Day: July 10, 2018

Augur, a cryptocurrency project on the Ethereum network, has just announced that it be launching its long-awaited prediction platform.

Augur Prediction Platform: Three Years In The Making

For the uninitiated, Augur is a decentralized predictions platform based on the Ethereum network, that allows for users to create and place bets on any event. Whether it be the next American president or the winner of this year’s World Cup, Augur users will be able to place their hard-earned cryptocurrency funds on an outcome.

Vitalik Buterin, well-known co-founder of Ethereum and advisor to Forecast Foundation, the organization behind the prediction platform, expressed his excitement for a prediction platform, stating:

“I have been excited about the possibility of prediction markets on Ethereum for a long time.”

While this sounds all well and good, for over two years, this platform was just a concept with no official product. Augur was one of the first successful ICOs in the cryptocurrency space, raising upwards of $5.5 million in 2015. However, since then, the collective value of Augur’s REP ERC-20 tokens has ballooned to become the 38th largest cryptocurrency, at $375 million.

Due to the project garnering immense interest from all corners of the cryptocurrency community, the Augur platform become one of the most anticipated releases in the industry. With today’s announcement, the final deployment plan has been put into effect, with the platform’s team expecting a full launch within the next 24 hours.  

Why Augur Instead Of Centralized Prediction Platforms?

Augur has been lauded for being a unique innovative take on an old industry, bringing predictions and betting to a decentralized environment. Many find a multitude of issues with centralized betting/prediction platforms, most notably, the regulatory requirements imposed on these sites.

Many centralized sites will require you to submit I.D. documents, in an attempt to stay in line with KYC/AML rules. But if these platforms do not find favor with regulatory bodies, your funds may be frozen by a central authority.

Augur mitigates regulatory risk, as all predictions are facilitated by a decentralized smart contract system, removing a single point of failure or attack.

Another feature which makes Augur appealing is the integrated ability to create predictions for any future event, as long as other users are interested. The two aforementioned factors coupled with a promise for lower settlement fees in comparison with its centralized counterparts makes Augur a great alternative to traditional betting/prediction systems.

Scaling Worries Continue With Platform Deployment

Despite being met with excitement from the cryptocurrency community, some naysayers believe that Augur will only worsen Ethereum’s scaling issues. Augur is expected to receive thousands of users upon release, leading many to worry that the prediction and settlement transactions will lead to further transaction clogs in the network. 

Joey Krug, co-founder of Augur acknowledged these worries, stating:

When queried about utilizing another blockchain for the Augur platform, Krug added:

“We considered it. Right now at the moment, there aren’t any alternatives that are live and viable. But there are a few we are looking at pretty closely.”

Since the platform has not been released as of the time of press, it is unclear what effect the release will have on the network. Nonetheless, many hope for the success of the platform, which has finally come to fruition after a grueling three-year wait. At the time of writing Augur’s REP token was down almost 3% on the day to $33.40.

 

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Cryptocurrency payments company Monaco has purchased the highly-coveted domain name Crypto.com for an undisclosed amount of money. Domain name selling expert Niko Younts says that Crypto.com is worth between USD 5 million and USD 10 million, possibly making this the largest crypto-related domain name purchase in history.

Other examples of extremely expensive crypto domain name purchases are Eth.com which sold for USD 2 million, Btc.com which sold for USD 1.1 million, and Block-chain.com which sold for USD 1 million. Ethereum.com has an asking price of USD 10 million, and Blockchain.us is on sale for USD 3.45 million. As of now though, it would seem Crypto.com is the most expensive crypto-related domain name purchase in history based on expert analysis, although this can’t be confirmed since Monaco hasn’t disclosed how much it spent on the domain.

Crypto.com was registered in 1993 by Matt Blaze, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is on the board of directors of the Tor project, which is an anonymous and cryptographically secure platform for surfing the internet. This domain was purchased 16 years before the genesis block of Bitcoin.

Matt Blaze actually did not want to sell Crypto.com despite numerous offers in the past. In September 2017 and January 2018, he posted on Twitter that he was not considering offers for Crypto.com. The CEO of Monaco, Kris Marszalek, says the deal wasn’t about money for Matt Blaze, or Crypto.com would’ve been sold a long time ago.

Monaco offers Visa-branded cryptocurrency debit cards. These cards are connected to a cryptocurrency wallet that can hold several different cryptocurrencies, and these cryptocurrencies can instantly be converted to fiat at market rate when withdrawing cash from an ATM or making a purchase from a store.

Since these debit cards are backed by Visa, they are accepted almost everywhere. This is seen to be beneficial for the global spread of cryptocurrency, and is much more efficient and cost-effective than cryptocurrency ATMs which charge high fees. In fact, some of the Monaco crypto debit cards offer cash back from 1% to 2%.

Monaco has a native cryptocurrency, MCO, which is quite active with daily trade volume in excess of USD 20 million and a market cap of USD 138 million, indicating that the use of Monaco’s platform is already becoming widespread.

 

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Coindesk

Bitcoin Bull Bias Fades as Price Drops Below $6.5K Coindesk Bitcoin (BTC) is on the defensive today and could suffer deeper losses in the next few days should the bulls fail to defend the key moving average (MA) support, technical charts indicate. The leading cryptocurrency looked vulnerable to a pullback 24 ...

A daily close (as per UTC) below 10-day moving average would abort bitcoin’s short-term bullish view.

All cryptocurrency markets have taken a surprising turn for the worse, although it remains unclear why this has happened exactly. The Bitcoin price is getting battered right now, which spells a lot of trouble for all altcoins. The EOS price clearly feels the pressure, as it is dropping value a lot faster than most people would have assumed possible.

EOS Price is Heading South

Every time the Bitcoin price loses value, altcoins will be affected in spectacular fashion. So far, these developments have been anything but positive for alternative cryptocurrencies. The EOS price is a good example of how dire things can get in fairly quick succession. Even though the currency has seen a good run throughout early 2018 – despite the overall net losses – finding stability has proven to be a major challenge.

Over the past 24 hours, the EOS price has declined by 11.66% Compared to Bitcoin’s setback of less than four percent, this comes as a rather big surprise, for obvious reasons. Even so, it is only normal altcoins bleed value when Bitcoin faces a tough time, as those types of situations have been present for quite some time now.

As one would expect, the EOS price is declining because of ongoing losses over both Bitcoin and Ethereum. EOS has lost 8.32% compared to Bitcoin and 4.69% over Ethereum. Combining these figures with Bitcoin’s net USD loss, it is not hard to see why the EOS price is dropping below $7.6 at this stage.

Even though there is more than sufficient EOS trading volume to provide market liquidity, most of the trades are controlled by sellers, rather than buyers. Considering how the markets will continue to face a setback as long as Bitcoin’s value is in the direct, today will not be a good day for EOS price speculators or other cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

Unsurprisingly, OKEx is dominating the EOS trading volume charts. Its lead over Huobi is not that big, despite both companies topping the charts with their USDT trading pairs. Bitfinex’s USD pair comes in third place, followed by another USDT market on Binance and OKEx’s BTC market. A very solid mix of different exchanges and trading markets, although the bears will remain in firm control for quite some time to come.

All cryptocurrency markets rely on Bitcoin’s value in one way or another. The way things are currently going, the situation is not looking all that promising by any means. Even so, the cryptocurrency markets tend to see interesting momentum when people least expect it. Whether or not that will have a positive impact on the EOS price later this week, is very difficult to predict.

Activity on the Ethereum network spiked at the end of last week causing transaction fees to hit all-time highs and now fingers are pointing to an obscure Chinese trading platform called FCoin. Accusations are being made against founder Zhang Jian, formerly of Huobi, of orchestrating a series of Sybil attacks in order to drive up traffic, crippling the Ethereum Network and gaining publicity for itself.

FCoin’s Voting Method Blamed for High Ether Transaction Fees

The congestion of the Ethereum Network is linked to F Coin implementing a “cumulative deposit number ranking” voting protocol to list new coins on its exchange. This is a process by which new coins are voted into the exchange based on sending desired coins to the exchange instead of using a simple one vote per user structure.

This voting process is easily manipulated by bad actors creating multiple votes by accessing different accounts to send tokens to the exchange, AKA a Sybil attack. The rush of Ethereum based coins racing to get onto the exchange by using Sybil attacks created substantial congestion on the network which in turn caused transaction and gas fees to increase.

A Reddit poster who goes by the username u/ltcisking wondering how an exchange in its infancy could cause such a drastic slowing of the Ethereum Network and was further puzzled by the exchange’s $7 billion daily trading volume. Looking further the poster concluded that both the exchanges trading volume and the above-mentioned voting process had been heavily manipulated.

FCoin Accused of Botting and Price Manipulation

The poster wrote that after spending just a bit of time on the exchange it was clear that there were  “rampant levels of botting being done”. As the Reddit post read “Orders of 5, 7, 10, 15, 20 fly across the screen such that over 6 billion usd in “transactions” can be completed in a 24 hour period on FT (Fcoin Token) alone.”

The user also maintains that the price of the FCoin Token is being constantly manipulated by bots. Again, the poster wrote, “At its current price, it is impossible to acquire enough FT to gain enough daily rewards to offset risk”.  u/ltcisking added in his post that he has reached out to unnamed sources at FCoin who have admitted the potential for the exchange to be behind both the botting issues as well as the price manipulation.

The post ends with a call out to anyone who has been involved with FCoin to join a class action suit that u/ltcisking is planning on bringing against the exchange. Commentors expressed their appreciation for the post. Some posted to damn the exchanges practices for putting a whole network at risk for publicity while others called for analytics website Coinmarketcap to vet their position in relation to exchanges more carefully.

 

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Bitcoin Press Release: AVINOC (Aviation Network Operation Chain) is a platform for the global General Aviation (GA) businesses, using a new concept and innovative Blockchain technology. AVINOC aims to bring the power of decentralization and the speed of blockchain systems into the GA, especially into the Business Aviation (BizAv) sector and as a second step consequently into the Airline Business.

July 2nd, 2018. Hong Kong – Blockchain startup AVINOC brings passengers, airlines, air traffic control, and travel agencies together with its advanced, decentralized technology. The company look to challenge the status quo of old centralized booking companies such as checkfelix.com or expedia.com. AVINOC’s Blockchain technology allows for direct link between players, while cutting out needless intermediaries and connecting passengers and airlines to flight bookings.

AVINOC provides other services such as group bookings for increased organization and ease of use. The service will bring friends together in a all-inclusive platform, making the whole process simpler and easier. Blockchain technology allows AVINOC to contact its airline provider in a similar fashion to social media messaging apps.

Aviation Disruption

AVINOC is a blockchain solution for BizAv and the entire aviation business, and is building a strong foundation for solving problems in the Airline Business. Similarly to the way facebook first became implemented in Universities in America, AVINOC looks to be become the Facebook of BizAv, by scheduling Airline and Charter Business in a worldwide development roadmap.

Since the 1960’s, the organization of airline air travel has been steered by the same technology but now a new contender has arrived. This system is generally known as the Global Distribution System (GDS). In this system, transactions are made between airlines and travel agencies that offer air travel to passengers. This market is dominated by three players worldwide. Apart from the GDS and as a more recent development, numerous price comparison and booking portals have emerged over the last two decades, separating airlines from customers and leading to a lack of transparency. Technical innovation is urgently needed to break this artificial overpriced system and to re-strengthen the airline market from the inside.

AVINOC creates new concepts to manage the General Aviation Business and provides innovative solutions for airline ticketing, direct bookings, time saving and empowerment of the traveler through lower ticket prices. In addition there is a considerable cost reduction for airlines and operators.

The AVINOC Token

The strength of AVINOC is based on its generic model and the internal payment system, the first incarnation of which will be an ERC-20 token published on Ethereum. The token is a utilization token and will be traded on exchanges and circulated globally. AVINOC token will be required for writing data into the blockchain and as a means of spam protection and process optimization. It will be used for payments within the system e.g. to pay for tickets, crews, fuel, airport fees, handling, ATC (air traffic control), maintenance and much more.

There is a fixed amount of 1 Billion token, 40% of which will be for sale for the general public. The issuing price of each token will be USD $0.05 at the token sale.

Learn more about AVINOC here – https://www.avinoc.com/
Read the AVINOC Whitepaper – https://static.avinoc.cloud/downloads/AVINOC_Whitepaper_en.pdf
Find AVINOC on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/avinoc.io/
Follow AVINOC on twitter – https://twitter.com/AVINOC_ICO
Check out AVINOC on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/avinoc-ico/
Join the AVINOC official Reddit page – https://www.reddit.com/user/Avinoc-ICO
Join the AVINOC team on Telegram – https://t.me/AVINOC

Media contact

Name: Gernot Winter
Location: Hong Kong
Email: [email protected]

AVINOC is the source of this content. Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to consumer protections. Cryptocurrencies and tokens are extremely volatile. There is no guarantee of a stable value, or of any value at all. Token sales are only suitable for individuals with a high-risk tolerance. Only participate in a token event with what you can afford to lose.

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“The world’s largest cosplay platform” is turning to blockchain to tackle issues facing the industry, including pay rates, copyright and harassment #SPONSORED

Multi-national tech giant IBM has been making multiple headlines in recent days, getting involved in several large-scale blockchain contracts and patent filings despite recent failings in one of its most lucrative deals in Australia.

The biggest blockchains in the world

IBM and other tech behemoths, 30 big banks and other organizations including JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft and Intel have been coming together in the form of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA).

It is a group formed of Fortune 500 enterprises that are looking to build upon the Ethereum blockchain, the only popular one that supports smart contract technology. It’s presenting somewhat of a contradiction to the technology itself as Ethereum was designed for public use and, therefore, broadcasts transactions to all nodes in the blockchain.

This means that the tech has to undergo rigorous modification for privacy-centric corporations such as IBM. These moves are somewhat contrary to the decentralized blockchain ethos and could provoke responses from purists who are against such industry heavyweights, especially ones who creating privatized or patented blockchain technologies.

IBM patents and contracts

July has been a busy month for IBM. On 5 July, the company filed a new patent application as a means for developers to catalogue coding updates and milestones on a blockchain. ‘Blockchain For Program Code Credit and Programmer Contribution in a Collective’was published by the US Patent and Trade Mark Office (USTPO).

On 8 July, the Australian government signed a deal worth USD 740 million with IBM, securing it as its major tech partner for the next five years, with IBM’s automation and blockchain services being part of it.

9 July sees the tech juggernaut partnering with the US state of Delaware, signing yet another lucrative contract of USD 780,000. The contract has IBM being responsible for creating Delaware’s blockchain-based corporate filing system.

In January, it was reported that IBM and MasterCard were tied second for the companies with the most blockchain patents filed with 27 each, now in June, they have 42 “alive” patents with four being “dead”. In the technology industry, IBM holds twice as many than its nearest competitor, Dell.

Cross-patent collaboration?

Though it’s not just patents that IBM has been filing at a startling pace, the company has been working on projects such as Blockchain Loans in Africa and Humanitarian Aid Challenges.

Manny Schecter, IBM’s chief patent counsel, said in a 19 June Forbes report: “With respect to the foundational elements of specific blockchain technologies that are based on open source software components (e.g., Hyperledger), a cross-licensing patent consortium covering those elements is worthy of some consideration.”

He added, “IBM is a founding member of Open Invention Network (OIN), which is a shared defensive patent pool with the mission to protect Linux. A similar construct to protect the foundational open source components of certain blockchain technologies may make sense.”

While his words may chime with a collaborative attitude between companies, somewhat evoking the distributed ledger ethos, there could be a patent race that leaves much of the innovations we see today from smaller startups stifled and the dream of a decentralized future could find itself in the grips of privatized centralized companies.

 

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A new study out of Boston University has found that at over half of crypto startups that complete fundraising through an ICO is dead within four months of their coin launch.

Only 44% of ICOs Survive 120 Days

As the ICO has become the preferred method for emerging tech companies to raise funding the space. Is has become overpopulated with coins that are never going to make it to an exchange. The first ICO was launched only 5 years ago, but most probably never heard the term until 2017, when the strategy took off along with the rising price of cryptocurrency.

A schedule of ICO funding in the last year shows month to month growth in funding dollars from $400 million in July of 2017 to the height of just over $4 billion in March of 2018 alone. Tapering off coming into the summer with numbers at between $1.3 and $2 billion for the last two months. This may mark investor weariness about throwing money at a project just because it uses the term crypto or blockchain.

The recent study from Boston University , which analyzed the intensity of tweets from startups in order to measure their lifespan, found that only 44.2 % survive longer than 120 days once their ICO is complete. Researchers, Hugo Benedetti and Leonard Kostovetsky, examined 2,390 ICOs that completed before May.

According to Bloomberg, there are to date 1,000 coins that have died either to regulatory problems, bad financial management or just because they were a bad idea from the beginning. There has also been a lot of startups that were scams from the get-go.

80% of ICOs are frauds

Aaron Brown, a business author who writes for Bloomberg Prophets, said in an email;

“I accept figures I have seen that 80 percent of ICOs were frauds, and 10 percent lacked substance and failed shortly after raising money. Most of the remaining 10 percent will probably fail as well.”

The research from Boston concludes that turning over an ICO investment as soon as it founds is the safest strategy.  As Kostovetsky said:

“What we find is that once you go beyond three months, at most six months, they don’t outperform other cryptocurrencies, the strongest return is actually in the first month.”

There may be a turn around in the mortality rate though as the study also found that returns on ICOs are much lower today than in the recent past. This points to the probability that startups have become savvier about pricing coin offerings and scaling their burn rates once the ICO is complete. Still though investing in an ICO is a risky endeavor. As Kostovetsky said;  “People often look at returns and say this is a great deal, but we teach in finance that return is a compensation for risk,”

 

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Li Xiaolai, a Chinese crypto investor, has resigned from a $1 billion blockchain fund following an online spat that led to a defamation lawsuit.

The current cryptocurrency market situation does not look all that great. Virtually all of the top currencies have lost a lot of value, even though Bitcoin’s value is still relatively stable. For NEO price speculators, on the other hand, the current momentum is not looking all that great.

NEO Price Drops Significantly

Considering how the Bitcoin price has only lost 1.3%, one wouldn’t necessarily expect any altcoin to suffer from steep declines. As is the case in the cryptocurrency world virtually every single day, the reality is completely different in this regard.  The NEO price is an excellent example of how things can deteriorate fairly quickly when the Bitcoin price starts losing a bit of value for no apparent reason.

Over these past 24 hours, the NEO price has suffered a 9.73% decline. That is a rather steep setback, although it remains to be seen how long this momentum will remain in place. Considering how the cryptocurrency markets are trying to recover from this current setback, the NEO price may face a lot of challenges in the coming hours and days. It will largely depend on how the Bitcoin value evolves later today.

Speaking of Bitcoin, the NEO price is facing its current decline because of growing setback in the NEO/BC ratio. An 8.17% setback, combined with Bitcoin’s USD decline, effectively pushes the NEO price down to $34.93. Whether or not that is effectively the bottom, is a different matter altogether. If this current downtrend keeps up, it is not unlikely the NEO price will drop below $34 and potentially even lower in the coming days.

With the overall cryptocurrency trading volume picking up again, things are not looking all that bad for NEO in this department. Thanks to $221.309m in 24-hour trades, it seems there is plenty of liquidity in the market today. Unfortunately for NEO price speculators, it is evident the market is primarily controlled by sellers rather than buyers. It may take a while until this situation turns around again.

BitForex is leading the charge in terms of NEO trading volume. It generates over 51% of all trades, which seems to indicate the current trading volume is heavily inflated. Binance’s USDT and BTC pairs complete the top three for a combined 19.46% of all volume. Bitfinex’s USD market and OKEx’s USDT pair are in the top five as well. A very interesting mix of pairs and exchanges, although the lack of outspoken fiat currency support can be a problem.

Considering how the current cryptocurrency market conditions are not looking all that great, it seems unlikely the NEO price will face a recovery process later today. Although everything is possible in this industry, it seems the NEO price will remain below $35  for the time being. An unfortunate turn of events after a strong weekend, but this correction was to be expected.

Just recently the Bitcoin ABC development team has published the Bitcoin Cash ‘November 15 Upgrade Timeline’ which details what the programmers plan to do before the hard fork. As the upgrade approaches the ABC development team wants to ensure a smooth hard fork by making sure every full node participant and miner is ready with the necessary preparations.

Also read: Privacy-Centric ‘Bob Wallet’ Adds Bitcoin Cash Support

Preparing for the Next Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork

The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network is planning for another hard fork this coming November which will see a few more changes to the protocol. So far since the split on August 1 the BCH community performed two successful hard forks with one on November 13, 2017, and the other on May 15, 2018. The first upgrade fixed the network’s Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (DAA), while the second hard fork saw a 32 MB block size increase alongside a few re-enabled Satoshi OP_Codes, and the increase default datacarriersize to 220 bytes.

The Bitcoin ABC development timeline does not reveal what will be added this November as far as features are concerned. However, the programmers do explain two key goals as for the next codebase upgrade with the first being code completion by August 15, 2018.

“Due to the higher-than-normal risk associated with protocol upgrades, everyone needs time to review the code changes involved,” explains the latest upgrade timeline.  

To accommodate that, Bitcoin ABC is targeting August 15th as its code completion date — Protocol changes past this date will be recommended for next year’s May hard fork.

October 15, 2018: The Official Bitcoin ABC 0.18 Release and Testnet Launch Date  

Moreover, when the code is polished, testing on testnet will begin, explains the Bitcoin ABC team, revealing the deadline and 0.18 official release will be on October 15, 2018.

“Barring the discovery of any major issues after two months of testnet testing and debugging, Bitcoin ABC will launch the official release for version 0.18,” the timeline details.        

This will give node operators approximately 30 days to upgrade in time for the hard fork.

Discussions and Proposals

According to an ABC team member, the discussions and the development on the table include various features and some things will be skipped until the next fork in May 2019. Right now developers are discussing and testing “canonical transaction ordering, OP_Datasigverify and variants, tokenization, UTXO commitments, and reintroducing other previously removed OP_Codes.”   

Other proposals that are under development that might make the cut include: binary contracts via OP_Datasigverify, a more efficient way of announcing blocks with Graphene, a revised DAA, double spend proof creation and forwarding, and maybe a nomenclature for the unit of 1/1,000,000 BCH. As of now, there are no guarantees on any of these improvements this coming November or next May. But when the new codebase is launched people will surely find out what features are coming with the next upgrade. Another thing to note is that there has been no mention of a block size increase this time around, and this BCH hard fork may not include an increase.

What do you think about the preparations and timeline for the next Bitcoin Cash network upgrade coming this November? Let us know your thoughts on this subject in the comment section below.

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Images via Shutterstock, Pixabay, Bitcoin ABC & BCH logos. 

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Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH, and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi’Pulse, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.

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Key Highlights

• Ethereum classic price failed to move above the $18.80 resistance and declined against the US dollar.
• There was a break below a key bullish trend line formed with support at $18.20 on the hourly chart of the ETC/USD pair (Data feed via Kraken).
• The pair is now trading below the $18.00 pivot level and the 100 hourly simple moving average.

Ethereum classic price is slowly moving lower against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. ETC/USD could decline further as long as it is below the $18.00-18.20 resistance.

Ethereum Classic Price Resistance

After a decent upside move, ETC price failed to break the $18.80 and $19.00 resistance levels against the US dollar. The ETC/USD pair formed a high near $19.00 and started a downside move. There was another attempt to clear the same hurdle, but the price failed and topped near $18.81. ETC price moved down and broke the $18.50 support area. Moreover, there was a close below the $18.00 pivot level and the 100 hourly simple moving average.

Additionally, there was a break below a key bullish trend line formed with support at $18.20 on the hourly chart of the ETC/USD pair. The pair is currently trading near the $17.60 level with an immediate support at $17.40. Below the mentioned support, the price could accelerate declines towards the $16.60 support area. On the upside, an initial resistance is near the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $18.81 high to $17.61 low. However, the most important hurdle is near $18.20 and the 100 hourly SMA.

The chart suggests that the price may perhaps face a strong resistance at $18.20. If it fails to recover above $18.00 and $18.20, there is a risk of more losses below the $17.60 level in the near term.

Hourly MACD – The MACD for ETC/USD is gaining pace in the bearish zone.

Hourly RSI – The RSI for ETC/USD is currently near the oversold levels.

Major Support Level – $17.60

Major Resistance Level – $18.20

The post Ethereum Classic Price Analysis: ETC/USD Bearish Below $18 appeared first on NewsBTC.

Key Points

• Bitcoin price declined further and broke the $6,680 and $6,600 support levels against the US Dollar.
• Yesterday’s highlighted connecting bearish trend line is intact with resistance at $6,680 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair (data feed from Kraken).
• The pair must stay above the $6,550 support zone to avoid more declines in the near term.

Bitcoin price extended losses below the $6,680 support against the US Dollar. BTC/USD is now at a risk of further slides if there is a break below $6,550.

Bitcoin Price Analysis

Bitcoin price started a downside move from the $6,840 swing high against the US Dollar. The BTC/USD pair declined and broke the $6,700 support level. The decline was such that the price failed to hold the $6,680 support area. More importantly, there was a break below the 50% Fib retracement level of the last leg from the $6,445 low to $6,840 swing high.

There was a spike below the $6,580 support and the price settled below the 100 hourly simple moving average. On the downside, there is a bullish trend line with support at $6,560 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair. If the pair breaks the trend line and $6,550, there is a risk of more slides. An initial support is around the 76.4% Fib retracement level of the last leg from the $6,445 low to $6,840 swing high at $6,540. Below this, the price may perhaps accelerate declines towards $6,500 and $6,450. On the upside, the $6,650 and the 100 hourly SMA are initial barriers.

Looking at the chart, yesterday’s highlighted connecting bearish trend line is intact with resistance at $6,680. A break above this trend line and $6,700 is needed for a recovery. The next resistances are seen near $6,750 and $6,800.

Looking at the technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD for BTC/USD is placed heavily in the bearish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI is moving towards the 20 level.

Major Support Level – $6,550

Major Resistance Level – $6,680

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