Upcoming Taproot and Schnorr signatures, attack on Bitcoin Gold and other key events of the week

In the traditional Sunday digest, we talk about the main events of the first week of January — the approach ofTaproot and Schnorr signatures, Bitcoin Gold attack and cryptocurrency speculations by Elon Musk.

Decreased activity

During the week, the price of bitcoin was mainly in the lateral movement - there were no sharp jumps, as well as the retest of the recently reached $ 9,000 mark.

TradingView Bitstamp BTC / USD hourly chart

According to observations by Arcane Research analysts, volumestrading in the BTC / USD pair on Bitwise 10 exchanges is falling, this trend has been going on since November last year. However, there is a tendency to increase the volatility of the price of bitcoin.

According to the observations of technical analysts at CoinDesk Markets,the weekly chart is still encouraging, however, the lower timeframes abound with bearish signals. Key support is at around $ 7,700 - a fall in prices below this level will dispel hopes for a rally in bitcoin.

The "magnificent ten" of the most capitalized coins according to the results of the week looks like this:

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The total cryptocurrency market capitalization is $ 233 billion, the BTC dominance index is 66%.

Taproot and Schnorr signatures are already really close

Schnorr / Taproot soft forks are officially issued as proposals for improving bitcoin - BIP-340, BIP-341 and BIP-342.

According to Bitcoin Core developer Peter Velle,proposals can be considered final, a lot of work has been done to study and improve them. The last word is left to the wider community of developers, who have to decide whether they will be accepted and implemented in the Bitcoin code base.

Taproot and Schnorr signatures promise to be one ofthe most important updates in the history of the first cryptocurrency. In addition to increasing scalability and privacy, they are also focused on expanding network functionality and improving coin interchangeability.

Another attack on Bitcoin Gold

The other day, the network of Bitcoin Gold, one of the many forks of the first cryptocurrency, was attacked by 51%.

On January 23 and 24, the attacker withdrew 1900 BTG and 5176 BTC from the Binance exchange (more than $ 80,000 at the current exchange rate).

MIT Bitcoin Club President James Lovejoynoted that there were two deep reorganizations of the Bitcoin Gold blockchain. An attacker credited funds to the Binance exchange wallet and was able to successfully withdraw them after 12 transaction confirmations.

“The reorganization of 14 or 15 blocks allowed to circumventBinance retention period. After that, Binance increased the number of confirmations for BTG withdrawal to twenty. Based on the market prices of Nicehash for the Zhash algorithm, we calculated that the cost of each reorganization is about 0.2 BTC (~ $ 1,700). ”- wrote the expert.

He added that even “dozens of block confirmations are not enough to make the costs of such an attack excessively high” for the attacker.

It is worth noting that earlier Bitcoin Gold was already attacked by 51% - in May 2018, the attacker managed to get 388 thousand BTG coins (about $ 18 million at the exchange rate at that time).

Adventures of Vinnik in France

On December 20, 2019, the head of the Ministry of Justice of Greece Kostas Tsiaras signed a decision on the extradition of Alexander Vinnik to France, and then to the United States and Russia.

A few days ago, a Russian was taken fromhospitals in Greece and taken to an unknown destination. This happened immediately after the publication of the decision of the highest administrative court of Greece on the rejection of the lawyer's complaint about the extradition of Vinnik to France and the United States.

It soon became clear that Vinnik was extradited to France. He was taken to the Hotel Dieu hospital in Paris, where he was interrogated at night.

On Tuesday, January 28, the French judge for freedoms and imprisonment will hold a hearing to determine the conditions for the pre-trial detention of the Russian.

According to lawyer Timofey Musatov, Vinnikmay be detained if they are charged with specific crimes. Otherwise, the Russians should be released, as the laws of the European Union provide for a maximum period of detention without charge, which has already expired during the stay of the Russian in a Greek prison.

Musatov noted that due to the poor physical condition of Vinnik, the hearing could take place right in the hospital.

Elon Musk and Bitcoin

The other day, the head of Tesla and SpaceX, Ilon Musk, discussed whether cryptocurrencies can compete with fiat money.

The entrepreneur emphasized that he was neither a supporter nor an opponent of digital assets, although the white paper of bitcoin seemed to him “quite thought out”.

According to him, cryptocurrencies are now a kind ofa bridge that helps legalize illegal transactions. Musk also believes that it was the difficulties in using cash that allowed digital assets to find their niche in the economy, but their role is secondary:

“Cash is used less often today,somewhere you can’t pay at all. In such cases, cryptocurrencies can come in for a replacement, but I don’t see how they can become the primary database. ”

Tether, Gold and Pornhub

Pornhub Added Stablecoin Tether(USDT) as a payment option through a partnership with TRON. To make a payment using “stable coins”, the service recommends using the TRONLink wallet.

A new payment option appeared two months laterafter PayPal has suspended payments to actresses of the world famous porn site. Tron CEO Justin Sun called Pornhub's decision to support the USDT “a brilliant way to support victims of centralized platforms.”

In turn, Tether, in turn, is not idle either - on Thursday, January 23, the company announced the launch of a new token provided with gold.

According to a press release, Tether Gold (XAUT)"Represents ownership of one troy ounce of physical gold in a particular bullion." Stablecoin will be available on the Ethereum (ERC-20 protocol) and Tron (TRC20) blockchains.

Gold security of the token will be in the Swiss vault. Tether said they have “direct control over the physical storage of gold” and do not charge for it.

Peter Schiff vs Bitcoin Wallet

The epic with a bitcoin wallet ended with the recognition of Peter Schiff, a gold supporter, that he simply confused the pin code with the password and therefore could not get into his account.

Many Twitter commentators were unpleasantly surprised that Schiff severely criticized Bitcoin, without even studying elementary information about it, as well as elementary rules for working with wallets.

However, the supporter of gold remained in his opinion, saying the following:

“The most important thing about bitcoin is that it is not money. He will not succeed as a medium of exchange or preservation of value. This case demonstrates how easy it is to lose bitcoin if you don’t understand how wallets work. ”

The head of the Binance exchange, Changpen Zhao, who watched Twitter battles, expressed the opinion that Schiff unknowingly popularizes cryptocurrencies with his criticism.

“I think Peter is a great promoter of bitcoin. He probably doesn’t even realize, given his illogical claims that most people will do exactly the opposite. We need more such “negative” statements, ”Zhao shared his opinion.