We built the Blockchain Wallet because we’re driven by a relentless passion for making crypto easy to use. We want everyone to be able to use it, not just invest in it.
We believe that owning and controlling your own private key is the single most important aspect of using crypto. Without a private key, you aren’t using crypto – you’re just speculating and you’re missing the defining part of crypto: user controlled, sovereign money.
It was enabling that exact need that underpinned the development of the Blockchain Wallet six years ago. The mission? Make it easy for every user to have their own private key, to get users away from storing funds at exchanges and “bitcoin banks”, and to enable everyone to be their own bank.
Fast forward six years and we’ve achieved a few things that we’re proud of:
Building the first cross-platform, non-custodial, and cross-chain wallet
Signing up 30 million wallets in 140 countries globally
Powering over $200 billion in consumer transaction volume and over 80 million consumer crypto transactions in the last two years alone
Championing the cause of financial sovereignty and user-control with regulators around the world. (We’ve spent thousands of hours and millions on education and outreach.)
Helping our users store millions of BTC, BCH & ETH coins and generate over a quarter of bitcoin network traffic alone
Most importantly, it’s been a honor and privilege to be the first place tens of millions of people turn in order to actually use crypto and hold their own keys.
But there’s a lot still to do.
At the end of the last bull run, we did a serious self-assessment and asked ourselves, what do users need that we aren’t delivering today? We identified four common requests and frustrations:
Better, faster ways for new users get their first crypto and make their first transaction
More storage types, like hardware, as users’ balances increased
More assets as users want to store and use an increasingly diverse asset set
Better, more reliable sources of liquidity as trading and investing across assets continues to increase
Satisfying these demands meant building a huge extension of our platform, at scale. We’ve had our heads down much of this year doing exactly that and starting today we’re excited to begin delivering new solutions to you, beginning with two new capabilities.
First, we’re launching Swap by Blockchain: a next generation trading product with best-in-class liquidity and execution, powered by our new machine trading software platform that ensures best execution across assets. Blockchain Wallet users will now have access to exchange-like prices without giving up control of their keys or their crypto. And trade limits will increase from hundreds to thousands of dollars of crypto per trade.
While the system currently has deep liquidity drawn from a variety of sources, we plan to add more liquidity sources over time, including decentralized exchange protocols. We’ve rebuilt our risk and KYC systems, so that you can onboard with ease, in minutes. Swap ensures our users stay liquid and can trade at the best prices in the market, regardless of overall market volatility and challenges. We’ve started rolling Swap out today and everyone will have access over the next two weeks.
Secondly, we’re launching Lockbox: a hardware vault in your pocket, built in partnership with hardware leader Ledger. Lockbox is simple to use and is even more secure thanks to a locked endpoint that prevents phishing and spoofing attacks. It’s hardware made easy, with a setup that takes just a few moments thanks to our custom hardware-software integration.
With Lockbox you’re able to check your balance and receive transactions, on mobile and web, without the inconvenience of having to plug your device in every time. In an industry first, you’ll also be able to trade directly from your Lockbox while still maintaining your keys. In conjunction with Lockbox, we’re also excited to let current Ledger device owners seamlessly pair with the Blockchain Wallet and trade directly from the Ledger device they already own.
And we have more coming this year, including additional assets and new products within the Blockchain Wallet that will bring you new, faster, and better ways to get started in crypto.
We’re here to build a new financial system and the Blockchain Wallet is your passport to that new world. Store crypto, trade crypto, transact with crypto and most importantly truly own and control your crypto.
We’re dedicated to building the functionality you want, without compromising your control of your key. Your crypto is yours, and it should stay that way.
UPDATE (25 October 13:25 EDT): This article has been updated to include Tether’s recent redemption statements.
The “Tether Treasury’s” USDT wallet has rapidly risen up the ranks to become the top holder of the stablecoin, suggesting that some market participants may have managed to successfully withdraw their holdings from circulation. The removal of roughly 28.5 percent of the total number of Tether in circulation has coincided with a significant depletion in the amount of USDT held in two wallets separately owned by Binance and Huobi.
Also Read:
Largest Holdings Shift to Tether Treasury
The Tether Treasury has grown from being the fifth-largest store of the currency as of Oct. 7, when it held nearly 186.7 million USDT, to becoming the largest USDT wallet at present, with almost 916.7 million USDT. The growth of the wallet’s contents appears to have coincided with a 26.6 percent reduction in the contents of the largest of two wallets belonging to Binance. That held the largest Tether balance of 808.7 million USDT as of Oct. 17, but is now ranked second with 593.6 million USDT.
A once identified as the largest Tether wallet, owned by Huobi, has also seen a significant reduction in its holdings. On Oct. 7, it was the second-largest store of the currency at 249.3 million USDT. However, as of this writing, the wallet holds just 29.18 million USDT, putting it at 12th place.
Another Tether wallet owned by Huobi, currently the exchange’s largest, has not changed in value, with USDT. It has crept up the rankings of the biggest Tether wallets from fourth place to third place at present. Additionally, Tether’s official Twitter account the company had destroyed 500 million tethers on Oct. 24. The Twitter announcement leads to a which details that over the past week, Tether has “redeemed a significant amount of USDT from the circulating supply of tokens.” The company states there are approximately 466 million USDT remaining in the Tether treasury wallet.
Tether has just destroyed 500M USDt from the Tether treasury wallet with the following tx:
For more information see the announcement here:
— Tether (@Tether_to)
USDT/USD Pairing Appears to
Stabilize Following Capitulation
Kraken’s Tether wallet, which was the seventh-largest on the list with almost 47.8 million USDT as of Oct. 19, now ranks ninth with 43.9 million USDT. Just 12 days prior, on Oct. 7, the wallet was the 22nd-largest holding on the list, with 21.6 million USDT.
Recent sizable inflows to the Kraken wallet had sparked theories that a major Tether holder was contemplating a sudden exodus from the USDT markets, with Kraken hosting the strongest USDT/USD pairing by volume. While the wallet has since been depleted by nearly 4 million USDT, the price of Tether has remained relatively stable, ranging between $0.965 and $0.98 over the past week. Despite this, there were $11.25 million worth of unfilled cumulative USDT sell orders priced below $1.00 as of this writing, indicating that many market participants are willing to accept losses to liquidate their holdings.
What is your response to the shifting holdings of the largest Tether wallets? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Images courtesy of Shutterstock
At bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen our page? You can even lookup the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.
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The game’s mission is to provide its users with a fun way to spend some of their time.
Each monster has a unique genome and strives to grow and evolve. It has different characteristics – the most important of them is its evolutionary level. The higher the level is, the more evolved the cryptomonster is, and the better its chances to grow larger are.
The Competition
The first CryptoMonsters World competition starts on 26 October 2018 00:00 UTC and ends on 01 November 2018 23:59 UTC.
Your goal is simple: In order to win the first prize you must be the participant, who has played the most during the competition.
The Rules
You can play with one or with all of your monsters.
You can use as many magical potions as you want.
You can participate in any type of a game.
It doesn’t matter whether your monsters grow or shrink. It only matters how many games you’ve played.
The Prizes
The five players, who have played the most games during the competition, win the following prizes:
1th place: one monster – level 20, 10 potions of immunity and 10 potions of growth
2th place: one monster – level 15, 10 potions of immunity and 10 potions of growth
3th place: one monster – level 10, 10 potions of immunity and 10 potions of growth
4th & 5th place: 5 potions of immunity and 5 potions of growth
Visit to learn more.
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As of 10.30am PT on Thursday, October 25, Coinbase Pro is launching support for the USDC stablecoin. Here’s what that means:
Starting immediately, users can deposit normal US dollars (USD) and click to convert them to USDC with no feeAlso starting immediately, users can send and receive USDC into and out of their Coinbase Pro accountsAfter a minimum of 12 hours, once sufficient liquidity is established, trading will begin on the BTC/USDC and ETH/USDC order books
USDC trading will be accessible for users in most jurisdictions, but will not initially be available for residents of the state of New York.
A true stablecoin: convert $1 USD to 1 USDC and back
One of the unique aspects of this launch is that while users may trade bitcoin or Ether for USDC, the USD/USDC order book will not be available at this time. Instead we’ve developed something we consider better: an automatic tool to instantly convert USD to USDC and back, without exchange rate risk. What this means is that US customers will be able to buy 1 USDC for $1 or sell 1 USDC for $1, with no fees, in large volume, with one click.
Here’s what that looks like:
The reason we chose this approach is that we think the conversion of USD to USDC and back should be simple and intuitive. Just like you can convert physical dollars to bank-based dollars at an ATM, you can now convert bank-based dollars to blockchain-based digital dollars at Coinbase Pro. And you can then send these blockchain-based dollars to your local Ethereum wallet, use them in dApps or other crypto apps, or write programs with them, confident that each USDC can be sold for $1 at Coinbase This makes USDC a true stablecoin, as it’s stable in value at Coinbase Pro.
The Stages of the USDC Launch
In more detail, there will be four stages to the launch as outlined below. We will follow each of these stages independently for the BTC/USDC and ETH/USDC order books. If at any point one of the new order books does not meet our assessment for a healthy and orderly market, we may keep the book in one state for a longer period of time, or suspend trading as per our . We will send tweets from our Twitter account as each order book moves through the following phases:
USDC conversion-and-transfer-only mode. Starting at 10am PT on Thursday, October 25, customers will be able to convert USD to USDC and back, and to transfer USDC into and out of their Coinbase Pro accounts. Customers will not yet be able to place orders and no orders will be filled on the BTC/USDC and ETH/USDC order books. These order books will be in conversion-and-transfer-only mode for at least 12 hours.Post-only. In the second stage, customers can post limit orders but there will be no matches (completed orders). An order book will be in post-only mode for a minimum of one minute. This market state has been shortened while still maintaining market health during launch.Limit-only. In the third stage, limit orders will start matching but customers are unable to submit market orders. An order book will be in limit-only mode for a minimum of 10 minutes.Full trading. In the final stage, full trading services will be available for an order book, including limit, market, and stop orders.
With this launch, Coinbase Pro users can now easily convert large quantities of US dollars into USDC and back at no fee and without exchange rate risk, can send USDC back and forth to their Ethereum wallets, and can also trade the two most popular digital currencies (bitcoin and Ether) for USDC. We believe these are major steps towards making the USDC stablecoin useful, and help us build a more open financial system.
You can for a Coinbase Pro account here to start trading USDC.
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