The weekend is here and Bitcoin as well as the rest of the crypto market has just pulled through a poor week for the bulls. Altcoins will be the ones licking their wounds the most, with many of them losing up to 15% of their value in a matter of days, like ETH did from a high of USD 290 some weeks ago to just USD 225 these few days.
Nevertheless, there is some room for optimism that the worst could not happen despite best efforts from scalpers and sellers, so there is much hope for a comeback in the near future from the bulls.
One bullish piece of news for altcoins, or for ETH anyway, is that crypto derivatives exchange FTX has been recording record volumes in the trading of the alternative digital asset. The Hong Kong-based platform says that amid the ETH sell-off in mid week, USD 245 million worth of ETH changed hands to a lifetime high, up 51% from a previous day volume of USD 162 million. The exchange is only nine months old, but sees most of the ETH volume from that region. On 20 February this year, it had recorded a previous high of USD 189 million.
Trading activity has been rising since early January and has witnessed spectacular growth over the last four weeks, as seen below.
In fact, interest in Ether has been on an upward trajectory for a while now. Looking at July 2019 onwards, futures crossed the USD 25 million thresholds seven times and then broke through the new record in January 2020 with a volume of over USD 45 million for three days straight. And then, daily volume climbed from USD 12 million on 27 January to USD 245 million on 26 February, clocking in a mind-boggling increase of 1,784%.
Speculators aren’t the only ones getting interested in cryptocurrency, to be sure!
Next week, we will see an interesting blockchain event take place in the US, where its House of Representatives will appoint a committee to hold a hearing that will look at how blockchain technology could impact small businesses. While crypto and blockchain are known and understood to change the way how businesses operate, the effects are better known for large corporations, and now the US government is interested to find out how this could affect smaller businesses.
This Committee on Small Business has titled its hearing as ‘Building Blocks of Change: The Benefits of Blockchain Technology for Small Businesses’, and this is due to be held in the capital on 4 March 2020, on Wednesday.
Official information on their website, names Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) as the lead, and has said it will center the hearing on “using blockchain technology to help small businesses boost productivity, increase security, open new markets, and change the way business is done”.
Confirmed listed attendees include Ownum CEO Shane Bigelow, PopCom CEO Dawn Dickson, Protocol Labs general counsel Marvin Ammori, and American Enterprise Institute visiting fellow Jim Harper.
This isn’t the first time the House of Representatives have tried to enquire more into blockchain of course, as the tech and digital assets have always been in some legal grey area, especially when it comes to enforcement. The same Chairwoman Velázquez had been attending an earlier hearing last year on 17 July at the House Committee on Financial Services.
That particular time, they were grilling a certain Facebook chief executive to discuss the potential consumer impact of Facebook’s crypto project Libra. When commenting on potential regulatory approvals for the troubled cryptocurrency, Velázquez stated:
“We do not want to stifle innovation, but we do have a healthy dose of skepticism.”
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The price growth without corrections in Ethereum market has come to an end. Now, all market participants will have to take part in the correction and test for the strength all previously broken ranges. Over the past two days, sellers managed to lower Ethereum price by 15%. Sellers have reached our target $232, which we wrote about in previous analyzes.
The price fall was on particularly high volumes and the daily candle on 26 February closed with a great prospect of the fall continuation with the target $200. However, on 27 February, buyers managed to keep the price, thereby taking the time to arrange a correctional rollback to $244.
If buyers manage to keep the local range $216-219, we will expect another wave of growth with a target $244. Looking at the trading volumes on the 4-hour timeframe, we get another confirmation that the current growth in Ethereum market is a correction. Pay attention in which low volumes the price is moving. Sellers have only one candle with a larger volume to fully turn the price into the opposite direction.
Optimism does not leave the hearts of buyers. Looking at the marginal positions of buyers, it becomes clear that they expect a significant Ethereum price growth in the near future:
It is quite contradictory fact which can drastically change after the test of $244.
Sellers are also trying to develop their trend of rising marginal positions:
Although in recent days, during the sharp fall in Ethereum market, the mood of sellers has diverged and positions growth has stopped.
Now, a 3-wave correction is being formed, which lacks one more local wave of growth. After that, we expect the fall continuation to $200 with the prospect of continuation to the mark $185. Let’s see on Sunday whether buyers will be able to complete their correction qualitatively, or whether sellers will not allow it and continue falling.
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Bitcoin price continues to struggle to find momentum, with the daily high still short of USD 9,000 (CoinDesk). On the other hand, Bitcoin bears have been equally unable to plunge to fresh bottoms, so Bitcoin does look quite strong at these prices today.
The selling flurry is estimated to have been worth over USD 190 million, with shorts liquidated over derivatives exchange BitMEX, according to data analysis from Skew. In comparison, only USD 6.1 million worth of buy orders were fulfilled. This is possibly the main reason for the price falls, rather than vague coronavirus news the media has been feeding the market lately. This is BitMEX’s record volume of liquidations for the year so far.
$150mln+ liquidations on BitMEX today – highest in 2020 pic.twitter.com/WO7aKyNhcI
— skew (@skewdotcom) February 26, 2020
But the news on Friday is actually almost all bullish (apart from Craig Wright news which is always a non-sentiment for us). We start off with US crypto exchange Coinbase, one of the largest in the world and certainly the most well known in the USA.
It has announced a pilot testing period for facial recognition technology called Clearview AI. With 30 million new accounts, Coinbase clearly has a reason to test such technology, but has denied that the tests involve data from customers. The software has actually been embroiled in past controversy when the New York Times expose blew the cover on Clearview’s database that had scraped more than 3 billion images from websites and social media without asking permission from the users or publishers.
Clearview AI in fact is facing litigation threats from some of these platforms that include Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Its CEO, Hoan Ton-That, had said in the past that it was only with law enforcement that it deployed the software, and with an exclusive focus on Canada and the US. An anonymous source, however, leaked the entire customer list to BuzzFeed, revealing thousands of entities across 26 countries, and included corporate clients including Walmart and Macy’s. A BuzzFeed spokesperson said:
“Our security and compliance teams tested Clearview AI to see if the service could meaningfully bolster our efforts to protect employees and offices against physical threats and investigate fraud. At this time, we have not made any commitments to use Clearview AI.”
Meanwhile, the public in the US could be happier to hear that other blockchain implementations are getting some traction. After the Iowa Democratic Caucus earlier in February caused such a fiasco with mobile voting, blockchain companies are now proposing alternative solutions that could prevent such issues and introduce even more benefits.
One such firm is Kaspersky Lab, who this week pulled the curtains to reveal a new type of voting machine that is based on blockchain. Called Polys, it was actually first shown off in November 2017 to be a new way to vote online effectively and securely.
Moscow-based Kaspersky will probably know that the US public remembers the recent Russian links that allegedly influenced the last Presidential elections, but as it has offices throughout the nation, it could hope that the public doesn’t view these innovations in a bad light.
In any case, blockchain-based votings aren’t new and have already been trialed with supposedly good success. In Sierra Leone, for example, some 70% of votes were cast on the blockchain in 2018 (although latter reports downplayed the significance). In India, where corruption and lack of transparency in elections are rife, the Chief Election Commissioner also announced blockchain voting for citizens.
But will Americans warm up to Polys, in the way that it allows them to conveniently vote and also have the security of crypto? Roman Aleshkin, Project Lead for Polys, believes the benefits certainly look far better than traditional methods, on paper at least:
“From speaking to our customers, we understand the issues and inconvenience they face when organising paper-based voting. As we see from our Polys platform, e-voting can solve some of these issues, allowing more possibilities for remote participation and even increasing turnout of younger people.”
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Bitcoin (BTC) has spent much of the last week in freefall, sinking to a low of $8,520, just as the Coronavirus outbreak prompts widespread panic in the financial world due to its potentially cataclysmic impact on the global economy. This negative correlation between a global crisis and the value of the world’s largest cryptocurrency is fuelling doubts that Bitcoin may not actually be a safe haven asset, as previously thought.
A safe haven asset is an investment that investors turn to during times of market volatility and instability, in order to “weather the storm,” and are ...
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Today, buyers were able to confidently enter the critical price range $9050-9350 on Bitcoin market. Sellers managed to lower Bitcoin price by 10% during the last wave of fall. If we consider the whole wave of fall from 24 February, then trading volumes significantly increased during the test of $9050-9350.
Therefore, the probability of the price stop in this range and temporary stabilization of the market in the form of consolidation is a likely scenario for the coming days. To continue falling and fixing of sellers below $9050, a correction is clearly needed, in order to new sellers can enter the position. If we look at the 15-minute chart at the time of the test of $9050-9350, we see that buyers are reliably protecting it and are not going to give it without a fight:
As you can see, buyers are actively placing limit orders in the range $9050-9150 with high volumes buying Bitcoin. On this basis, the maximum correction in the form of growth can reach the level $9555, testing the previous local consolidation.
If buyers can close the candle at $9350, then a pin will be formed. It will be the first signal of the local Bitcoin price reversal to $9555.
If we analyze the mood of buyers, the chart of marginal positions shows that buyers are actively reducing their positions in the last 2 days:
Previously, the marginal positions decrease was more passive.
Sellers have not yet believed in the long-term falling trend. That’s why they fix profits and close margins together with the fall in Bitcoin market:
Let’s see how sellers will behave with the price growth to $9555.
According to the wave analysis, yesterday sellers managed to correct the previous wave of growth by 23.6%. Today, they continue to fall towards the next level of Fibonacci $8750:
Given these facts, the main short-term scenario of Bitcoin price movement is a price rebound to $9555. However, it requires confident closure of the daily candle above $9350. Otherwise, falling to $8750 is the next step of sellers on their way to the final target in Bitcoin market.
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After some attempts to renew bullish moves and break the trend, Bitcoin has given up on a key support level now and trades close to USD 9,000, with a daily high of USD 9,446 (CoinDesk) now some distance away.
As price continues to struggle, more and more analysts are now wondering: is China’s coronavirus outbreak really having anything to do with this? Bitcoin as digital gold and Bitcoin as a safe haven asset seemed to be a strong argument earlier on, with tensions between Iran and US driving up prices of gold and Bitcoin, while initial health scares in China did the same.
But now, the trends have diverged, with gold continuing to break new multi-year highs in price per ounce in US dollars, but Bitcoin has since parted ways with the precious metals, letting go of USD 10,000 levels as coronavirus fears spread into Italy in Europe.
There has been a ton of Coronavirus talk in bitcoin/crypto circles.
Why do you think that is?
A) We’re “sky is falling” types/prophets of doom
B) We’re more hedging-macro-risk oriented
C) Belief that BTC can/will act as safe haven
D) All of above
E) Other (use comments)— Nathaniel Whittemore (@nlw) February 24, 2020
A new survey on Twitter by crypto analyst Nathaniel Whittemore suggests that finance and tech world have indeed felt the touch of the mutated strain of influenza, with more prominent voices entering the discussion. Between them, they have been debating the government’s reports, market impacts, and even personal preparation. After asking more than 1,500 people their opinions on why crypto interest hung about the Coronavirus, some surprising results were thrown up.
Surprisingly, a quarter (25%) of respondents believed that this interest was due to the belief that Bitcoin was a new safe haven asset that should go up in price with these kinds of fears and instability. But now that we’ve seen prices go down despite heightened risks, is this no longer the case? About a fifth of respondents thought equally that the chatter was mostly led by doom and gloom prophets, as it was because of macro hedgers.
A third of all respondents (34%) believed that all these reasons contributed to the peaking of coronavirus-related conversations in crypto spheres.
Insightful? Or merely more noise to add to the pile of opinions? At BitcoinNews.com, we can only report on what can be seen and heard, but if there’s one thing Bitcoin price has proven, it’s that it can go up and down, and does not need any particular reason to do so.
Those in the United Arab Emirates won’t really care as a new Know Your Customer (KYC) platform in the gulf nation has just been given a positive credit rating by Moody’s Corporation. Local media outlet The National first broke the news, writing that the famous ratings agency had given the thumbs up due to the platform’s perceived potential to bring improvements to the quality of assets while bringing profits a boost.
Six banks had come together to form a consortium holding almost 45% of UAE’s banking assets that would share verified customer data over a blockchain. Moody’s said that this new KYC portal should improve compliance locally and abroad, while securing customer data. It stated:
“We expect the KYC blockchain consortium to support the asset quality of UAE banks primarily by reducing operational risk. The platform will facilitate faster and more secure onboarding, and exchange of authenticated and validated digital customer data and documents through distributed technologies powered by blockchain.”
Of note is how Moody’s believes that the new technology will protect data against breaches, something that banks will be increasingly aware of given new GDPR requirements. The agency said:
“The platform will support regulatory oversight of banks’ collection and management of KYC data. We also expect it to help credit risk management with better data for client underwriting and debt collection.”
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As reported by Al Jazeera, the Association of Banks in Lebanon has enforced capital controls – forcing customers to withdraw their savings at the official exchange rate – rendering the value 40% less than that of the parallel market. The banks in Lebanon have also restricted transactions to the outside to ‘urgent personal expenses’. The report stated that cross-border transactions were capped at USD 50,0000 a year.
The Lebanese pound is pegged at about LBP 1,500 to the dollar — 40% less than the parallel exchange rate of LBP 2,500 per dollar.
Mahmoud Dgheim who has been a crypto trader since 2015 stated:
“Right now, Lebanese are interested in escaping tight restrictions on cash withdrawals and transfers. They basically want financial freedom. If you want to go around the banking system, Bitcoin is a solution.”
Given the current circumstances, it will not be a surprise if the financial crisis of the country snowballs into a state of complete chaos and disorder. Perhaps, decentralized currency will provide the way out of this economic turmoil, atleast to some extent – before the government figures out the best solution for the country.
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San Francisco-based crypto research firm Blocknative has tallied up the total crypto transactions across the 24 more post popular cryptocurrencies between 2009 and 2019, and found that there have been over 3.1 billion crypto transactions in the past decade.
Other interesting stats are that these 3.1 billion transactions have a total value of USD 4.6 billion, and 96% of this total aggregate value was sent between 2017 and 2019. Further, in 2019 alone there were 1.1 billion crypto transactions.
Blocknative also made some projections for the future, including that Bitcoin and Ethereum will each have over 1 billion transactions per year by 2023, and that the 24 crypto networks analyzed in this study could have 20 billion total transactions in the next 5 years.
Overall, this report presents solid evidence that cryptocurrency use has been rapidly accelerating in recent years, and all signs point towards this growth continuing over the next decade.
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The stock market has experienced a nearly continuous rally over the last decade, with stock indices in the United States persistently achieving record highs in recent months. However, speculation is growing that this is a bubble and will soon come to an end, and this speculation could be fueling investment into crypto.
Essentially, the economy was already looking shaky over the past year, with continual Central Bank interest rate cuts and the injection of hundreds of billions USD of stimulus being required to prevent liquidity from drying up in the stock market. Since the beginning of 2020 the economy has weakened even more due to the Coronavirus pandemic, since the outbreak and quarantines in China have brought the Chinese economy to a screeching halt.
At this point China and other nations are injecting upwards of one trillion USD just to make up for the economic loss from the virus, and these injections seem to be the only thing holding the economy afloat.
Bitcoin is considered a safe haven asset, since it is independent of the stock market, and it appears more investors are choosing to buy Bitcoin in order to keep their money safe from a potential stock collapse. Indeed, this could partially explain why Bitcoin’s price has increased from USD 7,000 to USD 10,000 since the beginning of the year.
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The lawmakers of New Jersey proposed a new bill directing crypto firms to mandatorily acquire business licenses to continue operation within the state. The new proposed bill, titled ‘Digital Asset and Blockchain Technology Act’, was sponsored by López.
López is aiming at fueling cryptocurrency growth by establishing the appropriate regulatory measures. As per the official report, the bill addresses two major aspects for the crypto firms to comply with:
López stated:
“People see and hear about Bitcoin in their day-to-day lives, but most are not quite sure what it is. We must take steps to protect consumers looking to invest in cryptocurrency, while also allowing the sector to continue to develop and expand in New Jersey. [..] Everyone agrees that the industry has an exciting future — one right here in New Jersey.”
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Over the last decade Bitcoin has typically been the most volatile asset class. However, since December the volatility of oil has been surging, and recently the volatility of West Texas Intermediate crude oil surged to 119.6%, while Bitcoin’s volatility was simultaneously as low as 42.3%.
Volatility is calculated from the standard deviation of price movements, and is therefore a measure of how much a price is varying from its long term average. It seems the cause of oil’s rapidly fluctuating price is tensions between Iran and the United States, followed by major economic movements due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Bitcoin having far less volatility than oil could be considered a sign that the Bitcoin market is becoming more mature. That being said, Bitcoin still has a long way to go before it becomes less volatile than the S&P 500 or gold, which currently have volatilities of 15.6% and 12.2% respectively.
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