Bitcoin ETPs Control Over 7% of the Cryptocurrency’s Total Supply 6460

Investment vehicles tied to Bitcoin have now accumulated more than 7% of the cryptocurrency’s fixed 21 million coin cap, with BlackRock’s U.S.-listed ETF standing out as the single largest holder. In total, exchange-traded products (ETPs) linked to Bitcoin collectively manage around 1.47 million BTC, according to recent data.

The majority of these holdings come from U.S. exchange-traded funds, which together account for over 1.29 million BTC spread across 11 different funds as of August 31, data from the X account HODL15Capital revealed.

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) leads the market with 746,810 BTC under management, while Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) holds nearly 199,500 BTC, ranking second.

Demand Shows Signs of Cooling

Despite these large totals, interest in Bitcoin-based investment products has slowed. In August, Bitcoin ETPs worldwide recorded net outflows of approximately $301 million. By contrast, Ethereum-focused funds saw robust inflows, pulling in around $3.95 billion over the same period, according to CoinShares.

This shift is partly driven by large Bitcoin holders, or “whales,” reallocating capital into Ether. On Monday, one such whale sold 4,000 BTC in exchange for 96,859 ETH within just 12 hours, ending up with a position valued at $3.8 billion in Ether. Blockchain analytics firm Arkham reported that nine major whales recently locked in Bitcoin profits and redirected about $456 million into Ethereum.

Broader Market Context

Historically, September has been a weak month for Bitcoin’s performance, and this year appears no different. Meanwhile, gold prices continue to climb, offering investors an alternative hedge.

Regulatory uncertainty also weighs on sentiment. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) currently has 92 crypto-related ETF applications pending approval. Among the most closely watched are funds tied to Solana (SOL) and XRP (XRP), with final decisions expected in October.

Well-known pseudonymous analyst PlanC cautioned that Bitcoin’s long-term path to a potential $1 million valuation may face significant obstacles.

Adding to this, research firm Delphi Digital suggested that if the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates after a price rally, Bitcoin could see a sharp decline. However, if the asset remains relatively inactive leading up to the Fed’s decision, its price may hold steady instead.

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Trust Machines Launches Leather, a New Bitcoin Wallet Brand 16189

Trust Machines, the company building the largest ecosystem of Bitcoin applications, today announced the launch of its flagship wallet brand, Leather. Leather is a Bitcoin wallet with one mission in mind: driving the global transition to a digital economy built on Bitcoin.

Leather Wallet LLC is now a subsidiary of Trust Machines, through an acquisition of wallet assets from Hiro Systems PBC. From DeFi to DLCs to Ordinals and beyond, Leather will accelerate its role as the premier access point for the growing Bitcoin ecosystem, giving users the opportunity to make the most of their bitcoin holdings via emerging Web3 apps and protocols.

Historically, the wallet supported the Stacks L2 functionality along with Bitcoin Ordinals. The new Leather brand is more than just a name change, with Leather looking to create a bridge between Bitcoin and all emerging layer-2 solutions, providing a seamless experience for users to move and use assets between layers depending on their application needs.

“Bitcoin wallets are the window through which the world will interact with the revolutionary technology of Bitcoin and digital assets built on Bitcoin. To take Bitcoin to a billion users we need to make Bitcoin and Bitcoin L2s simple and intuitive to use,” said Muneeb Ali, CEO and Co-Founder of Trust Machines. “Leather reminds me of the revolutionary potential of Bitcoin and the transformative impact it has had on countless lives. Instilling trust and security through decentralization is a key factor of our Bitcoin wallet.”

Leather, a self-custodied, open-source and audited wallet, gives users the ability to:

  • Secure and manage Bitcoin (BTC), Stacks L2 (STX) and other Bitcoin-secured assets like BRC-20 
  • Deposit, view, create, trade and transfer Ordinals, Stacks NFTs and Bitcoin Stamps
  • Identify themselves across decentralized communities with Blockchain Name System (BNS) domain names
  • Explore Bitcoin DeFi protocols that are set to revolutionize how financial systems work
  • Access emerging Bitcoin layers and features (like the Lightning Network, DLCs and Stacks) along with their native mechanisms, like Stacking.

Leather users can also connect to a myriad of platforms that have emerged as the bedrock of Bitcoin Web3. These include access to Bitcoin NFT marketplaces like Gamma and decentralized exchanges (DEX’s) like ALEX and Velar. Leather is already integrated with hundreds of apps and platforms, including Magic Eden, Rare Stamp, Ord.io, UniSat, On Chain Monkey and more.

“Creating a Bitcoin wallet application is not merely about storing digital currency; it’s about providing users with a gateway to the internet being built for tomorrow,” said Mark Hendrickson, GM of Leather. “This acquisition and rebrand will accelerate Leather’s efforts to drive the global transition to a digital economy based on Bitcoin, onboarding millions of people into Web3 apps powered by Bitcoin and Bitcoin layers such as Stacks and Lightning.”

Prior to the acquisition and rebrand, the former Hiro Wallet had over 375,000 total installations, more than 100,000 monthly active users and transactions exceeding 300,000 on a monthly basis. Porto Rocha, the New York-based design and branding agency, assisted in developing the brand new look and feel of Leather.

Users can begin their Bitcoin Web3 journey with Leather today, through Leather’s browser extension (compatible with Chrome, Firefox, Brave and Edge) or Leather’s desktop application (compatible with Windows, macOX and Linux).

Visit leather.io to learn more about Leather and create your own Bitcoin wallet.

About Leather

Leather is a Bitcoin wallet that supports building apps on Bitcoin and Bitcoin L2s like Stacks. With NFTs, Ordinals, Stamps, DLCs, and much more. Now available as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Brave and Edge. Leather is developed as a subsidiary of Trust Machines. Leather is Bitcoin for the rest of us.

About Trust Machines

Trust Machines is leading the mission to advance the Bitcoin economy by building the biggest ecosystem of applications that utilize Bitcoin or settle on the Bitcoin Blockchain. Founded by Stacks Co-Creator Muneeb Ali and Princeton computer science professor JP Singh. Trust Machines is unlocking the trillion-dollar Bitcoin economy.

CME Group Announces Launch of Euro-denominated Bitcoin and Ether Futures 15208

CME Group, the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, today launched Bitcoin Euro and Ether Euro futures.

“The launch of these new futures contracts builds on the strong growth and deep liquidity we have seen in our existing U.S. dollar-denominated Bitcoin and Ether futures contracts,” said Tim McCourt, Global Head of Equity and FX Products, CME Group. “Our new Bitcoin Euro and Ether Euro futures will provide institutional clients, both within and outside the U.S., with more precise and regulated tools to trade and hedge exposure to the two largest cryptocurrencies by market cap.”

Bitcoin Euro and Ether Euro futures contracts will be sized at five bitcoin and 50 ether per contract. These new contracts will be cash-settled, based on the CME CF Bitcoin-Euro Reference Rate and CME CF Ether-Euro Reference Rate, which serve as once-a-day reference rates of the euro-denominated price of bitcoin and ether.

These new futures contracts will be listed on and subject to the rules of CME.

For more information on this product, please visit https://www.cmegroup.com/cryptocurrencies#explore-our-cryptocurrency-products.

As the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, CME Group (www.cmegroup.com) enables clients to trade futures, options, cash and OTC markets, optimize portfolios, and analyze data – empowering market participants worldwide to efficiently manage risk and capture opportunities. CME Group exchanges offer the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural products and metals. The company offers futures and options on futures trading through the CME Globex® platform, fixed income trading via BrokerTec and foreign exchange trading on the EBS platform. In addition, it operates one of the world’s leading central counterparty clearing providers, CME Clearing.

How ViaBTC, a Pool Founded 6 Years ago, Continues to Rank Top Globally by Hashrates 5541

Recently, the BTC hashrate has reached a new high. The previous record was 248.11EH/s, which was exceeded when the hashrate figure peaked at 254.77EH/s this month. Despite sluggish market conditions in 2022, the interest in mining remains unabated. In addition, as more people joined the mining community, the BTC hashrate kept going up, and the difficulty also soared. Running low hashrates, individual miners are becoming less competitive, yet the advent of mining pools brought them a ray of hope and also revolutionized conventional mining models.

Of the many pools that have popped up, ViaBTC Pool has left miners with a deep impression. In 2021, some countries cracked down on BTC mining, and many pools went out of business as a result. However, the strict policies didn’t hurt ViaBTC’s BTC hashrate. Instead, it has ranked 1st for a while thanks to the pool’s globally distributed business model and the recognition from global miners.

As a pool founded in 2016, ViaBTC managed to survive and record world-leading hashrates all thanks to the following factors.

A strong team

To create a stable mining environment, the ViaBTC team has deployed nodes all over the world to match miners with the nearest node, which minimizes delays and makes the mining network stabler. So far, ViaBTC remains the pool with the lowest orphan rate in the entire industry, which shows the strength of its team.

At ViaBTC, over 60% of the staff are members of the product and R&D teams, the primary members of which are all seasoned developers from world-renowned Internet-based companies. Led by ViaBTC’s founder Haipo Yang, the team has continued to upgrade and improve the pool. As it keeps the pool secure and stable, the R&D team has introduced more versatile products and features and built a full set of matching tools.

Innovation

To address existing flaws of the mining industry, ViaBTC Pool has rolled out many innovative products. For instance, the pool invented PPS+, which was the first payment method of its kind in the industry, and created Transaction Accelerator, also a unique product. Plus, it is also the first pool to support “Convert Now”. These products have not only improved the mining revenue but also solved the problem of congested transactions under extreme market conditions. Meanwhile, the hourly pay of mining revenue effectively avoids risks arising from price fluctuations.

A well-established blockchain ecosystem

ViaBTC has been trying to build an all-encompassing blockchain ecosystem that integrates products, tools, and investment. In addition to ViaBTC Pool, the group now also boasts other four key business segments, including CoinEx Exchange, ViaWallet, CoinEx Smart Chain (CSC), and ViaBTC Capital, which makes it one of the best-established blockchain firms out there.

Relying on its strong ecosystem, ViaBTC has simplified the tedious process that goes from crypto mining to transaction and circulation. When withdrawing cryptos from ViaBTC Pool to CoinEx Exchange, miners do not have to pay any fees, and withdrawals arrive in real time. Moreover, Staking, a built-in service of ViaWallet, provides miners with all kinds of different ways to preserve the value of their assets in an extended bear market.

Yomi Games Raises $2M to Build Out Casual Play-and-Earn Ecosystem 4443

Yomi Games has raised a $2 million seed round to fund its vision of developing social, casual, and play-and-earn blockchain games. The developer recently launched its first non-fungible token (NFT) collection, Oni Squad, and an accompanying mini-game, Oni Mansion. The Oni Squad collection consists of 6,666 hand-drawn generative Onis (ghosts) that were also playable assets in Oni Mansion.

Oni Squad’s NFT collection launched as a free mint in late January, and reached 300 ETH (> $1m USD at the time) in trading volume on its first day. It was among the top traded collections on OpenSea at the time, particularly notable given it cost early adopters $0 to acquire the assets.

The Oni Mansion game, a casual game where players collaborate to customize and build their own NFT mansion, also featured a free NFT mint on Ethereum. Players participated in daily missions to share, visit, and leave messages at each other’s mansions. As they completed missions, they earned tokens to buy new traits to upgrade their mansion. In this way, the overall rarity scheme constantly evolved as players updated their mansions and unlocked new traits.

The game also innovated by enabling several external Ethereum-based NFT collections to play the game as well. Oni Mansion was one of the first games to feature interactive interoperability across NFT projects on multiple different blockchains (Ethereum & Polygon), without requiring assets to be bridged between them.

Yomi Games aims to be the “Zynga of Crypto” by focusing on casual and social gameplay catering to players new to blockchain and crypto gaming. Future games will be mobile-first, widely accessible, and emphasize easy onboarding for players new to crypto.

Pavan Katepalli, Yomi Games CEO, said in a statement that this emphasis on player inclusivity is what differentiates Yomi from its competitors. “We believe player-owned economies, enabled by blockchain technology, are the future of gaming. We want all of our games to be as accessible as possible to the broadest audience and onboard people new to digital collectibles and gaming NFTs. Current crypto games and NFT projects are gated by high purchase barriers to entry, but we believe eventually the most successful games will meld free-to-play and play-and-earn mechanics.”

“What got me excited about Yomi was that they were of the first games that leveraged the inherent composability of NFTs to bring other NFT collections in-game, creating a third place whereby these communities can interact via a collaborative and social gameplay experience. The team also brings the perfect mix of web2 and web3 operating experience to onramp the next millions of players into this new paradigm via games.” – Jerry Lu, Principal at Maveron

Participants in the round include Hypersphere Ventures, Infinity Ventures Crypto (IVC), Sfermion, Cultur3 Capital (early Axie Infinity investors), Maveron, Momentum 6, and Taureon. Yomi Games’ angel investors include Kevin Lin (co-founder, Twitch), Dan Dinh (co-founder, TSM FTX), Thomas Vu (Riot Games), Alex Chung (founder, Giphy), Dan Sommer (founder, Trilogy Education), Mike Ouye (Cloud 9), Don Ho (Quantstamp), Hubert Thieblot (Twitch), Jeff Kuan (Terraform Labs), and others.

About Yomi Games
Yomi Games is a blockchain gaming studio developing social Play-and-Earn video games targeted at casual audiences. Its products include Oni Squad, a set of NFTs representing cute ghosts enabling gameplay in Oni Mansion, as well as future games. The Company plans to publish multiple crypto mobile game titles, across a variety of casual genres, that appeal broadly to mainstream audiences and act as a gateway to gamers new to crypto and NFTs.

Popular BTM Operator: Bitcoin of America Welcomes Shiba Inu Coin to Its Bitcoin ATMs 12377

Bitcoin of America has officially announced the newest addition to their Bitcoin ATMs (BTMs). Shiba Inu coin is now available at Bitcoin of America ATM locations. Bitcoin of America has more than 1800 BTMs across 31 states. They recognized the growing popularity of Shiba Inu and decided it was time to include it in their BTMs. Bitcoin of America also offers Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum options. This news comes after their recent addition of Dogecoin in March of this year.

Bitcoin of America is a popular virtual currency exchange registered as a money services business with the United States Department of Treasury (FinCEN)(RegNum). They are known for their top-of-the-line customer support while also providing a fast and hassle-free transaction.

Bitcoin of America makes it easy for everyday businesses to get their hands on a Bitcoin ATM and for customers to buy Bitcoin. They take care of their host locations by providing passive income, increased foot traffic, and marketing. They even handle customer support and any maintenance/installation services.

The popular operator has made many updates to its BTMs and services over the past year. They launched their universal kiosks, which operate as a traditional ATM combined with BTM functions. Bitcoin of America has created a point-of-sale system for their tablet program, which has allowed businesses to accept cryptocurrency as a new form of payment. Bitcoin of America is constantly expanding and improving its services.

African Crypto Startup, Basqet Launches Payment Gateway to Enable Businesses Accept Bitcoin – Goes Live With 118 Businesses and $1.3 Million in Transaction Volume 12719

Recently, blockchain payments startup Basqet announced the launch of its cryptocurrency payments gateway which will allow businesses to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as payment.

Basqet said it is launching a public beta and will be going live with 118 businesses already signed up to start accepting payments in Bitcoin and several other cryptocurrencies.

Prior to the launch of its beta launch, the team at Basqet also revealed that they had done about $1.3 million dollars in transactions with a handful of businesses.

According to Bunmi Eleshin, Senior Product Manager at Basqet “we are creating a missing link between people who hold cryptocurrency and businesses who want to accept crypto as a means of payment. And we are doing it without merchants having to experience a loss due to crypto’s price volatility”.

Since Bitcoin entered mainstream media there has been a lot of discussion about crypto being the evolution of money, and Basqet could take crypto adoption steps ahead as people will be able to shop and pay for services using crypto besides using it for speculation.

Although one of the biggest concerns around crypto payments is the rapid price fluctuation that crypto is known for. According to Basqet, they resolve this is by allowing merchants to accept crypto as payment and get settled in US dollars, crypto, and over 5 other local African currencies without experiencing any volatility from cryptocurrency. So when a merchant is selling a product for $20 they will always receive the equivalent value in the currency they choose regardless of crypto’s price volatility.

Cryptocurrency payment gateways like Basqet are similar to the likes of Stripe in the US as well as Flutterwave and Paystack in Africa but for crypto. They have the potential of enabling freelancers, business owners, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and fintech to accept different cryptos as donations, payments or deposits in over 120 countries. Also, they could help cut regular transaction fees by more than 60% with zero chargebacks.

The team at Basqet also stated that for its beta-launch merchants will be able to accept cryptos including; USDT, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin with several more to be added over the next few weeks.

Merchants that sign up for Basqet’s beta launch will have 3 ways to accept crypto; payment link, payment button, and Basqet API.

In its press release, Basqet mentioned that without a website businesses can use the payment link to accept crypto payment. Adding that it only takes 10 minutes for a business to sign up generate a payment link and send it via WhatsApp, Instagram or any other channel to their customer.

About Basqet

Basqet is a fintech that is revolutionizing payments using blockchain technology. They provide African businesses with a cryptocurrency payment gateway that enables them to accept cryptocurrency payments and get settled in US Dollars and their local currency.