Day: February 5, 2018

Chinese regulators are stepping up a crackdown that began last year on websites for cryptocurrency trading and investing, according to local reports.

Tether’s USDT has always been a very interesting currency for many different reasons.It is supposed to be pegged to the US Dollar at a 1:1 ratio, which always creates some speculation as to how a company can keep the price at that level. In the case of the USDT price, the value will hardly ever shift, even though it is slightly above $1 right now. What is of great interest is its current trading volume and the USDT price increase compared to both Bitcoin and OMNI.

USDT Price Outclasses Bitcoin and OMNI

The one boring thing about stablecoins such as Tether’s USDT is how they will hardly ever fluctuate in value. In the case of the USDT price, the value will always remain at $1 or within a 1% difference of that value. Right now, the USDT price is labeled as $1.01, even though people will only get 1 US Dollar for every USDT they trade. It’s an interesting form of currency, even though there are still a lot of questions regarding Tether’s financial situation right now.

More specifically, a lot of people are still waiting for an official independent audit of the company’s financial records. Their prior “partnership” with Friedman LLP was suddenly dissolved without any auditing taking place. To this date, it remains a bit unclear why this has happened and whether or not Tether will look for another firm to provide its auditing services. Until they do so, the company will continue to face a lot of backlash on social media due to their “shady” operations. No one is guilty until proven otherwise, though.

One would expect these “growing concerns” regarding Tether to negatively impact the demand for USDT. After all, the company has been – seemingly in random fashion – bringing more USDT into circulation whenever the Bitcoin price started tanking. If that were actually the case, however, one would expect this company alone to be able to sustain indefinite Bitcoin price growth. So far, that has not happened, as the Bitcoin price is down over 32% in the past seven days.

No one can blame the USDT trading volume for this particular development, though. There is such a high demand to both buy and sell USDT right now, its trading volume has surpassed $3bn over the past 24 hours. At this rate, Tether’s stablecoin will easily overtake Ethereum in terms of volume. While not completely unheard of, it does show all cryptocurrency markets are heading in a very peculiar direction as of right now. When Tether’s USDT is the third-largest currency by volume, it remains to be seen if this is a positive trend in general.

When looking at the biggest trading markets for USDT, it is no surprise Bitcoin and Ethereum take the cake at any given moment. OKEx’s BTC and ETH markets are both in the top three. Binance’s BTC and ETH markets are ranked second and fourth. Huobi’s  ETH and BTC markets are in the top six as well. The first currency to break this trend is Litecoin, which is also heavily traded against USDT on OKEx. In fact, OKEx is ranked a total of five times in the top 13 of USDT pairs. An interesting trend well worth keeping an eye on in the future.

It is also worth noting USDT maintains its price stability thanks to some solid gains against both Bitcoin and OMNI. With a 15.43% gain in BTC value and a 19.87% increase in OMNI value, it is evident USDT is becoming the go-to solution if you want to increase your Bitcoin holdings in quick succession. This is not without risk, though, as people need to trust Tether enough to allow them to trade back the USDT for Bitcoin or Ethereum in the future.

Right now is a tough time to be a bitcoin holder. Things have been moving fast and very much in the wrong direction over the latter half of the weekend, despite some early weekend reprieve that saw a few of the majors pick up a few percentage points and stem the tide – temporarily.

As we move into a fresh week of trading, nobody really knows where price is going near term. Some analysts suggest that current levels are a major support region and, when looked at against the backdrop of a traditional technical analysis approach, this seems valid. With that said, however, traditional technical analysis was built around traditional assets, so while it can be useful, it would be foolish to assume it’s failsafe.

So, all we can do is set up against the action we are seeing and hope that things don’t play out against our bias.

With this in mind, then, here’s a look at what we’re focusing on and where we intend to jump in and out of the markets as and when things move and in whatever direction the movement comes.

As ever, take a quick look at the chart below before we get started so as to get an idea where things stand. It’s a one-minute candlestick chart and it’s got our primary range overlaid in green.

As the chart shows, the range that we are looking at for the session today comes in as defined by support to the downside at 7551 and resistance to the upside at 7710. We will look out initially for a close above resistance to validate an immediate upside target of 8000 flat.

Conversely, if we see price close below support, we’ll get in short towards a downside target of 7300.

Stops on both positions just the other side of the entries will take us out of the trades if things turn against us.

Let’s see what happens.

Charts courtesy of Trading View

The post Bitcoin Price Watch; Trading Things As They Come appeared first on NewsBTC.

Singapore’s largest airline operator is turning to blockchain technology to boost spending of its loyalty program air miles.

China is adding a fresh round of restrictions to its cryptocurrency trading and ICO ban, now blocking access to foreign crypto exchange sites #NEWS

No hard feelings on Bitcoin, traders eyeing a reversal of fortunes across crypto markets. #NEWS

Winding Tree, a set of open-source protocols for data exchange based on blockchain allows tourists and travelers to access a central repository of various services to plan their travel without a hitch. The platform will include inventory availability information from airlines, hotels, and tour and travel service providers to enable booking of airline tickets and hotel rooms.

The Decentralization Feature

Winding Tree, based on blockchain, is a decentralized travel distribution platform. It eliminates the middlemen in the process, making travel more economical for travelers and more profitable to service providers. The platform is working on reorganization of travel distribution, offering a decentralized B2B marketplace ecosystem and driving blockchain-based travel booking transactions.

This platform serves as the world’s first decentralized travel marketplace on blockchain, which brings innovation to travel industry worldwide and reduces costs significantly for the consumers. Winding Tree intends to replace monopolies and excessive fees, making travel faster, cheaper and more enjoyable for all.

The Token Generation Event (TGE) of Winding Tree is going on and will end by February 15, 2018. A Gibraltar based non-profit, Winding Tree Foundation, maintains and supports the platform, with the mission to develop and revolutionize the efficiency of travel technology and distribution through:

• Funding of collaborating travel partners like open-source APIs and databases
• Promotion of events, marketing, and community initiatives
• Development of open-consensus modeled marketplace where users freely participate in the network while proposing changes at the same time

The Partnerships

In view of the mission stated above, Winding Tree has already entered the partnership with the mainstream travel players, including Lufthansa Group, Air New Zealand, Aruba’s ATECH Foundation and Nordic Choice Hotels.

Moreover, the company has also announced the partnership with two leading technology players in the blockchain industry; Zeppelin_OS and RSK. Through these partnerships, Winding Tree aims to enhance its platform’s security, privacy and scalability in the blockchain sphere, in order to bring platform- compatible improvements and solutions in future.

Maksim Izmaylov, the Founder and CEO of Winding Tree, says:

“We are thrilled to announce our newest partnerships with Zeppelin_OS and RSK, as they will further our goals of staying at for the forefront of technological innovation on the blockchain. Winding Tree has dedicated itself to decentralizing the travel industry, and these partnerships are strategic in ensuring that goal.”

Pedro Anderson, the Founder and COO of Winding Tree, says:

“There is a big problem in the online travel industry today, in which the distribution landscape in travel is dominated by a handful of companies, which manipulate the prices to their benefit, hindering competition and innovation. Winding Tree Foundation’s non-profit approach is presenting a democratic, transparent, decentralized solution to this issue.”

 To know more about the platform and participate in its ongoing Token Generation Event (TGE), please visit https://windingtree.com/

The post Winding Tree- Decentralized Platform Transforming the Travel Industry Worldwide appeared first on NewsBTC.

The Lloyds ban applies to the group’s 89 million credit card holders, including across subsidiaries such as Halifax, MBNA and Bank of Scotland.

All cryptocurrencies are in the red once again, which is not entirely surprising. Even though things looked good on Saturday, the situation has quickly turned around on Sunday and last night. There isn’t much positive news to report right now, yet it seems the Litecoin price is suffering from the smallest losses right now. Even though the Litecoin price has dipped to $143 once again, there is still a small gain in the LTC/BTC ratio to take note of. It seems this will be another terrible week for all cryptocurrencies, though.

An Interesting Litecoin Price Trend

It is safe to say no one is too happy with the way cryptocurrency markets are performing as of right now. With even more losses to contend with and an overall market cap heading back to $375bn in quick succession, things are not looking all that great. Bitcoin lost another 11% over the past 24 hours, yet it seems the Litecoin price “only” lost 9.8% in the same timespan. It is insufficient to effectively buck the trend, but it’s still worth taking into account regardless.

More specifically, we now have a Litecoin price of $143.06. That is a lot lower compared to $170.48 last Saturday, but it’s not even near the lowest Litecoin price point in the past week either. After all, that low resulted in an LTC price of $110.43, which occurred when Bitcoin was valued similarly to its current price. This seems to indicate Litecoin is recording higher lows in USD value even when Bitcoin continues to drop. It’s an interesting development, although most people will still be unimpressed with the way things are going as of right now.  

There is one silver lining for Litecoin to keep in mind. Unlike most other altcoins, the Litecoin ratio compared to Bitcoin has improved by 1.1% over the past 24 hours. With altcoins reclaiming some lost value by increasing their ration against Bitcoin, most price losses in USD value can be kept rather low. This doesn’t mean the Litecoin price won’t drop below $140 later today, though, but we will have to wait and see what the future holds for this particular altcoin.  

With $833.12m in 24-hour trading volume, Litecoin isn’t doing all that bad right now. It is evident most cryptocurrencies suffer from a reduced trading volume, yet Litecoin seems to successfully buck this trend as we speak.  After all, it is one of the more popular trading currencies as of right now, with most of its “direct competitors” struggling to break the $200m trading volume barrier. An interesting trend well worth keeping an eye on if you are interested or invested in Litecoin, that much is rather evident.

Most of the Litecoin trading volume comes from OKEx, even though they do not generate the highest individual market trading volume. The exchange’s BTC and USDT pair combine for a total of 20.7% of all Litecoin trades. GDAX has the highest individual volume with its LTC/USD trading pair generating almost 16% of all Litecoin trades. Bitfinex is also doing its part with another 12.27% of all trades. It’s good to see two USD pairs in the top three for Litecoin, as it seemingly indicates people are buying in cheap while they can.

It will be interesting to see what the future holds for Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies in the coming days. So far, things look anything but spectacular, but things are not as terrible as others may want you to believe right now. There are some currencies which are still remaining somewhat stable in BTC value, even though their USD value is on the decline. With the Litecoin price remaining above $140, things will certainly get very interesting moving forward. It’s always important to keep the bigger picture in mind when dealing with cryptocurrencies.

Vulnerability found in Ledger cryptocurrency wallets that can lead to loss of funds, company reveals how to avoid “man in the middle” attack. #NEWS