No CommentsAlthough many expected many Bitcoin miners to drop out following the recent Halving’s reduction of their profits, in reality, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty spiked by nearly 15% recently. Difficulty is a measure of how much hashpower is dedicated to Bitcoin. This is the biggest Difficulty increase in over 2 years.
Nomura, the nearly 100-year-old Japanese bank and financial services firm which is one of the world’s largest investment banks, announced a Bitcoin custody service for institutional investors. Nomura is partnered with Ledger and CoinShares to provide this service, dubbed “Komainu,” meaning “guardian lion.” Bitcoin and Ethereum custody is available and support for other major cryptos is forthcoming.
Thousands of bank accounts owned by crypto traders have been locked down by Chinese police. The move is explained as a crime sweep and accounts will apparently be restored if no evidence of wrongdoing is discovered.
An alleged Bitcoin scam is now targeting residents of Canada. Criminals impersonate government officials and call unsuspecting residents to tell them to deposit money into a “bitcoin machine” to sort out pending fraud allegations against them. There is no circumstance where police will contact individuals requesting Bitcoin.
The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, highlighted the responsibility that exchanges carry toward their users in relation to anti-addiction notices. This came shortly after a 20-year old tragically took his own life after losing $730,000 investing on Robinhood.
Finally, we want to thank you for helping us reach 100,000 subscribers on our YouTube channel. In order to say thanks we’re holding a massive giveaway of TREZOR hardware wallets. Make sure to check out the link in the description for all of the details.
Before we conclude, this week’s “Bitcoin quick question” is what is a bitcoin hash?
To hash means to convert any string of letters and/or numbers, in any length, into an encrypted output with a fixed length using a sophisticated computer algorithm.
Hashing only works one way.
We can easily take any sentence, or a bitcoin private key, and hash it into a fixed-length text.
However, if we wish to guess what the text was before being hashed, it would be almost impossible.
For example, I can hash the word “99bitcoins” using Bitcoin’s hashing algorithm and receive the following output <you can also try it live here: 0aa51a8507f5ca7f0f46ce7ab1c6d4cfc785b7ef19b6cc804371e1cc02221ea5>
However if I only add the number “1” at the end of the word, it will change entirely, to this <display in the video: 99bitcoins 0aa51a8507f5ca7f0f46ce7ab1c6d4cfc785b7ef19b6cc804371e1cc02221ea5>
The hashing process is the backbone of the bitcoin network.
It is a crucial part of wallet creation, private key generation, and the bitcoin mining process.
Thanks to bitcoin hashes, network participants are able to verify the proof-of-work process conducted by the miners. Therefore, it helps ensure that the blockchain remains immutable and compliant with the consensus rules, and that no double-spending takes place. If you want to learn more about Bitcoin hash, visit the link in the description.
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That’s what’s happened this week in Bitcoin. See you next week.
