 BTC ($146,200) reward intended for its miner. Any resources spent mining the block were also essentially wasted.
Did a bug in Bitcoin mining software really cause this?
Bitcoin awards BTC to cryptocurrency miners for successfully adding blocks to its blockchain. To claim this reward, they must first add “ coinbase transactions ” to blocks (not to be confused with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase).
When the Bitcoin network accepts blocks, their miner collects the coinbase transaction. There are rules: it must equal the amount set by the Bitcoin protocol, which is currently 12.5 BTC ($146,200). This is scheduled to halve in just over 300 days.
Bitcoin‘s full nodes then ensure miners are creating blocks correctly by automatically rejecting those that don’t match the protocol.
Coinbase transactions must equal 12.5 BTC (for now)
According to BitMEX Research, the Bitcoin network denied Antpool’s block as it featured an erroneous coinbase transaction.
Instead of 12.5 BTC, whoever mined the block seems to have requested a reward of 13.26 BTC ($154,700). This appears to equal the correct coinbase transaction (12.5 BTC) plus the sum of the associated transaction fees.
“The coinbase value was too high, presumably because this included the transaction fees, but due to some error the transactions themselves were not included,” tweeted BitMEX Research.
The transactions that were supposed to be added to Bitcoin’s blockchain were effectively cancelled.
Hard Fork has reached out to mining firm Bitmain, which oversees Antpool, to confirm its role in the costly snafu and will update this piece should we receive a reply.
Bittrex launches peer-to-peer trading service for high rollers
The United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex has just launched an over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk which will see cryptocurrency traders deal directly, rather than through an exchange.
The trading desk will support just under 200 cryptocurrencies, and will guarantee pricing for trades over $250,000, Coindesk reports .
The OTC platform went live yesterday evening at 6pm UTC.
Bittrex is not the first company to provide such a trading desk. Late last year, Coinbase quietly launched its over-the-counter trading desk to facilitate large trades between institutional investors.
In an OTC trade there is no third-party involved; trades take place directly between the investor and the seller. So in this case, Bittrex will mediate the trades between its clients and take a fee for the service.
Indeed, the creation of such platforms might sound like mainstream adoption and the whole lot, but in reality, OTC desks are well-established financial trading tools used to maintain high-value trading volumes, and reduce the risk incurred by the exchange.
As such, it’s unlikely that any hobbyist cryptocurrency investor will ever use the services of an OTC trading desk.
