Day: August 29, 2018

DPW Holdings’ Super Crypto Mining subsidiary is going to be harnessing the power of an entire river to mine cryptocurrency. They have purchased a hydroelectric dam in Valatie Falls, New York, and are converting it into a crypto mining facility. The dam continuously produces 1 MW of clean renewable energy. The crypto mining farm is expected to launch by Q4 2018.

There have been concerns that crypto mining, specifically Bitcoin mining, is an environmental danger because it is consuming tremendous amounts of fossil fuel, which could damage the environment by releasing CO2 and toxic chemicals. One popular site, Digiconomist, says Bitcoin uses the same amount of electricity as the entire country of Austria and releases over 35,000 kilotons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year. Some experts say this is an overestimate of the energy Bitcoin mining uses though, and the CO2 estimate doesn’t factor in renewable sources. There is also no real cost-benefit estimate that takes into account the benefits provided by this activity, such as an immutable and virtually impregnable network of global payments.

If mining uses renewable energy like hydroelectric then it doesn’t damage the environment and this new crypto mining operations at Valatie Falls is a good example of how crypto mining can be environmentally friendly. In general, crypto mining hubs are clustered around renewable energy sources, like geothermal in Iceland and hydroelectric in China, because power costs are lower in those regions.

In addition to using renewable hydroelectric energy as a power source, DPW Holdings is installing Anteater mining rigs produced by Coolisys that are more energy efficient. Anteaters use 10 nm chips, instead of the standard 16 nm chips, and each rig has a hash rate of 17.2 TH/s with an energy consumption of 1,430 W.

Valatie Falls has the energy capacity for about 700 Anteater rigs, which yields a hash rate near 12 Petahash/s. This is only a drop in the bucket compared to the Bitcoin network hash rate of 62,000 Petahash/s, but still would yield a respectable USD 2,000+ per day of Bitcoin revenue at least for the time being. Of course, Bitcoin’s hash rate is exponentially increasing and mining is becoming more difficult long term.

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Key Highlights

• Ripple price started a downside correction after trading as high as $0.3581 against the US dollar.
• There is a crucial bullish trend line in place with support at $0.3410 on the hourly chart of the XRP/USD pair (data source from Kraken).
• The pair is currently testing the trend line and the $0.3400 support area with positive signs.

Ripple price is trading above key supports against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. XRP/USD is likely to bounce back as long as it is above $0.3300 and $0.3310.

Ripple Price Support

Yesterday, we saw a decent rise above the $0.3500 level in Ripple price against the US Dollar. The XRP/USD pair traded towards the $0.3600 level and formed a high at $0.3581. Later, the price started a downside correction and moved below the $0.3500 level. There was also a break below the 38.2% Fib retracement level of the last upside from the $0.3189 low to $0.3580 swing high.

However, the price found a strong buying interest near the $0.3400 level. There is also a crucial bullish trend line in place with support at $0.3410 on the hourly chart of the XRP/USD pair. More importantly, the price is holding the 50% Fib retracement level of the last upside from the $0.3189 low to $0.3580 swing high. If the price breaks the trend line and $0.3400, it could test the 100 hourly simple moving average at $0.3360. However, the most important support on the downside is at $0.3300-0.3310, which was a resistance earlier. Therefore, dips from the current levels are likely to find support near $0.3360, $0.3310 and $0.3300.

Looking at the chart, ripple price could decline a few more points towards $0.3360 to complete the current correction. On the upside, an initial resistance is near $0.3500, above which the price might retest $0.3580.

Looking at the technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD for XRP/USD is slowly moving in the bearish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for XRP/USD is just above the 40 level.

Major Support Level – $0.3400

Major Resistance Level – $0.3500

The post Ripple Price Analysis: XRP/USD Remains Supported Above $0.3300 appeared first on NewsBTC.

Finance Ministers in the European Union’s member states are taking a closer look at cryptocurrencies and the regulatory challenges they pose. They will be discussing whether or not regulations on the industry should be tightened and will be looking at issues including the lack of industry transparency, and the misuse of cryptocurrency for illicit purposes, like money laundering, tax evasion, and terrorism financing.

The meeting will be taking place in Vienna on September 7th, according to a draft note obtained by Bloomberg. According to the document, European regulators notably view Initial Coin Offerings as a “efficient way to raise capital” and are interested in looking at how cryptocurrencies can modernize current economic systems, meaning that the meeting will not be entirely negative.

The meeting comes as global regulators are taking a closer look at the cryptocurrency industry and how to best regulate the relatively young markets.  It is unclear whether any harsh stances will be taken that affect the cryptocurrency markets.

Global Regulators Taking Conflicting Approaches to Industry Regulation

Regulators in China have notably been working tirelessly to maintain their government’s ban on cryptocurrencies, but most countries are taking far more well-reasoned approaches to the industry. Although it is unclear what the results of the upcoming EU regulator’s meeting will be, the group has taken a “do-no-harm” approach to the industry, allowing for growth and innovation while trying to reduce the amount of fraud and illicit activities.

Regulatory groups in the United States have been sending mixed signals to investors, although their approaches generally appear to be reasonable.  The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has been fairly quiet on cryptocurrency regulation but has been rejecting countless ETF applications due to fears of “market manipulation” and volatility.

The SEC’s regulatory counterpart, the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has been advocating for the cryptocurrency markets, expressing that the technology and investors deserve “respect” and that regulations should only act to benefit the markets and investors.

Notably, the US Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, advocated for a sandbox regulatory environment for the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry in his department’s Fintech report addressed to US President Donald Trump.

In the report, Mnuchin stated that:

“Internationally, many countries have established ‘innovation facilitators’ and various regulatory ‘sandboxes’ — testing grounds for innovation…While replicating this approach in the United States is complicated by the fragmentation of our financial regulatory system, Treasury is committed to working with federal and state financial regulators to establish a unified solution that accomplishes these objectives — in essence, a regulatory sandbox.”

Mnuchin also added that the United States must “stay abreast of developments in technology and to properly tailor regulations in a manner that does not constrain innovation,” while speaking about crypto and blockchain technology.

Japan has notably been focused more on regulating cryptocurrency exchanges rather than the broader cryptocurrency markets. One such action taken by Japanese regulatory authorities is the targeting of cryptocurrencies with anonymity features, like Monero and Zcash, forcing exchanges to remove them.

Japan has also taken steps to reduce speculative investing associated with cryptocurrencies, like imposing a cap on crypto leverage trading, discouraging investors from making high risk trades using borrowed crypto.

As the cryptocurrency markets continue to grow and adoption becomes more widespread, it is presumable that global regulators will begin to synchronize their regulatory measures in an effort to incubate innovation while protecting investor’s funds.

Featured image from Shutterstock

The post Will EU Tightening Crypto Regulations Affect Bitcoin Price? appeared first on NewsBTC.

Over the course of the last two weeks, many Bitcoin Cash (BCH) proponents were waiting for the firm Nchain to publish its Bitcoin SV codebase. Then on Wednesday, August 29, the company published its alpha release in order to show the code to miners and pool operators. Moreover, a mining pool called ‘SV Pool’ was also announced which will allow miners to point their hashrate at the SV client.

Also Read: Free Keene Activists Launch Tip-Card Creator Called Cryptotip.org

Nchain Releases Bitcoin SV Alpha Client

Initially Nchain had promised its open source codebase on the first week of September but instead, the company has released its alpha release on August 29. However, Nchain says they still intend to publish a more polished version during the first week of September. The current alpha code is based on Bitcoin ABC 17.2 with some differences which include a new soft limit of 32MB, OP_MUL, OP_INVERT, LSHIFT and RSHIFT integration, the limit of 201 opcodes per script has been removed, and the automatic replay protection for November 15, 2018, was removed.

At the moment there is not much of a reference in the code towards the 128MB block size increase, which has caused some arguing among the community. But there has been a functional tests addition implemented to the code seven days ago which says, “Add a couple of new functional tests to check for being able to set the block size flags via the bitcoind.conf file and to check if we can actually process 128M blocks.” Many people believe after the initial alpha code release there will be new changes to the code going forward.

“This is an Alpha release, the purpose of which is to provide a preview of the code in response to requests from miners and pool operators,” explains the Github repository.  

This is not intended to be a release candidate. Work is still in progress targeting a beta release for 1st week of September in line with the initial Bitcoin SV announcement.

SV Pool Launches Pre-Registration

In addition to the alpha code release, a mining pool has been launched so miners can point their hashrate to the Bitcoin SV client. The website Svpool.net leads to the SV Pool’s registration page which displays a circular picture of a Chinese dragon and a welcome message written in Chinese as well. A rough translation of the website states:  

Welcome to SV Pool — We are a brand new public pool, in line with the original Nakamoto vision and Bitcoin SV agreement. Pre-register to get updates — We will release the initial version of the public pool in September and the full version in November.

At around 11:20 am EDT Nchain’s chief scientist Craig Wright posted about the pool to his Twitter followers. Of course, many BCH fans are wondering what will happen next as far as the upgrade is concerned come November. Further, many are talking about a miners’ meeting taking place in China, and discussions concerning that topic can be seen throughout forums and social media. Today’s Bitcoin SV code release and the launch of a mining pool has surely started lots of conversations concerning the pending upgrade.

What do you think about Bitcoin SV releasing its alpha codebase and the launch of the SV Pool? What do you expect to happen this November? Let us know your thoughts on this subject in the comment section below.

Images via Shutterstock, Github, and SV Pool 

Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section.

The post Nchain Publishes Bitcoin SV Alpha Release appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Key Points

• Bitcoin cash price attempted another upward move, but it failed near the $570 resistance against the US Dollar.
• This week’s followed important bullish trend line with support at $545 is intact on the hourly chart of the BCH/USD pair (data feed from Kraken).
• The pair is currently placed well above the $540 support and is facing a key resistance near $565.

Bitcoin cash price is trading nicely above the $540 support against the US Dollar. BCH/USD must break $560 and $570 for a fresh weekly high.

Bitcoin Cash Price Support

After forming a high near the $576 level, bitcoin cash price corrected lower against the US Dollar. The BCH/USD pair dipped below the $560 support and traded close to the $540 support area. However, buyers defended further losses and an intermediate low was formed near $545. Moreover, the 61.8% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $526 low to $576 high acted as a support.

The price climbed higher once again, but it is facing resistance near the $560 and $570 resistances. It seems like the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $570 high to $545 low is acting as a hurdle. A break above this could push the price towards a bearish trend line with resistance at $565 on the hourly chart of the BCH/USD pair. Above this, the price will most likely break the $570 and $576 resistance levels. On the downside, this week’s followed important bullish trend line with support at $545 is intact on the same chart.

Looking at the chart, BCH price is placed nicely above the $540 and $545 supports. As long as the price is above $540, it is likely to trade higher towards $570 and $600 in the near term.

Looking at the technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD for BCH/USD is moving back in the bullish zone.

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

Major Support Level – $540

Major Resistance Level – $570

The post Bitcoin Cash Price Analysis: BCH/USD Holding Key Support at $540 appeared first on NewsBTC.

Crypto exchange Huobi has become the largest shareholder of a public firm listed in Hong Kong, inching a step closer to a possible back-door listing.

Security token trading platform OpenFinance has launched a regulated alternative trading system

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

• Bitcoin price is once again attempting to break past the key $7,000 barrier on its climb.
• If it does, bullish pressure could kick in and complete the formation of a long-term double bottom reversal pattern.
• The pattern’s neckline would be at the $8,400 mark and a break higher could spur a prolonged rally.

Bitcoin price is back to the key $7,000 mark and a strong upside break could confirm that a big rebound is in order.

Technical Indicators Signals

The 100 SMA is below the longer-term 200 SMA on this time frame to signal that the path of least resistance is still to the downside. In other words, resistance is more likely to hold than to break.

However, the gap between the two indicators has narrowed significantly to indicate that a bullish crossover may be in the works. In that case, more buying pressure could be seen once completed, giving bitcoin price enough energy to sustain a move past $7,000.

This would put in on track towards testing the neckline around $8,400 to $8,500 and complete a large double bottom pattern. This reversal formation would span around $2,700 in height, which suggests that the resulting move could be roughly the same size.

RSI is still heading lower for now, though, so sellers might have the upper hand. Similarly stochastic is moving south so bitcoin price could follow suit while sellers stay in control. Sustained bearish momentum might even lead to another test of the bottoms at $5,800.

BTCUSD Chart from TradingView

However, the mood is somewhat positive in the industry as investors await the SEC decision on pending bitcoin ETF applications. To top it off, risk appetite has been evident in global financial markets thanks to developments in NAFTA and Brexit.

It might take an industry-specific catalyst to sustain any potential rallies, though, and it’s likely that the regulator’s ruling could do the trick. Approval could bring stronger volumes and increased activity for bitcoin and its peers.

The post Bitcoin (BTC) Price Watch: Make or Break at $7,000 appeared first on NewsBTC.

Over time, it has been proven that Bitcoin Cash (BCH) theatrics are head line makers. However, this time round, the topic of discussion—whether or not to hard fork is existential. Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin ABC are diverging on how best to upgrade the network. what they disagree is block size increment and reactivation of Satoshi operation codes. As the drama rolls on, prices are stalling. At the time of press, BCH is down two percent in the last day. However, it is up seven percent on a weekly basis.

The reality is if Bitmain, Coingeek, nChain sat at a table to find a unified roadmap that they could all benefit from, it would bring BCH to astronomical heights.

I hope today's meeting can achieve something.

— Eli Afram (@justicemate) August 29, 2018

From the News

Apparently, it’s war at Bitcoin Cash and as the alphas compete for assertion and superiority, they are pushing the network to the brink, an unnecessary precipice. At the moment, Roger Ver is calling on a meeting in a bid to iron out issues. Should this stance persist then odds are, the BCH network will further split out into two competing chains: Bitcoin Satoshi Version (Bitcoin SV) and Bitcoin ABC.

The contention circles around operation codes and block size increment. Bitcoin SV, which has the backing of CoinGeek, the largest BCH mining pool, is pushing for a pure Bitcoin protocol. Their proposal includes the expansion of the current block size to 128 MB and re-activating the four Satoshi operation codes.

We have just published "Bitcoin ABC and the Block Size Limit" which describes the work being done to enable raising the block size limit on Bitcoin Cash. https://t.co/8qq6SviTc1

— Bitcoin ABC (@Bitcoin_ABC) August 29, 2018

On the other hand, Bitcoin ABC already has their full node implementation version (0.18.0) up and running complete with canonical ordering and reinstatement of two operation codes. Bitmain supports Bitcoin ABC ideas and remains the largest Bitcoin Cash client.

So far, the Bitcoin Cash network has executed around four hard forks after forking off from the Bitcoin core network 13 months ago. It is now at cross roads and though Vitalik is joining the discussion calling for the community to ostracize and reject Craig Wright—whom Bitmain refer to as fake Satoshi following his lofty claims—the community needs to reach a consensus and agree on the best way to upgrade the network in an amicable manner.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Technical Analysis

Weekly Chart

Bitcoin Cash Weekly Chart by Trading View

By adding seven percent in the last week, Bitcoin Cash bulls have been successful in reversing last week’s losses.

However, it may be all bullish and rosy in the markets but still BCH prices are trading below $600 and $750, two important resistance lines which were broken by week ending Aug 12 bear engulfing candlestick.

If anything, caution should supersede expectations. Therefore, the simplest and the safest approach more so for long term coin traders is to wait for a conclusive break and close above $600 our main resistance line before buying on dips in lower time frames.

It’s easy to see why: the market is technically bearish. Though there are hints of higher highs, it will most likely take more than a month before there is a complete market reversal.

Daily Chart

Bitcoin Cash Daily Chart by Trading View

In this time frame, there are hints of Bitcoin Cash higher highs. It’s all because of that effort versus result situation that continues to print every time prices fail to breach Aug 17 high-low.

Notice that it has been 12 days or horizontal consolidation and this rejection of lower lows supports our bullish overview. In that case, buying at current spot prices with stops at $500 will be suitable.

Disclaimer: This is not investment advice and views represent that of the author. Do your own research before making an investment decision.

The post Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Price Analysis: Prices Calm As Bitcoin Cash Fight An Existential War appeared first on NewsBTC.

Rosfinmonitoring is seeking to expand its internal systems to account for cryptocurrencies.