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Hackers revealed that 986 unique BTC wallets have allegedly been used by Russian state intelligence groups, amid the complicated relationship between crypto and the Russian government.

A recently deleted Chainalysis report from April 26 revealed that by using the blockchain feature OP_RETURN, which allows senders to attach messages on transactions, Bitcoiners could trace the more aggressive usage of BTC by Russian State intelligence groups. Almost 1000 wallets were linked to Russias Foreign Military Intelligence Agency (GRU), Federal Security Service (FSB), and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).

The OP_RETURN feature, according to the Bitcoin Wiki, allows a user to void the transaction and has at times been used to convey additional information needed to send transactions, meaning that burned transactions can also broadcast and keep added messages on the blockchain forever. The so-called OP_RETURN vigilante burned over $300,000 in BTC to send messages via BTC transactions to these addresses between February 14, 2022 and March 14, 2022putting the start of Russias Ukraine invasion right in the middle of the informants quest.

The transactions included the four following texts in Russian:

Whats more, the vigilante is suspected to have gained access to the private keys of these wallets marked with the above four messages because the vigilante returned in April 2022 to send money from these wallets to Ukrainian aid addresses.

The possibility that the OP_RETURN sender acquired private keys for Russian-controlled addresses also suggests that the Putin regimes crypto operations arent secure, Chainalysis reported.

At least three of these wallet addresses are confirmed to be owned by Russian agencies, according to the report. Wallets ytPm and 2uPf are owned by the SVR, cybersecurity firm HYAS confirmed in a now-archived post. Wallet 4hDH is owned by the GRU, which was confirmed by the wallets connection to DCLeaks.com that had spread disinformation about U.S. politicians leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

While the Russian government agencies have yet to respond to the validity of the claims above, blockchain sleuths and hackers found a way to hypothesize how Russia has been using crypto to its advantage in its war against Ukraine.

Those OP_RETURN message will be there forever no government or corporation can take them down, the Chainalysis report reads, highlighting how government officials can have trouble grasping basic principles of blockchain technology.

Ukraine has fully embraced the use of crypto since the start of the war as an easy way for people to donate to Ukrainian war efforts. The Ukrainian government managed to collect $600,000 in donations in a matter of days and over $70 million within a few weeks of the war, with notable names such as Vitalk Buterin, the Canadian-Russian head of Ethereum, tweeting in support of Ukraine.

Over the border, the Russian government has been uncertain about crypto adoption. In July 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a crypto ban on the payment of goods and services. Meanwhile, the Russian Duma expressed interest in developing a digital ruble CBDC for 2023 to be used only for specified goods and services.

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Hundreds of Bitcoin Wallets Controlled by Russian Intelligence ... - Crypto Briefing

Dogecoin price has always been a leader in the meme coin space, but the emergence of PEPE challenged the supremacy of the cryptocurrency. The OG meme coin continues to fail to breach an important resistance level, but the altcoin might have found its way around the bearishness surrounding it.

Dogecoin price over the last week has had a rather less volatile, sideways movement in comparison to Bitcoin prices rise to $30,000 and the subsequent decline. The latter noted another 4% crash on May 1, while DOGE stood virtually unchanged at $0.0789.

Given that the altcoins currently lack the strength to mark an alt season, all the cryptocurrencies are bound to follow Bitcons lead. However, DOGE is one of the altcoins refraining from doing so, given its correlation to the asset stands at a low of 0.3. This is the same reason why the meme coin did not observe much decline over the last 24 hours, even as BTC slipped to $28,000.

Dogecoin correlation to Bitcoin

Read more - MicroStrategy outperforms Apple, Google and Bitcoin price despite BTC dip to $28,000

But beyond a low correlation, Dogecoin needs the support of its investors, that have been disappearing over the last ten days. The addresses conducting transactions on the network declined from an average of 142,000 throughout April to 112,000 for the last couple of days.

Dogecoin active addresses

One of the potential reasons behind this is the absurdly successful meme coin, PEPE, which boasts a market cap of $481 million that it gained over the last two weeks. The hype surrounding the joke coin has been such that the 24-hour trading volume of PEPE surpassed that of Dogecoin.

While DOGE noted a total of transactions worth $321 million conducted in the last day, PEPE traders and holders moved around $521 million worth of supply in the same duration. The trading volume of PEPE even exceeded the total diluted market cap, which speaks volumes to the sensibility and loyalty of meme coin holders.

Dogecoin vs. PEPE 24-hour trading volume

Regardless, DOGE might have a shot upon the PEPE hype easing; until then, not following Bitcoin is likely the best option for the cryptocurrency.

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Dogecoin price defying Bitcoins lead might be the key to its recovery - FXStreet

The price of Bitcoin (BTC), after a sharp increase on April 25 and 26, BTC underwent days of relative stability, only to drop by over 4% as last weekend came to a close.

In a tweet on April 30, crypto analyst Ali Martinez put forward an observation regarding Bitcoins price direction, highlighting two critical levels that may play a role. Martinez notes that a significant support level is evident, with 1.85 million addresses purchasing 650,000 BTC between the price range of $27,440 and $28,315.

Additionally, Martinez identifies a key resistance level, with 1.37 million addresses having acquired 530,000 BTC between $29,260 and $30,130. These levels could potentially influence Bitcoins future price action.

At the time of writing, Bitcoins price sits at $28,551, placing the digital asset just above the support level mentioned in the tweet.

After initially rising from $27,400 on April 25, Bitcoin reached a resistance just below $30,000 on April 26, and the coin spent the weekend trying to breach the resistance at $29,260. BTC reached the height of $29,800 on three occasions over the past week Once on April 26, another time on April 27, and one last time on April 30.

However, with the arrival of the new week, Bitcoins price dropped to roughly $28,500, which is where it sits at the time of writing. In the past 7 days, BTC price has grown by 4.13%, but on a 24-hour chart, it is 2.35% down.

The price drop comes ahead of the Federal Reserves monetary policy decision, which is expected to be made on Wednesday, May 3. The uncertainty has caused the majority of crypto assets to trade in the red, moving toward neutralizing the weekly gains seen in the final days of April.

For now, traders are waiting for one of the levels to break. However, it remains to be seen which level will break first.

Disclaimer:The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.

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2 key levels that will decide Bitcoin's future price - Finbold - Finance in Bold

This article explores five compelling use cases for Bitcoins Lightning Network, a layer 2 (L2) payment protocol designed to address Bitcoins scalability issues and enable instant, low-cost transactions.

The Lightning Network is a payment protocol that operates on top of a blockchain, such as Bitcoin or Litecoin, to enable fast and low-cost transactions. As explained by Binance Academy, the Lightning Network is an off-chain or layer two solution, which means that it allows individuals to transact without recording every transaction on the blockchain. This is made possible by creating a separate network that communicates with the main blockchain using its own nodes and software.

To enter or exit the Lightning Network, users need to create special transactions on the blockchain, which allow them to create a mini-ledger, also known as a channel, with another user. This channel operates like a smart contract, holding a private ledger between the parties. Each transaction on this ledger updates the balance between the parties in the channel.

For instance, if Alice and Bob put 5 BTC each into the smart contract, both parties would have a balance of 5 BTC in their channel. Alice could then write to the ledger, pay 1 BTC to Bob, which would update the balance to 4 BTC for Alice and 6 BTC for Bob. Bob could then send 2 BTC back to Alice later, updating the balances to 6 BTC for Alice and 4 BTC for Bob. This process can continue for many transactions without the need to record each one on the main blockchain.

Lightning transactions are speedy and cheap since they dont require block confirmations, which can cause delays and increase fees. Payments can be made as fast as the internet connection permits.

Below are some of the top use cases for Bitcoins Lightning network:

David Marcus, the Co-Founder and CEO of Bitcoin startup Lightspark, was interviewed by Alex Heath on The Verges Decoder with Nilay Patel podcast. The conversation covered a range of topics, such as the current state of the crypto industry, the unique opportunities offered by Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, and how Lightspark intends to simplify access to the network for developers and businesses.

Marcus emphasized the importance of an open, interoperable protocol for money on the internet and stated that Bitcoin is the only network that satisfies this requirement due to its robust, battle-tested infrastructure and lack of central control. Lightspark is built on the Lightning Network and aims to simplify the process of using the Lightning Network by providing an enterprise-grade entry point, charging a small fee for transactions conducted through its platform. Marcus is particularly excited about the concept of streaming money, which involves sending small amounts of money, even fractions of a cent, in real-time across the network, potentially revolutionizing how people transact online.

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Unleashing the Power of Bitcoin: The Lightning Network's 5 Best ... - CryptoGlobe

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In one of the more bizarre intraday price moves we've seen in the crypto market in a while, it was the stairs up and the elevator down for Bitcoin (BTC-USD) on Wednesday. Bulls and bears both took it on the chin at various points during the session. First, bulls pushed the price up to $30,000 from a Tuesday close of $28,300.

BTC 1hr Chart (TradingView)

Then late in the Wednesday session BTC's dollar price crashed more than 8% in about a 90 minute timeframe from $29,700 down to $27,200 before somewhat amusingly closing the Wednesday session back at $28,400. In the process, more than $2.5 billion in open interest was wiped out during that single elevator candle.

There was quite a bit of speculation that the dump was caused by a rumor-related panic sell following a $26.6 million BTC deposit to Binance by market maker Jump Trading. This deposit was alerted via Twitter by chain analysis company Arkham Intelligence and was in close proximity to a false alert that the US Federal Government was actively selling seized BTC holdings from the Silk Road confiscations. That alert was attributed to Arkham.

US Gov BTC Holdings (Dune Analytics/21Shares)

That turned out to not be true as the US Government's balance is still well over 205k BTC and hasn't budged since early March. Arkham's explanation online was that the alert did indeed happen but that it was improperly configured at the user end by a well-followed crypto news account on Twitter. The account then shared that incorrect information online.

Onlookers falsely attributed the decline in BTC's price to Jump Trading reacting to the Arkham Silk Road funds alert, when it in actuality Jump's deposit was an hour earlier. The end result was a very volatile Wednesday session that closed roughly breakeven, but not before traders lost billions in the process.

As far as the actual activity on the network is concerned, Bitcoin's usage has remained stable in recent weeks and we're seeing that activity reflected through a generally positive trend in daily active users:

Active Addresses (Messari)

DAUs on the main layer have oscillated between 800k and 1 million over the last several weeks. Raw transaction figures have increased in recent days according to data from IntoTheBlock. However, despite the increase in total transactions, the BTC volume of the transactions has remained low compared to 2022 levels.

BTC Transaction Volume (IntoTheBlock)

After cooling off for much of April, there has been a noticeable jump in daily fees over the last couple of days:

BTC Daily Fees (Token Terminal)

In my opinion, this is likely attributable to another increase in Ordinals mints. Adoption of Bitcoin's controversial NFT project Ordinals continues to make new daily inscription highs. There have now been over 2 million NFTs minted with Bitcoin's block space since that project launched a few months ago.

Ordinals Daily Mints (Dune Analytics/dgtl_assets)

However, what's been different about this recent surge higher in Ordinals mints has been the lack of a surge in transaction fees up until the last couple of days.

Ordinals Fees (Dune Analytics/dgtl_assets)

We can see from the chart above that daily fees paid to inscribe Ordinals fell from a peak of $375k on March 24th down to just $8.8k on April 20th. This recent pop in daily inscriptions has resulted in more fee revenue than was apparent during the early April inscription highs.

Another important metric to consider when guessing where the BTC price is going in the short to medium term is exchange flows. Typically when exchange flow is net negative, it means buyers are accumulating and taking assets into self-custody. Conversely, when exchange net flow is positive, it could be a sign that holders are looking to take profit.

Exchange Net Flows 1 Month (IntoTheBlock)

According to data provided by IntoTheBlock, aggregated exchange flows have been positive by nearly 76k BTC since the start of April. That represents $2.2 billion in positive net flow over the last 27 days. I'd call that a fairly bearish development for the short term.

90 Day NVT (CoinMetrics)

Something else that I often point to when I look at these more payment-focused cryptocurrencies is the NVT ratio. The NVT utilizes the USD value of the transaction volume and the market capitalization of each cryptocurrency to try to determine when a coin is moving more based on speculation rather than when it is moving because of an increase in value being transacted. The higher the NVT, the more overvalued the coin theoretically is.

The day to day variance of this metric can be very volatile so to smooth it out I like looking at the 90 day adjustment. Bitcoin's 90 day NVT ratio is still above 150. It's gone from the cheapest PoW coin by NVT last summer to the most expensive one now. There is no standard rule for what a low NVT is or what a high NVT is. Personally, I think 150 is high. I take that view because before February of this year, the last time BTC was above 150 on a 90 day adjusted NVT was in November 2013.

There are many lessons that crypto participants can take from the Jump/Arkham confusion. From where I sit, the most important one is to watch the chains, not the Twitter feed. I would also be very cautious when using leverage in these assets. Market participants who buy and hold with confidence didn't get wiped out on Wednesday. It was the day traders and margin bettors who did.

Block Reward vs Price (LookIntoBitcoin)

There is a Bitcoin halving a year away. If history rhymes, BTC's dollar denominated price will be much higher in 18 to 24 months than it is now. Dollar cost average holders who don't play the margin game will likely do very well post-halving. At this point, the last thing a Bitcoin bull should want is to get wiped out through leverage before the next cycle starts. Risks certainly remain and there is no guarantee that BTC will continue to behave the same way it has behaved following previous halving events.

When assessing everything that I'm seeing on chain, I would probably be cautious rather than aggressive at this point. It is very possible we see a higher BTC price in the weeks and months ahead. There are positive signs from a usage and a holder growth standpoint. However, I believe in the shorter term, bulls who want to aggressively scale a position rather than dollar cost average over time can probably be patient and wait for a better price.

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Bitcoin: A Flash Crash And A Look At The Fundamentals (BTC-USD) - Seeking Alpha