On Monday (August 8), Bitcoin is trading above the $24,000 level for the first time June 13.
According to data by TradingView, on Binance, the $BTC price broke above the $24,000 level at 8:32 a.m. UTC on August 8, and currently (i.e. as of 9:34 a.m. UTC on August 8) $BTC is trading around $24,157, up 5.02% in the past 24-hour period.
Earlier today, Matt Corallo, an open source engineer at Spiral, which is “an independent, bitcoin-focused entity within the Block ecosystem of companies”, criticized those Bitcoin maximalists who are more focused on “attacking other projects” than with explaining why Bitcoin is “great and unique”.
Corallo joined the Spiral team at Block in October 2019. Prior to that, he was working as an engineer for nearly three years at Chaincode Labs, which is “a Bitcoin research and development center based in Midtown Manhattan, New York.” Corallo has been writing patches for the BitcoinJ Open Source Library since June 2012.
Corallo, who is the 10th known contributor to Bitcoin Core, took to Twitter to criticize the small segment of Bitcoin maximalists that is usually labeled “toxic” by the crypto community:
2/ This is particularly damning to Bitcoin b/c, instead of its most vocal proponents explaining why Bitcoin is great and unique, its most vocal proponents spend all their time just attacking other projects. Sure, some of them are scams and may deserve it, but it doesn't help BTC.
— Matt Corallo (@TheBlueMatt) August 8, 2022
This upset a few Bitcoin maximalists, such as Bitcoin advocate Samson Mow:
these people lost their way
there’s no excuse for this behavior
anyone who’s still in this cult needs to wake up. your leaders are panicking and they won’t think twice before throwing you under the bus.
— udiverse (@udiWertheimer) August 8, 2022
One thing that might have helped to drive Bitcoin’s latest price rally is the recent partnership announcement between BlackRock and Coinbase:
28.5 trillion assets under management between the top managers globally that offer access to #bitcoin.
A 0.15% allocation would buy every single BTC sitting on exchanges now.
Number will go up.
— Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) August 8, 2022
On August 4, Coinbase’s Brett Tejpaul (who is Head of COINBASE Institutional) and Greg Tusar (who is Head of Institutional Product) published a blog post, in which they stated that Coinbase and BlackRock were going to “create new access points for institutional crypto adoption by connecting Coinbase Prime and Aladdin.”
The blog post went on to say that “Coinbase is partnering with BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, to provide institutional clients of Aladdin®, BlackRock’s end-to-end investment management platform, with direct access to crypto, starting with bitcoin, through connectivity with Coinbase Prime.” Apparently, Coinbase Prime will “provide crypto trading, custody, prime brokerage, and reporting capabilities to Aladdin’s Institutional client base who are also clients of Coinbase.”
Joseph Chalom, Global Head of Strategic Ecosystem Partnerships at BlackRock, had this to say:
“Our institutional clients are increasingly interested in gaining exposure to digital asset markets and are focused on how to efficiently manage the operational lifecycle of these assets. This connectivity with Aladdin will allow clients to manage their bitcoin exposures directly in their existing portfolio management and trading workflows for a whole portfolio view of risk across asset classes.“
