Autor Cointelegraph By Joseph Hall

Bitcoin addresses holding at least 1 BTC close in to a million

Smaller wallet addresses in the Bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem continue accumulating BTC despite market turmoil.The number of known addresses on the Bitcoin blockchain that hold 1 BTC or more has hit a new all-time high. According to blockchain analytics company Glassnode, the number of wallets holding at least 1 BTC or more reached 950,000.Bitcoin balances of 1 BTC or more has surged since November. Source: GlassnodeBitcoin podcast host Jake Woodhouse told Cointelegraph that “To the untrained eye, the price of something reflects the value. However, price action should not be confused with value, as the most recent data in the Bitcoin market represents.” He added:“Plebs around the world are hoovering up Bitcoin, as they see this is an opportunity to accumulate a wildly under-valued asset, which most assume has no value as the price collapses. ‘Bitcoin is dead,’ shouts the mainstream… Is it? Clearly, many disagree.”Bitcoin “pleb” is the name adorned to ordinary people around the globe who support Bitcoin. Plebs buy Bitcoin–or in pleb speak, stack sats (Satoshis)– and continue to believe in Bitcoin despite mainstream media’s attempts to eulogize the decentralized technology.The trend coincides with billions of dollars of Bitcoin and crypto exiting exchanges. As Woodhouse suggests, the Bitcoin plebs of humbler means demonstrate higher levels of conviction while the price flirts with the low teens.Woodhouse digs into self-custody: “How many of these BTC are in self-custody never to be moved again? My bet: the majority.” Indeed, in the aftermath of the FTX fiasco, some Bitcoin enthusiasts are learning how to take custody of their Bitcoin, registering record withdrawals from exchanges.Bitcoin Balance on exchanges trends lower. Source: GlassnodeAccording to Glassnode data, exchange balances have trended down since the beginning of the year. In January, exchanger balances measured roughly 2.8 million, or almost 15% of the total supply of Bitcoin mined. In November, exchanges balances are down to 2.3 million Bitcoin or shy of 11% of the total supply.Related: Ledger hardware wallets hit by the FTX earthquake — CTOWoodhouse told Cointelegraph, “The bear market is highlighting the fraudsters who have been selling bitcoin derivatives, naturally promoting the superpower of bitcoin self-custody, which I believe individuals are taking heed of; a signal of huge positivity for the bitcoin bulls.” Billionaire Michael Saylor, one of the wealthiest Bitcoin bulls, agrees. Saylor recently shared nuggets of wisdom with Cointelegraph concerning the bear market. He advised Bitcoin buyers to relax and focus on the bigger picture.

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First time Bear market? Advice from Bitcoin Bull Michael Saylor

First-time bear market? It’s also the first Bitcoin (BTC) bear market for Michael Saylor, one of the world’s biggest Bitcoin bulls. Executive chairman of one of the world’s largest pro-Bitcoin companies, Saylor took a moment out of his busy schedule at the Los Angeles Pacific Bitcoin conference to speak with Cointelegraph. Crucially, Saylor told Cointelegraph that when it comes to Bitcoin, “you have to take a long frame time perspective.” “If you’re buying [Bitcoin] and you’ve got less than a four-year time horizon, you’re just speculating in it. And once you’ve got more than a four-year time horizon, then the obvious thing is you dollar-cost average.”Dollar-cost averaging is a way of reducing exposure to the volatility of an investment. Saylor continued, “You buy the asset that you want to hold for a decade or longer, which is the long-term store of value.” At 130,000 BTC, MicroStrategy owns 0.62% of the total supply of Bitcoin, as the total Bitcoin mined is restricted to 21 million. MicroStrategy’s entry price is roughly $30,639 per BTC, meaning the technology group’s total investment is substantially underwater — were they to sell for dollars.Saylor (right) with Cointelegraph reporter Joe Hall.However, Saylor is nonplussed about the loss — on paper — of billions of dollars, stating, “Don’t get caught up and looking the price day to day, week to week.”Michael Saylor on stage at Pacific Bitcoin with Swan CEO Cory Klippsten (right). Source: YouTubeThe billionaire compares valuing Bitcoin to valuing a home. He joked that “if you bought a house and then every time you went to a party, you got drunk, and then at 11 pm or midnight, you walked up and said, ‘How much will you pay for my house? I want to sell you my entire house right now.’ Someone might say, ‘Well, I’m not really in the mood to buy a house. I’ll give you like half of what you paid for it,’ and then you’ll go home despondent, saying, ‘I lost all my money.’”Related: Bitcoin may need $1B more on-chain losses before new BTC price bottomAvoid that anxiety, he advised, and if you really do need the money in the next 12 months, it’s not investable capital; instead, Saylor explained, “It’s working capital.” “A logical model is if you live in Argentina, you’re holding pesos for a month or two, you’re holding dollars for a year or two. You’re holding Bitcoin for a decade or two. And when you think about it in those frequencies and time frames, it all starts to make sense.”Finally, as Saylor and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao suggested, take custody of your Bitcoin. In light of another crypto exchange vanishing with customers’ funds, taking custody of Bitcoin is the only way of ensuring property that cannot be confiscated.

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How to build a Bitcoin Beach: Advice from the pros

How does one build a Bitcoin (BTC) community? How to start? Where to begin? And what are the best practices? Cointelegraph spoke to Bitcoin community builders around the world to shed light on a growing phenomenon in the Bitcoin world. From Indonesia to South Africa to El Salvador and the Congo, circular-based Bitcoin economies and community projects have sprung up across the globe. Cointelegraph asked the successful community-focused Bitcoiners how to kickstart a Bitcoin circular economy and what advice they’d lend to enthusiasts looking to replicate the success of projects like Bitcoin Beach, El Zonte. Using Bitcoin at Bitcoin Beach. Source: TwitterFor Bitcoin community project leader Mike Peterson, it starts with Lightning. Peterson pioneered the Bitcoin Beach project in the sleepy surf town of El Zonte, El Salvador. The circular economy energized an entire nation and eventually led to El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021. Peterson told Cointelegraph:“You need to be using lightning for for people to be transacting and to build a circular economy. It really needs to be built on lightning. [..] You need to get people transacting.”The layer-2 Lightning Network is a payments solution built on top of Bitcoin. In El Salvador, El Chivo is among the most popular Lightning-enabled Bitcoin wallets, although it has experienced issues since its rollout. Across the rest of the world, Bitcoin enthusiasts use Wallet of Satoshi, Muun Wallet, CoinCorner or Blue Wallet to instantly transact with one another. Peterson continued: “If you get them making that first transaction and they see how easy it is and that they’ve actually sent value from one person to another in like a second time for hardly almost no fees, that’s what the light bulb goes off and they realize the value that that has.”Ultimately, leading with Lightning helps newbies realize that Bitcoin can be easy and even fun. In the Isle of Man, where there is a budding Bitcoin community, United Kingdom-based exchange CoinCorner has found inventive ways to demonstrate the Lightning Network.Bitcoin Ekasi Project next to Mossel Bay, South Africa. Source: TwitterHermann Vivier, founder of Bitcoin Ekasi in the Western Cape of South Africa, shared a few tricks to establishing a Bitcoin economy. First, while it’s important to “put one foot in front of the other,” and “just start,” he said, try to see if there’s a preexisting community to tap into:“We had something that that was already existing and we built the Bitcoin community on top of that.”Bitcoin Ekasi is a township project that keeps kids away from gangs in school and among South Africa’s Atlantic waves, where they learn lifeguarding and surf skills. Vivier teaches Bitcoin as another element of the kids’ education.Recent: What can blockchain do for increasing human longevity?Furthermore, Vivier also shared that it’s important to keep it simple. Stick to Bitcoin, he joked. His hours of labor and love given to this community project have turned him into a “Bitcoin maximalist,” as it helps in avoiding the risk of scams in crypto, while blockchain buzzwords can get in the way of making progress: “I would say 100% focus on Bitcoin only. And if there was something better than Bitcoin out there, then that’s what you should focus on. But at the moment Bitcoin is where it’s at.”Nourou, founder of Bitcoin Senegal, a community-led Bitcoin project in West Africa, told Cointelegraph, “You cannot create a community if you aren’t capable of answering people’s questions–and that requires a wide range of knowledge.”Iman Yudha, who leads a group of crypto and Bitcoin enthusiasts in Indonesia, agrees. He told Cointelegraph that it’s important to “Get educated first–before you make any decisions. That’s my personal opinion.” After establishing a solid basis of foundational knowledge about Bitcoin, crypto and security. Nourou recommends to start talking about Bitcoin with close relations: “Start with the family if you can’t convince your mother, your brother, your sister, the cousins, and so on, it’s a bad start.” He notes that the following step varies depending on the culture, business practice and environment. Over in Senegal, “it is the wealthiest who roughly define fashion, who define trends. So people tend to copy them.” It’s for that reason that Nourou tried to target his Bitcoin communication to those communities first. Incidentally, Nourou is hosting West Africa’s first major Bitcoin conference, Dakar Bitcoin Days, on Dec. 2 in West Africa’s largest theater.Cointelegraph attended Dakar, Senegal’s first ever Bitcoin meetup in 2022.Lukas, a co-founder of Global Bitcoin Fest — which holds marathon Twitter Spaces for people all around the world — again encourages Bitcoin enthusiasts to focus on the people. It can be “lonely” in the land of Bitcoin, he told Cointelegraph, so finding a team with shared values can spur things along. He shared an example:“It’s a conversation that I’ve had recently with two guys in Zimbabwe. They want to kickstart a [project] there. He wanted to do it, but he was alone. […] Then he found Metamorphoses, another great maxi, and now they’re forming a team — and the energy is completely different now.” Yudha chimed in, sharing that energy and enthusiasm are critical, and community builders should avoid being “toxic” where possible. Recent: FTX collapse: The crypto industry’s Lehman Brothers momentIn short, these Bitcoin pioneers suggest finding like-minded individuals to work with, starting small, taking advantage of existing communities, knowing and understanding the subject matter and not overstretching. The simplest way to do this is to focus on Bitcoin and Bitcoin only. And to get people interested and transacting, get people using the Lightning Network because that’s what gives people their own light bulb moment.

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Subway accepts Bitcoin, so users can get a sandwich on the Lightning Network

No, it’s not Groundhog Day. Subway is accepting Bitcoin (BTC), again — but this time it’s using the fast, nearly free Bitcoin Lightning Network.Kicking off the 7-day #usingbitcoin week with Lunch at Subway, Chausseestrasse in Berlin! 50% off when paying with #bitcoin #spendyourbitcoin pic.twitter.com/f81kdMOnEQ— felix (@felixbillert) October 19, 2022The world’s largest franchise by number of restaurants is trialing Bitcoin payments at three Subways in Germany’s capital, Berlin. Subway first experimented with Bitcoin almost 13 years ago in Moscow, Russia. Over the past few months, Daniel Hinze, the Berlin Subway franchise owner, recorded over 120 Bitcoin transactions. In an interview with Cointelegraph, Hinze explained his desire “to help Bitcoin become money.” “Five years ago, I started to deal with cryptocurrencies; and in the last two years, I have dealt very intensively with the topic of Bitcoin. With that in mind, I’ve decided that [Bitcoin] could be the better money system.”Bitcoin is not a popular means of exchange in Europe, despite the efforts of merchants, retailers and even Lightning-enabled conferences. Hinze has encouraged Bitcoin payments by offering a 10% discount on all footlongs, meatball marinaras and sucookies paid for with BTC. Lunch with #usingbitcoinat Subway in Berlin. Also got 50% off. 😀 pic.twitter.com/yZkZ6osO9D— Rumpel_BTC (@BtcRumpel) October 19, 2022

To kick off the campaign, Hinze offered a 50% discount on all Bitcoin payments for one week: “Around the week, there was, of course, extremely high demand. Our three restaurants were frequently visited by people who liked to pay with Bitcoin.”German-speaking social media was buoyed by Subway buys as the hashtag #usingBitcoin took over. Hinze partnered with Lipa, a Swiss-based Bitcoin company, to enable an easy-to-use point-of-sale solution. Bastien Feder, CEO of Lipa, told Cointelegraph that its mission is to make Bitcoin “basically irresistible to use because Bitcoin is currency.” Lipa kitted out the Subways with merchant devices that allow customers to quickly scan a Lightning-enabled QR code that allows for fast, frictionless, low-cost payments. Lipa charges merchants 1% for the service, as opposed to Visa or Mastercard payment rails, which charge double or more. Feder explained:“It’s 2.5% to 4% depending on the contract from the merchant. If it’s a business card, there’s 0.5% on top of that. […] And if it’s a foreign business credit card, you pay up to 7%, and you don’t know until the end of the month.”The experience of paying over the LN differs greatly from when Subway franchises first accepted Bitcoin payments in 2014. Before the arrival of the LN, customers would have to wait for around for several minutes. Miners would mint the next block on the blockchain, with the transaction confirmed by Bitcoin nodes around the world. The process was inconvenient for retail payments due to the wait time as well as the sometimes high fees. With the LN, customers enjoy faster settlement times than Visa or Mastercard and lower fees thanks to a peer-to-peer network of payments.RACE OF THE RAILS ‍♂️ Bitcoin #Lightning payments vs #fiat contactless payments at the #Gibraltar Bakery. £2.20 loaded up on both PoS. WHO WINS?? ⚡️ ⚡️ ⁦@CoinCorner⁩ ⁦@CoinCornerMolly⁩ pic.twitter.com/b3ezy7FIeq— Joe Nakamoto (@JoeNakamoto) July 25, 2022

Nonetheless, due to the fact that Bitcoin has for most of its history been a speculative vehicle — sparing a few use cases for purchasing — encouraging Bitcoiners to spend BTC can be a challenge.Nonetheless, retail examples are popping up, such as in Berlin or San Salvador. Nicolas Burtey, CEO of Galoy Money, told Cointelegraph that the adoption of Bitcoin in El Salvador was the tipping point for the Lightning Network. He joked that the Bitcoin Law “should have actually been called the Lightning Law!”Related: McDonald’s, pizza and coffee paid in Bitcoin: The Plan B for crypto paymentsLipa and Hinze expect a steady increase in demand for Bitcoin payments. Feder told Cointelegraph that it’s due in large part because of the ”exponentially rising Bitcoin community in Germany, in Switzerland, basically all over the world.”Indeed, the LN is enabling communities keen to trade, from Senegal to Guatemala and Switzerland. Hinze told Cointelegraph that for the moment, the Subway restaurant only accepts the world’s most recognizable currency, as he and his business partners “firmly believe in Bitcoin.”

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Why banking uses at least 56 times more energy than Bitcoin

The next time Bitcoin (BTC) comes under fire for energy consumption, remember this statistic. The banking industry uses at least 56 times more energy. That’s according to cryptographer and founder of Valuechain, Michel Khazzaka: “I’m not saying it uses less or the same, just know it uses 56 times more than Bitcoin.”The statistic, first shared by Michel Khazzaka in the summer, caused a stir in the Bitcoin and wider crypto community. He published his estimates in a Valuechain report, a company he founded to investigate the world of crypto payments. In an exclusive Cointelegraph Crypto Story interview, Khazzaka talks viewers through the extensive research that led to striking conclusions. In short, Bitcoin might not be as bad for the environment as the mainstream media lead people to think.[embedded content]Khazzaka, who describes Bitcoin as “Money with a memory,” sought to refute the claim that Bitcoin is worse for the environment than fiat money. He spent four years toiling away, compiling data and crunching numbers. He built out a model, or estimate, to understand just how much energy the banking industry consumes.Speaking from his home in Paris, Khazzaka told Cointelegraph that he looked at commute times, data centers, servers, and even ATMs for the calculations. He didn’t, however, take into account the energy put into “Banks, buildings or ATMs; to manufacture to bring the metal etc. Let’s compare the operations.” Khazzaka admits this oversight is intentional: “That’s why all my numbers are underestimated for banking and extremely accurate for Bitcoin.”For Bitcoin, Khazzaka concluded that Bitcoin consumes 88.95 TWh per year, considerably less than the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance estimates. Nonetheless, Khazzaka admits that Bitcoin uses an “Extraordinary amount of energy.” However, in return users receive:“An extraordinary amount of security, for an extraordinarily important service.”He compares Bitcoin to space travel, explaining that even if people don’t care about going to the moon, it’s a right– “Even it tries to consume more energy than a car.” Related: Bitcoin mining to cost less than 0.5% of global energy if BTC hits $2M: ArcaneFinally, in a nod to the layer-2 Bitcoin Lightning Network, Khazzaka concludes that as a payments network, it shows tremendous promise. It just needs to prove itself.

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