The top daily news from the cryptocurrency and blockchain space:

  • Blockchain Capital’s Spencer Bogart comments on bitcoin price, Facebook’s Libra.
  • Bitcoin hash rate and mining difficulty hit new all-time highs.
  • BitMEX annual trading volumes hit $1 trillion.

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) are trading at $11,078.9 (-7.4%) and $297.4 (-6.3%), respectively. As for the MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index, it is currently tracking at 4,560.8 (-0.8%).

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Blockchain Capital’s Spencer Bogart on Bitcoin, Facebook’ Libra

Spencer Bogart, the general partner of Blockchain Capital – a top-tier venture capital company within the crypto and blockchain space – appeared on Bloomberg Technology to discuss with host Emily Chang bitcoin’s latest price rally and Facebook’s plan to launch a cryptocurrency.

In an attempt to provide some rationale for bitcoin’s volatile week, Bogart pointed out it “is natural for any kind of asset that has fixed supply but fluctuating demand, particularly one like bitcoin that’s early on in its life cycle.”

Asked by Chang about Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency announcement and whether that has affected the price of bitcoin, Bogart shared his belief that it had probably been the “biggest driver just in the past few weeks.”

He noted, however, that the “backdrop of global monetary policy” and an increasing pool of negative-yielding government bonds are important factors when considering possible factors underlying bitcoin’s recent price rally. “Capital is going to flow into other assets instead of taking a guaranteed loss. We’ve seen this across the risk spectrum,” Bogart told Chang.

Bitcoin Hash Rate, Mining Difficulty Hits All-Time Highs

The hash rate of Bitcoin – measured as the estimated number of tera hashes per second (i.e., trillions of hashes per second) the Bitcoin network is performing – spiked to new record highs over the weekend to 68,631,992 tera hashes per second (TH/s), according to data retrieved from Blockchain.com.

Indicative of an increasingly secure Bitcoin network, the Bitcoin hash rate has clocked new all-time highs on four separate occasions since June 14, 2019. Notably, when the price of bitcoin was at an all-time high on December 17, 2017, the hash rate of the Bitcoin network was 44,909,481 TH/s; 65.4 percent of the hash rate at the time of writing.

Similarly, on Friday, Bitcoin mining difficulty – a relative measure of how difficult it is to find a new block (adjusted periodically as a function of how much hash power has been deployed by the network of Bitcoin miners) – reached a new all-time high of more than 7.93 trillion.

BitMEX Annual Trading Volumes Reach $1 Trillion

The Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange (BitMEX), the world’s leading cryptoasset derivatives exchange, has recorded over $1 trillion in trading volumes over the past 12 months, according to chief executive Arthur Hayes.

BitMEX has long enjoyed majority ownership of the cryptoasset derivatives trading sector. It is, though, soon to become a lot more competitive, with popular spot exchanges Bitfinex and Binance expected to soon fully launch their respective cryptoasset margin trading solutions.