Decentral Block Post

With the ultimate goal to regain investor confidence amid a prolonged bear market, crypto derivatives exchange Bitget launched a $200 million fund to safeguard users’ assets. Bitget joins the growing list of crypto companies, such as Binance, that have taken an investor-centric approach to gain investors’ trust via protection funds.

The Bitget Protection Fund comprises 6,000 Bitcoin (BTC) and 80 million Tether (USDT), valued at $200 million at the time of writing. Considering the fact that crypto winter currently shows almost no signs of slowing down, Bitget pledged to secure the value of the fund for the next three years.

While Bitget chose to self-fund the entire protection fund without relying on a third-party insurance policy, Binance set up its user protection insurance fund, Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), by allocating 10% of the trading fee. Starting off in 2018, SAFU reached a $1 billion valuation by early 2022. Sharing details about the newly founded fund, Gracy Chen, managing director of Bitget, added:

“The protection fund will help us mitigate investors’ concerns and attract potential users. As we continue to endure the crypto winter, it is crucial that our users can rest assured that their funds are kept safe.”

Bitget’s reasoning behind using a combination of stablecoin and BTC in the protection fund is to counter massive unforeseen volatility in crypto markets. Further safeguarding investors, Bitget implemented stringent Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) policies to disallow bad actors from using its services.

Bitcoin (BTC) starts a new week and a new month on a cautiously positive footing after protecting crucial levels.

After an intense July in which macro factors provided significant volatility, BTC price action managed to provide both a weekly and monthly candle favoring the bulls.

The road to some form of recovery continues, and at some points in recent weeks, it seemed like Bitcoin would suffer even harder on the back of June’s 40% losses.

Now, however, there is already a sense of optimism among analysts, but one thing remains clear — this “bear market rally” does not mean the end of the tunnel yet.

As Summer 2022 enters its final month, Cointelegraph takes a look at the potential market triggers at play for Bitcoin as it lingers near its highest levels since mid-June.

Bitcoin (BTC) miners have been capitulating for almost two months, but an end to the squeeze could already be here.

That was the conclusion from Blockchain infrastructure and cryptocurrency mining firm Blockware as it published its latest Intelligence Newsletter on July 29.

Report: “Expect” capitulation to be done by September

The most recent edition of the market research series highlighted changes in the mining ecosystem apt to switch up a trend in place since early June.

Miners, judging by the hash ribbons metric, have been retiring for an “extended period of time,” Blockware says, and as of Aug. 1, hash ribbons have been signaling capitulation for 55 days.

“The current miner capitulation began June 7th, 2022, and it has lasted a significant amount of time. It’s important to note that miner capitulations are particularly relevant because it reveals that a large number of machines are no longer hashing,” the firm wrote:

Under the mattress, in the seams of a piece of luggage or even rolled into a cigar, what are the worst and best ways for keeping a seed phrase safe? The key to unlocking and recovering cryptocurrency, a seed phrase, should be secured and safe. 

Especially now that prices are low and the crypto tourists have checked out, it might be time for a crypto security spring clean. Security starts with a seed phrase, sometimes called a recovery phrase.

There’s no denying it: Bitcoin and the crypto space writ large are in the clutches of a bear market. Since Do Kwon’s Terra experiment went up in smoke, a crypto contagion has choked the most reputable of exchanges, causing many self-sovereignty advocates to chant, “not your keys, not your coins.”

Indeed, hardly a day goes by that another “trusted” crypto lender freezes customer withdrawals. From Singapore’s crypto lender Vauld to Thailand’s crypto exchange with 200,000 customers, Zipmex, to the world-renowned Celsius exchange, many centralized lending platforms have suffered similar fates, ensuring heartbreaking consequences for customers in 2022.

These circumstances are timely reminders to look after one’s own keys and to ensure they are in a safe place. So, while prices are low and trust in centralized exchanges (places that claim to look after crypto), also hits rock bottom, there is no better time to up the security of one’s crypto assets.

Ether (ETH) is reaching a make-it or break-it point as the network moves away from proof-of-work (PoW) mining. Unfortunately, many novice traders tend to miss the mark when creating strategies to maximize gains on potential positive developments.

For example, buying ETH derivatives contracts is a cheap and easy mechanism to maximize gains. The perpetual futures are often used to leverage positions, and one can easily increase profits five-fold.

So why not use inverse swaps? The main reason is the threat of forced liquidation. If the price of ETH drops 19% from the entry point, the leveraged buyer loses the entire investment.

The main problem is Ether's volatility and its strong price fluctuations. For example, since July 2021, ETH price crashed 19% from its starting point within 20 days in 118 out of 365 days. This means that any 5x leverage long position will have been forcefully terminated.

How pro traders play the “risk reversal” options strategy

Despite the consensus that crypto derivatives are mainly used for gambling and excessive leverage, these instruments were initially designed for hedging.