Day: December 23, 2017

Key Points

• Bitcoin cash price traded sharply lower and moved below the $2000 support against the US Dollar.
• There is a major bearish trend line forming with current resistance at $3000 on the 4-hours chart of BCH/USD (data feed from Kraken).
• The pair might continue to struggle to move above the $3000 level in the near term.

Bitcoin cash price is under pressure and is below $3000 against the US Dollar. BCH/USD may continue to face sellers on upside near $3000 and $3200.

Bitcoin Cash Price Resistance

After a solid upside move above the $3500 level, bitcoin cash price found sellers against the US Dollar. The price traded sharply lower and moved below the $3000 and $2000 support levels. The decline was crucial and the price traded as low as $1772. Later, an upside move was initiated and the price moved above the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $4000 high to $1772 low. However, the price is facing a lot of sellers around the $3000 level.

There is also a major bearish trend line forming with current resistance at $3000 on the 4-hours chart of BCH/USD. The pair is struggling to move above the $3000 level and it might continue to struggle. Moreover, the 61.8% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $4000 high to $1772 low also acted as a hurdle. Once there is a break above the trend line resistance and the trend line at $3000, the price might recover further in the near term.

However, any major gains would be tough above $3000 and $3200. On the downside, the $2400 level is also a good support followed by the $2000 level.

Looking at the technical indicators:

4-hours MACD – The MACD for BCH/USD is about to move back in the bullish zone.

4-hours RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for BTC/USD is now moving lower from the 50 level.

Major Support Level – $2000

Major Resistance Level – $3000

Charts courtesy – Trading View, Kraken

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Key Points

• Bitcoin price made a sharp downside move and traded below the $12,000 support against the US Dollar.
• There was a break below two important bullish trend lines with support near $17,800 on the 4-hours chart of BTC/USD (data feed from SimpleFX).
• The pair is currently recovering, but it is facing a major resistance near the $15,500 level.

Bitcoin price declined sharply toward $10,000 against the US Dollar. BTC/USD is currently recovering, but it is facing a lot of selling pressure.

Bitcoin Price Resistance

After a great upside run toward the $20,000 level, bitcoin price faced selling pressure against the US Dollar. There was a sharp decline below the $18,000 and $15,000 support levels. More importantly, there was a break below two important bullish trend lines with support near $17,800 on the 4-hours chart of BTC/USD. These trend lines break opened the doors for more losses and the pair tumbled below the $12,000 level. A low was formed at $10,688 from a minor recovery wave was initiated.

The price has moved above the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $19,628 high to $10,688 low. However, there is a bearish trend line forming with current resistance at $15,150 on the same chart. Moreover, the 50% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $19,628 high to $10,688 low is also acting as a major hurdle for buyers. As long as the trend line resistance is intact, the pair might continue to struggle. Only a close above the $15,500 would negate the bearish pressure and may call for more gains.

On the flip side, if the price continues to move down, then there can be more slides toward $12,500 in the near term.

Looking at the technical indicators:           

4-hours MACD – The MACD is reducing its bearish slope.

4-hours RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI is struggling to move higher and is below the 50 level.

Major Support Level – $12,500

Major Resistance Level – $15,500

Charts courtesy – SimpleFX

The post Bitcoin Price Weekly Analysis – BTC/USD is Under Bearish Pressure appeared first on NEWSBTC.

When markets correct there are winners and losers, this week’s slump was led by Bitcoin as it fell almost $8,000 from a high of $20k down to a bottom of $12k. The reversal has since reversed and now things are slowly picking themselves back up again, so much for the bubble bursting.

One altcoin that has weathered the storm this week has been Ripple. It corrected a little with all of the other altcoins but generally remained on a high and is still trading over that psychological one dollar level. Trading action across Asia kept XRP pumped when other coins were losing as much as 35% in a day. While there is a buzz in trading the volatile charts of relatively unknown crypto coins, most traders seek some form of stability and Ripple has become the provider.

Infighting in the Bitcoin camp and the obvious divisions between the BTC and BCH chains have caused both to lose out this week. Rumours of insider trading on Coinbase have also created cause for concern for many. Meanwhile Charlie Lee reportedly selling his stash of Litecoin dropped 47% off the price of LTC as it plummeted from a high of $373 down to just below $200.

Ripple has remained solid throughout, it is a well-established platform founded in 2012. It has the stability that others lack and according to their website has offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Sydney, India, Singapore and Luxembourg, with more than 100 customers around the world. Ripple’s flash transaction facility has generated interest from a number of financial institutions in the Asia Pacific region that are willing to run trials on the new technology.

Ripple is actually in use at the moment, parsing transactions and providing a faster, cheaper and more efficient way to carry out inter-bank transfers. It is hoped one day that Ripple will replace the archaically slow current system, Swift. Next year will be the make or break for XRP but if 2017 is anything to go by investor confidence in this cryptocurrency remains strong.

Ripple currently has a market capacity of $43 billion, at the time of writing it is the fourth largest crypto by market cap. In the past month alone XRP has surged 400% in value from around $0.23, where it sat idle for several months, to over $1.15. It is traded heavily on Bithumb in South Korea which carries almost 28% of the total volume. The Asian appetite for Ripple is likely to continue into 2018 as the crypto pulls in more partners.

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The popularity and resultant price increase of Bitcoin and its ilk has become a magnet for cybercrime and hackers vying to get an illicit profit from crypto mining. By utilizing the path of least resistance and preying on the vulnerabilities of the uninitiated they have taken to the easiest platform to exploit – social media.

Facebook is already an out of control web of digital detritus, clickbait, spam, and fake news. Now it’s instant Messenger service has fallen victim to an exploit which allows attackers to secretly mine cryptocurrency by harnessing the computing power of those infected. Researcher and cyber security firm Trend Micro discovered the malware which consists of a mining bot called Digmine.

It is spread via a fake video that appears to have been sent from someone in the victim’s friends list. Once opened the ‘video’ installs malicious code which will compromise the desktop version of Facebook Messenger when used with Google Chrome. Hackers then have a backdoor into the users Facebook account where they can access the contacts list to further spread the malware.

Researchers at Trend Micro stated:

“If the user’s Facebook account is set to log in automatically, Digmine will manipulate Facebook Messenger in order to send a link to the file to the account’s friends. The abuse of Facebook is limited to propagation for now, but it wouldn’t be implausible for attackers to hijack the Facebook account itself down the line.”

It currently does not affect mobile versions of Messenger as its primary target is desktops with CPU power that can be used to mine Monero, an anonymous crypto cousin of Bitcoin. The profits from this illicit computer-jacking are sent to the attacker’s encrypted Monero wallet. The software is a modified version of open source mining program XMRig which the bot sets to start automatically. This will fire up Google Chrome with an infected extension that allows the hackers to access Facebook profiles.

According to the Trend Micro team:

“The extension will read its own configuration from the Command and Control server. It can instruct the extension to either proceed with logging in to Facebook or open a fake page that will play a video. The decoy website that plays the video also serves as part of their C&C structure. This site pretends to be a video streaming site but also holds a lot of the configurations for the malware’s components.”

Officially Chrome extensions can only be downloaded from their web store but in this case the malignant code is added via the command line. This is not the first or last time mining malware has been used to exploit systems, back in October a malicious program called Coinhive was embedded into a number of compromised apps on Google Play. A new trend in crypto malware is emerging so extra caution is needed for heavy users of social media.

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Key Highlights

• ETH price recovered after a nasty downside move toward the $475 level against the US Dollar.
• A major bullish trend line with support at $600 is acting as a key buy zone on the 4-hours chart of ETH/USD (data feed via SimpleFX).
• The pair might fail to move above $715 in the near term, but also remains supported at $560.

Ethereum price is slightly under pressure against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. ETH/USD is currently below $715 and is struggling to gain traction.

Ethereum Price Support

The past couple of days were very choppy for ETH price as it tumbled below the $550 pivot against the US Dollar. The price made a sharp downside move and traded below the $700 and $620 support levels. Moreover, the price also broke the $550 pivot and even traded below the $500 level. During the downside move, there was a break below a bullish trend line with support at $760 on the 4-hours chart.

The downside move was stalled near the $475 level and another bullish trend line on the same chart. The current trend line support is at $600 is a major buy zone. The pair has moved above the 50% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $864.53 high to $475.28 low. However, it seems like the pair is struggling to break the $715 level. Moreover, the 61.8% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $864.53 high to $475.28 low is also acting as a major resistance.

On the positive side, the price is above the 100 simple moving average and the $600 support. As long as the price is above $600, it might attempt an upside move. If buyers fail to hold the $600 level, there can be more downsides.

4-hours MACD – The MACD is currently in the bearish zone with negative signs.

4-hours RSI – The RSI is currently moving down and is below the 50 level.

Major Support Level – $600

Major Resistance Level – $715

Charts courtesy – SimpleFX

The post Ethereum Price Weekly Analysis – ETH/USD’s Recoveries Remain Capped appeared first on NEWSBTC.

The future is bright following Wall Street’s futures trading embrace, but education is emerging as a key hurdle ahead.

Following yesterday’s drop, mainstream media naturally began crowing about Bitcoin’s “bubble” having “popped.” Not so fast, says the market. #NEWS

There are always some interesting developments in the world of Bitcoin. Mike Novogratz was forced to cancel his initial hedge fund plans. More specifically, the $500m fund will not launch after all. He also adjusted the Bitcoin price prediction of several months ago. In the long run, however, there is no reason to think his previous target of $40,000 won’t be reached.

The recent Bitcoin price dip has forced people to rethink their original predictions. Mike Novogratz is no exception in this regard. Last night, he tweeted how the Bitcoin price will consolidate between 10-16k for a while. An extreme dip to $8.000 would not be out of the question either. A pause in the bull market was bound to happen sooner or later. When looking at the bigger picture, this correction was direly needed.

Mike Novogratz Sees the Bigger Picture

While Mike Novogratz remains bullish, he’s also aware of the problems affecting Bitcoin. Although no one knows for sure how this market will evolve, the overall sentiment is pretty bullish. Even so, we see the Bitcoin price recover most of its losses less than 36 hours later. While the bullish momentum may be on pause, the recovery happens pretty quickly. Whether or not we can expect major changes by the end of the year, remains to be seen right now.

In wake of the price momentum, Mike Novogratz had another announcement as well. His $500m cryptocurrency hedge fund will not launch anytime soon. In fact, it was delayed due to the market conditions for new investors. That latter part is pretty interesting, albeit very vague as well. For all intents and purposes, the team remains very bullish on cryptocurrencies. It will be interesting to see when this vehicle launches. Right now, that is still an unknown factor.

If Mike Novogratz is to be believed, everything will turn out just fine. So far, those predictions seem to be incredibly accurate, although no one expected anything else. Bitcoin is not a stable market by any stretch of the imagination, though. A five percent dip can form on the charts without prior warning. Given the panic investors have shown two days ago, we may see some big price swings moving forward. In the long run, however, things will sort themselves out. A $40,000 Bitcoin price remains as likely as a $1,000 one.

Header image courtesy of Shutterstock

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There are a lot of exciting projects in the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency to take note of. Descrow is one of those concepts which will certainly be of interest to a lot of people. As its name suggests, the company is all about offering decentralized escrow services. It is certainly true that there are a lot of trust issues when it comes to using cryptocurrencies and other financial assets these days.

Will Descrow be Even Remotely Successful?

It is very difficult to predict whether or not Descrow will ever become a globally used service. Although its business model of offering decentralized escrow services has a lot of merit, it’s not necessarily something people will trust right away. This brings us to the reason why this platform exists in the first place, as there are a lot of trust issues when it comes to finance. This is especially true when cryptocurrencies are involved, mainly because of their non-refundable nature.

Solving this inherent lack of trust will not be easy whatsoever. The Descrow team plans to go about it by introducing a completely trustless system to provide escrow services. It is an interesting approach to the concept of trusting people over the Internet, to say the least. The key features of this Descrow service include the secured collection and storage of funds as well as protection against unforeseen losses.

The big question that comes to mind is whether or not the team can successfully provide decentralized escrow services. After all, the very nature of escrow is that an individual or company acts as a custodian of user funds, which is never an ideal situation. It is evident this project will mainly focus on the ICO market moving forward, as that particular industry can certainly benefit a lot from escrow services.

The team’s mission revolves around making initial coin offerings safer for all participants. They also aim to eliminate any distrust among potential investors for startups embracing this business model. Moreover, they want to integrate the concept of decentralized escrow as a versatile instrument into “all applicable blockchain segments.” It’s an interesting approach, to say the least, but it’s not something people will automatically flock to either.

The system works as follows: once an ICO is completed, the ICO’s team receives a first batch of financing. As they reach new milestones of their roadmap, more funds will be released to them. The financing of a campaign when hitting such a milestone will be done by the investors, who all get to vote on the progress delivered to them. In the long run, this approach can certainly help eliminate most of the scams plaguing the ICO industry right now. It is an interesting idea, although similar (albeit centralized) platforms exist which offer similar functionality.

In the end, Descrow aims to become a decentralized community of devoted participants. Motivating backers to invest in startups while also being actively involved in ensuring companies meet their goals is a pretty intriguing concept. After all, with so many initial coin offerings launching in the past few months, it’s not entirely unsurprising that a few teams have shown their true colors in terms of scamming people. That situation needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

If there is one thing to take away from the Nicehash hack, it is how cryptocurrency mining marketplaces are very popular Although Nicehash successfully returned earlier this week, there’s a need for alternatives. One Bitcoin Cash community member has launched such a service, although it’s still in the early stages. Known as NotNicehash, it will be pretty interesting to see how this platform fares. The only accepted payment method for this platform is BCH, which isn’t a big surprise.

Imitation is often the most sincere form of flattery. In the case of cryptocurrency mining marketplaces, Notnicehash has certainly looked closely at competing services. The concept is almost identical, although the layout is very different. That is a good thing, mind you, although not everyone will be a fan of it.  The bright colors certainly make things a lot clearer for everyone to see, though.

A Nicehash Clone to Promote Bitcoin Cash

The main reason this platform is created is to promote Bitcoin Cash. All payments need to be made in BCH. Payouts will occur on a daily basis, with BCH being the obvious main option. Given the success of Bitcoin Cash in recent months, such a platform can be quite profitable. For now, Notnicehash is still in closed beta. An official launch date has not been announced as of yet.

Whether or not people will show an interest in this Nicehash “clone”, remains to be seen. It is evident the BCH community wants to get more people excited about this currency. Moreover, plenty of people have mining farms they don’t use themselves. Being able to accept BCH payments is an option worth looking into. Especially for those people who believe Bitcoin Cash will eventually replace Bitcoin. The jury is still out on that front, yet it remains a possibility.

The big question is how Notnicehash will fare in terms of security. After all, Nicehash was hacked not too long ago. In the process, the company lost over $70m worth of customer funds. This money will eventually be refunded, yet it paints a worrisome picture as well. If this clone wants to avoid those issues, there may be a lot more work to be done. For now, we will have to wait and see if there is a genuine interest in the project. It would certainly help shake things up quite a bit.

Header image courtesy of Shutterstock

The post NotNicehash is a Bitcoin Cash-only “Clone” of Nicehash appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Bitcoin has recovered strongly above $14,000 after a 40% sell off on fears of a bubble. #NEWS