Arijit Sarkar
Ever since early Bitcoin (BTC) investors woke up millionaires as the ecosystem gained tremendous popularity alongside the mainstreaming of the internet, investors across the globe have been in the rush to accumulate as many of the 21 million BTC — one Satoshi at a time.
With BTC recently trading at the $20,000 range for the first time since 2020, small-time investors found a small window of opportunity to achieve their dream of owning at least 1 BTC. On June 20, Cointelegraph reported that the number of Bitcoin wallet addresses containing one BTC or more increased by 13,091 in just 7 days.
While the total number of addresses holding 1 BTC saw an immediate reduction in days to come, the crypto community on Reddit continues to welcome new crypto investors that hodled their way into becoming a wholecoiner.
Redditor arbalest_22, who shared the above screenshot, revealed that it took him around $35k in total to accumulate 1 BTC over several months since February 14, 2021. Showing further support for the Bitcoin ecosystem, the Redditor aims to continue procuring Satoshis or sats until he accumulates over 2 BTC.
Arbalest_22 started purchasing BTC from crypto exchange Coinbase but later started using Strike owing to lower fees. Sharing a peek into his future plans, they stated:
“I’m hoping in the future I can treat it more like rich people treat real estate and take loans out against it. Then as it appreciates just pay off the old loan with a new one. Boom, tax-free income.”
Following suit, another Reddit user Evening-Main-5860, too, posted about being able to 1 BTC after largely following a dollar-cost averaging (DCA) strategy, wherein they regularly bought smaller amounts of BTC over a long period of time, stating:
“I was able to catch the falling knife and buy enough to get me over the finish line. This was no easy feat. I'm just an ordinary guy with an ordinary life.”
Between June 15 to June 25, the total number of Bitcoin wallet addresses holding more than 1 BTC grew by 873, according to Glassnode data.
While falling BTC prices are seen by many as an investment opportunity, Google search trends highlight the tendency of other investors to speculate about its demise.
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Arijit Sarkar
Austrian crypto and stock trading platform Bitpanda joins the growing list of companies to announce a mass layoff as it aims to “get out of it financially healthy” amid an unforgiving bear market.
Over the past several weeks, the bear market resulted in numerous catastrophic outcomes for many ecosystems such as Terra’s (LUNA) and Abracadabra’s Magic Internet Money (MIM) de-pegging fiasco. Witnessing the crashes from a front-row seat, Bitpanda made the “tough decision” of cutting down its employee headcount to roughly 730 people.
While the exact number of employees intimated to stop working for Bitpanda remains undisclosed, data from LinkedIn indicates that the company is in the process of laying off approximately 277 full-time and part-time employees.
In the announcement, named ‘The Way Forward,’ Bitpanda supported the move to cut down employees by highlighting the need to be “robustly well-capitalized” amid uncertain market conditions, stating:
“It is a tough, but necessary decision and we are confident that the new organizational design will help us be more focused, effective and stronger as a company.”
The company is offering itex-employees support packages which include mental health support, references and an employee assistance program (EAP). Speaking about its hypergrowth phase, a timeline when the crypto market breached the $2 trillion market capitalization, Bitpanda revealed problems with internal processes and infrastructure to successfully onboard new joiners:
“We reached a point where more people joining didn’t make us more effective, but created coordination overheads instead, particularly in this new market reality. Looking back now, we realize that our hiring speed was not sustainable. That was a mistake.”
Bitpanda has not yet responded to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.
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Turner Wright
Crypto lending platform Celsius Network has reportedly onboarded advisers from a management consulting firm in advance of the company possibly facing bankruptcy.
According to a Friday report from the Wall Street Journal, Celsius hired an unknown number of restructuring consultants from the firm Alvarez & Marsal to advise the platform on potentially filing for bankruptcy. The report followed one from June 14, which said Celsius had hired lawyers in an attempt to restructure the company amid its financial issues.
Celsius has been at the forefront of discussions in the media around significant volatility in the market amid the crypto lending platform’s decision to pause “all withdrawals, swaps and transfers between accounts” on June 12. CEO Alex Mashinsky and other Celsius higher-ups have been largely silent on social media since that announcement, with the platform, saying on June 19 that it would be suspending discussions on “Twitter Spaces and AMAs” to focus on addressing issues with its operations.
State authorities have turned their attention to Celsius following the platform’s decision to suspend withdrawals. On June 16, Texas State Securities Board director of enforcement division Joseph Rotunda told Cointelegraph that regulators in Alabama, Kentucky, New Jersey, Texas and Washington were “looking at the issue involving the frozen accounts” at Celsius.
On June 20, Celsius investor and BnkToTheFuture co-founder Simon Dixon proposed a recovery plan aimed at having the crypto lending platform take a similar approach as Bitfinex in 2016, using a “financial innovation” solution. As of November 2021, Celsius had a $3.5 valuation following a $750-million Series B funding round, which may have fallen given the recent market downturn.
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This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
