News summarizing the blockchain & cryptocurrency market – April 12

Outflow of GBTC shares hits record low

Outflow of GBTC stock reached a record low on April 10 with an outflow of $17.5 million. Previously, on April 8 and April 9, a total of more than 450 million USD flowed out of GBTC. During the past 3 months, the cash flow withdrawn from GBTC has reached 15 billion USD, including 2.2 billion USD from Genesis company.

Thanks to the significant decrease in GBTC outflow, Bitcoin quickly recovered from the threshold of 67,000 USD on the evening of April 10 due to the news that the US announced a higher-than-expected CPI. The coin recovered to 71,300 USD before stabilizing at 70,700 USD at present. GBTC is a fund-like investment product from Grayscale, representing the amount of Bitcoin the company holds. Previously, the price of GBTC was always higher than the market price of Bitcoin, but at the end of 2023, the difference between GBTC and BTC reached -50%.

Bitcoin mining difficulty continues to set new records as halving approaches

Bitcoin mining difficulty continues to increase and reach new records as the halving approaches. Bitcoin mining difficulty has increased nearly 4% and reached 86.4 trillion hashes, the highest number ever. At the same time, the average hashrate of the BTC network also increased by 3.92% to 657.87 EH/s. Bitcoin mining difficulty changes to maintain block generation around the target every 10 minutes.

Bitcoin halving is an automatic deflationary mechanism in which block mining rewards are halved every 210,000 blocks. The next halving event is expected to take place on April 20, 2024. History shows that Bitcoin halvings are often accompanied by significant price fluctuations. Currently, Bitcoin price is trading at around 70,700 USD.

Mempool Founder Criticizes Layer-2 Bitcoins

The Mempool founder criticized Layer-2 Bitcoins, emphasizing that current Bitcoin Layer-2 projects do not adhere to Bitcoin's core principles of decentralization, transparency, and user control.

The Mononaut founder pointed out a number of issues, including the lack of support for unilateral withdrawals, VC investor participation, and private tokens, providing reciprocal rewards, based on a scalable Ethereum contract. level, offers rewards for long-term coin lock-up, claims to be Bitcoin-native but is only multisig on Ethereum, and lacks technical documentation.