The Motley Fool has announced a $5 million investment into bitcoin as part of a long-hold plan to gain a 10x return on its investment over the next 15 years.

As the fifth-largest investment website globally, with over 45 million unique visitors in January alone, The Motley Fool’s positive outlook for the future of bitcoin is another data point in the coin’s journey as an influential advisory organization wades into the debate.

This move is much more than merely a one-off investment into bitcoin, though. The Motley Fool is a respected voice in the world of investment – essentially a crypto influencer. By adding the coin to its 10x portfolio alongside 39 other stocks, Motley is essentially backing Bitcoin as a strong long-term hold to an audience of millions that includes plenty of investors.

This is a direct investment into bitcoin, with Motley shooting down EFTs as an ‘overpriced’ route into the market. The site’s members will be given the opportunity to read guidance from its analysts and writers before the website adds $5 million of bitcoin to its balance sheet.

Institutional investment into bitcoin still has a lot of room to grow. According to bitcointreasuries.org, at least 38 corporations hold a total of $66.5 billion worth of BTC, only 6.04% of the total Bitcoin supply. Yet, as organizations like The Motley Fool, Microstrategy, and Tesla put their money where their mouths are, more institutions may gradually follow suit.

Do you think The Motley Fool will now start advising their millions of website visitors to buy bitcoin? Let us know in the comments section below.

The conversation about reaching the 1 trillion dollar milestone was a topical conversation all week, as bitcoiners said it was a long time coming. The same day, the software developer, Jameson Lopp, also talked about the $1 trillion event on social media. “The first trillion is the hardest,” Lopp tweeted to his 262,000 followers.

After Lopp made his statement, a number of people compared the decentralized crypto asset’s market valuation to Apple Inc. (AAPL).

It took Apple Inc. around 504 months (42.0319 years) to get to a $1 trillion market valuation one person responded. Another individual mentioned that after Apple captured the $1 trillion valuation, it only took 26 months to reach $2 trillion, which means the ride to a $2 trillion valuation for bitcoin (BTC) very well could be a far less time frame.

Bitcoin reaching a $1 trillion valuation has been a big deal to a number of proponents and many believe the crypto asset is just warming up. The popular creator of the stock-to-flow (S2F) model, Plan B, discussed the watershed moment.

“Straight line up to a $1trillion market cap,” he said to his 269,000 followers. “Bitcoin going for gold next ($10T),” he insisted.

Civic founder Vinny Lingham, often referred to as the oracle, thinks making it to the $60,000 zone might be in the cards.

“Bitcoin looks primed to make a big break above $50k,” Lingham wrote just before the price surpassed the $50k handle. “Once it clears, it will likely test and break $60k quickly. We could find out which [altcoins] are uncorrelated, as there will likely be some carnage in the alt market, if such a big move materializes,” Lingham added.

What do you think about bitcoin reaching a $1 trillion market valuation? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

According to the announcement, law enforcement expanded charges to Park Jin Hyok, a North Korean military hacker, from his involvement in hacking Sony in 2018, deploying Wannacry ransomware attacks, and other financial cyber thefts.

Moreover, the new indictment unsealed mentioned Jon Chang Hyo and Kim Il as part of the new measures taken by the DOJ. Authorities also said that three hackers belong to the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), a North Korean military intelligence agency.

Lazarus Group is the codename given by the U.S. authorities to the military hacking groups of North Korea.

Per the counterintelligence findings, the RGB has participated in several crypto-related cybercriminal campaigns since 2014 to provide funding to the North Korean regime.

The DOJ mentioned that Lazarus Group developed multiple malicious crypto applications from March 2018 through at least September 2020. Such apps include Celas Trade Pro, Worldbit-bot, icryptofx, Union Crypto Trader, Kupay Wallet, Coingo Trade, Dorusio, Cryptoneuro Trader, and Ants2whale.

Law enforcement revealed a case related to an unnamed Slovenian crypto company. Per the court documents, the hackers participated in the theft of $75 million from such a firm in December 2017.

They were also involved in a $24.9 million theft of another crypto business in September 2018, but this time in Indonesia.

Also, assistant attorney general John C. Demers of the DOJ’s National Security Division pointed out that Lazarus Group can be considered the “world’s leading bank robbers” nowadays.

As news.Bitcoin.com reported recently, a panel of experts at the United Nations stated that North Korea had amassed $316 million in cryptos from various cyberattacks on crypto exchanges and financial institutions.

What are your thoughts on this U.S. DOJ announcement on Lazarus Group? Let us know in the comments section below.

Tezos has been ramping up development activity following the growing hype around its native token XTZ, which has risen nearly 120% year-to-date as of writing. Its last update, Delphi, was released three months ago and cut gas costs by 75%.

Tezos says its new Sapling protocol will enable developers to power “new types of applications” by incorporating “voting or supporting asset transactions with selective disclosures.” One-use tickets will act as a ‘convenient mechanism’ to unlock contractual functions, according to Tezos. Besides improving developer efficiency, tickets are designed to encourage more ‘secure and composable contracts’ and issue tokens.

The new Adoption Period is set to address the common challenges users face on the Tezos network during the transition period of new protocols. Users can now expect a five-cycle period between the approval of upgrades and the adoption process (approximately two weeks). This signals a departure from Tezos’ previous mechanism of four periods to eight cycles, with Tezos declaring its commitment to “seamless upgrade transitions for all users.”

Edo will tackle minor bugs, improve overall performance, and lower gas consumption than previous ecosystem upgrades. Tezos’ progress continues apace, with the project already working towards the next milestone. In the Edo release, Tezos stated that users could anticipate news on its next major update, Florence, soon.

What do you think about the future of the XTZ token? Let us know in the comments section below.

Just recently, the exchange-traded fund called the “Purpose Bitcoin ETF” was approved to be listed in Canada and proponents deemed it to be the “first” bitcoin-based ETF in North America. Bloomberg’s Claire Ballentine revealed that the ETF saw more demand than most ETFs listed on TSX on Thursday. The fund is curated by the firm Canada-based Purpose Investments, and the Ontario Securities Commission granted the fund permission to begin trading.

Ballentine noted that during the first hour of trading, the Purpose Bitcoin ETF (ticker symbol BTCC) saw a whopping $80 million in trade volume. Ballentine also highlighted that the Purpose Bitcoin ETF roared during its debut, and many analysts think crypto exchange-traded funds have untapped interest.

“There’s sizable untapped interest for a Bitcoin investment that has the benefits of an ETF,” the CFRA Research’s director of ETF research, Todd Rosenbluth said. “While most ETFs come to market globally with an educational hurdle to overcome, many investors are familiar with what is inside BTC.”

In addition to the significant demand from the Purpose Bitcoin ETF, another ETF is set to debut on TSX today. The exchange-traded fund is managed by the company Evolve, and the fund holds physical bitcoins by using Gemini’s custody arm. The listing scheduled for Friday and distributed by Evolve will be called “EBIT.” Evolve is a Canadian business that manages roughly $1.7 billion assets under management (AUM).

Meanwhile, as the two TSX-listed bitcoin-based ETFs trade in Canada, many crypto proponents are hopeful that America will follow suit soon. A number of ETFs are waiting on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval including ETFs registered by the New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), Vaneck, and Valkyrie Digital Assets.

What do you think about the massive demand the Purpose Bitcoin ETF saw on Thursday? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.