The difficulty of Bitcoin mining has updated its maximum, US prosecutors have demanded 36 months in prison for Changpeng Zhao, Tether has announced its intention to block payments bypassing sanctions and other events of the past week.
Bitcoin price fell to $63,000
The first cryptocurrency started the week below $65,000. On Tuesday, April 23, digital gold soared to $67,000, but fell to $64,000 the very next day.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $63,600.
BTC/USDT hourly chart of Binance exchange. Data: TradingView.
Most of the top 10 digital assets by capitalization finished the week in the “red zone”. The exceptions were Ethereum (+5.1%) and BNB (+5.4%).
Data: CoinGecko.
The total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market is $2.5 trillion. Bitcoin dominance index – 54.1%.
Bitcoin mining difficulty reached new maximum after halving
As a result of the next recalculation, the difficulty of mining the first cryptocurrency increased by 1.99%. The indicator reached a record high of 88.1 T.
The average hashrate for the period since the previous value change was 726.3 EH/s.
According to Glassnode, the smoothed 7-day moving average peaked at 649.6 EH/s ahead of the April 20 halving. After the reduction in the reward for a found block, it slightly adjusted to 638 EH/s.
US prosecutors asked for 36 months in prison for Changpeng Zhao
Founder and former CEO of Binance Changpeng Zhao (CZ) must spend 36 months in prison after pleading guilty to violating anti-money laundering laws. This is stated in the petition of the US Attorney's Office.
Federal guidelines call for a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison in Zhao's case.. Prosecutors previously announced their intention to achieve a harsher sentence, with a maximum sentence of 10 years.
Experts discussed the possible verdict of the ex-CEO of Binance
CZ apologized for his “poor decisions” and took “full responsibility” for his actions in a letter to the judge.
“There is no excuse for my failure to establish the necessary compliance controls at Binance,” Zhao wrote to Judge Richard Jones.
He assured that this would be his “only encounter with criminal justice.”
In addition to Zhao's petition, the court received 161 letters asking for leniency from family members, friends and others.. Support also came from Binance co-founder and mother of his three children, He Yi.
“The main mistake is ignorance”. Yi He spoke out in defense of Changpeng Zhao
The entrepreneur's sister, Jessica Zhao, a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, noted that CZ made mistakes, but did not allow client funds to be abused, as happened at FTX.
What to discuss with friends?
The founder of Notcoin announced a new listing date. Telegram username purchased for $80,000 was presented to Pavel Durov. The meme Buy Bitcoin inscription sold for 16 BTC. An airdrop of two meme tokens paid for the pre-order of a Web3 smartphone from Solana.
Tether announced its intention to block payments bypassing sanctions
Tether will block wallets of organizations and individuals with USDT that are subject to US Treasury sanctions. In particular, any payments in their favor will be frozen.
A Tether representative emphasized that the company remains committed to stopping transactions on addresses included in the OFAC SDN list and strives to ensure that they are promptly blocked.
The statement comes after reports that Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA was using USDT to circumvent sanctions.
Jack Dorsey's Block has developed a chip for Bitcoin mining
Jack Dorsey's payment company Block has completed the development of a 3nm chip for mining the first cryptocurrency. In the fall, the company received the corresponding silicon wafers from a manufacturing partner.
Now the company has begun to create a full-fledged system for Bitcoin mining based on its own chip.
The team noted that as the program progressed, it spent a “significant amount of time” communicating with miners to identify technical issues they were facing.
“Based on this information and in accordance with our goal of supporting the decentralization of mining, we plan to offer both a separate mining chip and a complete system of our own design,” the developers emphasized.
The production of the devices will be carried out by an unnamed “well-capitalized supplier of mining equipment,” follows from the statement.
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Why aren't we growing? Experts explained post-halving dynamics
Journalists learned the start date of Bitcoin ETF trading in Hong Kong
Trading of the spot Bitcoin ETF launched by Bosera Capital and HashKey Capital on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange will start on April 30.
On April 15, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission approved applications by Boshi International, HashKey Capital, China Asset Management and Harvest Investment to launch spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs.
According to agency analyst Rebecca Sin, the inflow of funds into this product category could reach $1 billion within two years.
Recall that Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas said that a cryptocurrency ETF listing in Hong Kong will be “lucky” if they manage to raise a total of $500 million. The expert called Matrixport’s projected $25 billion “madness.”
What else to read?
This week ForkLog talked about what Proof-of-Personhood is and whether Bitcoin can protect wealth from depreciation.
“Science is always preceded by philosophy”. All Time Half guests talk about why the simulation hypothesis is good
Traditional digests collected the main events of the week in the fields of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
The most important news from crypto industry participants was collected in a separate digest.
Partnership with Messi and 25 million users – review of the Bitget exchange