Day: November 21, 2017

The big news of last night was how Tether allegedly got hacked. In a statement issued by the company, they explain how almost 31m USDT were removed from the Treasury. This incident occurred on November 19th, and the money was sent to an unauthorized address. None of the stolen tokens will be redeemed, but the company hopes to recover the money regardless. For now, the money still appears to be in a Bitcoin address. It is unclear how this money will be spent, assuming that is even the objective.

This whole Tether issue is pretty worrisome, to say the very least. We have reported on this company’s odd behavior for some time now. Whether or not there is a malicious intent behind this attack, remains to be determined. The company did not explain how the money was moved from the Treasury exactly. That is always a bit worrisome, as companies should be transparent regarding what is happening. The stolen tokens have effectively been flagged and won’t be redeemable for USD.

The Plot Thickens for Tether

For the time being, the Tether back-end wallet service is suspended. This is part of the ongoing investigation to determine what caused this problem. Secondly, the Tether “chain” went through a hard fork to ensure the stolen funds can’t be moved. Considering how USDT is issued on Omni, new builds are being provided to Omni Core to make this happen. All individual users and integrators need to update their client as soon as possible. This is similar to how Ethereum bailed out The DAO investors when a similar issue occurred.

This new software will also cause a consensus change. It is a temporary hard fork to the Omni Layer. Any tokens belonging to the flagged bunch will not be accepted. This should prevent the attacker from successfully moving the USDT balance to an exchange. Otherwise, they could easily convert it to BTC or different altcoins and cash out that way. It is possible this may still happen, depending on how fast all integrators upgrade their clients. It is a very worrisome turn of events, to say the very least.

Some sources claim this was not a hack at all. Instead, they are fearful Tether is working toward a major exit scam. Their rapid issuance of new tokens, previous issues with converting back to USD, and now this certainly makes for a strange year for Tether. Whether or not the company can recover from this incident, remains to be determined, though. The company confirms all other assets are still backed by US Dollars in reserve. For now, everyone will have to believe that story. It may be the truth, though, but no one knows for sure at this point.

The post Tether Claims a “Hack” Cost Them $30m, or is it an Exit Scam? appeared first on NEWSBTC.

NEO is fielding interest from dev teams in the run-up to its first DevCon event.

The company models its Blockchain developments to that of the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin for various purposes.

We are about to get things moving for a fresh day of trading in the bitcoin price and it’s time to put some levels together that we can use to try and draw profit from the market as and when things move. Normally, at this stage of the day, we take a look at action overnight and see how we can use any of the key levels that influenced volatility to set up against the market in the morning. However, things are moving pretty fast right now, so it’s probably best if we just jump straight into the markets, put some levels in place and see what happens.

So, with this noted, let’s get going.

As ever, take a quick look at the chart below before we get started so as to get an idea where things stand and where we are looking to get in and out if things move in line with our strategy. It is a one-minute candlestick chocolate has our key range overlaid in green.

As the chart shows, the range we are looking up for the session today comes in as defined by support to the downside at 8170 and resistance to the upside at 8197. We are going to initially look at entering into a long trade if we see a break above resistance followed by a close above that level. On the trade, we will target an immediate upside target of 8235. Looking the other way, if we see a close below support, we will enter short towards a downside target of 8140.

We need to have stop losses in place on both positions so that we are taken out of the trades for just a small loss if things end up turning against us. With this in mind, a stop loss on each just the other side of the entry (say, $10 or so) will keep our risk parameters tight.

Charts courtesy of Trading View

The post Bitcoin Price Watch; Jumping Right In appeared first on NEWSBTC.

A survey of over forty CFOs showed that there is still a strong belief that Bitcoin is in a bubble, but there is a growing trend of belief in cryptocurrency in these heads of finance.

Distributed ledger startup R3 is moving to more deeply integrate its Corda platform with Microsoft’s Azure cloud service.

It was to be expected the top 10 cryptocurrencies would start to recover after the recent Bitcoin price rally. More specifically, we now see the Dash price slowly approach the $500 mark out of the blue. This is a pretty interesting price trend, to say the very least. Whether or not the Dash price will continue to grow significantly over the past few days, remains to be determined.

Dash Price Surge is Significant

Whenever an alternative cryptocurrency goes up in value out of the blue, there are always questions as to whether or not this is legitimate. In the case of the recent Dash price surge, it is evident there is no real reason for this specific price surge right now, even though the value is slowly approaching the $500 mark all of a sudden. All of this is happening thanks to marginally inflated trading volume over the past few hours as well. It is evident this price surge will attract a lot of attention moving forward.

What is rather interesting is how we see this sudden surge across different privacy-oriented currencies as well. Monero is, alongside Dash., one of the few top 10 cryptocurrencies not recording any major losses over the past 24 hours. While Bitcoin is still a major cryptocurrency, it is evident there are some issues associated with this project when it comes to privacy and anonymity. Given the increased scrutiny by US government agencies, it is not surprising to see people flock to Dash and other currencies.

At the same time, there is still no major “shift” taking place either. Most people will continue to buy Bitcoin over other currencies such as Dash for quite some time to come. Moreover, the people who are diversifying their portfolio through different altcoins often only do so for speculative purposes, and in the hopes of accumulating more Bitcoin in the process. How this current Dash price trend will play out, remains to be determined.

With an increased trading volume of around $195m, the demand for Dash is certainly increased out of the blue. Although Bitcoin has seen a small dip not too long ago, it doesn’t mean people will suddenly switch over to Dash either. For now, this seems to be a temporary uptrend, but it may not be sustainable in the long run. After all, the Dash price peaked above $500 already a few hours ago and was pushed back down to $460 pretty quickly.

As has quickly become the new normal in the world of altcoin trading these days, Bithumb is the go-to place for trading Volume. This Korean exchange represents around 22% of all Dash trades, although Bittrex and Bitfinex are not too far behind. Most of this trading volume for Dash comes from fiat currency markets, assuming one includes USDT in that list. Other than that, Bitcoin-denominated trading pairs are certainly contributing their fair share of volume as well.

It will be interesting to see how things play out for the Dash price in the coming hours. Despite the massive rejection after reaching $500, the price is still up by 5.52% in USD value and 3.65% in BTC value. With Bitcoin moving up again, this situation can reverse pretty quickly, though.There is a lot of good money to be made with altcoins such as Dash, although one shouldn’t hold out for obscene profits either. There is a lot of volatility in the industry right now and any established trend can disappear pretty quickly.

A lot has been said about the launch of Bitcoin Gold so far. It was delayed by a few days initially and there are still some issues regarding the claiming process. Not enough wallets support BTG right now, yet exchanges are slowly coming around to supporting it. More specifically, Bittrex added this altcoin overnight, which promptly caused a surge in value. Right now, one BTG is valued at over $285.

While not too many may care about Bitcoin Gold, there is a very good reason to do exactly that. More specifically, the value of BTG has yet to be properly determined. If some exchanges are to be believed, this currency is worth over $285. An interesting price surge of 132.66% over the past 24 hours. This isn’t a change anyone really expected, that much is certain. So far, the number of use cases for BTG, other than speculation, are still pretty much zero.

Bitcoin Gold Surge Reeks of a Pump

This makes the Bitcoin Gold price surge even stranger, for obvious reasons.  While speculation is a good indicator, more than doubling in value isn’t exactly normal. At the same time, there is no reason why this altcoin shouldn’t have any value whatsoever. Until we know the exact circulating supply of BTG, there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered. An interesting development well worth keeping an eye on, though.

Bittrex has been dominating the trading volume over the past 24 hours. They generate over half of the volume of this entire currency. HitBTC and Bitfinex are also showing some interesting momentum, but in far less spectacular fashion. It is certainly possible we will see some more price fluctuations moving forward. Especially when considering how the price hit over $325 on Bittrex already. The rest of the exchanges are almost $100 behind in this regard. A massive gap to take advantage of, as long as it lasts.

For now, the entire Bitcoin Gold debacle appears to be a massive pump-and-dump. Considering how this price is propped up by a handful of exchanges, it is evident speculation is dominating the landscape right now. We may see a very high BTG price in the future, though, as there aren’t too many coins available right now. It will be interesting to see how high Bitcoin Gold can go over the next few days.Another altcoin to keep an eye on for speculators, that much is evident

The post Bitcoin Gold Price Doubles in Value Thanks to Bittrex Listing appeared first on NEWSBTC.

The European Parliament has released a research paper that touts blockchain in the prevention of odometer fraud or “clocking.”

Often trumpeted as the future of bitcoin, the success of the Lightning Network may come down to economic forces, say researchers.

Tether has recently announced a new hack from its treasury for over $30 mln as the company continues to come under fire for transparency policies.

Key Highlights

• Ethereum classic price is moving higher and it recently broke the $17.00 resistance against the US Dollar.
• There is a major bullish trend line forming with support at $17.00 on the hourly chart of the ETC/USD pair (Data feed via Kraken).
• The pair might continue to move higher and there are chances of it retesting the $20.00 handle.

Ethereum classic price is moving higher against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. ETC/USD is now above $17.00 and eyeing a test of the $20.00 resistance.

Ethereum Classic Price Support

This past week, we saw a solid rise in ETC price above $21.00 against the US Dollar. Later, the price corrected lower and traded below the $15.00 level. A low was formed at $14.37 from where it started moving higher. Buyers succeeded in pushing the price above the 38.2% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $21.40 high to $14.37 low. The best part was a close above the $17.00 support and the 100 hourly simple moving average.

There is a decent uptrend forming with a major bullish trend line forming with support at $17.00 on the hourly chart of the ETC/USD pair. The pair recently tested the 61.8% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $21.40 high to $14.37 low. It faced sellers and moved down to test the $17.00 support and the 100 hourly SMA. The highlighted trend line is holding losses below $17.00 and might continue to act as a strong support.

On the upside, there is a connecting trend line forming with resistance at $19.00. A close above the mentioned $19.00 would call for a test of the $20.00 handle. However, the most important resistance is near the last swing high at $21.50.

Hourly MACD – The MACD for ETC/USD is currently in the bearish zone.

Hourly RSI – The RSI for ETC/USD is recovering from the oversold levels, but still below the 50 level.

Major Support Level – $17.00

Major Resistance Level – $19.00

Charts courtesy – Trading View, Kraken

The post Ethereum Classic Price Technical Analysis – ETC/USD Eyeing $20 appeared first on NEWSBTC.