Day: August 4, 2018

Key Points

• Bitcoin price declined below $7,260 and moved into a bearish zone against the US Dollar.
• There is a major bearish trend line formed with resistance at $7,320 on the 4-hours chart of the BTC/USD pair (data feed from Kraken).
• The pair must clear the $7,260 and $7,320 resistances to move back in a positive zone.

Bitcoin price tuned bearish with a close below $7,260 against the US Dollar. BTC/USD’s upsides remain capped near the $7,260 and $7,320 levels in the near term.

Bitcoin Price Upside Hurdles

This past week, there was a sharp downside move from well above $7,600 in bitcoin price against the US Dollar. The BTC/USD pair declined and broke the $7,500 and $7,260 support levels to move into a bearish zone. It even traded below the $7,000 level and is currently well below the 100 simple moving average (4-hours). A new monthly low was formed at $6,881 and the price is currently consolidating.

An initial resistance on the upside is near the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last dip from the $8,297 high to $6,881 low. More importantly, there is a major bearish trend line formed with resistance at $7,320 on the 4-hours chart of the BTC/USD pair. Below the trend line resistance, the previous support at $7,260 is a crucial resistance. Therefore, the $7,260 and $7,320 resistances are major barriers for more gains in BTC in the near term. Should there be a break above $7,320, the price could recover. The next resistance awaits near $7,600 and the 50% Fib retracement level of the last dip from the $8,297 high to $6,881 low.

Looking at the chart, BTC price is clearly trading in a bearish zone below $7,260. If it fails to recover and slides below $6,880, the next stop for sellers could be $6,500-6,600.

Looking at the technical indicators:

4-hours MACD – The MACD for BTC/USD is mostly placed in the bearish zone.

4-hours RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI is currently well below the 30 level.

Major Support Level – $6,880

Major Resistance Level – $7,320

The post Bitcoin Price Weekly Analysis: BTC/USD Remains Sell on Rallies appeared first on NewsBTC.

Key Highlights

• ETH price is under a lot of bearish pressure below the $430 and $410 levels against the US Dollar.
• There are two bearish trend lines in place with resistance at $432 and $412 on the 4-hours chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken).
• The pair needs to settle above $432 and the 100 SMA (4-hours) to move back in a positive zone.

Ethereum price is trading with bearish moves versus the US Dollar and Bitcoin. ETH/USD is facing major hurdles near $732 for a recovery in the near term.

Ethereum Price Resistances

This past week, there were mostly bearish moves below $440 in ETH price against the US Dollar. The ETH/USD pair declined and broke the $430 and $423 support levels. It moved into a bearish zone below $430 and settled below the 100 simple moving average (4-hours). The decline was such that the price even broke the $400 level and formed a new low at $397.

Later, the price started consolidating around the $400 level. It tested the 23.6% fib retracement level of the last decline from the $483 high to $397 low. However, ETH buyers failed to gain traction above the $417 level, and the price declined once again. At the moment, the price is trading in a range above $400. On the upside, there are two bearish trend lines in place with resistance at $432 and $412 on the 4-hours chart of ETH/USD. The second bearish trend line coincides with the 38.2% fib retracement level of the last decline from the $483 high to $397 low. An intermediate resistance is near the $423 level (the previous support).

The above chart indicates that ETH price is facing an uphill task near the $432 level. A break above $432, trend lines, and the 100 SMA is needed for a decent recovery in Ethereum.

4-hours MACD – The MACD is slowly moving in the bullish zone.

4-hours RSI – The RSI is currently just below the 40 level.

Major Support Level – $397

Major Resistance Level – $432

The post Ethereum Price Weekly Analysis: ETH/USD Facing Uphill Task appeared first on NewsBTC.

Key Points

• Bitcoin cash price declined and broke the $730 and $705 support levels against the US Dollar.
• There is a major bearish trend line formed with resistance at $710 on the 4-hours chart of the BCH/USD pair (data feed from Kraken).
• The pair has to move above $710 and $730 to start a decent recovery in the near term.

Bitcoin cash price is under pressure below the $730 pivot level against the US Dollar. BCH/USD may perhaps recover, but upsides could be capped.

Bitcoin Cash Price Resistance

There was a crucial failure above the $750 level in bitcoin cash price against the US Dollar. The BCH/USD pair started a downside move and broke the $735 and $705 support levels. BCH even traded below the $700 level and formed a new monthly low at $684. It is currently trading well below the $730 pivot level and the 100 simple moving average (4-hours), which is a bearish sign.

It is currently correcting higher towards the $710 resistance. An initial resistance is around the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $771 high to $684 low. There is also a major bearish trend line formed with resistance at $710 on the 4-hours chart of the BCH/USD pair. However, there is a crucial barrier formed near $730-735. It coincides with the 61.8% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $771 high to $684 low. It also presents the previous support zone near $735. Therefore, a break above $730-735 is needed for a larger upward move in BCH.

Looking at the chart, BCH price is under a lot of pressure below $730 and $710. If it slides further and breaks $684, it could extend losses towards the $665 level.

Looking at the technical indicators:

4-hours MACD – The MACD for BCH/USD is slowly heading into the bullish zone.

4-hours RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for BTC/USD is currently well below the 40 level.

Major Support Level – $684

Major Resistance Level – $730

The post Bitcoin Cash Price Weekly Analysis: BCH/USD Bearish Below $730 appeared first on NewsBTC.

Financial arbitrage – the practice of buying an asset and immediately selling it at a higher price for a very low-risk profit – is possible with Bitcoin, but it’s not a long-term sustainable strategy.

Bitcoin will replace cash and card payments in the near future. This is a statement you’ve heard often. From its ease of use to the elimination of third-party payment processors, Bitcoin could be the ultimate payment method for the future. However, according to recent research, the reality on the ground is quite different. The research revealed that Bitcoin transactions in commerce have declined by a great margin from last year’s record highs. The decline has mirrored the plummeting prices of most cryptos this year. High transaction costs and volatility remain the biggest challenges, according to many merchants who have steered clear of accepting cryptos.

Will Bitcoin Replace Cash and Cards?

The research was conducted by New York-based crypto forensics services provider Chainalysis in partnership with Bloomberg. It revealed that the amount of money received monthly by the 17 largest crypto merchant processing services had declined from a high of $411 million in September to a low of $60 million in May, an 85 percent decline. The amount increased slightly to $69 million in June, but it’s still way below the highs hit last year.

So, why are people not using Bitcoin?

According to Nicholas Weaver, a senior researcher at the International Computer Science Institute who was quoted by the news site, the cost of a transaction is one of the biggest stumbling blocks. The cost incurred for a Bitcoin transaction is higher than that of credit cards, giving people no incentive to ditch their plastic. The irreversible nature of Bitcoin transactions is also a challenge, as it makes it almost impossible to follow up in cases of fraudulent transactions, he said.

However, it’s the volatile nature of Bitcoin that has put people off the most. In September, when Bitcoin registered its highest amount in payments, its price stood just below $4,000. Three months later, its price spiked to a record high just shy of $20,000, a 400 percent increase. While many investors rejoiced, merchants weren’t as jubilant. The price has come down since then and has slowly steadied over the last few weeks, but consumers and merchants alike aren’t too excited at returning to paying with Bitcoin.

The processing fees associated with Bitcoin transactions also proved to be a challenge for many users. While that cost is currently $1 or less, it rose to over $50 in December as Bitcoin transactions hit new records. The cost was quite prohibitive, especially for small transactions such as paying for coffee. During this time, the execution time for Bitcoin transactions was also quite long. This forced many users to utilize Bitcoin only for cross-border transactions, which was still cheaper than traditional methods.

The decline in Bitcoin’s transactional value has been compounded by big companies such as Stripe who have stopped offering the option. The payment processor stopped supporting Bitcoin transactions in January, citing slow transaction speeds as the biggest impediment. As we reported, the Stripe COO stated during a recent event that Bitcoin is not yet practical for payments because a transaction can end up taking the better part of an hour to be completed. The popular travel company Expedia also recently discontinued the use of Bitcoin as a payment option, citing user dissatisfaction with the process as well as some users having to pay with their credit cards even after paying in Bitcoin.

At press time, the father of crypto has sunk deeper into oblivion and is now trading for just over $6,900. This is a $600 drop from yesterday’s price, which leaves many investors and enthusiasts worrying about the future of crypto. Is bitcoin about to disappear for good?

All the currency’s gains over the last two weeks have now been completely erased. Bitcoin has fallen by roughly $1,300 since it first began its ascent beyond the $7,000 and $8,000 marks, and all its previous moves have become null and void.

One source suggests that the present support level for bitcoin is $6,700, which means we could see the currency dip even further before another bounce occurs. Prior to that, support was placed at $7,100, while resistance stood at $7,400.

Overall, bitcoin has fallen about 17 percent since mid-July. The currency is valued at $120 billion, while daily trading volumes have fallen to just over $4 billion. The strange thing is that this massive drop comes just a day after it was announced that Bakkt – a new company that will make it easy for retail merchants to buy, sell and trade digital currencies – had joined hands with Starbucks, and that the coffee king would be the first company to allow purchases of drinks and other goods with crypto via Bakkt’s payment protocol.

The platform is set to make its official debut in November. News like this was big enough to cause many enthusiasts to believe the bitcoin price would incur another spike. Instead, the opposite occurred, which leaves us to think that maybe bitcoin’s overall structure has changed. Maybe news no longer has the influence it once did over bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies, and the drops and spikes one witnesses are dependent more on technical factors.

In addition, Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs says that despite the creation of its new bitcoin trading desk, executives believe bitcoin will never come back, and that the $20,000 investors witnessed last year was a one-time gig never to be repeated.

One source is claiming that a bitcoin futures trader is largely responsible for today’s massive slide. Digital exchange OKEx, based in Hong Kong, was ultimately forced to cover a trade when an anonymous futures trader couldn’t cover his losses when bitcoin’s price went down after making a “wrong-way bet” on the currency.

The long position of roughly $416 million was force-liquidated on July 31. OKEx later administered a statement saying that due to the size of the order, their risk management team couldn’t trigger the “societal loss risk management mechanism,” which ultimately forced other futures traders to give up approximately 18 percent of their alleged earnings to cover the loss.

Bitcoin Charts by TradingView

When Bitcoin was hitting record highs in December, blockchain technology was one of the hottest areas that companies sought to invest in. To take advantage of the hype and the increased investment flowing into the industry, some companies changed their names and their core services and began to offer blockchain-related services. One of them was Long Island Iced Tea, which rebranded to Long Blockchain, a decision that paid immediate dividends. However, things have been going downhill for the company this year, as its stock value has dropped by over 90 percent. And now, it’s been subpoenaed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company revealed in a recent regulatory filing.

Day of Reckoning

The former beverage manufacturer has not had the best year. Having shifted its focus from beverages to crypto mining and related services in December, the company experienced an incredible 289 percent rise in its stock price, as everyone wanted a piece of the pie. The shift in focus saw the company avoid delisting by Nasdaq, which had threatened to delist the company as far back as October. However, with the subsequent plunge in crypto prices, the company’s value fell by over 90 percent.

Long Blockchain was delisted by Nasdaq in April after the company’s value failed to meet the required threshold. According to Fortune, it now trades at less than $7 million on “less regulated and less prestigious over-the-counter markets.”

The company revealed in a recent regulatory filing that it had been subpoenaed by the SEC. The subpoena was dated July 10, and according to reports, the company intends to cooperate fully with the regulator.

The company is fully cooperating with the SEC’s investigation. The company cannot predict or determine whether any proceeding may be instituted by the SEC in connection with the subpoena or the outcome of any proceeding that may be instituted.

Just a day before the subpoena, the controversial company announced that it was once again shifting its focus to a new product line: loyalty and gift card programs. The foray into this business will be conducted through its newly established subsidiary, Stran Loyalty Group. The new company will provide incentive, reward, loyalty, and gift card programs to both its corporate and consumer entities. Long Blockchain also announced the appointment of a new chairman and CEO, Andy Shape, taking over from Shamyl Malik, who is set to step down. The new CEO, who has over 25 years of experience in branding, marketing and merchandising, promised that Long Blockchain will implement blockchain technology in the loyalty industry.

The SEC has continued to investigate companies that pivoted their activities towards the formerly-hot blockchain industry, making good on its promise earlier in the year. In April, the regulator subpoenaed Riot Blockchain, yet another controversial company which changed its name in late 2017 to get a piece of the blockchain pie. Previously known as Bioptix, the firm focused on veterinary and life science-oriented business before it rebranded and shifted its focus to blockchain and crypto-related services. And just like Long Blockchain, Riot saw its share prices spike fifteen-fold as investors wanted to be part of the hot new sector.

“A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new,” said Jawaharlal Nehru. To borrow another famous line, the digital revolution has been “one giant leap for mankind”. The interconnectivity of the whole planet presents a unique opportunity married with a daunting scalability problem.

Cryptocurrencies are continually transforming the way we conduct business globally. They are safe, cheap, and easy. The total market cap of cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed from about $15 billion just a couple of years ago to $718 billion. The potential of the blockchain is huge and world-changing. However, there are 3 major issues that are holding back this technology:

• Lack of scalability
• Lack of true decentralization
• Excessive energy use

This is where GoChain comes in.

Overview of the platform

GoChain is a scalable, high-performance, low-cost, and decentralized cryptocurrency and blockchain that supports smart contracts and distributed applications.

Decentralization is a central tenet of cryptocurrencies. It ensures that no one company or government can control them. However, in practice, almost three-fourths of all blocks are mined by large Chinese companies. GoChain looks to develop a public cryptocurrency built on decentralized applications and smart contracts.

While the likes of Visa are capable of handling more than 50,000 transactions per second, Ethereum lags behind, struggling to process even 20. Therefore, fast transactions and contract executions are key focuses for GoChain.

In regards to interoperability, the platform is fully compatible with existing Ethereum wallets, smart contracts and other tools.

Key Features

As mentioned previously, GoChain looks to provide a scalable, low-cost, energy efficient platform for digital currency and decentralized applications.

Open decentralization does not always work as intended, as noted before. GoChain addresses this concern by forcing nodes to operate from multiple countries, run by traceable, unrelated companies.

GoChain looks to support very high transaction volumes with fast verifications. Initially, it will target 1,300 transactions per second.

The amount of energy used to run the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks is said to be capable of powering over 4 million US households. This raises sustainability concerns. GoChain will use only a small fraction of that energy.

How It All Works

GoChain uses a Proof of Reputation consensus model that depends on the reputation of its participants to keep the network secure. A participant’s reputation has to be high enough so that they ascertain that cheating the system would have punitive consequences for both finances and branding. These participants work as an authoritative node, making it possible for them to create, sign, and distribute blocks to other nodes sans the overhead mining cost.

A list of authorized signers will be maintained on the blockchain. Authorized signers are rewarded with GoChain Coins (GOC) for each block signed. For the initial rollout, there are 50 signers on the authorization list – companies from multiple industries which are spread out across multiple countries. This will enforce decentralization and prevent interference by any single entity.

Companies are identified by their Dun & Bradstreet DUNS numbers, which can be used to obtain official contact information. A secondary verification step requires companies to add a TXT entry to their DNS records with a random token. To enable better decentralization and scalability, a regular checkpoint will be employed. This is a signed snapshot of the current state of the entire blockchain at a particular block number. Once a checkpoint is generated, all previous blocks and data can be removed. This allows nodes to only store a small fraction of the total blockchain that is required for current processing.

A new node will download the latest checkpoint, then continue retrieving blocks and state information from that point on. By using trusted nodes, transactions are verified quickly, and the volume of transactions the network can handle increases manyfold. As there are a small set of signers with known capabilities, the block size can be increased to reduce block times.

Using a trusted network of authoritative nodes means that there will be no mining, and therefore no wasted energy. Signers communicate directly with each other. Thus, the node that has just finished signing will send the just-signed block to other signers on the authorized signers list before sending it to a replication node, offloading blockchain and API queries for the rest of the network. Newer modes reduce the size drastically. Furthermore, limiting the set of nodes operating in the dataset reduces the network traffic and storage requirements.

About the team

The core team is a group of software engineers and business leaders with in-depth knowledge and experience in building high-scale, distributed cloud systems.

Jason Dekker is the Chief Executive Officer. He is a serial entrepreneur, former hedge fund manager, board member, and advisor. He has wide-ranging experience in diverse fields such as finance, biotech, and tech.

Travis Reeder is the Chief Software Architect. He has over two decades of experience with high-scale applications and cloud infrastructure services. Having been involved with resolving scaling issues and delivering scalable services for his entire career, he is now applying that knowledge and experience to blockchain. Travis holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.

Jordan Krage is a Senior Software Engineer with experience in huge data and distributed systems. He is part of the team that developed the Go (golang) dependency management tool. Jordan holds a master’s degree in Computer Science.

Roman Kononov is also a Senior Software Engineer. He brings 12 years of experience developing software and leading engineering teams. His biggest strength is his extensive knowledge and experience in cyber security. Roman holds a master’s degree in Computer Science.

Brooke Hansen is the Social Media Director. She is a blogger and social media guru. Brooke has had a passion for creative expression, channeled through a multitude of outlets including painting, drawing, writing, photography, and modeling. She received a degree in journalism from the University of Nevada at Reno.

Token Performance Details

Introduced into the market earlier this month, GoChain (GO) was initially valued at US$0.05 per token.

GO token lifetime performance chart (courtesy of CoinMarketCap)

While the currency performed admirably in its first week and was worth US$0.11 at one point, it’s since seen a downward trend. Due to the newness of the associated product, it is still difficult to assess the true potential of this token.

As of August 2, the price of a single GO token stands at $0.049.

Final Thoughts

GoChain delivers a highly decentralized and scalable protocol that is both high-performance and low-cost. Owing to its multifaceted nature, it would not be surprising to see this service continue to do well this year.

If you are interested in investing in GoChain, GO trading pairs are currently available on DDEX, IDEX, and OTCBTC.