On May 7, 2023, the Bitcoin network was plagued by 500,000 unconfirmed transactions, causing a major bottleneck in the system. However, the good news is that the congestion has now been eliminated, and the on-chain fees have been greatly reduced, currently falling below $5.

As of now, there are just over 300,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to be confirmed, and 185 blocks need to be mined to clear the pending transactions.

Just a few days ago, on May 8, the average transaction fee spiked to $31 per transfer. Yet as of today, the high priority deal is only $3.

British man Joseph James O’Connor pleaded guilty Tuesday in New York to hacking social media Twitter in 2020 to misrepresent Barack Obama, Joe Biden ), Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and others promoting a bitcoin scam scheme.

According to the indictment, O’Connor pleaded guilty to various cyber crimes, including exploiting social media accounts, online extortion and cyberstalking.

Additionally, O’Connor admitted he stole $794,012.64 from a Manhattan-based cryptocurrency company by exchanging SIM cards for some of its executives.

The man is due to be sentenced on June 23.

According to news on May 10, the total number of spot BTC trading pairs on cryptocurrency exchanges fell to 6.36 million BTC in April, a new low since 2019.

According to The Block data, the last low point of this indicator occurred in September 2019, when the total transaction volume of spot BTC trading pairs was 6.26 million BTC.

According to the analysis, the low volume of Bitcoin spot transactions indicates that the market is not liquid enough, and the price may change drastically.

According to data from Dune Analytics, the cumulative minting fee of Bitcoin NFT protocol Ordinals has exceeded 24 million US dollars.

At the time of writing this article reached $24,285,831 (863.98 BTC), and the total current inscription minting is 4,784,470.

According to official news, OKX Chief Innovation Officer Jason Lau tweeted that OKX attaches great importance to the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem and has supported the Bitcoin Lightning Network as early as two years ago. The original intention was to allow users to enjoy lower fees and faster speeds through the Lightning Network services.

It is reported that with the recent rise of the Ordinals protocol and the BRC-20 standard, there are more and more projects based on the Bitcoin network, which has led to a continuous increase in the transaction volume of the Bitcoin network, causing problems such as network congestion and rising transaction costs. However, due to OKX The first to deploy the Bitcoin Lightning Network has not been affected yet.

MicroStrategy, founded by Michael Saylor, has bought bitcoin every quarter since August 2020.

The company is the largest corporate holder of BTC, currently holding 140,000 BTC at an average purchase price of approximately $29,803.

Liechtenstein plans to accept BTC for government services, Liechtenstein Prime Minister Daniel Risch said in an interview that a bitcoin payment option is coming.

Bitcoin mining company Terewulf has announced a production and operations update for April 2023. As of April 30, 2023, hash rate capacity increased by more than 21% month-on-month to 4 EH/s.

Self-produced 239 bitcoins in April and 771 bitcoins so far in 2023. Fully powering its 50 MW stake in the Nautilus facility, the first bitcoin mining facility in the United States to be powered by 100% nuclear power.

The average cost of electricity per bitcoin produced in April was $76,000, with 34,500 miners deployed, 18,500 at the wholly-owned Lake Mariner facility in New York and 16,000 self-employed miners at the nuclear-powered Nautilus facility in Pennsylvania.

Completed construction of Building 2 of the Lake Mariner facility, which remains on track to bring an additional 50 MW of self-dug capacity online in the second quarter of 2023.

Cryptocurrency service provider Matrixport said in a research note on Thursday that bitcoin could rebound 20 percent to around $35,000-$36,000.

Bitcoin has been trading within a narrowing wedge that is about to be broken upward, the report said, adding that technically this could predict a higher move by an amount equal to when the wedge started to form , with a range of about 20%.

While the Fed raised interest rates by another 25 basis points yesterday, it is likely to be the last hike of the cycle. That could lead to another strong rally for the market.

2024 U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. condemned Biden’s proposed 30% bitcoin mining tax and echoed concerns about cryptocurrencies.

Kennedy tweeted: “Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and other crypto technologies are major innovation engines. The US government is wrong to hinder the industry and promote innovation elsewhere. Biden proposed a 30% tax on cryptocurrency mining.” Taxes are not a good idea. Energy use is an issue (albeit exaggerated), but bitcoin mining uses about as much energy as video games, and no one is calling for them to be banned. The environmental argument is a selective excuse, with to suppress anything that threatens elite power structures, such as bitcoin. Some advocate strict controls on cryptocurrencies to prevent them from being used by criminals. But it’s not just criminals who want privacy. So do dissidents and ordinary citizens. Government Harass enemies and suppress dissent by controlling bank accounts and payment platforms.”

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz said he is “very bullish on Bitcoin” and believes “the insights that led to Bitcoin’s birth are still remarkable.”

Speaking at an event organized by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, Cruz insisted that Bitcoin is “the alpha of crypto” because it was the first to emerge and “the most dominant.”

Meanwhile, Cruz explained why he and many others are drawn to Bitcoin. “Part of the appeal of bitcoin is that it can be a hedge against inflation, especially when there are irresponsible politicians in Washington spending like drunk sailors,” he said.

Cruz added that the trillions of dollars printed over the past two years have led to what he called “tremendous inflation.” According to him, since bitcoin is less “susceptible to government control,” it can serve as an “important check” against wasteful government spending.

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, said on Wednesday that Bitcoin’s movements are not reliable.

Gold is preferred over Bitcoin. I don’t understand why people prefer bitcoin over gold. If you look globally, gold is the third-largest reserve asset for central banks, behind the dollar and the euro.

Central banks are snapping up gold instead of bonds because it is timeless and universal. According to Ray Dalio, Bitcoin’s high volatility and risk limit the amount of investors holding it. Like I said, you have to be prepared for Bitcoin to crash, it could drop 80% or more… so I’m not very bullish on Bitcoin.

MicroStrategy (MSTR) is uniquely positioned among publicly traded companies to benefit from rising Bitcoin (BTC) prices, Berenberg said in a report on Thursday.

Berenberg has a Buy rating and $430 price target on the stock. MicroStrategy stock offers investors an “attractive way to gain exposure to bitcoin and navigate the digital asset space amid the ongoing regulatory crackdown, relative to other crypto tokens,” the report said.

Bitcoin has become a safe haven, and MicroStrategy stock could benefit greatly if investors increasingly turn to Bitcoin as an alternative currency amid macro-related concerns.

The fourth Bitcoin halving, scheduled for May 2024, could be a positive catalyst for the price of BTC and, in turn, MicroStrategy stock. As of press time, MSTR was down about 2 percent at $312 in premarket trading.

Block, the financial technology payment company owned by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, recently purchased a large number of bitcoin mining chips from Intel, accelerating its plans to enter the mining hardware market.

The acquisition will help it bring mining rigs to market as it focuses on developing its cutting-edge 3nm chips.

Since Intel announced in February 2022 that it would stop producing chips for bitcoin mining application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), it has set a production deadline of April 2024.

Block plans to finalize the design of its 5nm chip for bitcoin mining this quarter and use it as a basis for building machines.

The acquisition means the team can focus on 3nm designs. Block first-party products will launch early next year, according to Block hardware lead Thomas Templeton. When asked about the number of chips they buy, he said that’s more than enough to make up for the time it takes them to design and produce their own 3nm chips.

Bankrupt bitcoin mining firm Core Scientific says it has signed contracts with three companies to host nearly 18,000 bitcoin mining machines as it negotiates through Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Among them, Core Scientific will host 6,914 mining machines for Greenidge Generation Holdings (GREE), 10,000 for Ault Alliance (AULT), and 1,021 for LM Funding (LMFA).

Once fully installed in May, this will bring the total number of machines hosted by Core Scientific to approximately 70,000.

Data shows that the Bitcoin inscription token Ordi has broken through $1, temporarily reported at $1.2, an increase of 16.5% in 24 hours, and its current total market value has reached $25.2 million.

In addition, there are currently about 4,635 BRC-20 related tokens with a total market value of $46,071,391, and the current market value of Ordi accounts for more than 50% of the total BRC-20 market value.

It is reported that the BRC-20 protocol is written directly on the Bitcoin network, using Satoshi as the carrier, and using the JSON data of Ordinal Inscriptions to deploy, mint and transfer tokens.

Ordi is the first Bitcoin inscription token with a total supply of 21 million.

Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen an interesting phenomenon: the correlation between the performance of Bitcoin’s price and that of gold, the traditional safe haven for stable currencies, has increased, according to data from blockchain analytics firm Glassnode.

On a 30-day, 90-day and 365-day basis, the two assets exhibit a high degree of positive correlation that remained high during the recent U.S. banking crisis a few weeks ago.

In 2023, a total of 6.2 million BTC will return to profitability (32.3% of supply).

The official Cardano Foundation website has released its first annual report, which looks back at the blockchain’s achievements throughout 2022.

The report pointed out that since it mainly holds Bitcoin (worth $19 million) and ADA (worth $166 million), Cardano will not be directly affected by various risk events in the encryption industry throughout 2022.

The Cardano Foundation also disclosed other milestones, including: supporting the Vasil hard fork, signing cooperation agreements with the UNHCR and the University of Zurich, developing Kupo V2, expanding the Developer Portal, and more.

Robert Kiyosaki, author of the best-selling book “Rich Dad Poor Dad”, posted on social media, “Why did I choose Bitcoin? Years ago, I saw Bitcoin climb to $20,000 and then fall to zero. At that time, I thought Bitcoin Ruined.

But slowly watching Bitcoin soar to $6000, I bought a lot. Why? Because people support Bitcoin, not the Fed or the Biden administration.

Bitcoin doesn’t need their bailout because Bitcoin is people’s money. Bitcoin will reach $100,000. “

According to Coin ATM Radar, there are currently 355 crypto machines in Asia, accounting for 1% of the total number of crypto ATMs installed globally.

Since the beginning of 2023, Australia has gone deep into the installation spree of cryptocurrency ATMs, climbing from fifth to third place in the world in January alone, surpassing Asia in the total number of installed crypto ATMs.