The very first P2P transaction was made on 12 January 2009 when Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 BTC to Hal Finney.

One of the first supporters, adopters, contributors to bitcoin and receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was programmer Hal Finney. Finney downloaded the bitcoin software the day it was released, and received 10 bitcoins from Nakamoto in the world's first bitcoin transaction on 12 January 2009 (block 170).

Source

16 years ago today, that transaction might have been worth nothing in value, and today it is valued at $950K. BTC has achieved a lot and outperformed the expectations of many. Even Satoshi might not have predicted it. I first came to know about BTC in 2018 and it was somewhere between $3k and $5k, it was very cheap I planned to buy it with my cousin by borrowing money but I suggested investing in anything by taking a loan can be very risky, plus we both were unemployed so we did not take the risk, and now we both regret it. Well, the opportunity was missed. Can we still make this much gain in the upcoming 16 years? What do you guys think?

I know the news is very old about Germany selling 50k BTC, and this forum was full of such news, as most of us were in confusion about why they planned to sell these BTC when they could sell them at peak. So now we have seen BTC setting an ATH of $93,477, and Germany sold around 49,858 BTC at an average price of $53k. So they made a total of 2,642,454,000 USD back in July or August. If they had waited 2 to 3 months more, they would have been making $1.84 billion USD extra in profit if sold at $90k.

Timing peak and exiting at the right moment is not possible for everyone but at least they could have given it a second opinion Although I am no one to judge their decision, it's their loss  But they could have made more profit don't get what's the hurry to sell them.

So they say, it was not Germany selling 50,000 BTC (To be accurate 49,857) confiscated from a pirated film site (as they were involved in money laundering) but it was a free state of Germany "Saxony". There are a total of 3 free states in Germany, and according to what I learned is, each of these three states has its own government and its own president, but it's not that they are independent of Germany's government but they are bound to it as they have a parliamentary democracy.

So, should we say Germany was selling or dumping the market all this time or it was Saxony? I mean for me it's the same thing. But for news outlets seem to be very concerned about it, because people on X were saying different things about Gernmany's authorities that they have no sense, and blah blah while new outlets are making sure it was not Germany but one of its free states. BTW according to another news they have only left with 13,110 BTC.
source

Just now, another BTC ETF ticker got listed on the DTCC website. This ticker belongs to "INVESCO GALAXY BITCOIN ETF COM SHS B" Well according to the news, it might have been listed a few days back and we (the crypto community) came to know about it in the previous 1 or 2 days. And if you visit the source then you will find that Invesco applied for the ETF (21 June) just after 6 days of applying for ETF by Blockrock (15 June).

source

Overall I think it is bullish news even though there is not that much hype about this listing of ETF as news outlets said it might be listed for a few days but it is confirmed by them that it was not listed on the website till 25 October.

Well, let's see how this news turns up to be beneficial for the market but I don't think it will have any good impact because most people know the name of astronaut who stepped first on the moon and they don't know about the second or third astronaut. 

https://www.binance.com/en-ZA/feed/post/1588263

Yesternight, the website was down due to some overloading maybe but now when I opened the list and searched the ticker, it was listed there. I mean, what is going on here? Is it some kind of prank, or did the website get hacked so that the ticker was removed from the list by unauthorized actors?

Old Picture

Current Picture

Or it was some kind of glitch, I mean that's so wrong to play with the market sentiments, they should know their responsibilities and should take care of all the outcomes too. I mean, we have also become so dependent on such news which no doubt really matters, but we can see the stats, when it got listed their BTC volume increased and when it was delisted, BTC volume started to decrease within 2 hours.

If the ticker is still listed then, it is good for the overall market, because the chances of ETF approval are high.

But what must have caused the delisting of the ticker? Overall, you guys can check for yourself too.

[Ordinals]

I was quite shocked when I heard this news and when confirmed it. Well, to all those who don't know what is Ordinals and what is Wikileaks and what are war logs. Listen to me.

Ordinals have allowed one to inscribe video, text, images, etc. into the BTC blockchain. Some take it as a loophole while some take benefit of it. And the Wikileaks is a website more like a news website which is nonprofit and full of all the war crimes done by the US in several countries. Many of the readers of this post must be well aware of WikiLeaks and the journalist ( Julian Assange ) who created it and is in jail now for publishing the secret logs of war on the website. Now coming to the war log, consists of 92,000 documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Which is full of sensitive data.

Now someone is inscribing all of those war logs (which are the top secret of the US and removed by them ) in the BTC blockchain. I mean, whether they are doing the right thing or not I will not get into this discussion. But overall we might see some hot things against BTC as the documents which are already on the BTC blockchain now, cannot be deleted or altered.

I cannot say anything that what those authorities would do but one thing I will say for sure is, that BTC has not provided us the financial freedom only but provided the freedom of speech too. And now I have started to think that BTC is legendary and really has exceeded the expectations of Satoshi (answer to those OPs who ask mostly --> either BTC exceeds Satoshi's expectations or not?)

Well, the group who have taken responsibility is known as Project Spa-rta-cus's and they have initialized a website to inscribe the logs on the BTC blockchain. Well, now from the technical point of view, we might see a surge in the transaction fee because if someone has decided to inscribe all of the 92,000 documents then we might see some congestion on the market. So, be prepared for it.

And what do you guys have to say on this? I mean regardless of the differences and being as a BTC enthusiast, Do you think BTC is being used for good purposes or not? I mean my mind also told me, that this might be a divergence to divert some attention of the economists (BTC enthusiasts also) from the Palestine and Israel war. I mean, who knows, next time a journalist like Julian Assange, will not have to go to jail to bring the truth in the front of the world as they can simply use the BTC blockchain. Or I am wrong here?

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/someone-is-inscribing-all-of-wikileaks-infamous-afghan-war-logs-on-bitcoin

Disclaimer* I don't know, if I broke any rule of the forum by sharing the news, if I did, then please correct me by suggestions.

[5,445]

Michael Saylor bought around 5,445 more BTC. At an average price tag of $27,053 per Bitcoin and the total investment is around $147.3 million. Which is a big milestone in the adoption of BTC. We all know the adoption of BTC is increasing day by day. This is a good news.

Now the total holdings of MicroStrategy is around 158,245 BTC which is worth around $4.68 billion, bought at an average price tag of $29,582 per Bitcoin. This also shows that DCA is better for long-term investments. But we have also observed a pattern in which MS sell their some funds in the last month of the year to save themselves from tax.

The amount is not that much, but still, if it will be used for holding purposes then the demand will increase oversupply. Simple as that. How many of you found it a good news?

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/michael-saylors-microstrategy-buys-5445-bitcoin-147-3-million

[23]

According to the cointelegraph, the trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi has changed the repayment date by 1 year. I mean directly from  Oct 31, 2023, to Oct 31, 2024. That was so unpredictable and honestly I don't know on what basis they are delaying the repayment. Even though they have funds in their hands. It would be good if they had repaid the amount to the creditors so that they would use them according to the market's current condition. I mean according to the upcoming halving event.

source

To be honest, I almost thought that, they would increase the repayment date. But did not think that they would put an increment of 1 year. That's so long for the waiters. But if they have waited this long then I think they can wait for another year too. Plus I have a question, is this a good factor for the market or not? I do know that, if they would pay the amount then we will see some selling of BTC, BCH and Yuan, etc. Which would cause a dump in the market. But what else I am missing other than this?

[The market was dumped due to 5 reasons, which are as follows:]

Here is what I was thinking about the current situation of the market. I know I am going to talk about BTC but somehow things will be moving toward governments so I thought this section would be good to make this post. It's based on my assumptions and could be proved right if one is able to provide some tools to back my assumptions with stats.

The market was dumped due to 5 reasons, which are as follows:

• SpaceX sold BTC unofficially means there is still some confusion about it but they need not answer us that either they have sold or not because it is an open market.
• The surge in high-interest rates.
• High increment in Bond yeild
• ETH ETF just got a green light after this dump ETH went around $1500 which provided BTC whales a chance to collect some ETH too because this greenlight of ETF will take ETH to new heights.
• Devalutaion of Chinese Yuan

Source

The thing is, I think the government tried to manipulate the market like first they increased the interest rates recently just before this dump like a few days ago and after that, there was an increase in Yield bonds means more people are giving their money to Governemnts in exchange of getting a fixed return and they are for sure. And banks are now giving the same money back to those who are in need now after this dump for example those who wanted to take some entry and those who lost all of it because according to analysis the liquidation amount that was gone in this dump was more than the one liquidated in FTX. (source). The point is the same governments are now giving that money borrowed from other people to the needy ones with huge interest rates and I think if that's the case then interest rates will increase more.

Plus a few days back I also heard the Chinese Yuan was losing its value and the Netherlands was going into stage inflation and such news is just to put more pressure on holders and traders of BTC. Which it really did. Now those who have lost everything will turn towards banks for borrowing money and that money will have more interest rates on them means the borrowers have to pay more interest rates.

It's a win-win from all angles for banks and governments. Now the question is, how did they manage to make it work if they are really behind it. Or I might be wrong here because every picture has different stories for each viewer of it so what are your stories about this situation? Is it real or manipulated to fill bags? Not to mention why did SpaceX sell those amounts of BTC when they don't have to? We all know that Elon is a person of money who always follow the money and how he would sell the reaming amount of BTC which is all SpaceX has according to the wall street journal.

[BCOIN]

Yes as the title says, first Bitcoin ETF got approved for europeans now they could trade Bitcoin ETF from official platform. It have the ticker of "BCOIN". The ETF platforms is knows as JacoBTCi. Well, this is what i have not been expecting because i didn't heard about it before. Most of the news outlet was talking about only Black Rock.

🟠 NEW: First European Bitcoin ETF is now live 🙌

Institutional investors from the following countries are able to participate in it:

🇳🇱 The Netherlands
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
🇱🇺 Luxembourg
🇨🇭 Switzerland
🇩🇪 Germany
🇩🇰 Denmark
🇸🇪 Sweden
🇫🇮 Finland
🇦🇹 Austria
🇮🇪 Ireland

The news outlets saying about this platform is it already got approval of ETF back in 2021 but was not live till then (source).

But according to another latest news, they says this platform is going to launch its own Exchange for ETFs trading very soon. (Source).

The thing is why this ETFs is so underrated then other. Because such news must have good impact on the market as well but it didn't. Well, i think due to the unavailability of the exchange maybe as according to news it was not live back then but now i think it's live. Made this topic to know more about it from you guyz.

[Note*]

A recent thread motivated me to ask this query because according to that post,

Lately, there has been some development here in the integration of AI in trading on some stock assets and cryptocurrencies, and to a large instead, AI has ground in acting and executing trades and recording profits, but it has not been for long so as we can't tell what the success rate will be, but for the fact that the reality on the ground has shown and proven their existence in trading stock, so as that which one will you prefer if AI is proven to be effective.
Will you prefer to trade with AI or you prefer to do the trading yourself?

OP asked which would you prefer self trade or AI trade. And i thought why would someone promoting or encouraging or the ones who prefer decentralized system. Will use AI Bots. Because AFAIK, in order to do AI trading. Don't we have to hand over our assets or i must say allow the Bots to use our assets as they want. So that they could make us some money.

Why someone, do not even like the centralized platform (CEXs, ETFs, CBDC) etc. will hand over his or her assets to a centralized bot so that that bot could help them to make money. Does decentralized enthusiast do AI trading or not. Or i am the one taking the whole thing wrong.

Because those AI, are managed by single entity or organization who would have all the data of you plus to register with one AI bot you also have to accept so many policies and have to provide so much documentation too. But their also exists other bots that require you to give less documentation and ask you to agree with less policies.

Note* i am not talking about bots that automatically make your trade and end your trade. and all you have to do in those bots is set stop limits for profits and loss. I am talking about bots which suggests you to make trades at specific prices and also make those trades on your behalf.

[(]

As the title suggested, to understand the potential BTC blockchain. what is necessary to know about BTC. is it how a block is formed and what is its architecture, or to know the algorithms behind the encryption of addresses and blockchain smart contracts. OR do we have to get familiar with the use cases of the BTC blockchain like how one can not tamper with it? I think not! we must know another thing which is the following:

If we really wanted to understand the potential of BTC or BTC blockchain then we have to understand the current flaws in the financial system currently run by banks. This means we have to get familiar with the working of the banking sector and get to know how they are manipulating us to think that they are our only hope to manage our funds. But I think they are not our only hope and source to place our money. Instead, we are the only hope to which they lived for so many years.

If I took my own example, i didn't come to know about the truth behind the banking sector, how they manipulate the money deposited in their wallets so that they could make more money by giving loans to others from our money, etc., etc. Until I came to know about BTC/Blockchain. If we really want to know how banks are making money (which you can learn from the following thread)

• How do banks generate income?

Then you will understand the potential BTC blockchain has and how it will free you from the only hope of the Banking sector which they had put inside our brains from very long ago.

The point is, Get the knowledge of Banking sector how they make money, how they manipulate our money, how they are using our money for their own purposes, why we should trust them, is there any other way to manage our finances. What's the essence of depending only on the banking sector? Why we have been taught only about Banks as the only way to store, send, receive, and borrow money?
------------------------------
What Potential Does BTC Have?
1.We can send, receive, borrow, and store BTC. Example of how BTC is better than the Banking sector.

• Bitcoin continue to safe life in the face of financial crisis

well, i had read many other real-life scenarios here on the BTT but during writing, only this one came to my mind i will add more once i remember them.

2.We can remain anonymous while hiding our real identity which is not possible in banks. So that's how we will save ourselves from debit/credit card offers from the banks. We would save ourselves from all the offers or i would say phishing offers by banks to borrow money or lend money to earn more interest etc. which will sink our money. other than this, we will save many other offers coming directly or indirectly from the banking sector, how do they know about our current financial situation? Because they have our whole information and they know about us but here on the BTC blockchain that's not an option.

3.BTC blockchain is decentralized and i know even the newbies know this, that Decentralization is the only thing for which BTC has been made (if I am not wrong about the financial crisis of 2008 in which the centralization of banks becomes a reason of all banks collapsed I know the other reasons too but i am just writing the whole story in one statement).

4.BTC Blockchain provides us the level of security that banks don't because there is no single vault or wallet where all the money is placed. There is no single entity owning the whole BTC blockchain that could run away with all the money (Rug Pull). BTC blockchain is tamper-proof while the banking sector still has many back doors even in the age of modernization.
---------------------------
Banks also came to know the potential of BTC That's why they are:

As i said, That's why they are launching their own CBDC or many other shits (like ETFs) to control the whole interest of users shifting towards decentralization. Because the banks are not from like 100 years old or 200 years old they exist for thousands of years and how such an organization (even if they have not formed a collude) will let this power slip away of controlling the money of others? So, to shift the interest of people of 3 types. Towards

The one who knows about crypto (as a newbie)
The one who did;nt know about the crypto
The one who is already into deep down of Crypto sea. (Pro)

Towards centralization which is framed as decentralization as they had pictured the whole thing as decentralization (ETFs) but those who knew are against it and know that this will only hurt the main purpose of BTC/Blockchain.

Conclusion
Overall, I would like to say, if we knew about the flaws in our current financial system then we could easily understand the potential BTC/Blockchain is holding. Many topics were made here on BTT asking how one could start to teach another (newbie) about BTC? and many have shared their opinions but here is mine to them. To understand the BTC find why it was made against the current Financial system and why the current financial system doesn't like it. What do they afraid of?

[US Congressman Warren Davidson has filed legislation against SEC and to fire Gary Gensler]

Well, as the title says, US Congressman Warren Davidson has filed legislation against SEC and to fire Gary Gensler. He shared this news on Twitter at 10:13 PM · Jun 12, 2023.

This legislation will force SEC to rebuild its laws against digital assets and will reconsider its acts against tokens declared as "securities". Well, no wonder, last week was full of attacks from SEC and the market has bled a lot, many people are saying they have misused their power and some said they were just following orders from other congress.

Congress enacted the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”) in part to provide for the regulation of the national securities markets. And Congress charged the SEC with protecting investors, preserving fair and orderly markets, and facilitating capital formation, in part through a series of registration, disclosure, recordkeeping, inspection, and anti-conflict-of-interest provisions

Well, the point is, What's good in all the steps against declaring those tokens as securities? (note* i am not in favor of any of those tokens just interested in the story). That's still a mystery for me, but now it has become more interesting, like how things will move now against them and what reaction are we going to see from them, i personally have no information about Congressman Warren Davidson, like how much potential his words and case will put against SEC and Gensler? it could be a trick (artificial case/fake one to take more severe steps to make the market bleed more, as i think these are all the tricks to buy more BTC at a lower price! (i might be wrong and open all ears) or this might be a true case and Warren Davidson really stands for his words. (Or i am being too skeptical?).

Well, its looks like, he really wants Gary to be out of this even though he filed against SEC to reconstruct their laws, and still the main aim is to fire Gary.

Source

There are many ifs, but what if the next SEC chair is the next level avatar of Gary Gensler, (haha) well i think that's why he mainly focused on the structure of making commissioners to follow the Executive Director.

[SEC has sued Coinbase too]

As we all know that SEC has sued US Binance Exchange and its CEO (CZ). For what they have been sued is already covered (Another Fud or Its Reality? BTC is Down Again). Now as of 6th June 2023, SEC has sued Coinbase too. Why? That's what i will write here.

source

Short story, SEC always came up with the issue concerning assets declaring as (working as) Securities and SEC wants every Security to be in compliance with them. Coinbase exchange was already alleged by SEC in the past and warned too but who knows what got into SEC this week, like they are after every exchange possible. I think its pressure from the top, maybe someone advised that dealing with these centralized exchanges might control the inflation in US (again-->who knows what got into them). Now here is why they are sued for:
1.

The Coinbase Platform merges three functions that are typically
separated in traditional securities markets—those of brokers, exchanges, and clearing agencies. Yet,
Coinbase has never registered with the SEC as a broker, national securities exchange, or clearing
agency

2.

In addition, during the same period, Coinbase has operated as an unregistered broker
through two other services it has offered to investors: Coinbase Prime (“Prime”), which Coinbase
markets as a “prime broker for digital assets” that routes orders for crypto assets to the Coinbase
Platform or to third-party platforms; and Coinbase Wallet (“Wallet”), which routes orders through
third-party crypto asset trading platforms to access liquidity outside the Coinbase Platform.

3.

In addition, since 2019, Coinbase has offered and sold a crypto asset staking
program (the “Staking Program”) that allows investors to earn financial returns through Coinbase’s
managerial efforts with respect to certain blockchain protocols......Coinbase has never had
a registration statement filed or in effect with the SEC for its offers and sales of its Staking Program,
thereby depriving investors of material information about the program, undermining investors’
interests, and violating the registration provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 (“Securities Act”).

Source to above quotes


Now what impact it will make on BTC price?-->(i think not that much as of compared to Binance, yet the Coinbase market dropped 15% though but still BTC and the market facing the impact too but lesser than Binance). Who is next on the list?-->(That depends on who is against the security act). Because from that press release, one thing is sure congress has put pressure on SEC to follow the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (source--> you can find at the first paragraph of the second page of the document). From what i think is, they are trying to make entry opportunities so that they could benefit from BTC halving (just saying, as other factors are also included though).

[SEC sues Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao]

As many of you, must have heard the news of SEC sues Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao. And this has a great effect on the market as around $3.7 Billion dollars has vanished in 15 minutes only from BTC and Alts Source. Currently, BTC is 5+% down and still going down because of this news has created fud among early, new, and less capital investors. People are trying to withdraw their BTC to fiat or any other stablecoin (pegged). Why? this news has made so much impact on the market and why people fall for this FUD. Or is it really a FUD? Before declaring anything or acting on anything, we should shed some light on what is happening to the market.

source

You should keep this image in your mind and then read the following.
SEC and CFTC had sued Binance and CZ so many times, and we have been reading that news and ignoring them as those were at the lower level (i think), plus CZ always comes up on Twitter with something encouraging that could avoid people stopping panicking. And he still posted on Twitter Handle that it's a FUD. But still, people are leaving the market and so much BTC has been liquidated too.

source

Main Reason Behind this downtrend
Now SEC has sued Binance and CZ they are helping US citizens to get access to their Binance (US) exchange intentionally using their BM Trading Platform (As it can be seen above the Binance US). Well, That's not something new, As a few days ago CFTC also said that, and it was also discussed before.

• Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao violated compliance rules to attract U.S. users, CFTC alleges

Climax here is, SEC has found out that, the BAM Trading platform is directly linked to the US Binance exchange. How Bam Trading platform is linked to CZ, Go through the pic again and check the connection of US Binance to CZ and how much CZ holds in shares to BAM trading. Well, in the short story, SEC and CFTC sued CZ and Binance before, that, they are not registered with us and they should be banned for US citizens but CZ always come up with some unique plans to provide access to US citizen like, before he was alleged by SEC that, he made some VPN services for high class, VIP investors and traders of Binance so that they could keep using the Binance and Binance could generate millions of dollars in just fee money.

And we know that the US does not like that another person works on their soil without paying taxes or complying with us and still making millions of dollars. Well, no wonder there must be other factors too, on which SEC wants to control and they have to follow those rules and regulations to avoid streamlined adoption of crypto, My personal view on it does not matter, because those who have access to Binance and wants to make money (or want to use Binance) will definitely use it without fear of any regulation.

Coming back to the story, So, Binance was prohibited to provide access to US citizens and hence it was providing access to them using its unregulated platform (BAM Trading). So, People could keep using the features of (buy, sell, and trade crypto, asset securities) through an unregistered trading platform that directly links back to Binance and to CZ (CEO).
They also mention in their case that, BAM Trading provided the sales of unregistered assets (BNB and BUSD) and US citizens could access the feature of Binance ("BNB Vault" and "Simple Earn") through BAM Trading Platform which is the product of CZ (that what SEC says). In the Document, they also said that BAM has raised around $200 million of dollars which directly benefits CZ and the Binance platform.

Well, i could write the whole points that has SEC alleged CZ and Binance for but this is of no good here, because everyone could read it directly. So here is the link to read it.

You should read the reply from CZ's US Binance platform to SEC.

Source

Now, How BTC is being Effected by this FUD
The answer is simple FUD and FUD, (i am not trying to accuse anyone here just stating the facts) people are exiting from the market as i mentioned above and volume is decreasing which is a bad sign. The dominance of BTC will decrease. I wonder what would have created so much panic among lower-class traders and investors who have exited the market. I think most of them are in Telegram and Discord groups and those groups sometimes share the news without confirming it, like i hear the news that CZ will leave the slot of CEO for Binance and "Teng Key" will become the new CEO. (Source). You might be wondering if that, news would have a big impact but it was shared about 8 to 10 hours ago that CZ will replace by Teng Key and some Telegram Influencer use these types of news in such scenarios which encourage investors and traders who are facing big losses, who can not think straight due to loss of big money and some of them fall prey to such news without even checking the source or background. Because we all know if you want to take action then it must be hurry because till then you could lose more and more.

Another reason is those countries like mine, whose governments have seized the use of Crypto exchanges and banned crypto all over the country, we are already living under the roof of pressure and such news will put more pressure on that roof.

Now, what will happen to the market, how down it will go? is there still room to go down or hitting $25k was the target?

[But the good news is]

i just read the news and this was already shared here before when Core Scientific Filed for bankruptcy. Why? the reasons are here.

Crypto mining firm Core Scientific sold over 7,000 Bitcoin in June via the open market to bring its holdings down to about 70% over the previous month.

Core Scientific is a bitcoin mining firm in Austin Texas at United States of America. On the 21 of December, 2022, they have filed for bankruptcy protection for the down fall of the industry...

Following FTX's liquidity crisis and bankruptcy, the largest mining company "Core Scientific" has filed for bankruptcy....

But the good news is, they have some stats, stating that they have enough funds to exit from the bankruptcy. it's means now they will be in the market and mining BTC as usual.

On Dec. 21, 2022, when Core Scientific filed for bankruptcy, Bitcoin’s price was $16,904, according to CoinMarketCap. Since then, the price has shot up by over 60%, currently sitting at around $27,000.

Additionally, power prices have decreased by 24% since the petition date according to the filing, while the network hashrate has jumped by 54%.

Source

But what good is it for the market? As, back then they sold many BTC and which might have affected the price of BTC, but now what will be the effect of their recovery? Because i am confused is it good for BTC or not?

[Reasons Behind this Surge in Tx Fee of BTC]

We have seen a huge increase in the transactions fee of BTC, even according to blockchair BTC fee Graph recorded a fee of around $31.46 and i have seen on many social media profiles, it exceeds more than that. So, the question is what caused this huge surge in tx fees?

And as of writing current tx fees according to priorities are;

• No priority tx = 70 sat/vB -->$2.71
• Low Priority tx = 219 sat/vB --> $8.47
• Medium Priority tx =236 sat/vB --> $9.13
• High Priority = 251 sat/vB --> $9.71 --> It's fluctuating too much, like a few minutes before it was around $13.

Reasons Behind this Surge in Tx Fee of BTC

1. Huge Number of Unconfirmed Transactions:
As of writing, according to mempool, 431,788 tx are pending for validation, and according to "Difficulty Adjustment Bar" it's going to take 10 days to process them all as the rate of completion of each block is also increased from 10 minutes to 10.3 minutes and currently, it holds on 10.4 minutes per block and if it continues to increase then more transactions will have to spend more on fees.

To put it in simple words-->As a huge number of txs are needed to be processed thus there is a lot more work to do for validators and therefore fees are increasing.

But what caused a huge spike in Unconfirmed Transactions? Obviously, people were making a hell lot of transactions and thus amount increased but why a sudden increase happened? Does BTC is being accepted as a legal tender in the USA? (in your dreams). To answer all these questions we have to understand the concept of "BRC-20"

2. Hype of BRC-20 token's Impact:
If you guys don't know about BRC-20 then it's similar to ERC-20 and we can deploy tokens on the BTC blockchain by using "Ordinal Protocol" just like people can mint tokens on the ERC-20 blockchain. What is Ordinal Protocol? --> "Well it's quite a simple protocol that allows one to input or i should use the most used term "inscribe" some data into the BTC blockchain. Well, such as smart contracts for NFTs and these NFTs will definitely be of great importance for BTC maniacs as they are the first minted NFTs on the BTC blockchain.

As we have comprehended the BRC-20 token and to some extent understand the reason of the hype behind it (aforementioned), so do you know what are the current stats on it, allow me to share them with you.

source

If things were still blurry then the above stats might have opened your eyes, Actually, this hype brings airdrops proposals and many Airdrop hunters made huge profits out of it, such as the following one:

• $260 investment in pepe token has made dimethyltryptamine.eth a total of $7 million dollars --> can you believe that, No, Go look for yourself wait am i dreaming (hehe) he holds 2.56 Trillion pepe tokens and one pepe is around $0.000001834 which means he made a total of $463,826,862.36. (well all the big profits in pepe coin can be seen on the source link i provided.

i was going to cover more profits but this is of less concern here, so the profit of pepe and other BRC-20 tokens might have given you the idea of why did people were so interested in them so that they spent around 775.93 BTC in BRC-20 token's transactions fee and performed a total of 3,954,343 tx on BRC tokens till now plus (yeah there is more) on non-ordinal, the transactions exceeds #633,533 tx with a total of 113.76 BTC being paid by people. (still don't believe me, ok go look for your self).

What Now?
As we have comprehended some factors, but my concerns are now, where are we going with it, some dude named Supernestnet, found a loophole in the ordinals of the BTC blockchain and was able to "inscribe" a number of data, images data, etc. into it and thus was able to make an NFT. How this problem will meet with a solution? Does this fee issue will encourage more Centralized Exchanges to halt withdrawals as Binance did? Why many are saying BTC will lose its value when the 10 days of pending transactions will pass?-->(is it because there will be less demand because till then there will be less demand as stats are already showing lesser trading volume).

And top of all the questions--> Did you also lose the chance of making profits out of BRC-20 tokens too? or i am alone? because to be honest i didn't care about them and they are now 2 months old and from then i didn't know a thing about it ( i guess my bad), i come to know about it due to the issue of high fees).

[Why do i think that people did not care about decentralization?]

I recently read, an article about WEB 2.5 a conceptual term used to make a gateway between WEB 2.0's products and services with WEB 3.0's decentralization. But the question that arises here is, Why is there a need for WEB 2.5? Because there was no mass adoption of decentralization, many projects were coming into the market based on WEB3 but most of them failed to get traffic. Why? the reason was difficult for me.

Like, I thought, every new technology takes a lot of time to get mass adoption. For example, If we Observe BTC, then it took almost 14 years to get globular adoption but still I think it's not that mass. (maybe I would be wrong but that's the way of perception of every mindset). So maybe Web3 will also take time. I know many decentralized swaps and exchanges are in the market like Uniswap and Aave, which has great traffic and adoption but I am talking about other social media, games, and educational projects facing adoption. Like DeFi, which is one of the use cases of Web3.

Why do i think that people did not care about decentralization?
According to Worldometers, there are around 8 billion of the population throughout the world (not official) and out of which, 5.16 billion are using the Internet, and from that 5.16 billion, 4.76 billion of internet users are using Social media platform. (According to Statista)

As we all know, Social media platforms are centralized ones, like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Tik Tok, etc. If we really want to remain anonymous by leveraging the features of Web3 then why are we using these centralized platforms? Maybe we are so dependent and addicted to these. Maybe due to mass adoption of it, because where there are more people there is more business and money too then why making effort to shift to another (easily)? The same scenario goes for crypto as well. Like, in crypto there is more trading volume on centralized exchanges while less on decentralized ones. Why? due to less adoption and knowledge may be due to less trust also.

What are your thoughts on it, like if we really want to remain anonymous and want to get more control of the internet by leveraging Web3 then why we are riding on the boat of Web2? Why are we still sticking to centralized platform?

[this market sentiment has no impact on BTC price]

I was searching about wash trading and how it could impact the crypto market, those who have no or less idea what is wash trading, it's manual or automatic (high-frequency bot trading) making trades of tokens to increase its trading volume to create big candles (increment in the price of that token).

I had a firm belief in BTC that it could not be used in the Pumps and Dumps Scheme because of its scarcity (limited supply, high demand) and decentralization. I posted a topic about Don’t Fall Prey to these Market Sentiments and Save your Bitcoin in which i covered 4 major market sentiments. One of them was the Pumps and Dumps Scheme, but "this market sentiment has no impact on BTC price". That's what i learned in that topic by reading members' replies.

So i can conclude, most of us think of BTC as P&D-free. But i think that's not true when i read a report more-than-half-of-all-bitcoin-trades-are-fake by Forbes.

They manually calculated the trading volume of BTC and compared it with BTC's trading volume of CMC, Coingecko, and other exchanges. These are some key points to their results of the report

1. Forbes estimates the global daily bitcoin volume for the industry was $128 billion on June 14. That is 51% less than the $262 billion one would get by taking the sum of self-reported volume from multiple sources.
2. In terms of how much bitcoin activity takes place at these firms, 21 crypto exchanges generate $1 billion or more in daily trading activity, while the next 33 exchanges had volume between $200 million and $999 million across all contract types, spot, futures and perpetuals.
3. Altogether, the lesser regulated exchanges in our study account for approximately $89 billion of the true volume (they claim $217 billion).
4. In the Western world and particularly in the U.S., it is tempting to think of bitcoin only trading against either the U.S. dollar or the euro and British pound. But some of the largest trading pair activity occurs against fiat currencies like the Japanese yen and Korean won and against major stablecoins like Binance U.S. dollar and the USD coin.

Source

Now i am wondering is it true? like really BTC is involved in P&D schemes because Wash trading is another term for P&D schemes and both have the same purpose to manipulate the BTC trading volume to control its price for their own benefit.

[1.]

So here is a small report on the previous week crack down of SEC on Staking services provided by Kraken and Things could also go bumpy for other exchanges too. Maybe these are fuds, but things may changes so i think we should remain active on any news from SEC.

1. On 9th February, SEC Bans staking of crypto in kraken exchange on in USA. other countries can use the staking service. SOURCE
As the in the pic, after that news price of btc moves down from $23k to lowest of $21,473. well this week comes with some positive vibe but things may go wrong after the news of SEC concerns about USD of Binance (BUSD).

2. Concerns of SEC on BUSD may cause trouble for Binance atleast for the market in upcoming days. i think they are planning to give market, goose bump in this month. Well, As we all know BUSD because most of the people use it me included. well Paxos is the main company minting this token. previous year we have heard many news about paxos and binance as fud was created last year, saying that, busd are not under control of BINANCE instead they are under control of PAXOS, and they said paxos was not registered with sec or whatever. all of it was to spread panic in the market.

And now again SEC is determined to sue Paxos and asked them not to mint any BUSD after 21 February. What are your thoughts on this.
Source 1     Source 2       Source 3     

Source to Text

3. well previous week just like before Binance tried its best to shift the concerns of SEC towards COINBASE platform. as i read some of there article and some of the lines in my interpretation looks like, Binance wants to shift that banning concerns towards Coinbase staking system by saying following lines.

Source to tweet

4.Well despite of sec's prohibition on Paxos to stop minting BUSD, CZ of Binance, told that paxos will contune to mint busd.
Well Binance does cover a great analysis about How will these crackdown boost the prices or market cap of Ethereum (decentralized) Source

Well no doubt remains there when these bans on staking would cause many exchanges to bankrupt because of shirftness of investors and stake holders to other platforms. Well, in some ways these bans are also backing the ecosystem like when people tend to go for decentralized platform to stake there assets.

Maybe there are more surprises.