Additionally, money distribution service PayPal has also upped their interest in the digital currency realm by hosting a Bitcoin related presentation called PayPal TechXploration on 31st July. This news story was also reported by Coindesk. This marks a significant change in the mindset of both PayPal and Ebay. When Bitcoin was announced they were truly opposed to the introduction of digital currency as it was potentially poised to overtake PayPal as medium of transferring funds. A partnership or technology venture between Bitcoin and PayPal would certainly shake up the world of finance as we know it.
So, how has this affected the Bitcoin network?
Bitcoin Pricing
It appears that the price of Bitcoin has fallen for the past few days last week. It also appears that the price is starting to rebound overnight. While we have seen stability around $600.00 range for some time, falling below that threshold has caused some concerns. It appears that renewed interest in Bitcoin is driving the price up again.
Bitcoin Network Capacity
The Bitcoin network capacity is 142.5PH/s this week and was approx 146PH/s just last week. Over a week, this is minimal impact, however significant growth again in mining hardware investment over the past month (See our prior posts). How has this impacted the difficulty? The Bitcoin difficulty has grown as follows 11.7B, 13.4B, 16.8B, 17.3B to 18.3B...Overall some modest gains.
Bitcoin Market Capitalization
The Bitcoin market capitalization continues to remain roughly stable at $7,8-8.1B, for the past month. This continues to encourage investment from large investment firms looking for stability and upside potential growth.