Bitcoin’s Peak Hash Rate, Booking.com Predicts Global Adoption | Crypto News

Hey everyone. Today, Booking.com predicts global blockchain adoption.

An Austrian telecom service now accepts crypto.

Bitcoin's hash rate hits a new all time high.

A Twitter account sparks bitcoin cash drama.

And Libra is already taking over the world despite not even existing yet.

This is Cryptocurrency News with Molly, Jane and Jackson. But before we get to the news, hit the subscribe button below.

Guys, adoption is imminent. Glenn Fogel, the newly appointed CEO of Booking.com? yeah, that's right. We were talking about the site that literally everyone uses to book anything, predicts the future relevance of blockchain based currencies. Booking.com was one of the founding members of the Libra project, so it is pretty unsurprising that its CEO would predict such a future.

Fogle says when Bitcoin became well known, many questioned its legitimacy. And while the jury is still out on the future of bitcoin, I do believe currencies with a blockchain base will continue to surface and may become more widely accepted across the globe, especially outside the US which has a well accepted credit card payment system.

His assessment doesn't appear to be wrong as the trend toward blockchain adoption is already materializing around the world with blockchain technology being supported in many different countries including China, India and now even Austria.

Insane.

So Molly Jean, how could the adoption of cryptocurrency services be beneficial for booking.com.

Well, there's two sides to this, Jackson. On one hand, it can be beneficial for the global crypto community as a whole, because whenever a big retailer adds crypto as an option, like overstock.com did back in 2014, it brings more name recognition to Bitcoin and makes it more accessible for people to use Bitcoin in their everyday lives. On the other hand, this could also be beneficial for booking.com itself because the use of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies on the platform could allow for more ease of transaction. It could allow for faster processing times, less transaction fees that they're going to be paying to credit card companies. The middleman will be gone. So in that sense it's kind of helpful for both sides. But I do want to underline for you guys that nothing that the CEO said means that booking.com is actually going to be adding support for crypto in the future. This is just hypotheticals we're talking about here. Starting from August 19, customers of major Austrian telecom operator A1 can now pay for network services with cryptocurrency in seven selected shops throughout Austria. Six major cryptos will be Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Litecoin, Stellar and Dash.

The A1 payment service was developed in collaboration with a few European payments solution providers, including Concartus and Ingenico. Echoing Glenn Fogel, the head of A1 business marketing, Markus Schreiber, said that paying with digital currencies is becoming more and more prevalent globally while cash is becoming an obsolete model which is affecting all industries. And really we have to see what the demand is going to be like if people are actually going to use this service.

It reminds me a little bit of the interview that I did with the former mayor of Zug and our documentary about Switzerland, because in the town of Zug you can pay your taxes with cryptocurrencies and you have for a few years. But when we asked him how many people did, it was like five I guess. For our Austrian viewers, would you be interested in paying your telecom bill with cryptocurrency? Let us know in the comments.

Bitcoin's hash rate has been hitting new all time highs this summer. On August 19th it broke through 82.5 terahashes per second according to blockchain.com Bitcoin.

Investor Max Kaiser pointed out earlier this month that he believes the hash rate is directly correlated to Bitcoin's price. People believe that the higher the hash rate, the more secure the network and therefore the more confident investors will be.

Even though the hash rate has just hit its new all time high, Bitcoin's price is now on the decline and trading at about 5.5% down in the last 24 hours as of the time of this recording.

So Jackson, what does Bitcoin's hash rate indicate?

Bitcoin's hash rate indicates the level of security of the network. The greater the hash rate is, the more secure the network is. And by that I mean the network is healthy. It can resist attacks, it can resist 51% attacks and it just means it's a good sign for how the network is performing.

So if we take a look right now Jackson at the bitcoin hash rate versus bitcoin's price in USD on bitinfocharts.com you can see that over a two year period bitcoin's hash rate and price have not been one to one correlated, especially at the end of 27 beginning of 2018. But if you look more recently since about January this year until now, they're both steadily moving up. So one could extrapolate that the price and the hash rate are becoming more correlated, but at the same time I'm hesitant to do so because looking at the whole two year span, it's really not the case even the majority of the time, correct?

Well, I think in 2017 we saw some extraordinary circumstances to say the least, and the amount of money that was being pumped into Bitcoin was not reflected in the hash rate. But now that we're as things have moved on and maybe so to speak, have stabilized a little bit, we're seeing a greater correlation between the price and the hash rate. I just think that this means that the system is performing as it should be, and it's reflected in the correlation between the price and the ability of miners to verify blocks and transactions.

Check your Twitter accounts the Bitcoin Twitter handle, which has long been a shill for Bitcoin Cash, has seemingly switched alliances overnight. The account, which had around a million followers, had previously allegedly been under the control of Roger Ver, a rabid Bitcoin Cash proponent.

However, this week the account changed its description to link to Pro Bitcoin website bitcoin.org instead of versbitcoin.com and started to publicly unfollow people. How does an account publicly unfollow people?

That's a good question. The user records the screen as he or she scrolls through the following list, clicks unfollow on Justin sun and labels the whole thing a misspelled ginormous announcement. As of recording time, the account now follows only nine people.

Bitcoin Cash supporters on Reddit have lost their collective minds. Viver's response to their cries for help in turning the account back to Bitcoin.

Cash was Litecoin's Charlie Lee had what I consider to be the best response to this odd debacle. I have no proof of this, but I think the owner of Itcoin must have had a romantic relationship with Roger Ver and recently broke up with Roger. That's the only thing that can explain why ITCoin stopped supporting BCH.

It's also worth mentioning that Roger Ver and Bitcoin Cash have seen better days. While Bitcoin has been resurging in the past few months, Bitcoin Cash is currently trading close to its all time lows in Bitcoin terms as well. Vers apparently left his position as CEO of Bitcoin Cash supporting Bitcoin.com now.

As I'm sure you've noticed, Facebook's Libra project is everywhere, but it doesn't exist yet. However, there are already a slew of competitors that are coming out of the woodwork.

So, Molly Jane, who wants to compete with Libra?

Well, there have been a lot of contenders. I would argue that the most important is the People's bank of China because they've been working on their central backed digital currency for a few years now. But apparently they have now been inspired by the Libra project and are in a sense rushing to complete their currency before Libra is released. Another important one, Jackson, I think is Binance's Venus, which was also announced this week. And they say that they are going to do Libra better than Libra does Libra. So we'll see how that works out. I think that maybe Libra and Facebook have more name recognition than Binance, but that's just my opinion.

True. And what about the Winklevoss twins?

The Winklevoss twins, Gemini have said they're in talks with the Libra association to join, but because the Libra association isn't actually releasing right now, any of the people they're in talks with, Jackson, we don't really know what's going to happen with that.

So do you think that Binance's Venus actually has the capability to compete with Libra once both of them are obviously released?

I think it has a good chance, just in the sense that Binance has good name recognition within the crypto community and the success of their Binance coin this year has shown that they are able to keep things afloat even when all the other cryptocurrencies are crashing and they have Binance chain. So I think that we should keep an eye on what Binance is doing with Venus.

Do you think there is a current trend where people are using the Libra name and this sort of like Libra rival competing with Libra in order to actually market their own product?

I definitely think so. This week Eric Finman, who is Bitcoin's reportedly youngest millionaire, said that his new project is going to be a Libra killer. So this has been cryptocurrency news. I'm Molly Jane and this is Jackson. Before we leave, we wanted to ask you guys, do you think there are any projects out there that are real competitors to Libra? Comment below your thoughts. And as always, remember to like subscribe and HODL cointelegraph. Like subscribe and hodl. Sam.