The top stories in the Crypto Roundup today: BitMEX annual trading volume tops $1 trillion, Bitcoin hash rate and mining difficulty hit all-time highs, and Blockchain Capital’s Spencer Bogart talks bitcoin’s surge and Facebook Libra.

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $10,910.05 (-6.82%) with a daily volume of $1.04 bn, while ether (ETH) is trading at $293.39 (-4.70%) with a daily volume of $2.51 bn. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 4,507.87 (-1.94%).

BitMEX Annual Trading Volume Tops $1 Trillion

The world’s leading cryptoasset derivatives exchange, The Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange (BitMEX), has seen over $1 trillion in trading volume over the past 12 months, according to CEO and founder Arthur Hayes.

Tweeting the news out late on Saturday evening, Hayes also revealed that BitMEX traded a staggering $164 bn in the previous 30 days.

While BitMEX has long enjoyed the lion’s share of the cryptoasset derivatives trading sector, the space looks soon to become more competitive, with popular spot exchanges Bitfinex and Binance soon expected to fully launch their respective cryptoasset margin and trading solutions.

 

Bitcoin Hash Rate, Mining Difficulty Hit All-Time Highs

The Bitcoin Hash Rate - measured as the estimated number of tera hashes per second (i.e. trillions of hashes per second) the Bitcoin network is performing – hit record highs over the weekend to 68,631,992 tera hashes per second (TH/s), according to data from Blockchain.com.

Indicative of an increasingly secure and active Bitcoin network, the Bitcoin hash rate hit fresh all-time highs on four occasions since June 14, 2019. When the price of bitcoin was at an all-time high on December 17, 2017, the hash rate of the Bitcoin network was 44,909,481 TH/s; 65.4 percent of the current hash rate.

Similarly, on Friday, the Bitcoin mining difficulty – a relative measure of how difficult it is to find a new block – reached a new all-time high of more than 7.93 trillion.

Blockchain Capital’s Spencer Bogart Talks Bitcoin’s Surge and Facebook Libra

Spencer Bogart, general partner a Blockchain Capital – a top-tier VC within the crypto and blockchain space – made an appearance on Bloomberg Technology to talk with host Emily Chang about bitcoin’s latest price rally and Facebook’s Libra plans.

Offering a rationalization for Bitcoin’s recent volatility, Bogart pointed out that it “is natural for any kind of asset that has fixed supply but fluctuating demand, particularly one like bitcoin that’s early on in its life cycle.”

Asked by Chang about Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency and the possible connection to the bitcoin price, Bogart argued that it has probably been “the biggest driver just in the past few weeks.”

He noted, however, that the “backdrop of global monetary policy” and an increasing pool of negative-yielding government bonds might also be important factors in the recent surge: “capital is going to flow into other assets instead of taking a guaranteed loss. We’ve seen this across the risk spectrum,” Bogart told Chang.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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