Miner outflows of bitcoin have dropped to decade lows, with analysts suggesting a hoarding mentality is partly responsible.

The seven-day average of the total amount of bitcoin transferred out of miners' addresses declined to 987 on Thursday, hitting the lowest level since Feb. 3, 2010, according to data source Glassnode. The previous decade low of 988 was registered on May 23.

glassnode-studio_bitcoin-miners-outflow-volume-7-d-moving-average
Source: Glassnode
The number of coins being sent by miners to exchanges is also at its lowest point in over a year, as noted by Glassnode in its weekly report.

"It is a sign of efficient miners continuing to hoard (only selling a proportion of BTC)," said Asim Ahmad, co-chief investment officer at London-based Eterna Capital.

The increase in miner holding does not necessarily have long-term bullish implications for the cryptocurrency's price. Miners tend to operate mainly on cash and liquidate their holdings almost on a daily basis to fund operations.

As such, miner hoarding could be termed as temporary deferral of BTC sales, possibly due to fears that the market lacks the strength to absorb the regular amount of supply. Essentially, they may be waiting for the market to show strength and prices to rise before realizing their profits.

The market, therefore, could face an above-normal miner supply during the next meaningful price rise. That, in turn, could put the brakes on a price rally.

Hoarding aside, the other main reason for the decline in outflows is the reduction in bitcoin being mined since May's reward halving, said Ahmad.

Indeed, transfer volume from miner addresses fell from 2,334 BTC to 1,034 BTC in the nine days following the May 11 reward halving, which reduced the per block emission by 50% to 6.25 BTC.

That sharp decline in profitability forced out less inefficient miners, as evidenced by a drop in the seven-day average of the hash rate – the total computing power dedicated to mining blocks on the blockchain. That fell from 120 tera hashes per second (TH/s) to 90 TH/s in the two weeks following halving (though it's since climbed as more efficient machines were switched on).

Forced out miners, however, may return to bitcoin's blockchain if prices rise sharply, making older hardware once again profitable.

Bitcoin is currently trading largely unchanged on the day near $9,370, according to CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index.

The cryptocurrency has been largely restricted to a narrow range of $9,000 to $10,000 since mid May. The direction in which the range is breached will likely set the tone for the next big move. 

Challenger bank startup Revolut has amended its terms and conditions, giving users 'beneficial rights' to digital currency bought through their platform.

The change in terms follows the U.K. bank allowing all customers access to digital currency trading for the first time, having previously been reserved to its Metal and Premium users.

While users will not be able to carry out the transactions themselves or send funds to an address other than one held by another Revolut customer, the change in terms means they will have rights to the financial value of the digital currency bought through the platform.

The distinction gives users legal title to their digital currency on the platform for the first time, giving them the freedom to direct what happens to their money.

"You will own the rights to the financial value of any cryptocurrency we buy for you. We will hold it on your behalf and you will have a right (called a 'beneficial right') to it. This means you can tell us when to sell or transfer it (within the limits of these terms and conditions). You have complete control of your cryptocurrencies, and we will only act upon instructions you give us. You will not be able to carry out transactions yourself."

The title to the digital currency is limited by the terms, and users are only able to transfer to other Revolut users through the app. This means users can pass title to buyers within the Revolut ecosystem, but are unable to move the digital currency to wallets not controlled by the bank.

Furthermore, the terms mean it is no longer possible to pay in crypto via a Revolut card. Those holding only digital currency balances will see card payments fail if there is insufficient fiat on account to cover the transaction.

The development comes as Revolut has launched its app in the U.S., as it aims to expand on its global user base. 

A South Korean university has announced that it's building a blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) campus in the city of Daegu. The campus will take a year to construct, with admission set to begin in 2021.

Suseong University partnered on the initiative with the Korea Artificial Intelligence Association (KORAIA). In an announcement on local outlet Money Today, the university revealed that the campus will also focus on other emerging technologies such as big data and cloud computing.

A number of technology companies based in Daegu have already signed up to be part of the project. They will provide training to the students, as well as practical experience. They include Wooshin Co. Ltd, an AI company based in Daegu.

The COVID-19 crisis has created a need for more robust systems, and combining blockchain with AI is the best way to respond to this need, according to Kim Kun-woo, the university's Planning and Coordination Division director.

Kun-woo further revealed that the university intends on giving students at the campus firsthand experience in the blockchain and AI industries by pairing them up with experts in these fields.

South Korea has been a global hub for blockchain technology, with the government playing a key role in the industry's development. As CoinGeek reported recently, the country launched a fintech sandbox that has promoted the growth of several blockchain startups. In its latest report, the Financial Services Commission revealed that the sandbox has attracted $111 million in the last year and created 380 jobs.

Elsewhere, the country's central bank published a report that touted the use of blockchain-based digital currencies. The Bank of Korea pointed to the decline of cash use and the advancement of digital payment technologies as key reasons why central banks are increasingly developing CBDCs. The report further claimed that several central banks have developed IT systems that rely on DLT to record digital currency transactions.

The instability of the rupee combined with high remittance fees is driving digital currency adoption in India, according to a new report.

The report from exchange OKEx in partnership with Coinpaprika found an increasing share of global digital currency business in India, projecting significant growth relative to other countries over the coming two years.

The problem of remittance fees is particularly acute in the country, with 17 million Indian employees working overseas and remitting money home. Of the $80 billion remitted from overseas workers in 2018, some $5.67 billion in fees were incurred.

According to the report, increasing liberalization of digital currency rules in India could set the country on a similar path to Mexico, where digital exchange Bitso has grown to account for 2% of U.S.-Mexico remittance.

The growth in digital currency uptake has accelerated since the Supreme Court ruled against the Reserve Bank of India's ban on banks serving crypto businesses. OKEx has reported a 545.56% increase in traffic from India, with sign-ups during the first quarter of the year up 4,100%.

The shift to crypto also coincides with instability in the rupee, which has lost 7% of its value against the dollar since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis.

Complex rules for exchanging foreign currency in India have made it difficult for those looking to transfer rupees into more stable fiat currencies, which the report said had also been a factor in driving more people to turn to digital currencies.

While the report found digital currency was currently being used as a vehicle for ultimately transferring funds to alternative fiat currencies, it suggests more Indians could turn to digital currency directly as the market continues to mature.

The move follows similar trends seen in other countries with unstable fiat currencies, and from those with large overseas remittance industries.

Happy Pizza Day! And this year, please make mine extra spicy. Yes, it's May 22 again, the day all Bitcoiners celebrate by ordering a pizza. Any pizza is good, but to make it special you'll need to buy it with Bitcoin—don't make the mistake of using BTC these days though, because at the time of writing the average transaction fee on the BTC network is US$6.28.

What is Pizza Day and why is it significant?
Today is actually the 10th anniversary of Bitcoin Pizza Day. It's significant because it marks the first (or at least, the first documented) purchase of real-world goods with Bitcoin. Before then, mining and transacting with Bitcoin was largely a hobbyist pursuit, so the purchase proved that Bitcoin could have a real-world dollar value. This in turn sent a price signal to the nascent "market" for Bitcoin, and became the first benchmark for BTC value. The rest, as they say, is history.

On May 18, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz of Jacksonville, Florida, posted on the Bitcoin Talk forums:
"I'll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.. like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day. I like having left over pizza to nibble on later. You can make the pizza yourself and bring it to my house or order it for me from a delivery place, but what I'm aiming for is getting food delivered in exchange for bitcoins where I don't have to order or prepare it myself, kind of like ordering a 'breakfast platter' at a hotel or something, they just bring you something to eat and you're happy!"

It took a few days to finally get a taker—user "jercos" (Jeremy Sturdivant) ordered two large pizzas from Papa John's for delivery to Hanyecz's home, paid in USD and collected the 10,000 BTC. The pizzas themselves cost US$41.

You can see photos of the now-famous Bitcoin pizzas here.
Technically, Hanyecz didn't buy the pizzas directly for Bitcoin so you could say the price included Sturdivant's service fee. Since the Bitcoin price in May 2010 was officially $0, he did take on a $41 risk.

As we now know, that risk paid off—the current market value of BTC is $9053, meaning either owner of the 10,000 coins would now have US$90,530,000. If BTC's all-time-high price stands at $19,891 then 10,000 coins would've been worth $198,910,000. Had they kept those coins in time for the two forks that shifted Bitcoin protocol development to BCH and finally to Bitcoin SV (BSV), it would be millions more.

Only BSV now is Bitcoin according to the Satoshi Nakamoto whitepaper and the original protocol, and 10,000 BSV is currently US$1,915,900.

Million-dollar pizzas, but value is priceless
Yes, that's an expensive pair of pizzas (for pedantic reasons, remember it was two large pizzas instead of the single "198 million dollar pizza" often mentioned in the media). Naturally, Hanyecz often finds himself in demand for a quote on whether he regrets his purchase. He's on the record as saying he doesn't at all, since his move kickstarted the Bitcoin economy. Had he not sent those 10,000 coins, and had no-one else taken the plunge either, Bitcoin's value could still be $0 today.

It's a sign that, unless people are willing to take risks and do something to give Bitcoin value, it doesn't have any. What if Hanyecz had abided by BTC's "HODL" mentality, or cared about all the people who called him crazy over the years, reminding him of his (theoretically) lost millions?

Most people who've been in the Bitcoin community for many years have "Bitcoin Pizza" stories of their own to tell. This writer likes to show off his "thousand dollar" Bitcoin keychain; everyone hates to be reminded of how much money they'd have now if they'd never spent those coins.

But again, if no one had ever spent Bitcoin then the value of Bitcoin would be $0. Bitcoin only has value if it's used in the real world. And thanks to the people who invested time, effort and money building user-friendly services so more people could use Bitcoin, that value has increased even more over time.

Think about all that next time you hear someone say "HODL" (ie: save your Bitcoins, don't spend them). HODLing creates no value whatsoever. BTC wouldn't even have speculative-gambling value if no-one sold them, and that's about the only utility BTC has nowadays. If you know any committed BTC HODLers, remind them how much that $6.28 transaction fee they just paid could be worth at some random point in the future. That's extra spicy.

BSV, on the other hand, recognizes real-world usage as the main value driver and its people build services that aim to solve real-world problems. The large-volume, low-fee model is creating a global immutable ledger for enterprises, and yet remains cheap enough to send individual transactions for cents, or much less.

But enough of that—Happy Pizza Day once again, and enjoy the food!

Steem is going to freeze roughly $5 million in Steem tokens that belong to supporters of Hive.IO, a hard forked version of the Steem blockchain. The battle between Justin Sun's Steem and Hive has been going on for more than three months now, and the trouble began when Justin Sun acquired Steemit.

Sun purchased Steemit, the blockchain-based blogging and social media website that rewards its users in Steem for publishing and curating content, on February 14. As part of his purchase, Sun became entitled to millions of pre-mined tokens (called the founder's reward) that belonged to former Steemit owner Ned Scott.

However, the Steem community viewed Sun's acquisition as problematic. Steem is a delegated Proof-of-Stake blockchain that is governed by the community and the community's votes—the more Steem tokens a user holds, the more voting power they have. Sun's Steem inheritance represented about 20% of the total supply of tokens, which made him one of the most powerful voters.

Sun's acquisition of Steemit will be a precedent that showcases the problems that can arise from Delegated Proof-of-Stake networks–problems that Ethereum is bound to run into when it switches from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) in the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade.

PoS networks can quickly turn into an oligarchy because token distributes are rarely, evenly distributed. As a result, on Proof-of-Stake network, the richest users on the network have the lion's share of power when it comes to decision making or mining new blocks—which extends the gap between the rich and the poor on the network. Proof-of-Work networks eliminate these problems because competition between miners is fierce. In addition, the gap between those who frequently mine blocks and those who don't can close very quickly in a PoW system. As Eli Afram says in his latest article, " While the majority staker inevitably grows to become a bigger majority staker in a PoS systems, it is not so in a PoW world. The competition among POW miners is fierce… a newcomer with a great new invention in ASIC mining could perhaps take the lead…A society that rewards competitiveness, risk, and investment is far superior to a society that rewards oligarchy and the descent into the hands of another."

The Steem community feared that Sun's acquisition threatened the decentralization of the blockchain because it put too much power into the hands of Sun. To solve this problem, the Steem community created a community proposal that suggested the Steem blockchain soft fork in a way that would prevent Sun from being able to access and vote with the pre-mined tokens he inherited. The community voted in favor of this proposal—which only made matters worse.

Justin Sun regains control
Once the community voted to soft-fork away from Sun controlling the pre-mined tokens, a proposal was created on Justin's behalf that would allow him to regain control of the pre-mined tokens if it was passed.

Sun enlisted the help of three digital currency exchanges—Binance, Huobi and Poloniex—and had them vote in the proposal by (illicitly?) pooling together the Steem tokens that were held on their exchanges by their users, and putting them towards the proposal to put Sun back in control of the pre-mined tokens. With the help of the three cryptocurrency exchanges, the proposal passed.

Hardfork to Hive
To combat Sun regaining control of the pre-mined tokens, Steem supporters decided to hard fork the Steem blockchain and call it Hive, a blockchain where everyone was airdropped Hive tokens in a 1:1 ratio to the Steem tokens they held—except for the founder's reward. On Hive, Justin Sun is not a central source of power that can sway community voting decisions.

Where we are today
The Hive blockchain has persisted without Sun or individuals that support the Sun's vision for the Steem blockchain. But in what seems to be a move to get back at those who support the Hive blockchain, a Steem hard fork scheduled for May 20 freezes roughly $5 million of STEEM that belongs to Hive supporters and even calls the users whose funds will be frozen out by name.

It is even rumored that Justin Sun has gotten law enforcement involved to put an end to the Hive blockchain, a chain he said was illegally created and is the work of hackers. 

ABTCoin, a digital currency startup that was found guilty of violating federal securities laws, has just told New York federal judge Vernon S. Broderick that they cannot pay the $250,000 settlement that they agreed to pay plaintiffs.

$20 million ICO but financially struggling
On May 12, ABTCoins lawyers from Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt LLC wrote a letter to U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick saying the company was not able to pay the settlement cost that they proposed "due to a change in circumstances." The lawyers also added that ABTCoin was not able to cover their legal costs, and therefore, Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt LLC lawyers were requesting to withdraw from the case.

This news comes as a surprise considering that ABTCoin raised more than $20 million in its 2017 initial coin offering (ICO). Before hosting a token sale, ABTCoin told potential investors that it was going to use the funds that they raise to create "the fastest blockchain in the world." However, upon release, the ABTCoin blockchain was not able to accomplish the technological achievements they had marketed. In addition, the ABT blockchain did not see very much user adoption and decreased in value by 85% by March 2018.

The lawsuit
After experiencing ABTCoin's technological shortcomings, investors in the project took action against the company.

Raymond Balestra, the lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit, sued ABTCoin, claiming that they had conducted an unregistered securities sale in 2017. ABTCoin attempted to have the case dismissed, but in March 2019, Judge Broderick rejected ABTCoin's dismissal bid, saying that the plaintiffs had adequately shown that ABTCoin had violated federal securities laws.

ABTCoin may have done this because they are making a legal chess-move, or maybe ABTCoin is out of money. It looks like the ABTCoin case is coming to a close—but backtracking on the settlement that they proposed themselves was unexpected.