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  MIMESIS CAPITAL: INSIDE THE EVENT HORIZON, REPORT #16 BITCOIN VERSUS ETHEREUM AND OTHER ALTS It’s been “alt season” for the past couple months. Bitcoin has remained situated around $50,000 while Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and Ethereum are soaring. While short-sighted gamblers like to make bets on the next big dog meme coin, it’s important to review the basics of why bitcoin has accrued value and compare bitcoin to other tokens. Bitcoin is the best monetary good. Why? It has specific credible properties: scarce, durable, portable, transactable and so on. From these properties, we can derive two unique characteristics: No counterparty risk No dilution risk These two characteristics can only be maintained by having the ability to hold your own private keys and run your own full node. No other coin or token can even compete with bitcoin on these properties and characteristics. Therefore, no other coin or token can compete with bitcoin as being the best monetary good. Like the invention of t...

  THE PROBLEM Enemies with unlimited cash (The Federal Reserve Board or the International Monetary Fund, for example), can suppress the price of bitcoin; here, I demonstrate why their suppression can have only temporary effects. Exactly what price suppression can achieve, long term, is debatable and not the topic of this article. I will just explain how price suppression can be achieved in the short term, and why the strategy won’t work in the long term. FUTURES MARKETS Price manipulation can be accomplished through the cash-settled futures market. Here’s how: Imagine you have 1 bitcoin and wish to bet on its future price. Suppose the spot price is currently $50,000. You write a contract that in one year (you can choose other time periods, but let’s go with one year for simplicity), you will sell 1 bitcoin at $50,000 (you can actually set any price). How much is this contract worth? Well, first consider what are the advantages to the person who buys the contract: They can refrain f...

  The world is being presented with a massive opportunity by way of China as they seem adamant about actually banning Bitcoin activity within their borders. As Blake Masters points out, if the US government was forward thinking, they would take the exact opposite approach and welcome Bitcoin with open arms, hold some in reserves, and encourage US citizens to build businesses and create services that increase Bitcoin's utility. While I'm not holding my breath and expecting the US government to do any of this, I am very bullish on individual Americans seizing the opportunity without waiting for permission. In fact, I can confirm that this is already happening in the mining industry where entrepreneurs are moving at a rapid pace to deploy more hashrate on American soil while getting the energy industry bought in. Regardless of whether or not the federal government gets exposure to bitcoin, the number of American citizens and businesses who hold bitcoin on their balance sheets is o...

  Digital currency trading has exploded on eToro, an online trading and investing community. The platform, which currently supports bitcoin and ether trading, has reported significant increase in both the number of users trading digital currencies and the volume of digital currencies traded on the platform. Over the last 12 months, eToro has seen a 4x growth in traders accessing the digital currency market. Volume of bitcoin and ether traded has skyrocketed 4,500 percent. Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst at eToro, told Bitcoin Magazine that as digital currencies are becoming increasingly mainstream, the company expects a significant pickup in trading and would consider introducing new digital currencies on eToro, “though nothing is currently set in stone.” “We are constantly reviewing our offer for traders and responding to demand on the platform,” he said. For Greenspan, the rapid growth in the adoption and price of digital currencies “only marks the first steps on the long j...

  Earlier this week, Wasabi Wallet creator zkSNACKs and Canadian bitcoin exchange Bull Bitcoin announced they would be donating a no-strings-attached grant toward Bitcoin Knots development. The two Bitcoin-focused companies split a 0.86 BTC (or about $40,000, at the time of this writing) contribution in support of the development of Bitcoin Knots, a node and wallet software that can serve as an alternative to Bitcoin Core. This grant is a great example of Bitcoin-focused companies investing in projects that advance the ecosystem, and ultimately their own best interests, through development grants. Both zkSNACKs and Bull Bitcoin have built businesses that rely on Bitcoin Knots and it is important that they support the development of that underlying technology. “Leading by example is the motivation behind our contribution and we want to make sure that people see our support for the development of open-source software in the Bitcoin ecosystem and are inspired to follow suit,” Daniel B...

  Bitcoin miner Bitfarms has announced updates on its mining operations, including production and energy mix usage, as well as the company's HODL strategy for bitcoin. The company has mined around 13 BTC per day with 99% clean energy. Bitfarms mined 391 new bitcoin during July 2021, the company's most significant production rate in the year and approximately 96% more than its mining production in January 2021. The miner estimates it is mining between 12.5 and 13.5 BTC per day. In the first seven months of 2021, the company has mined an aggregated total of 1,748 bitcoin. Bitfarms also shared that it has deposited 1,678 BTC into custody through August 1, 2021, a figure that represents around 96% of the firm's bitcoin production during this year. Based on the monthly closing price of July, the company has put $69.8 million in bitcoin on its balance sheet. The recent Bitcoin crackdowns in China have helped Bitfarms increase its daily mining production, as well as its overall ma...

  Before Bitcoin was a movement, it was a digital currency. While the store-of-value aspect of Bitcoin gets highlighted often, the permissionless payments side often doesn’t receive the attention it deserves. In 2012, Jon Holmquist embraced the Black Friday holiday in order to help Bitcoiners showcase the advantages of their favorite technology, launching BitcoinBlackFriday.com and hacking a mainstream cultural moment into a tool for Bitcoin adoption. In years past, thousands of merchants have participated in Bitcoin Black Friday, offering special discounts for those willing to pay in BTC. P2P marketplaces have facilitated bitcoin discounts on normal purchases and BTC payment processors have directed customers to massive directories of bitcoin-friendly deals. In 2013, the holiday became an opportunity to help children affected by a major typhoon in the Philippines. That same year, BitPay announced that it had processed a record-breaking 55,288 bitcoin merchant transactions in Novem...