After the world’s largest and most popular cryptocurrency received a welcome boost last week, as investors faith in Bitcoin was restored by the coin’s recovery from recent dips below $30,000 in value, the coin saw an even greater spike this morning (July 26).
Fears that Bitcoin was in a bear market seem to have now been soothed, as the news of Bitcoin’s potential acceptance by Amazon sent prices skyrocketing today for the crypto market across the board.
This also comes after the coin was buoyed by tech guru Elon Musk during his appearance at major Bitcoin conference and project launch, The B Word.
Appearing in a conversation with Twitter and Square, Inc founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, the B Word saw the launch of a new organisation promoting institutional acceptance of the coin, with Musk helping to deliver a boost to coins like Dogecoin and Ethereum as well as Bitcoin after Tesla suspended payments with the major coin following environmental concerns earlier this year.
Here’s the latest crypto news and prices for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin today in the wake of the Amazon report.
What is Bitcoin worth today?
As of 7.30am on Monday July 26, Bitcoin’s price peaked at $39,065.30 or £28,401.22 according to CoinDesk.
The coin is currently valued at 12% on the previous 24 hours, fluctuating around $38,500 in recovering from its latest dip to $29,504.96 on Tuesday July 20.
Bitcoin’s initial shock fall occurred last month on Tuesday June 22 when, after hovering around the $30,000 threshold, the coin’s value plummeted to a new recent low of $28,814.75 that afternoon.
Since then, the currency had rebounded and begun to trend upwards again but its price had remained in the low to mid $30,000s.
The recent plunge saw its highest value so far this year of $64,000 in May almost sliced in half, with pundits warning in late June that the dip to under $30,000 could lead to a sharp rise in sell-offs and more people refusing to ‘hodl’ their positions.
With all coins tending to move in tandem with Bitcoin, Ethereum prices also soared today – with the coin returning to values above $2,000 in trading at $2,352.88 at the time of writing on Monday.
A popular cryptocurrency synonymous with the rising crypto trend of NFTs, Ethereum has an all time high of $4,382.73 which it reached in May’s cryptocurrency boom but has struggled to return to this peak since.
The hype surrounding popular memecoin, Dogecoin, had until recently continued to show dwindle, but likewise showed considerable growth after Musk lauded the coin’s community and less serious status as an altcoin at the major Bitcoin conference on Wednesday July 21 – when Dogecoin it soared to over $0.20000.
Dogecoin’s price today is currently sitting at around $0.224146, or £0.162927, while Cardano prices fluctuate around $1.35, XRP Ripple at $0.660887 and Stellar at $0.278492 as of 12pm on Monday.
Is Amazon going to accept Bitcoin?
A report published by CityAM early on Monday morning cited an Amazon ‘insider’ on plans for the Big Tech behemoth to start accepting Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies as a payment and form a central part of its growth plans by the end of 2021.
The insider added that as well as looking to establish speedy ways of cryptocurrency payments, the company was also looking to brandish its very own native cryptocurrency token, with Amazon allegedly set to reveal this by the end of 2022.
The company has been approached for comment, but according to CityAM’s source Amazon’s plans to embrace cryptocurrency are already in motion and the “entire project is pretty much ready to roll.”
CityAM’s source added that the plans to make cryptocurrencies a major component of Amazon’s future growth and business plans was something which had been spearheaded by former CEO and Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos.
“It begins with Bitcoin – this is the key first stage of this crypto project, and the directive is coming from the very top… Jeff Bezos himself,” the Amazon insider told the publication.
The report has sent the value of Bitcoin soaring in a new propelled stage of growth which has not been seen since its boom period in the run up to May this year.
Why were crypto prices down?
Recent falls have come amid a growing crackdown on cryptocurrencies in China, where authorities in the southwest province of Sichuan ordered Bitcoin mining projects to close last month.
The State Council, China’s cabinet, recently vowed to clamp down on mining and trading as part of a series of measures to control financial risks.
While data on mining is scarce, production of Bitcoin in China accounted last year for about 65% of global production, according to data from the University of Cambridge.
Sichuan is its second biggest producer.
“(The) crackdown on Chinese miners might mean that they are offloading coin into a thin market and taking us lower,” said Ben Sebley of London-based crypto firm BCB Group.
China’s central bank said it had summoned some banks and payment institutions recently, urging them to crack down harder on cryptocurrency trading.
Companies that mine Bitcoin – an energy-intensive process – typically hold large inventories of the cryptocurrency, with any moves to sell large amounts depressing prices.
The cryptocurrency crash in late June also led to a similar fluctuation in the price and availability of Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) as reports of the dumping of these much-needed components for mining rigs in China amid the crackdown sent prices skyrocketing worldwide.
Following the move, countries like South Korea also pledged to tackle the rise in money laundering taking place via cryptocurrency, while the Metropolitan Police announced that it had successfully closed in on a huge UK cryptocurrency money-laundering operation.
On July 13, the Met declared that special investigators had made the UK’s largest cryptocurrency seizure yet, and one of the world’s largest seizures, seizing a whopping £180m worth of cryptocurrency.
In turn, cryptocurrency exchange platforms such as Binance have been feeling the heat across the world as regulators and governments have started to pay close attention to the operations of such platforms in the wake of the global crackdown on crypto.
Additional reporting by Reuters journalists Tom Wilson, Kevin Buckland and Julien Ponthus
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