Day: December 10, 2017

This weekend has been a tumultuous one in crypto-land. With Bitcoin bouncing off of an all-time high of just over $18,250, and altcoins surging on Saturday, a different picture was being painted on Sunday. The bears were out in force and BTC lost over $5,000 in just over 48 hours. Volatile does not even come close to describing the current market as most coins are showing red negative numbers yesterday.

The big slump may be connected to the launch of the Chicago Board Options Exchange futures contracts on Sunday. This will effectively allow traders to short Bitcoin and it looks like the digital avalanche has already started. Options Clearing Corp has set an initial margin requirement of 44% of the daily settlement price. This is huge compared to traditional commodities such as oil or gold. The rate has been increased from CBOE’s original 33% margin requirement as a result of the massive price swings Bitcoin has had this past week.

It is currently trading around $16,500 which has recovered from a 25% drop on its peak late Friday/early Saturday. Massive swings of over 20% in both directions in such a short time are cause for concern for institutional traders and investors. The margin requirement for futures trading is the amount investors need to put aside as collateral so that other traders know that losses can be covered. One of the managing partners at Benchmark Investments stated that “One of the reasons why the futures margin requirements are so high is because of the limited size of the overall bitcoin market. There’s a lack of depth and breadth.”

There is great concern that crypto currency trading risks have not been properly evaluated. This week the Futures Industry Association circulated a letter to regulators highlighting these concerns from the trade group of banks and brokers. Some of Wall Street’s biggest banks including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup are still hesitant and will be holding back from offering clearing for Bitcoin futures contracts until the digital dust settles.

Traders and investors are keen to get in on the action but are also hesitant for fear of going against management’s public stance on digital currencies. Whether the banking bigwigs fully embrace the technology or publically decry it as many have been doing recently they are all paying full attention to it now.

The charts look like roller-coasters and the wild ride isn’t over yet for Bitcoin and its brethren.

The post A wild ride ahead for Bitcoin appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

• Bitcoin price has been able to make a correction from its stellar rally over the past week.
• Price pulled back to the $13,000 area then bounced off the support level to signal that it’s ready to resume the climb.
• Bitcoin is now testing the 50% extension level and the next upside targets are marked.

Bitcoin price has completed its correction from the latest rally and is resuming the climb to the swing high.

Technical Indicators Signals

The 100 SMA is still above the longer-term 200 SMA to confirm that the path of least resistance is to the upside. This suggests that the rally is more likely to carry on than to reverse. Also, the gap between the moving averages is widening to reflect stronger bullish momentum.

Stochastic is also on the move up to show that buyers are in control of bitcoin price action. RSI has more room to climb, so price could follow suit. However, stochastic is already approaching overbought levels to signal exhaustion among bulls.

Market Factors

The US dollar strengthened on Friday when the non-farm payrolls report printed  a higher than expected result. This could up the odds of aggressive tightening in 2018, although the upcoming FOMC decision this week could confirm or negate that.

Updated Fed economic forecasts are due along with this week’s statement, and there will a press conference to follow the announcement. Of course this would be one of Yellen’s last pressers, so traders might be more curious to find out what incoming head Powell thinks.

CBOE has launched its bitcoin futures product but the website has crashed as activity jumped, leading many to worry that systems are overloaded and could hamper trading activity.

“Due to heavy traffic on our website, visitors to http://www.cboe.com may find that it is performing slower than usual and may at times be temporarily unavailable,” the exchange said in a statement. “All trading systems are operating normally.”

Traders are now turning their attention to the launch of CME bitcoin futures next.

The post Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 12/11/2017 – Updated Extension Levels appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Bitcoin cash has been gaining more support from within the automated teller machine ecosystem after a few companies revealed the digital asset would be integrated into their machine’s software. Now, this past week the bitcoin cash (BCH) community got more infrastructure endorsement from the ATM manufacturer Lamassu as the firm announced BCH support has been implemented into their machines.

Also Read: This Bulgarian Business School Offers Bitcoin Scholarships

Lamassu ATM Manufacturer Announces Bitcoin Cash Support

This week the well-known bitcoin ATM manufacturer, Lamassu, announced to its Twitter followers that bitcoin cash functionality is now available. Lamassu was founded by two brothers named Zach and Josh Harvey back in 2013. According to the company’s geolocation map, there are roughly 268 Lamassu machines spread all over the world. The founders felt that cryptocurrency wasn’t easy to obtain so they built a prototype so people can acquire bitcoin through an automated machine. Now bitcoin cash supporters can obtain BCH via the company’s latest update.   

“Bitcoin cash is now available on Lamassu machines,” explains the ATM company.

1300 Machines Worldwide Will Soon Have Bitcoin Cash Functionality

The digital asset has already garnered ATM support from the company Bitcoinplug. On November 6 the firm revealed that BCH had been integrated into all 21 of the company’s Los Angeles area bitcoin ATM locations. In addition to the LA machines one of the largest ATM manufacturers worldwide, General Bytes, is in the midst of implementing BCH support. The Prague-based company explains on Twitter stating;          

We are working on adding official support for all ATMs but want to test thoroughly before releasing. (No need to modify graphics BTW)

With Bitcoinplug and General Bytes support, adding Lamassu machines provide more BCH accessibility for those who enjoy buying cryptos from an automated teller. With all three companies implementing bitcoin cash, it means that over 1300 devices worldwide will be able to upgrade to support BCH transactions.

What do you think about bitcoin cash gaining support from Lamassu and other ATM companies? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, Lamassu, General Bytes, and Bitcoinplug. 

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The post Lamassu Adds Bitcoin Cash Giving BCH More ATM Support appeared first on Bitcoin News.

The general consensus throughout the Bitcoin community in anticipation of the launch of Bitcoin futures was one of uneasiness and uncertainty. Many individuals announced they were selling Bitcoin prior to Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s Bitcoin futures trading launch today, and many technical and fundamental analysts alike expected a sizable drop in response to this Bitcoin milestone.

While the introduction of Bitcoin into the largest derivatives market in the world is a milestone for the cryptocurrency, many speculators feared Wall Street had pumped Bitcoin price up to recent all time highs last week, in order to dump today while shorting CME’s Bitcoin futures. However, Bitcoin has performed considerably well since trading opened at 6 pm Central Time, breaking through recent resistance at $15,000 and now trading at just under $16,000.

Bitstamp BTC/USD 12 hour chart

When the futures launched earlier today, Bitcoin was trading at $14,700. It is currently up over $1,000, and seems to be poised to continue to surge. However, the real test may come Monday morning, when establishment traders clock in to take on this new market. Regardless, Bitcoin is well outperforming popular predictions for price movements on the day of the futures launch.

This is not to say that Bitcoin’s performance today is proof that its futures market has little interest. Quite the contrary is true. the Chicago Board Options Exchange, an exchange holding group offering BTC futures contracts, experienced a website crash due to high traffic. Luckily, the downtime was only momentary, and CBOE saw huge demand, trading over 800 contracts in the first two hours. Each BTC contract is worth 5 Bitcoin, which means trading volume eclipsed $60,000,000 during that two hour interval.

Due to heavy traffic on our website, visitors to https://t.co/jb3O722hoo may find that it is performing slower than usual and may at times be temporarily unavailable. All trading systems are operating normally.

— Cboe (@CBOE) December 10, 2017

If the price Bitcoin continues to hold steady, the individuals electing to cash out in preparation for a dump may instead choose to buy back in at or above where they previously sold. With sentiments of an impending correction or dump being dissuaded, its plausible to suggest another major Bitcoin bull run is right around the corner. Regardless of the direction the price heads, its likely that major volatility is perhaps the only constant in this ever evolving market, at least for the near future.

A presentation by the bank’s wealth management execs declared that blockchain technology has a lot of potential, but was lukewarm of cryptocurrencies.

While trading virtual kittens is fun, the success of Ethereum-based Cryptokitties game shows that real-world assets can be tokenized and transfered at scale.

The CBOE’s website became unavailable just as it launched its first bitcoin futures contracts on Sunday.

CBOE’s much-anticipated Bitcoin futures market opened today but the company’s servers almost immediately crashed, site is returning a 404 error due to higher than normal traffic.

Cboe may use information gleaned from futures trading to make a case to the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow bitcoin-linked ETF.