#bitcoinregulations

Google, arguably the most important company in all of technology, has largely held the crypto movement at arms length. That changes today.

Theta Labs, a venture-backed blockchain company, has struck up a new partnership with Google Cloud, the rapidly-growing Alphabet subsidiary. Google Cloud will offer a new service allowing users to deploy and run nodes of Theta’s blockchain network. Perhaps more importantly, Google Cloud itself will operate a validator for Theta’s network — servicing all of Europe.

It’s a baby step for Google, but make no mistake about it: the company is now engaging in blockchain. “This is one of our first validators, but we have many crypto customers,” says Allen Day, Developer Advocate for Google. “We had already made Bitcoin, Ethereum and six other cryptocurrencies’ data available through our public dataset program. This is the next step.”

A validator is a foundation of a blockchain network, deciding if a transaction is legit and vouching for that transaction. Without it a decentralized network doesn’t work.

This is a game-changer for Theta Labs. The San Jose, California-based company hopes to relieve overburdened networks everywhere, applying blockchain technology to online video distribution.

With the near-term picture cloudy, some analysts are focusing on a longer-term trend that could be surprisingly bullish for bitcoin: the emergence of digital currencies issued by central banks.

It’s not an obvious investment thesis, since bitcoin was invented to be used in an electronic peer-to-peer payment system that would be free of government control and operate outside of the traditional banking system.

And most central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs for short, would, by their very nature, be issued and controlled by governments, and in many cases distributed through banks.

But Jack Purdy and Ryan Watkins of the research firm Messari wrote last week in a report that the “coming digitization of money,” including the launch of CBDCs, could provide a “secular tailwind” for bitcoin.

CBDCs have gained momentum over the past year, as countries consider whether to roll out digital versions of their currencies to keep up with Facebook’s proposed Libra and China’s forthcoming digital currency electronic payment, which is already in testing.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency investors have been waiting for an end to crypto winter since early 2018.

The bitcoin price has been trading at around half of its all-time highs of $20,000 per bitcoin for the last two years—but there are signs crypto winter is beginning to thaw.

Now, co-founder of social news aggregation site Reddit and early investor in major U.S. bitcoin and crypto exchange Coinbase, Alexis Ohanian, has said he sees the green shoots of a new bitcoin and “crypto spring”.

Despite a post-halving rise in bitcoin’s price Wednesday, the current value may not be enough to keep less-efficient miners operating, and that could shift market dynamics.

At press time, bitcoin (BTC) was trading up 2.3% over 24 hours at $9,106. The world’s first cryptocurrency is trading above its 10-day and 50-day moving averages, which is a bullish technical indicator, and has been on a steady uptrend since early trading May 13, 00:00 UTC.

The long-anticipated halving was, “a little uneventful,” said Jack Tan, founding partner at Taiwan-based crypto trading firm Kronos Research. But there has been one bright spot for traders: Bitcoin prices have been going up slowly but surely.

But market uncertainty lingers when it comes to cryptocurrency miners. The reward for miners to generate new bitcoin was cut because of the halving to 6.25 BTC, so the business of running machines to secure the network is much less profitable: “I think some of the miners might be in trouble. They just took a 50% pay cut overnight, with prices remaining where they are,” added Tan.

One mining metric that immediately changed after the halving was miner revenue from fees, which jumped from 4.6% right before the halving to 7% Wednesday, according to data provider Glassnode.

The association is also abandoning plans for Libra to take the distinctive open architecture of Bitcoin, one of the best-known cryptocurrencies, which has a so-called permissionless quality that allows anyone to build on it. Such a design had led to widespread concerns that terrorists and others could use Libra for underhanded reasons.

Libra will now be a closed system in which only partners with the approval of the association can build infrastructure, such as wallets, for the coins.

“We think of this network as evolving as a complement to traditional institutions,” said Christian Catalini, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the chief economist for Calibra, a Facebook subsidiary focused on development of the Libra project.

Bitcoin has been searching for direction this week—struggling to climb along with traditional markets after the historic coronavirus-induced crash earlier this month.

The bitcoin price, down around 25% over the last 30-day period, had recorded its best start to a new year since 2013 until the coronavirus crisis sparked global market turmoil.

However, with the long-rumored digital dollar appearing to take shape this week, bitcoin, as well as other digital assets, could be about to take a step toward mainstream adoption—and potentially see the kind of interest that pushed the bitcoin price to last year's highs.

Bitcoin (BTC) is gaining amid a sell-off in fiat currencies and could rise further if the U.S. stock markets track European equities higher.

Technical charts indicate scope for a rise to key resistance at $5,926.

A move higher would confirm a breakout on the hourly chart and may propel prices toward $6,400.

Bitcoin is on the rise Thursday morning (UTC), showing resilience in the face of a global dash for dollars seen in the foreign exchange markets.

At time of writing, the cryptocurrency is trading near $5,670, representing a 9.4 percent gain on a 24-hour basis. Bitcoin found bids near $5,260 during the Asian trading hours and has been climbing since, according to CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index.

While bitcoin is flashing green against the U.S. dollar, most fiat currencies are currently trading in the red. For example, the British pound-to-dollar exchange rate is hovering near 1.1555, the lowest level since 1980. The currency pair has dropped by nearly 8 percent this week.

The Australian dollar fell to a 20-year low of 55 U.S. cents early on Thursday and is currently reporting a 0.6 percent drop on the day.

The greenback has gained in the past six trading days against all major currencies, as noted by macro analyst Holger Zschaepitz.

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-sees-9-gain-as-turmoil-hits-the-forex-markets

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