Day: February 7, 2018

MarketWatch

Bitcoin continues its steady recovery, rising above $8000 MarketWatch Bitcoin continued to move above $8,000 on Thursday, taking a cue from global equity markets, which appeared to be stabilizing somewhat after a week of extreme volatility. The price of a single bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.04% gained 6.7% to $8,091.23, bouncing ...

E-commerce is a mammoth industry in China worth an estimated $700 billion in 2017. For Chinese online marketplaces to sell overseas they will need quick, cheap, and convenient payment processing which current banking systems do not provide. Ripple is coming to the rescue with its xCurrent system and an expanding number of new partners in the region.

Some of the largest e-commerce platforms in the world are aimed at the Chinese market whose spending power is showing steady growth. Facilitating cross-border payments has been the bottleneck so far and blockchain company Ripple plans to alleviate that by partnering up with Hong Kong licensed money service firm LianLian.

Ripple expands the Net

In a company blog announcement San Francisco based Ripple stated that they had entered into a partnership with the Chinese e-payments provider which already has over 150 million users in the region. To facilitate more efficient real-time cross-border remittances, invoice payments and e-commerce payments LianLian will be joining RippleNet. The xCurrent settlement solution provided by Ripple offers end-to-end tracking for banks which power cross-border transactions between China, the US, and Europe.

Arthur Zhu, CEO of LianLian was in full support of the partnership;

“With RippleNet, we will further enhance that experience and increase our market share by offering customers instant, blockchain-powered payments across the 19 currencies that we currently support. We look forward to working with Ripple to power payment flows between China and RippleNet members in new markets.”

The company already processes billions of payments between consumers and merchants including some of the largest on the planet such as Ali Express, Amazon and eBay. According to reports this online commerce industry could be worth a staggering $1.3 trillion this year.

RippleNet is part of the company’s ‘Internet of Value’ drive. This includes a network of partners, of which there are already over 100, benefiting from faster, cheaper and more convenient cross-border and traceable payments. The Ripple’s Net is expanding in Asia with banking and commerce partners already located in Japan, South Korea, Thailand and India.

Director of joint venture partnerships at Ripple, Emi Yoshikawa, said;

“Cross-border payments related to China’s e-commerce market reached $1.07 trillion in 2017. There is a huge opportunity to make these payments quicker and more cost-efficient. With RippleNet, LianLian International will now be able to give merchants and consumers quicker, more cost-efficient payments into China, which they weren’t able to before. We also look forward to connecting other RippleNet members to LianLian.”

XRP still in slumber

News of this substantial partnership for Ripple has yet to be reflected in the price action of its own cryptocurrency, XRP. The token is currently trading at $0.75, down 80% from its high of $3.80 just over a month ago. Maybe the news of greater product adoption and more partnerships for the company will renew interest in XRP and reverse its month-long downtrend.

The post Ripple Enters Chinese Online Shopping Market appeared first on NewsBTC.

Ethereum will lead the upcoming revolution of financial markets #EXPERT_TAKE

Some experts expect to see bitcoin hit $50,000 and the cryptocurrency market to hit and surpass a trillion dollars according to a report on CNBC.

New products will boost trading

The recent downturn in the market saw bitcoin lose about half of its value and the overall market decrease by over $500 billion at it’s lowest point on Tuesday. Still, market experts are predicting another rally ahead.

“Increasing regulatory recognition of cryptocurrency exchanges, the entrance of institutional capital and major technology developments will contribute to the market’s rebound and push cryptocurrency prices to all new highs this year,”

Thomas Glucksmann, head of APAC business development at cryptocurrency exchange Gatecoin, told CNBC .

Last year saw the first Bitcoin futures products released by the CME and the CBOE that people could trade. This year we may very likely see crypto-futures listed on the Nasdaq which could change negative viewpoints of digital currencies across the board.

“One possible appetizer for the bulls … will be the release of another cryptocurrency backed instrument listed on a major exchange. There are several candidates in the pipeline, it’s only a matter of time until we have a cryptocurrency backed ETF (exchange-traded fund).”

Said Gluckman.

It seems only a matter of time until an ETF is realized. This would allow people to track the price of an asset and trade cryptocurrency without having to buy it on an exchange. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss who founded Gemini Trust Digital Fund had an ETF application rejected last year.

The recent market correction came after huge gains for many cryptocurrencies last year. Some experts are expecting to see comparative if not greater price rises in the year to come.

 “We believe after February the market will likely go on a bull run comparative if not greater than last year potentially reaching the trillion-dollar mark before a proper crypto winter sets in where the market becomes more focused on proper market fundamentals,”

Jamie Burke, CEO at Outlier Ventures.

Utility tokens are the future

Market analysts are tagging tokens like IOTA and Neo that can be used to build new blockchains as the ones to watch in the future.

‘Utility tokens and assets with a working platform are more likely to appreciate in value this year.’

Mick Sherman, co-founder and CEO of Hercules Tech told CNBC.

The CEO also warned that there will be more bubbles to weather as the true value of many Blockchain projects are still years away.

 

The post Experts Expect Bullrun Cryptocurrency Market to Hit $1 Trillion This Year appeared first on NewsBTC.

A hedge fund with short position in Kodak does not believe the image firm will use blockchain technology to save itself.

Key Highlights

• Ripple price moved above the $0.7000 resistance and is currently consolidating gains against the US dollar.
• There is a short-term connecting bearish trend line forming with resistance at $0.7065 on the hourly chart of the XRP/USD pair (data source from SimpleFx).
• The pair may soon break the $0.7065 resistance and the 100 hourly simple moving average to gain momentum.

Ripple price is trading nicely with positive signs against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. XRP/USD is likely to move above $0.7500 in the near term once the current consolidation is over.

Ripple Price Trend

There was a decent start of an upside move from $0.5500 in Ripple price yesterday against the US Dollar. The price climbed higher and succeeded in breaking the $0.7000 resistance. The upside move was strong since the price settled above the $0.6500 pivot level. There was also break above the 50% Fib retracement level of the last drop from the $0.9675 high to $0.5178 low.

More importantly, there was a break above a crucial bearish trend line at $0.6800 on the hourly chart of the XRP/USD pair. The pair traded as high as $0.7649 and is currently correcting lower. It is currently below the 0.7000 level and the 100 hourly simple moving average. During the slide, the pair tested the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $0.5180 low to $0.7649 high. However, the broken trend line acted as a support near the $0.6500 level.

On the upside, there is a short-term connecting bearish trend line forming with resistance at $0.7065 on the same chart. XRP buyers need to break the trend line resistance at $0.7065 and the 100 hourly simple moving average to gain momentum.

Looking at the technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD for XRP/USD is struggling to gain momentum in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for XRP/USD is just around the 50 level.

Major Support Level – $0.6500

Major Resistance Level – $0.7065

 

Charts courtesy – SimpleFX

The post Ripple Price Technical Analysis – XRP/USD Consolidating Gains appeared first on NewsBTC.

This past week bitcoin cash (BCH) markets have been suffering from the bearish sentiment plaguing cryptocurrencies across the board. On February 6 the price of BCH reached a low of $740 per coin but has since bounced back to the $950-1,050 region on Bitstamp Tuesday evening.

Also Read: Australian Freeze: Big Aussie Banks Denying Bitcoiners

Bitcoin Cash Markets Begin to See Recovery Ahead

This week bitcoin cash markets took a hit as BCH had lost roughly $588 USD (-39%) in value over the past seven days. At the moment the price has rebounded and is coasting along at just between the $950-1,050 zone after bouncing back much of Wednesday’s trading sessions. BCH trade volume has been averaging roughly $650 million to $1 billion over the past week. Exchanges swapping the most bitcoin cash today include Okex, Bitfinex, Hitbtc, GDAX, and Huobi. Currently, the top currencies traded with bitcoin cash include BTC (57%), USD (21%), tether (USDT 11%), the Korean won (4%), and the euro (2%).

New Localbitcoincash Features, Openbazaar Integration, and a Bitcoin Cash SMS Application  

Even though markets were down this past week, the bitcoin cash community got a bunch of infrastructure support and new applications. For instance, everyone in the BCH community is talking about a new app called Cointext which aims to create the ability to send bitcoin cash through text (SMS). According to the creators, all texts are on-chain transactions like the tipping platform Chaintip. However, with the platform being so new, some BCH supporters are skeptical of this project being secure when used via text messages.

Another interesting BCH feature announced this week came from the Localbitcoincash exchange which announced it had added skycoin and smartcash services to the platform. The implementation features no fees to these types of trades, explains the exchange developers. “No fee exchange is exactly what it is, it’s totally free, and you can keep exchanging the different cryptocurrencies supported by our platform, and there are no trading fees involved,” Localbitcoincash reveals on February 7.

Just recently the decentralized cryptocurrency infused marketplace Openbazaar integrated bitcoin cash and zcash into the latest 2.1.0 version.

“This release is the first step towards allowing more options for cryptocurrencies in Openbazaar — It includes native support for nodes using one cryptocurrency at a time, bitcoin, bitcoin cash, or zcash,” explains the Openbazaar developers.

Another addition to the BCH infrastructure is the AcceptBitcoin.Cash website has added an adult section to the portal. The developers of the website believe there is a demand for adult merchants to start accepting bitcoin cash. Further, the team said it has seen over 70 submissions since it implemented a request form, and the team added nearly every single merchant to the site in under three weeks of usage.

BCH Supporters Remain Optimistic

In other news this week a fake bitcoin cash token was created on the Omni layer chain. According to reports, the Omni chain’s ability to generate asset tokens was used to create a misleading BCH token. BCH supporters think the token was created to cause confusion while adding to the growing list of scammy snapshot forks that have come into existence over the past few months.

Overall the BCH community is in high spirits even with the past few weeks of bearish market sentiment. The protocol continues to get support nearly every day from exchanges, wallets, and merchants. Bitcoin cash markets are also starting to gather steam again alongside the rest of the cryptocurrencies who got hammered this past weekend.

What do you think about BCH market sentiment, support, and added infrastructure this week? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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Images via Shutterstock, Cointext, Openbazaar, and Acceptbitcoincash.

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Bitcoinocracy is a free and decentralized way to measure the Bitcoin community’s stance on a given proposition. Check vote.Bitcoin.com.

The post Bitcoin Cash Markets Recover — While Infrastructure Support Increases appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Key Highlights

• ETH price made a nice upside move and traded above the $780 resistance against the US Dollar.
• There was a break above a major bearish trend line with resistance at $775 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via SimpleFX).
• The pair is now placed nicely above the $780 level and the 100 hourly simple moving average.

Ethereum price is slowly gaining momentum against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. ETH/USD may soon move above the $840 resistance to gain further momentum.

Ethereum Price Support

There was a fresh start of an upside move in ETH price yesterday above the $700 level against the US Dollar. The price was seen struggling to break the $780 resistance yesterday. However, it was successful in breaking the mentioned $780 resistance and gained upside momentum. There was also a break above the 76.4% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $850 high to $553 low.

More importantly, there was a break above a major bearish trend line with resistance at $775 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD. The pair is now back in the bullish bias above the $775-780 level and the 100 hourly simple moving average. It traded as high as $848 recently and it is currently correcting lower. It already tested the 38.2% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $553 low to $848 high. There is a bullish trend line forming with support at $740, which is acting as a good buy zone.

As long as the pair is above the $730-740 levels, it could continue to move higher. Above $848, the price may test the $900 level in the near term. On the downside, below $730, the price may retest the $700 pivot area.

Hourly MACD – The MACD is slowly losing grip in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI – The RSI is just holding the 50 level with a minor downside angle.

Major Support Level – $730

Major Resistance Level – $848

 

Charts courtesy – SimpleFX

The post Ethereum Price Technical Analysis – ETH/USD Could Gain Momentum appeared first on NewsBTC.

CoinDesk recap’s Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit, a one-da event that focused on cryptocurrency investing and saw notable industry dialogue.

On January 31, 2018, the Facebook advertising platform announced that it would no longer be allowing advertisements related to cryptocurrency or digital token ICOs through a blog post.

The Facebook advertising platform covers its own native social media website in addition to its other subsidiary services, including Instagram, Messenger and the Facebook Audience Network. As such, the extent and reach of Facebook’s ad platform encompasses a sizeable portion of young internet users.

Facebook getting rid of cryptocurrency related advertisements has led to many blockchain companies scrambling to find an alternative platform where they can showcase their upcoming digital token or related technologies. Even though dozens of internet advertising networks exist, it is perhaps a good time for such companies to pivot to a decentralized alternative, especially since distribution and decentralization is the bedrock of this industry.

One such example of a decentralized network is DaVinci II, a full-fledged marketing platform built upon the Lydian token. The token leverages its native protocol, The Whisper Network, to solve digital advertising problems. The company has already been offering its marketing cloud service to Fortune 1000 companies and other international brands.

Since attaining mainstream internet popularity over the past decade or so, Facebook has managed to amass a wealth of demographic data from all of its users. Based on that information, its advertising algorithms are trained to target only a small subset of users that are likely to be interested in what the advertiser is trying to offer.

In the context of the digital token market, advertisers can choose to target different types of audiences, including those that showed great interest in ICOs in the past and those with little to none. The advertising algorithms, however, are pretty limited in their function. Their scope of influence extends only as far as Facebook’s own platform and its limited number of subsidiaries. Furthermore, it fails to account for user behavior elsewhere on the internet, especially non-Facebook users.

The future of digital advertising needs to solve such limitations and will also benefit from not being reliant on a social network for its data. Despite Facebook realizing this fact to some extent, as demonstrated by its machine learning efforts, the other problems associated with the social network remain.

DaVinci II’s approach to the problem has had the incorporation of deep learning and big data from the very beginning of the platform through its Mona Lisa AI. The reach of the advertising network is not limited to a limited user base either, especially as it boasts planned integrations on multiple devices, content types and demographics. Furthermore, without a central governing authority as is the case with Facebook, advertisers are not forced to comply with strict guidelines and can attract investors to their ICO, for instance, without a long administration process.

Given how rapidly the blockchain space is growing, it makes sense for companies in the industry to seek alternative advertising channels that are not only technically sound, but also stable. A decentralized marketing platform, like the one DaVinci II is envisioning, thus has great potential to nullify Facebook’s decision to terminate cryptocurrency-related advertisements.

Media Contact:

LydianCoin Pte. Ltd
Sydney Ifergan
[email protected]
https://lydian.io

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of The Merkle. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.

FOMO Moments

 

A mixed bag greeted us during this morning’s Asian trading session. A bit of a cool off from dip buying has leveled out the markets but they are still mostly in the green. Bitcoin is holding $8,000 which is good news for all the altcoins which seem to be heading upwards still. Looking at the top 25 we can see that one altcoin is doing better than the rest and it is one we have mentioned before; Lisk.

With a 18.7% rise on this time yesterday LSK is performing better that all of its siblings. From $16.45 at the same time yesterday the token is up to just over $20 at the time of writing. During the big dip on February 6 LSK fell as low as $12.18 so since then it has climbed an impressive 64% in just two days. The all-time high for LSK came during the crypto surge just after New Year when it reached $37.87 according to Coinmarketcap.

Lisk is a solid contender, it usually holds out pretty strong when other altcoins plummet and is a little more resilient to wild market swings. The team has been very active recently with updates to their Lisk Nano platform which is now at version 1.3.4. Updates to the Lisk Explorer to version 1.4.2 have also recently been announced so the whole ecosystem is coming along nicely. Lisk has also been added to a number of new exchanges recently such as Huobi and Japan’s BitFyer, they expect to be listed on India’s BitIndia very soon.

Momentum is currently very strong with Lisk and it could get back to previous highs quicker than other altcoins. LSK currently has a $2.3 billion market cap with $47.8 million traded in the past 24 hours. Other altcoins performing well with over 15% growth this morning are Neo, Monero, Zcash and Nano, formerly RaiBlocks.

More on Lisk can be found here: https://lisk.io/

FOMO Moments is a section that takes a daily look at the top 25 altcoins during the Asian trading session and analyses the best performing one, looking for trends and fundamentals. 

The post Morning Asian Altcoin Trading Roundup: the leader is Lisk appeared first on NewsBTC.

Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges which is said to be the fastest growing startup in history, has been offline for several hours.

The Binance development team along with its CEO Changpeng Zhao–who was recently included in the Forbes list of cryptocurrency’s richest people–announced that a server issue led the trading platform to be taken offline temporarily for maintenance.

“Due to a significant increase in users and trading activity, Binance will need to extend the System upgrade and is expected to be completed by 2PM (UTC),” the Binance team stated, noting that trading will remain disabled during this period. “Withdrawals and trading during this period will remain suspended. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience.”

Including the several hours Binance had been offline prior to the official announcement of the Binance team, by 2PM UTC, the trading platform would have had been offline for more than 14 hours.

The initial announcement of the Binance team led to some confusion among traders and investors on the Binance cryptocurrency exchange because it explained that a maintenance is ongoing and that traders may experience a temporary decrease in exchange performance.

However, by that time, traders were already unable to execute orders, withdraw, and deposit funds. The exchange had been frozen and was unable to execute any operations when the Binance team posted the following tweet

A system maintenance is in progress, some users may experience a temporary decrease in exchange performance while this in underway.Thank you for your understanding.

— binance (@binance_2017) February 8, 2018

Many traders were understandably frustrated with the statement of the Binance team that described the event as a “maintenance”, as orders were stuck and the trading platform stopped functioning. Quickly thereafter, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao released a follow up statement, emphasizing that the exchange experienced a server issue and that it may take several hours to fix.

We experienced a server issue on our replica database cluster, causing some data to be out of sync. Need to fully resync from master. Due the size of the data, it will take several hours. No data is lost. We appreciate your understanding and support.

— CZ (@cz_binance) February 8, 2018

During this period, OKEx, the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency trading platform of OKCoin, formerly China’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, became the global market’s biggest cryptocurrency trading platform by daily trading volume, overtaking South Korea’s Upbit and Binance.

Prior to this temporary technical issue, Binance was easily the largest exchange in the world, followed by Upbit and OKEx.

Given that the Binance team has already discovered the core issue of the minor server outage, as Zhao mentioned, the trading platform will likely recover soon immediately after the full re-synchronization of data of the master server is complete. In the meantime, for the next several hours, traders will be unable to make, cancel, or modify existing orders.

The past year has seen post-trade competitors join forces to collaborate on distributed ledger use cases and brought more rational expectations over the technology’s current capacity to achieve the scale and processing power needed for large-scale solutions. As the industry has come to the realization that blockchain’s potential isn’t limitless, and as companies focus on the nuts-and-bolts of development, applications need to demonstrate sufficient ROI and client value to get new rounds of funding.

Wien Energie intends to pilot blockchain products in a sustainably designed Viennese urban district this year.

Breaking … One of the largest crypto exchanges in the world just announced that it will be offline for the next 12 hours. Citing a server issue a company rep Tweeted about the incident and a message on the support page followed it up.

System Upgrade Extension

This was the title of the post on the Binance support pages which said;

Fellow Binancians,

Due to a significant increase in users and trading activity, Binance will need to extend the System upgrade and is expected to be completed by 2PM (UTC).

Our team is working hard to complete this upgrade as quickly as possible. We will make an announcement to all users if completed ahead of schedule.

Withdrawals and trading during this period will remain suspended. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience.

Thank you for your support.

Binance Team

2018/02/08

The notice follows a Tweet mentioning a server issue causing some data to be out of sync.

We experienced a server issue on our replica database cluster, causing some data to be out of sync. Need to fully resync from master. Due the size of the data, it will take several hours. No data is lost. We appreciate your understanding and support.

— CZ (@cz_binance) February 8, 2018

Replies started to express concerns about a hack but they were quickly reassured by the Binance team that it was routine maintenance.

According to Coinmarketcap Binance is the third largest exchange with 2 billion dollars in trade volume over the past 24 hours.

The post Crypto Exchange Giant Binance Will be Down for 12 Hours appeared first on NewsBTC.