Osato Avan-Nomayo
The top-10 Bitcoin (BTC) mining pools by hash rate distribution are now signaling for Taproot activation with BTC.Top being the latest among them as of the time of writing.
Indeed, 90% of Bitcoin’s hash rate briefly signaled for the protocol upgrade with the figure now standing at about 73%.
Tweeting on Monday, crypto exchange giant Binance announced that Binance Pool had begun signaling for Taproot. According to the Taproot Signal Twitter bot, Binance Pool’s maiden Taproot signal occurred at block height 683,878.
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the two largest Bitcoin mining pools — AntPool and F2Pool — were among the earliest supporters of the protocol upgrade in the mining arena. SlushPool — the 12th-largest pool by hash rate distribution — was the first to mine the first transaction block with a Taproot signal.
BTC.Top, the last of the top-10 pools to signal for Taproot, did so on block height 683,945. The mining pool had previously announced that it had completed the testing protocols necessary to begin including Taproot activation signals in mined transaction blocks.
Martin Young
The United States Federal Trade Commission has found that crypto scammers’ profits spiked in the last two months, noting a surge in fraudulent impersonators posing as prominent figures associated with digital assets, such as Elon Musk.
The findings report that cryptocurrency investment scams rose sharply in October 2020 as the impacts of coronavirus pandemic and lockdown deepened, with nearly 7,000 people reporting losses of more than $80 million to digital asset scams over the six months that followed.
The FTC’s Consumer Sentinel notes many of the thefts arose from giveaway scams where con artists pose as celebrities or crypto influencers and falsely promise to multiply cryptocurrency deposits sent to their wallet. More than $2 million in digital assets were to Elon Musk impersonators over the past six months.
The data shows an overall increase in losses to crypto scams by roughly twelve times year-over-year. The median loss reported by victims has also spiked nearly 1,000% to $1,900 in 12 months.
Martin Young
While new entrants to Bitcoin markets have been panic selling at a loss, the recent market slide has not vexed the old hands. Heavy selling in response to hints from Elon Musk that Tesla may soon sell its BTC stash saw Bitcoin prices tumble to their lowest levels in 20 weeks as the markets found support near $42,000 on Monday, May 17.
According to on-chain analytics provider, Glassnode, the crash predominantly saw newer traders exiting from their positions at a loss while long-term hodlers stood their ground.
Glassnoded noted Bitcoin’s adjusted Spent Output Profit Ratio (aSOPR), a metric that shows whether BTC was in profit or at a loss when it was last transacted on-chain, fell below 1.0 amid the dip. An aSOPR of less than 1.0 indicates aggregate losses have been realized on-chain and are most pronounced in short-term holders (coins younger than 155-days) — traders that purchased during the 2021 bull market.
