Report: Peak price Bitcoin HODLers have cashed out

Bitcoin passed $100 billion in "Realized Capitalization," according to a report by crypto data company Coin Metrics. 

Realized Capitalization is a metric created by the company to capture the value of a currency as it moves. Traditionally, a cryptocurrency’s value, or market cap, is calculated by simply adding up the price of a currency and multiplying it by the total coins in circulation.  

Compared to the market cap of Bitcoin, which currently hovers around $170 billion, that might seem small. But market cap, argues Coin Metrics, isn’t a particularly useful measure. If someone bought at $100 but hasn’t touched the currency in years, it should not be counted in an assessment of a currency’s overall health. 

In January last year, “74% of realized cap was composed of coins that were last exchanged when prices were above current market prices,” reads Coin Metrics’ analysis. As of August 25 this year, however, just 52% of coins were valued above market price.

To clarify—that means that people who bought Bitcoin when prices were high have already cashed out and that a large number of people who continue to trade bitcoin today bought their BTC for $3,000-$12,000. 

That will, in theory at least, make the price of bitcoin more stable, as people won’t dump crypto causing the price to fall. Recent price movements however, would suggest otherwise.

Capital One hacker also charged with cryptojacking

An ex-Amazon employee was charged with wire fraud and computer data theft, the Department of Justice announced yesterday. Paige Thompson, 33, exploited misconfigured firewalls on servers rented from the Cloud Computing Company to gain access to dozens of companies, including hundreds of millions of customer accounts from credit card company Capital One.

Thompson then used access to steal data and to mine cryptocurrency. Hacking servers to mine cryptocurrency is known as “cryptojacking”, a practice whereby viruses use the computing power of machines of unsuspecting victims.

It’s unknown how much Thompson looted from cryptojacking, but previous cases suggest it could be a lot. In a separate case, discovered by cybersecurity company Check Point last February, researchers found that someone had hacked Jenkins, an open-source automation server used by companies all around the world, and infected victims’ computers with crypto mining software. The hacker is estimated to have earned $3 million in Monero before they were stopped. 

Here are the biggest stories in the cryptoverse:

• Tether is clogging up Ethereum says report.   
• Sharding is a security risk, says CEO of Solana.
• R3 partners with Dubai's Wethaq platform to bolster Islamic markets. 
• Ripple CEO explains massive XRP sales. 

Uphold is listing 15 new altcoins, and will pay you to guess which ones

What you need to know

U.K.-based cryptocurrency exchange Uphold is opening up the altcoin floodgates.

Starting today, the cloud-based financial services platform is adding 15 new tokens to its portfolio of offerings, diversifying a catalog that until now only supported eight cryptocurrencies, along with various metals and fiat currencies from different countries.

Which tokens is the exchange adding you ask? Great question. Uphold isn’t saying. The company, in fact, would like for you to guess—and it’ll pay you in tokens if you guess correctly.

Why it's important

In an email sent to their clients, the company said it decided to expand its listings to satisfy repeated requests from a large number of traders who wanted more cryptocurrencies. But as a way to celebrate reaching a milestone of $5 billion in transactions on the exchange to date, it’s adding the giveaway twist: The first 10 users to correctly guess the new listings will win the associated tokens. The new listings will also come with the added bonus of 24 hours of zero-fee trading.

It's boom time for blockchain (education)

For those wondering if the next class of crypto enthusiasts will be as strong as the current one, Coinbase has some good news.

The San Francisco-based cryptocurrencyexchange today released its second annual report on the state of crypto and blockchain in higher education—and the findings are even more promising than the last.

Based on survey of 735 U.S. students age 16 and older conducted by London-based adtech company Qriously, Coinbase found that the number of students who have taken at least one blockchain-related course has doubled from the previous year. What’s more, based on data from US News and World Report, Coinbase’s report suggests that more than half of the world’s top colleges and universities (56 percent) now offer at least one course on cryptocurrency or blockchain—up from 42 percent in 2018.

Read more here.