Day: August 27, 2018

Willy Woo, a cryptocurrency researcher and respected investor, has said that the 2018 Bitcoin correction will not turn out to be like the 2014 slump, when the price of Bitcoin dropped 90 percent and remained in a low price range for several years.

In essence, Woo stated that the structure of the cryptocurrency exchange market in 2018 is significantly different than four years ago.

2014 Vs. 2018: What is Different?

In 2014, Bitcoin suffered the worst correction in its history, dropping by 90 percent and remaining in a low price range for several years until 2017. Based on historical evidence and the tendency of Bitcoin to take a year or two to properly recover from its major corrections, some experts have suggested that Bitcoin will not be able to rebound speedily by the end of 2018.

Woo emphasized that in 2014, the correction of Bitcoin was intensified by the bankruptcy of Mt. Gox, the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange that had complete dominance over the Bitcoin market.

At the time, Mt. Gox handled 90 percent of BTC trades in the global market with extremely poor internal management systems and virtually non-existent security measures.

Consequently, as Mt. Gox experienced a billion dollar hacking attack and declared bankruptcy, the cryptocurrency market fell and BTC struggled to recover for two years thereafter.

However, throughout 2018, a growing number of institutional investors have continued to show growing demand for cryptocurrencies as an emerging asset class and the digital asset industry has seen the efforts of companies like Coinbase and Gemini to lure in investors in the broader financial market to Bitcoin.

More importantly, the New York Stock Exchange, Microsoft, and Starbucks launched a joint initiative called Bakkt in order to improve the usability and adoption of cryptocurrencies worldwide.

One of the first initiatiives Bakkt has led in August is assisting major cryptocurrency exchanges in finding a trusted price formation of digital assets, which experts believe will drastically increase the probability of an ETF approval.

“Another view on a long recovery. Worth bearing in mind 2014-2015 was detoxing from a MtGox collapse; traded 90% of world volume. Plus 1/8 of all BTC stolen plus Willybot pumping prices. Systemically, Bitcoin 2018 is much healthier than Bitcoin 2014,” Woo said.

Bear Market is Coming to an End

Since February, BTC has tested the $6,000 level three times and in all three attempts, BTC has not fallen to the mid-$5,000 range, suggesting that the bear market is gradually coming to an end.

Bitcoin has also shown a 14-month low monthly volatility rate in the month of August, which matches the tendency of BTC in mid-term recoveries to remain stable for a couple months before initiating a large rally on the upside.

Market conditions in 2018 are fundamentally different in comparison to 2014 and there exists many variables like the Bitcoin ETF approval that could immediately reverse the trend of the dominant cryptocurrency.

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The co-founder and chief financial adviser of Fundstrat Global Advisers, Thomas Lee, has noticed a correlation between the MSCI emerging markets index and the price of Bitcoin over the past year. Not only is there is a noticeable correlation, with the MSCI peaking in January 2017 around the same time as the crypto and Bitcoin markets, Lee also thinks there is a causation.

The MSCI emerging markets index is essentially a weighted index of the combined stock market caps of Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. These countries’ stock markets are considered less developed and more risky than fully developed countries but can lead to greater gains than typical stocks.

To break down trends during the time Bitcoin has existed, MSCI rose steadily after the launch of Bitcoin in 2009, reaching a peak in 2011 and crashing to a minimum towards the end of 2011. Bitcoin’s price was very low back then, less than USD 10 but did hit a minimum in late 2011 at the same time as the index, according to Bitstamp data. In early 2012, MSCI rallied, coinciding with a Bitcoin rally, before dropping again.

The MSCI rallied through the middle of 2013, coinciding with a Bitcoin rally to USD 250. One notable break in the correlation is that during the first Bitcoin rally to over USD 1,000 in late 2013, the MSCI was steady if not declining. Then, it went into a long bear market which bottomed out in early 2016 and this strongly correlated with Bitcoin’s long bear market at the same time. A rally from 2016 through early 2018 exactly coincided with the strong Bitcoin and crypto rally. The index has been in a strong decline since then, at the same time the Bitcoin and crypto markets have been in a bear market.

The emerging markets index and Bitcoin markets have a very obvious and strong correlation. Lee says the causation is that hedge funds put money into more risky investments like the MSCI and Bitcoin at the same time, and when hedge funds divest from the MSCI, they also take holdings out of Bitcoin and put them into more mainstream stocks and assets.

Additionally, Lee speculates that emerging market economies have been heavily investing in Bitcoin and crypto, and when the MSCI declines, that indicates these emerging economies have less money to invest in crypto and Bitcoin. He calls this the wealth effect.

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The Bitcoin mainstream is currently obsessed with the possibility of a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). Most of the market moving headlines recently have been about Bitcoin ETFs being proposed and then rejected, and now stayed.

The excitement is that a Bitcoin ETF would allow Bitcoin, or Bitcoin derivatives, to be easily tradeable on all the major stock trading platforms where institutional investors transact trillions of US dollars, and how this could potentially lead to a Bitcoin rally. However, people obsessed with a Bitcoin ETF are ignoring its ground game such as Bitcoin ATMs, adoption, and crypto hedge funds, which are far more important and have a more direct impact on price than ETFs.

First off, many of the proposed Bitcoin ETFs, including the ones that have been stayed and are pending further review, are derivatives, i.e. paper Bitcoins. The Direxion and Proshares Bitcoin ETFs are settled for cash and only have cash backing them, meaning that even if trillions of dollars pour into these if approved, it wouldn’t have a direct impact on Bitcoin’s spot demand or price. The only ones that would really be important is one backed by actual Bitcoins, like the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust ETF, which was rejected, and the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin ETF which has been stalled for the foreseeable future.

As far as institutional investors are concerned, the proliferation of crypto hedge funds across the globe is far more important than a Bitcoin ETF. Currently, there are at least 466 crypto hedge funds and these largely invest in Bitcoin. Further, they provide a global infrastructure for institutional investors to invest money in Bitcoin and crypto in a safe and regulated way. Crypto hedge funds represent far more options and avenues than any potential ETF, yet the market is barely reacting to the news that the number of crypto hedge funds is skyrocketing.

Perhaps even more important is the real ground game, especially the adoption of Bitcoin by everyday people. This can perhaps be tracked by the absolute explosion of Bitcoin ATMs across the world. There are now over 3,600 Bitcoin ATMs in the world with five new machines being added per day on average. To put this in perspective, at the end of 2013 there were fewer than five Bitcoin ATMs in the entire world. These have turned into critical infrastructure that allows for rapid buying and selling of Bitcoin for fiat, turning Bitcoin into a real currency that can be used in everyday life.

The fact that Bitcoin can now be easily used to pay rent, buy food, or buy anything else thanks to Bitcoin ATMs is laying the groundwork for rapid global adoption.

People have more control over their money with a decentralized currency that can’t be seized or frozen. Bitcoin is less cumbersome than physical cash and easier to conceal, reducing the risk of theft and allowing for instant international transactions with low fees. Further, Bitcoin is the most secure form of money in history due to cryptographic security that has yet to be hacked

Perhaps most importantly, Bitcoin’s decentralization means it can’t be printed by governments or manipulated to balance a budget, unlike fiat currencies which are abused by their respective governments. These are the reasons why Bitcoin got popular to begin with, and now Bitcoin’s infrastructure is rapidly growing and setting the stage for global crypto proliferation.

Essentially, a Bitcoin ETF that is based on actual Bitcoins would be good news and useful, but it is not the most important thing. Bitcoin’s ground game consisting of crypto hedge funds and Bitcoin ATMs is what will really drive Bitcoin’s adoption and price upwards long term.

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Purchasing especially from countries like China is no easy task. The reason is the supplier verification has become a real issue due to the widespread epidemic of counterfeit products and sub-par quality in production. While e-commerce has definitely increased trade around the world and made it prosperous, the scourge of poor quality products has also affected many purchasers in cases.

One Hong Long-based blockchain/IT company Libellum Ltd has announced a new platform that provides supplier verification, product certification and compliance that is very much needed in the e-commerce vision of the world today. It aims to to make purchasing from manufacturing countries like China as transparent as possible. If one goes on e-commerce sites like Aliexpress, one realizes that most of the sellers are third party sellers and not direct manufacturers and thus there is a danger of many users falling victim to poor quality products. Libellum aims to change that once and for all by providing a transparent supplier verification system. The Blockchain startup aims to provide certification or test reports for products that buyers will be able to access in a matter of a few clicks.

Testing and Further Development

Libellum is currently in preliminary partnership with some of the biggest 3rd party testing laboratories around the world under a Non-Disclosure-Agreement (NDA) including one based in Germany. The CEO of Libellum Manuel Becvar has also worked with top 20 testing laboratories around the world and thousands of factories in Asia for quality assurance purposes.

According to the CEO:

“This is very exciting for retailers, eCommerce sellers, regulatory bodies, authorities and importers around the world. It has been my mission to help buyers verify suppliers from China and Asia for many years. I already give people advice via my educational blog and guidelines on how they can verify suppliers by following a detailed and sometimes (unavoidable) costly background check, but Libellum makes supplier verification simple, fast and affordable”.

The Libellum team has announced that an initial Minimum Viable Product will be launched by February 2019. Once the initial system is ready, thousands of existing certificates, reports and other various third party supplier information will be uploaded and the fully functioning platform will be launched by May 2019.

Token Generation Event

Libellum has announced an initial token event for crowdfunding purposes including a limited pre-sale. Over 50 million LIB tokens will be up for grabs in the initial phase that amount to 50% of the total cap. The token event will start from September 1, 2018 and last till September 30, 2018. Initial exchange rate has been set at 1 ETH= 3000 LIB.

The proceeds from the token event will be used mostly for hiring new team members and development of the new platform. Initial development has been funded personally by the CEO and there are no big investors in the project apart from him.

To learn more visit the Website – https://www.libellum.io/

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India’s central bank has formed a new unit within the organization to tackle research and regulatory frameworks for blockchain and cryptocurrency.

All cryptocurrency markets have found themselves in the green once again, with the exception of Tether. This positive momentum is primarily fueled by a small gain affecting the Bitcoin price. For most altcoins the current trend looks promising, and it appears the ICON price is benefiting a lot more from this bullish pressure compared to other markets.

ICON Price Surges Full Steam Ahead

Even though most other cryptocurrency markets are up by just a few percents, things look very different when looking at the ICON price. This particular altcoin, which still sits outside the top 25 ranked by market cap, is noting some rather impressive gains over the past few hours. It seems unlikely such a steep uptrend will be sustained for long, but it makes for a good quick profit opportunity regardless.

Over the past 24 hours, the ICO price has risen by 24.31%. That is a rather surprising figure, although it shows there is plenty of life left across all altcoin markets. That situation will only remain in place as long as the Bitcoin price stays green, which may not be for much longer under the current circumstances. How that would affect the ICON price exactly, remains to be determined.

Speaking of Bitcoin, ICON has also gained a lot of ground compared to the world’s leading cryptocurrency. With a 22.9% increase in the ICX/BTC ratio over the past 24 hours, it would appear interest in this altcoin is still picking up. Sustaining the current level of growth will be challenging, though, as no cryptocurrency uptrend can go on indefinitely.

In terms of trading volume, things are still not looking all that great for the cryptocurrency industry. With just $10.21bn in volume to speak of, most markets still suffer from a lack of interest. In the case of ICON, its volume has risen to $89.827m, which should be more than sufficient to keep this momentum going for a few more hours.

As is to be expected in the altcoin world, Binance generates most of the interest for ICON right now. Its BTC and USDT markets dominate the charts, followed by KRW pairs on Upbit and Bithumb. Binance’s ETH pair completes the top five, as this exchange represents 66% of all ICX trades in the past 24 hours. Whether or not that is healthy, remains to be determined. It may very well be a sign of a brief ICON price pump-and-dump cycle.

The current momentum across all cryptocurrency markets is not awe-inspiring by any means. Small gains for most top currencies and potential pumps affecting smaller-cap coins show there is no real unified momentum to speak of just yet. Whether or not the ICO price will see its correction later today, remains difficult to predict. Anything is possible in the cryptocurrency world, especially where altcoins are concerned.

Skycoin, the third-generation blockchain project promoting the next era of decentralized web, has proudly announced the official launch of its mobile wallet for Android devices.

Understanding that full democratization of peer-to-peer monetary systems must be rooted in secure and functional storage, the Skycoin project has built a wallet that meets these requirements: ultra security and mobility with functionality on the go. Its initial mobile wallet release includes all of the basic wallet functions, as well as unique features for advanced users, without compromising the security of a standard blockchain wallet.

Secure cryptocurrency storage and management

Users of the mobile wallet can expect the typical features one would get from a wallet, such as:

– new wallet creation and recalling of existing wallets

– basic transaction history overview

– QR code scanner and generation

– new address generation

Catering to the advanced user

Experienced users can have even more control over their funds, with the ability to select specific UTXO (unspent outputs) within the wallet when sending Skycoin. This lets you customize your own Coin Hour usage to fit your requirements.

Those members of Skyfleet who are keen to ensure higher levels of security can even select their own nodes to prevent reading data from hijacked nodes or competing nodes. If that’s not enough, wallet seeds are hardware encrypted and will never leave the device.

Furthermore, despite the sentiments of the current market downtrend, Skycoin will continue to focus on even more development objectives, and is sure to be announcing future updates in the coming weeks and months.

The Skycoin mobile wallet is current available at https://www.skycoin.net/downloads/, with minimum requirements of Android v6.0 “Marshmallow”.

Experience the most advanced blockchain in existence

The Skycoin platform is built from the ground up by the earliest contributors to both Bitcoin and Ethereum, incorporating the best features of blockchain and learning from the lessons of the past.

Skycoin features the utmost in security, is able to scale infinitely and is independent of ISP. It aims to fulfil the original vision of Satoshi Nakamoto, using bandwidth, storage and computational power to build the Skycoin technology ecosystem of harmonious integration.

This ecosystem is made out of the following main components.

Skywire replaces the obsolete centralized protocols of the internet with a blockchain-based internet service held together by thousands of nodes to directly connect and route traffic in a mesh network. This results in a much more stable, faster and secure network superior to the world wide web of today.

In a step towards decentralization, PoW and PoS are discarded in favor of the Obelisk distributed consensus algorithm which distributes influences via a “web of trust”. Each node is subscribed to a list of other nodes, with its subscriber density determining influence. Every node has its own personal blockchain acting as a channel for public broadcasting, publicly recording every node’s action.

Skycoin works over the elegance of a robust, customizable and infinitely scalable Fiber network, which uses the Obelisk consensus protocol for cheaper and faster transactions.

To learn more about Skycoin, visit the website or read details in the Skycoin whitepaper. Find out about the Skycoin bounty program on Telegram or connect with them on Twitter.

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Although Bitcoin maximalists can sometimes be over the top, in this bear market, their ideology may hold some credence, as some ICOs have tumbled by over 90% from all-time highs.

Oh How The Tables Have Turned

As some may remember, BTC entered 2017 worth approximately $1,000 a piece, towering over the crypto market by holding an 87% lions share of the collective capitalization of all crypto assets. At this time, Bitcoin maximalism was near its peak, as the asset had continually proven itself to be a reliable investment and project, even in the roughest of waves.

Yet as the year progressed, altcoins, specifically hyped up ICO projects, began a breathtaking crusade, as an influx of industry newcomers began to allocate their fiat solely to “promising” ICO projects. Ethereum, for example, saw an over 70-fold increase throughout 2017, while altcoins like NEO seemingly came out of nowhere to post a 500-fold increase. While these two cases are clearly extremes, as per statistics compiled by CoinMarketCap, the total value of altcoins rose from $2.28 billion to $350 billion in 365 days time.

Consequentially, Bitcoin’s dominance fell from 87% to 37% in the same time span, leaving some Bitcoin maximalists at the edge of their seats. Taking the astronomical performance of altcoins into account, many expected for Bitcoin to recede into obscurity as the year elapsed, but as seen now, this was evidently a premature prediction. Throughout this bear market. we’ve seen Bitcoin return to glory, rising from a year-to-date dominance low at 33% to a 55% high just recently.

The “return of the king” has not gone unnoticed, as investors have begun to rebalance their portfolios to focus on BTC, rather than the flashy, high-tps projects that were touted as world-changing products just a few months ago.

“Crypto-Darwinist” Reveals That Altcoins Have Underperformed Bitcoin

Eric Wall, a self-proclaimed “Crypto-Darwinist,” recently took to Twitter to convey his sentiment regarding the performance of altcoins since the commencement of the most recent bear season.

1/ Plenty of coins & ICOs are now down -90%. Hopefully the people who'll never be receptive the following commentary have left crypto twitter by now, but they'll surely be back for the next bull run. Making this thread to use as a reminder for when the idiocy returns pic.twitter.com/VlsVHNmkaI

— Eric Wall (@ercwl) August 26, 2018

NEO, which saw a 500-fold increase in 2017 as aforementioned, now sits 91% down from its all-time high. In an image highlighting similar losses, Wall brought attention to ten other popular altcoins, which also saw a 90% collapse from the exorbitant prices posted in January of this year. The other projects mentioned by the Crypto-Darwinist are no means pushovers, with IOTA, which has been lauded as “the next generation of distributed ledger technology,” down 90.5% from its ATH.

Although some may presume Bitcoin has shared the same fate, this is far from the case, as Bitcoin has “only” fallen by 70% since the start of the year.

Staying true to his title, the crypto-Darwinist then issued a tweet storm, outlining the reasoning behind the widespread altcoin collapse, alluding to the fact that “natural selection” will eventually kill off many of these projects. While Wall’s “rant” is quite extensive, a common theme is easily apparent across his 29 tweets on the subject. This common theme being the fact that a majority of projects issued ICOs to cash in on a trend, rather than to create a bona fide project with a real-life use case. Moreover, the ICO critic also added that the hype surrounding ICOs, in terms of investment potential, can also be attributed to the demise of such projects.

For now, the short-term outlook for altcoins, specifically some ICO projects, may be looking dismal. But some expect for this situation to change within the next few months, as some optimists are more than ready to hail in the next round of irrational exuberance, which has become the crypto market’s calling card.

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Bitcoin has been in a bear market throughout 2018 so far, declining from record highs near USD 20,000 in December 2017 all the way to USD 5,800 – a 71% decline. However, two Bitcoin experts, Bobby Lee from BTCC and Thomas Lee from Fundstrat Global Advisors think Bitcoin will again rally to record highs relatively soon.

Bobby Lee says USD 60,000 per Bitcoin is a matter of when, not if, which is equivalent to a market cap of USD 1 trillion. Just for reference, Bitcoin’s market cap as of this writing on 26 August 2018 is USD 115 billion. He goes on to explain that the Bitcoin market will be more stable, liquid, and conducive for faster adoption at that level. Bobby Lee is the Co-Founder and CEO of BTCC, a Bitcoin exchange that used to be #2 in the world, but experienced extreme turbulence from Chinese regulations that banned CNY to Bitcoin trading. BTCC has only recently re-opened after being closed for a year, before which it was the longest-running Bitcoin exchange with 2,305 days of continuous trading.

When #Bitcoin passes the USD $60,000 price level in the coming years, it‘ll reach a total circulation value of $1 Trillion. That will be a huge #milestone for $BTC, and it‘ll lead to more price stability, higher global liquidity, and even faster adoption worldwide. #VirtuousCycle

— Bobby Lee (@bobbyclee) August 24, 2018

One thing to note is that China is cracking down even harder on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, by banning practically all exchange websites and ICOs, and even prowling social media to wipe out peer to peer trading. However, Bitcoin’s price hasn’t gone down due to this news, and the rejection of 9 Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) by the United States didn’t make Bitcoin go down either. This shows there is strong support at USD 5,800, and bad news can’t drive Bitcoin below that. It also suggests Bitcoin is near its bottom, and when good news rolls in, like the approval of physical Bitcoin futures which are projected to launch in the United States in November 2018 on the Bakkt exchange, the cryptocurrency will have firm footing for a big rally.

Fundstrat Global Advisor’s Co-Founder, Thomas Lee, makes an even more imminent prediction than Bobby Lee. Thomas Lee says Bitcoin will hit its record highs of USD 20,000 by the end of 2018.

It seems quite obvious that Bitcoin will rally long term, regardless of if these specific predictions verify. Bitcoin is better than fiat currency, since it’s not prone to money printing, it’s decentralized so there’s no central government abusing Bitcoin to pay for a budget, decentralization also ensures that Bitcoin users can’t have their money frozen unlike banks, Bitcoin is cryptographically secure and unhackable, and transactions over the network are more instant and far cheaper than any other payment mechanism in the world. Bitcoin is likely to replace fiat currency in the future, at which point USD prices of Bitcoin will become irrelevant.

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Key Highlights

• ADA price has formed a support base near the $0.0920 level against the US Dollar (tethered).
• There is an ascending channel in place with support at $0.0925 on the hourly chart of the ADA/USD pair (data feed via Bittrex).
• The pair is likely to rise slowly towards the $0.0980 and $0.1000 levels in the near term.

Cardano price is trading in a bullish zone against the US Dollar while declining versus Bitcoin. ADA/USD is likely to climb higher towards the $0.1000 level as long as it is above $0.090.

Cardano Price Analysis

There were a couple of swing moves noted near the $0.0900 support in cardano price against the US Dollar.  The ADA/USD pair formed a base above the $0.0900 level and later started an upside move. It traded above the $0.0920 level and settled above the 100 hourly simple moving average. The price traded as high as $0.0968 and it is currently correcting lower.

The recent pullback was below the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement level of the last wave from the $0.0905 low to $0.0968 high. On the downside, there are many supports near the $0.0930 level. It represents the 50% Fibonacci retracement level of the last wave from the $0.0905 low to $0.0968 high. Below this, the 100 hourly SMA is positioned near the $0.0920. More importantly, there is an ascending channel in place with support at $0.0925 on the hourly chart of the ADA/USD pair. As long as the pair is following the highlighted channel and support at $0.0920, it could continue to move higher in the near term.

The chart indicates that ADA price has formed a solid support above $0.0900. However, on the upside, the $0.1000 level is a strong resistance and it won’t be easy for buyers to push the price above it.

Hourly MACD – The MACD for ADA/USD is currently placed in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI – The RSI for ADA/USD is retreating from the 70 level.

Major Support Level – $0.0920

Major Resistance Level – $0.1000

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A system for holding referenda on EOS is expected to launch soon. And that could release a huge pile of funds – or get rid of it.