Day: January 26, 2021

Why Estonia Has Begun Hosting the Bitcoin White Paper

by Decrypt

In brief

  • Lawyers for Craig Wright, who claims to have written the Bitcoin white paper, have asked several organizations to take the paper down.

  • In response, companies and organizations have been posting the white paper on their sites.

  • Today, Estonia and Colombia followed suit.

Estonia today published the Bitcoin white paper on a government website—in defiance of Bitcoin’s self-proclaimed “inventor” Craig Wright. 

The white paper is now hosted on Estonia’s e-Residency website; e-Residency is akin to a government visa for “digital entrepreneurs to start and manage an EU-based company online.”

“We are happy to preserve the original Bitcoin whitepaper here on our website as a source of inspiration for future innovators looking to understand how to use blockchain technology in support of facilitating cross-border business and other applications,” the site now reads.

The addition comes amid a push by Bitcoin advocates to paper the internet with the seminal work on cryptocurrency, authored by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008.

Wright, you will recall, has been publicly claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto since 2016.

He then emigrated from Bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash before spearheading BCH’s subsequent 2018 split into Bitcoin Cash and his preferred Bitcoin SV. He has since filed copyright claims to the Bitcoin white paper and defamation suits against those who have called him “fraud.”

Last week, lawyers with the law firm Ontier LLP claiming to represent Wright, sent a notice of copyright infringement to Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org, both of which had links to the white paper.

Bitcoincore.org complied, but Bitcoin.org did not, noting that the white paper was published under the MIT license, which permits reuse in most circumstances.

In either a repudiation of Wright’s copyright claims or a bid to keep the Bitcoin white paper visible, a wave of cryptocurrency- and blockchain-related websites posted the treatise on their websites, among them advocacy organization Coin Center and payments company Square.

Estonia got in on the act today in response to calls from former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan for a government domain to host the paper.

Not long after, Jehudi Castro, an advisor to the Colombian President, posted a link via a Colombian government website that redirects to the Bitcoin white paper.

However, Estonia and Colombia aren’t the first countries to host the Bitcoin white paper. That would be the United States. The paper appears on the United States Sentencing Commission’s website. The USSC is an independent agency within the judiciary that analyzes prison sentences.

So, not quite as positive as Estonia. But it doesn’t hurt.

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DeFi tokens bag double-digit gains as bears pin Bitcoin price below $33K

by Cointelegraph

Today Bitcoin (BTC) price continued to face selling pressure in the $32,500 to $33,000 resistance cluster and this led to a mild 3% to 5% pull back from most altcoins.

Despite the recent revelation that BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has given the green light for two of its funds to invest in Bitcoin futures, BTC price still struggles to gain momentum above the $33,000 level.

Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360

Meanwhile, the DeFi sector continues to flourish as Venus (XVS) and Fantom (FTM) saw their prices increase 23% overnight and the total value locked in DeFi protocols currently stands at $25.77 billion.

Following the confirmation of Janet Yellen as the new secretary of the United States Treasury, the department’s dreaded cryptocurrency monitoring rule is now back in motion and the public has 60 days to comment on the proposed self-hosted wallet requirement.

BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

Selling wasn’t limited to just the cryptocurrency sector as global financial markets also fell under pressure following news that the upcoming stimulus package offered by the Biden administration might not be as large as previously suggested.

The S&P 500 and Dow both faced selling pressure at the opening bell and finished the day down 0.15% and 0.07% respectively, while the NASDAQ was able to eke out a positive gain of 0.05%.

The Reddit-based investing group that recently put the squeeze on short-sellers betting against GameStop (GME) were able to regroup overnight and managed to push the price of GME up to $145.57 on Jan. 26, near its all-time high of $159.18.

GME/USD 1-day chart. Source: TradingView

DeFi tokens take the lead

DeFi related coins continue to surge higher despite the waning momentum seen from Bitcoin and Ether (ETH).

Uniswap’s trading volume surged above $6 billion earlier today and this helped lift the price of it’s governance token (UNI) to a new 2021 high at $13.67. Terra (LUNA), a stablecoin-oriented project, also saw its price increase by more than 37% and currently trades at $1.22.

Fantom (FTM) and Alpha Finance (ALPHA) have also seen an influx of buying activity in the past 24-hours and both rallied 22% and 35% during today’s trading session.

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $947.6 billion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 62.9%.