After a long period of unusually low volatility, Bitcoin’s next major price move is likely imminent and could drive BTC to $32,000, according to James Check, the lead on-chain analyst at Glassnode. That price level is where Bitcoin’s “true cost basis is sitting,” Check explained in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph. 

To calculate Bitcoin’s average cost basis – the average price at which BTC was bought – Check and his team removed the coins that are lost forever from the calculation and focused on active Bitcoin investors. 

“It’s where the mean reversion level would be, so a rally to that level, to be honest, wouldn’t surprise me,” he said.

Despite this bullish scenario, Check also points out there is likely a large number of investors who are tired of the bear market and are waiting for Bitcoin to reach that level before selling, thus putting pressure on the price. 

“That’s an area where you start getting more resistance,” he pointed out. 

To find out more about the chances of an upcoming Bitcoin rally, check the full interview on our YouTube channel and don’t forget to subscribe!

The United States has hit its $31.4 trillion debt ceiling and is now running out of money. 

As pointed out by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the debt ceiling needs to be lifted before June 1. Otherwise, the country risks missing its debt obligations due to Treasury bond holders and thereby defaulting on its sovereign debt.

Bipartisan negotiations are already underway to lift the debt ceiling, but no agreements is in sight so far. While Democrats want the ceiling to be lifted without any preconditions, Republicans are demanding a number of cuts in government spending as contingencies for lifting the ceiling.

Most experts agree that a U.S. government default would be catastrophic not only for the U.S. economy but also for the global financial system: the stock markets would crash, millions of jobs would be lost, and the economy would likely fall into a recession.

But what are the chances the U.S. government is defaulting on its debt? And what are the impacts of the debt ceiling crisis on crypto and the broader market? We answer these questions in the latest Cointelegraph Report.

The latest hype around Bitcoin (BTC) Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens is unsustainable and will fade away in a matter of months, according to JAN3 CEO Samson Mow. 

“These guys are basically paying massive amounts of fees that go directly to Bitcoin miners, and there is no way this can be sustained,” Mow said in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph. 

“They will fade away after even months, let’s not talk about years here,” he continued. 

Growing activity around Ordinals and BRC-20 – a crypto technology that allows users to mint fungible and non-fungible tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain – is the main cause provoking a spike in transaction fees, which resulted in the congestion of the Bitcoin network.

Related: Bitcoin BRC-20 token standard becomes new destination for meme tokens

While many members of the Bitcoin community see Ordinals as a use-case that could boost Bitcoin adoption, Mow considers them just as spam clogging the network. 

“These are just short-term money grabs similar to most things on competing chains like Ethereum and Solana,” he pointed out. 

To Mow, mass adoption of Bitcoin will happen because of its use case as a saving technology and as a means of exchange, not because of “people minting JPEGs and sticking them in the chain.”

To learn more about Mow’s argument against Ordinals, watch the full interview on our YouTube channel. Don’t forget to subscribe!

Magazine: $3.4B of Bitcoin in a popcorn tin — The Silk Road hacker’s story

The majority of people will have their wealth progressively eaten away by the devaluation of money, according to Arthur Hayes, the co-founder and former CEO of crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX. 

According to Hayes, due to the huge amount of public debt accumulated by the world’s largest economies, governments will have no choice but “inflating it away” through money printing. 

Thus, the only way to escape the progressive destruction of fiat wealth is by acquiring assets outside the traditional financial system, such as crypto, the purchasing power of which doesn’t fall compared with the cost of energy. 

“My whole goal with all of my investing and is to preserve capital so that I can consume the same amount of energy or whatever energy amount that I would like from now and into the future,” Hayes said in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph. 

However, the amount of crypto assets available is relatively small compared with the total amount of debt in the economy, which means that only a few will be able to preserve their capital as the majority see their wealth destroyed.

According to Hayes, the crypto crackdown in the U.S. reflects the government’s attempt to keep the masses within the traditional system by preventing them from fleeing to crypto.

“They want your capital sit there and they’ll make it very pleasant, pleasant journey to lose 20, 30, 40, 50, 60% of your purchasing power over a period of time such that the debt load is effectively lowered and the finances are healthier,” he said. 

To find out more about Hayes’ investment thesis on crypto, check out our latest interview on our YouTube channel and don’t forget to subscribe!

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), led by Chairman Gary Gensler, has been at the forefront of the United States’ cryptocurrency crackdown. In the last few months, the agency has filed several enforcement actions against major crypto companies that allegedly violated security laws.

Critics say the agency has adopted a regulation-by-enforcement approach without providing a proper set of rules that fit the unique features of crypto assets. A major source of confusion is the definition of a security and whether it can apply to a highly diverse set of assets such as cryptocurrencies. 

Despite being pressured in a congressional hearing last week, Gensler seems unwilling to take on the political responsibility of entering a constructive dialogue with the industry. 

For many crypto companies targeted by the SEC, the choice is between entering an expensive legal battle with the regulator or shutting down operations in the US and moving overseas. Most crypto companies will likely prefer saving millions of dollars in legal expenses and opt for the latter option.

To learn more about how the SEC has waged war on crypto and the potential consequences, check out the latest Cointelegraph Report on our YouTube channel, and don’t forget to subscribe!  

Despite the unprecedented regulatory pressure that crypto has been facing recently in the United States, the fight between the American government and the crypto industry has just started, believes ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees. 

According to the entrepreneur, U.S. authorities still don’t see crypto as an existential threat to the fiat system, and their recent crackdown is just an opportunistic reaction to last year’s blowups of fraudulent crypto companies. 

“They see it as sort of this scammy area where they can come in and look like the hero for cleaning up a mess,” Voorhees said in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph.

According to Voorhees, crypto needs to become mainstream before governments move against it fully. At that point, “it will be too late” for government actors to crack down on crypto since too many people will be aware of its value and utility.

Voorhees has no doubt that crypto will ultimately win the battle for the hearts and minds of people in part because it is free from the restrictions on capital flow that are present in traditional finance systems.

“Capital goes where friction is least […]. In the crypto world, capital moves freely, it moves effortlessly,” he pointed out.

Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel and don’t forget to subscribe!