Day: January 15, 2018

DASH/USD

DASH continues to drift around, bouncing from the $1000 level on Friday. The market looks a bit limp, and quite frankly I think you can take your time before jumping in with both feet. However, if you are a short-term trader, you may be able to trade back and forth. I think we will probably go looking towards the $1100 level if we get any momentum at all, as it is obvious that there is massive support at the $1000 level, extending down to the $950 level. If we do breakout to the upside, expect a lot of resistance at $1200.

LTC/USD

Litecoin has bounced a bit during the trading session on Friday, reaching towards the $250 level. I believe that we can go beyond there and find even more resistance at the $260 level. The $220 level underneath is offering support, and although I think we will see a move higher, I don’t necessarily feel that there is any compelling reason to put money to work though.

Thanks for watching, I’ll be back tomorrow.

The post DASH and Litecoin Analysis January 15, 2018 appeared first on NewsBTC.

ETH/USD

Ethereum markets rally during the Friday session, as it looks like we are trying to break above the $1300 level again. With this bounce it looks likely that we will not only reach that level, but perhaps reach towards the fresh, new high. The volume is drifting a bit lower though, so I think that pullbacks will happen. Keep in mind that Monday as Martin Luther King Jr. day in America, so once the Americans take over, things probably get quiet.

ETH/BTC

Ethereum has rallied slightly against Bitcoin, looking likely to continue to reach towards the 0.10 level as we have formed a bit of an ascending triangle. The 20 SMA looks to be supportive as well, so I believe that the buyers will get involved. It will be a grind to the 0.10 level though, which of course will be rather resistive.

Thanks for watching, I’ll be back tomorrow.

The post Ethereum Analysis January 15, 2018 appeared first on NewsBTC.

Having defended $13,000, bitcoin looks set to explore a move towards $15,000 levels in the next 24 hours.

According to their co-chairman Kong Jianping, a company making Bitcoin mining hardware has posted sales of over 1.2 billion yuan (US$ 185.2 million) during 2017. This translates in a profit of a staggering 300 million yuan (US$ 46.6 million). Kong told Chinese media outlet Yicai Global that he anticipates Canaan Creative’s profits to reach 5 billion yuan. This would mean they’d made sales of 10 billion yaun. However, the mining hardware chairperson did not specify a time frame for such a prediction.

Ejinsight, a domestic technology resource claims that Canaan Creative plan to list its shares on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations stock exchange – an over-the-counter way of selling shares in public limited companies in China.

Canaan Creative are one of the planet’s largest manufacturers of ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) chips. Such components have been tailored towards solving the complex algorithms required to “unlock” the remaining Bitcoin of the total supply of 21 million. The company filed their interest in listing shares on the NEEQ in August of last year.

Canaan Creative itself was founded in 2013 and according to Ejinsight, units they’d sold up until last April accounted for 22% of the global mining hash power on the Bitcoin network. Sales have been steadily increasing inline with surging interest in cryptocurrency since they began selling hardware chips designed for the purpose of mining. The local technology news source claims that of the 400 unique customers Canaan Creative have served, 97% of them are based in China.

However, with news of Chinese hostility towards the cryptocurrency mining industry and so many of Canaan Creative’s clients being located within the country, it seems hard to believe the projections of Kong. Recently the Chinese government have made efforts to squeeze Bitcoin miners out of their nation. Whilst the Beijing government has not expressly banned the practice, certain clampdowns on allowed electricity and land usage, as well as environmental regulation and tax collection, targets those engaging in the highly profitable and hugely power consuming activity.

According to the Financial Times, as part of their agenda against Bitcoin miners, a multi-agency task force has been set up to aid companies from exiting the mining industry.

The clampdown on mining is not the only hostility the Chinese government have shown towards the cryptocurrency space. During September of last year, legislators there banned the innovative fund raising practice known as initial coin offerings (ICOs). On top of this, several key exchanges also ceasing doing business in the second half of 2017. Evidently, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are not currently seen as being inline with Chinese economic interests.

The post Bitcoin Mining Hardware Firm Posts Massive 2017 Profits appeared first on NewsBTC.

Forcing cryptocurrencies to scale will always remain a very troublesome topic by the look of things. Bitcoin shows such issues can effectively cripple a network with relative ease. Project Terab, an open source initiative, wants to make sure Bitcoin Cash goes in a different direction. Right now, the network can accommodate blocks of up to 8MB in size. With Terab, the goal is to ensure one terabyte blocks become a possibility for the future. An interesting concept, but the bandwidth requirements shouldn’t be underestimated either.

Looking to the future is always important in the world of cryptocurrecy development. It is always better to prepare for potential issues rather than patch things up later on. The Bitcoin network has learned this lesson the hard way. After many years of bickering, the network now has a scaling solution few service providers are willing to use. Moreover, there is the Bitcoin Cash altcoin which seemingly has no scaling issues as of right now. Several initiatives are underway to further increase the BCH block size in the coming years.

Project Terab and one Terabyte Blocks

One of these scaling initiatives is known as project Terab. It’s an open source initiative focusing mainly on Bitcoin Cash‘s technical issues. More specifically, the team aims to introduce BCH blocks of one terabyte in the future. It is an astonishingly high number, but an interesting prospect nonetheless. Bringing such blocks to the network will be a rather big challenge, though. With such blocks, Terab would also allow Bitcoin Cash to process 7 million transactions per second.

It is evident these goals are very ambitious. Achieving such major milestones may not even be feasible in the long run. At the same time, in theory, nothing prevents a blockchain from scaling to such levels. The main problem is the terabyte blocks. Very few people have the infrastructure and bandwidth to process such blocks on a regular basis. Surprisingly, it seems unlikely such block sizes would be feasible for the regular Bitcoin blockchain. It seems the introduction of SegWit has made on-chain scaling a lot more difficult in terms of sheer block size increases.

Whether or not Terab will become a success, remains to be determined. The open source initiative certainly introduces some new opportunities and challenges. It will take a few years until such a block size could effectively be introduced to the network, though. Right now, the maximum size is 8MB, which isn’t even sued by most service providers and mining pools. Before we get to one terabyte, we need to experiment with 1 GB and 10 GB blocks. All of these developments are well worth keeping an eye on. It shows there are many ways to make bitcoin stronger and better in the future.

The post Terab Project Allows Bitcoin Cash to Scale to one Terabyte Blocks appeared first on NewsBTC.

South Korean authorities have reportedly said that cryptocurrency investors must attach their IDs to anonymous virtual accounts or face penalties.

After some very solid gains yesterday, it seems the NEO price is only just getting started. Whereas the value of this cryptocurrency was $145 per coin yesterday afternoon, it has now risen to $168. This growth is rather unprecedented for NEO, although it remains to be seen whether or not it can continue for much longer. Most holders wouldn’t mind seeing a NEO price of $200 by the end of January, but only time will tell if that is even remotely possible.

NEO Price Continues to Skyrocket

It became rather evident yesterday afternoon the NEO price would continue to rise for some time to come if the momentum could be sustained. During the weekends, we often see currencies go up in value following a near complete retrace on Monday. So far, that has not happened as far as the NEO price is concerned, although there is no reason to think we won’t see a steep correction at some point. The gains over the past few days are spectacular and the price will level out eventually.

These past 24 hours have resulted in another 20.29% USD value increase for NEO. Additionally, the BTC value has also increased by 19.98%. It is good to see the NEO price appreciate on both fronts at the same time. All of this is done with relatively little trading volume as well, which seems to indicate a lot of people are more than happy to hold on to their NEO, for the time being. They will take profits eventually, though, as such human behavior is unavoidable when the NEO price starts to hit certain levels.

With these new gains, we are now looking at a NEO price of $168. This is not the most recent all-time high, mind you, as that was recorded when NEO surpassed $176 last night. As was to be expected, this new ATH immediately caused a small correction, pushing the NEO price back down to $150. A good buying opportunity for those who sold at the top or new investors looking to get in on the action.  Whether or not we can set a new all-time high later today, is difficult to predict right now.

With $824.6m in 24-hour trading volume, things are trucking along nicely as far as NEO is concerned. Although this is not even close to the volume generated by the likes of XRP, Bitcoin Cash, or even Litecoin on a good day, the volume is more than sufficient to keep traders engaged right now. Moreover, it seems to confirm there is plenty of buying support all cryptocurrency exchanges. It is always difficult to guess whether or not this momentum will remain in place, though.

The vast majority of NEO trading volume comes from Binance with their BTC and ETH trading pairs. Especially their BTC market is very popular right now, with over $144m in volume. Bittrex completes the top three with their NEO/BTC market, which is only $500,000 behind Binance’s NEO/ETH pair in volume. Bitfinex is still the first exchange with a fiat currency market for NEO, and their volume is close to that of Bittrex right now. It seems there is some fresh capital entering the market as we speak, which is a very positive sign at this point.

For the time being, there is a genuine reason to be excited about the NEO price as we speak. With these solid gains over the past few days, it is not difficult to see why some people hope to see a NEO price of $250 and more in the coming days. That may not necessarily be a realistic target, though, but stranger things have happened in the cryptocurrency world over the past few years.  For now, make sure to take profits when the opportunity arises, as the cryptocurrency markets remain extremely volatile.

Indonesia’s Central Bank, Bank Indonesia (BI), have united with the national police service to tackle the illegal use of Bitcoin in Bali. According to them, the tourist hot spot is much more likely to attract people trying to use the cryptocurrency for transactions that are outside the law. The Jakarta Post and local language news source Tempo.co report that on Saturday, January 13, a senior member from BI, Causa Iman Karana, announced the clampdown in Dempasar, the capital of the romantic island getaway location:

“We are looking out for bitcoin transactions in Bali, particularly in tourist spots. We will take measures against non-rupiah transactions.”

Karana also called on the people of Bali to not accept transactions using digital money. For the banker, it is the lack of central authority regulating transactions that is a primary cause for concern. Like most central bankers, the fear of their own pending redundancy was also a likely motivating factor behind his words.

This recent  crackdown in Bali is part of a wider initiative against the use of cryptocurrency in the nation of Indonesia. According to national legislators, making transactions in Bitcoin violates Law No. 7/2011 on currency. This recent reiteration underlines the initiative penned at the bank late last year. In early December, Bank Indonesia issued BI Regulation No. PBI: 19/12/PBI/2017. This expressly banned the use of digital currency in Indonesia and stated that all transactions and payments must be made using the national currency, the rupiah. A spokesperson for the bank, Agusman, at the time spoke of the risks posed to those getting involved in the digital currency space. Like Karana, he too deemed the primary issue with virtual money transactions the lack of centralised control:

“We warned people not to carry out transactions with virtual money because there is no authority that regulates the transactions.”

The bank spokesperson went on to highlight the speculative risk of using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Also amongst his concerns were the dangerous posed to the state because of money laundering, as well as the ease with which virtual currencies could be used to finance terrorism. Agusman concluded with a straight forward message for the people of his country:

Therefore, [BI] wants all parties not to sell, buy or trade the virtual currency.

Indonesia isn’t the first and it certainly won’t be the last country who attempts to stamp out the use of virtual currencies by force. Across the globe, Bolivia, Algeria, Ecuador, and Nepal are amongst those nations that have issued an outright ban on the use and trading of digital currencies. However, such small economies are incapable of moving the price of BTC or any other currency in any dramatic fashion. If the global popularity of crypto continues to grow, it’s likely that these States will be forced to liberalise their knee-jerk legislation or else get left further behind the planet’s larger economies.

The post Bank Indonesia Team Up With Police to Clampdown on Bali Bitcoin Transactions appeared first on NewsBTC.

Bank Indonesia has warned that cryptocurrencies may not be used for payments in the country.

Enterprises may have gone quiet toward the end of 2017, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be players in the year ahead, Accenture’s Valiente argues.

Key Points

• Bitcoin gold price started a downside correction from the $369 high against the US Dollar.
• There is a major bullish trend line forming with support at $265 on the hourly chart of BTG/USD (data feed from Bitfinex).
• The pair is currently placed nicely in the bullish zone above $260 and the 100 hourly simple moving average.

Bitcoin gold price is placed well above the $250 level against the US Dollar. BTG/USD remains well supported and it could move higher in the near term.

Bitcoin Gold Price Support

There was a decent rise in bitcoin gold price above the $300 level recently against the US Dollar. The price traded as high as $369 before starting a downside correction. It declined and moved below the $320 and $300 support levels. Moreover, there was a break below the 50% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $200.21 low to $369.48 high.

However, there are many supports on the downside above the $250 level. An initial support is around the 61.8% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $200.21 low to $369.48 high at $264. There is also a major bullish trend line forming with support at $265 on the hourly chart of BTG/USD. The pair remains well supported above the $250-260 levels. More importantly, the 100 hourly simple moving average is at $256. Therefore, there is a clear major support forming above $250.

As long as the pair is above the mentioned $250 level, it remains in an uptrend. On the upside, there is a decent resistance forming at $300. A break of the stated $300 resistance may push the price back in the bullish zone for more gains.

Looking at the technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD for BTG/USD is about to move back in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for BTG/USD is currently below the 50 level.

Major Support Level – $250

Major Resistance Level – $300

Charts courtesy – Trading View, Bitfinex

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