Monday November 25 2019, Weekly News Digest

United States

Bitcoin slumps below $ 7,000 mark for first time in 6 months (MarketWatch), Rated: AAA

Bitcoin fell below the $7,000 mark on Sunday for the first time since May.

The price of bitcoin BTCUSD, +1.55%   was last around $6,850, according to Coindesk, after slumping about 24% over the past month. In June, the leading cryprocurrency topped $9,000 for the first time in more than a year, eventually topping out above $13,000.

Bitcoin Prices Fall To Their Lowest Since May (Forbes), Rated: A

The digital currency reached $6,616.24 shortly before 8:45 p.m. EST, CoinDesk data shows.

At this point, the cryptocurrency had fallen more than 35% from its recent high of more than $10,000 in October and over 50% from its 2019 high of nearly $14,000 reached in June, additional CoinDesk figures reveal.

Quick Analysis of the Current BTC Market (Hacker Noon), Rated: AAA

Today we wanna show you our view of  BTC/USD and situation on the market.
We move inside the  falling wedge , we just reached the price of $7280 and it is a good support and at this point several indicators intersect:
1. 61.8% fibonacci level;
2.  Falling wedge support line;
3. Diagonal support line formed by 4 points.

Until this time, the dominance of  Bitcoin will decrease, we’re waiting for domination in the region of 60-58% .

Bitcoin Price Drop to $ 2.5K Possible if Bulls Fail to Retake $ 7,350 (CoinTelegraph), Rated: AAA

With a drop of 22% within just 5 days, can investors expect a bounce to reclaim the lost ground, or will Bitcoin head to new lows to close out 2019? Let’s take a look at what could happen next.

Bakkt sees record bitcoin trading after market crash (Decrypt), Rated: A

Bitcoin futures contracts on both Bakkt—the blockchain trading platform run by the Intercontinental Exchange—and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange yesterday reached monthly highs. For Bakkt—it was the greatest volume it’s ever seen.

BakktBot, a Twitter bot that tracks the Bakkt Bitcoin futures contracts market, found that an all-time daily high of 2,728 contracts worth $20.3 million, had been traded on the exchange.

Bitcoin whale moves $ 310 million cryptocurrency fortune — for just $ 0.32 (The Next Web), Rated: A

A cryptocurrency whale has just moved a ball-busting 44,000 BTC (worth more than $310 million) — and they paid a minuscule $0.32 in Bitcoin $BTC▼0.55% transaction fees to do so.

Bitcoin Sentiment Indicator Prints “Extreme Fear” in Potential Sign of Bottom (NewsBTC), Rated: A

Bitcoin’s (BTC) recent plunge under $8,000 to tap $6,800 has done numbers of the sentiment in the cryptocurrency industry. As a popular trader, Crypto Michael, noted in a recent tweet, the Bitcoin Fear & Greed Index recently printed a 23, which is on the “extreme fear” side of the oscillating indicator.

Keep Calm & Bake? Bitcoin Spooked by China News, but Tezos Up 59% During Past Month (CryptoGlobe), Rated: A

Return on investment figures (vs USD) for Tezos:

• 7-day: +15.39%
• 30-day: +59.32%
• 90-day: +14.50%
• Year-to-Date: +184.59%
• One-Year: +135.22%

Litecoin’s descending channel breach may lead coin down recovery path (AMBCrypto), Rated: A

Litecoin’s descent started on 24 September, where it noted a free-fall by 35.85%. This fall resulted in the price of the coin to plunge from $79.92 to $51.27, following which it reported another drop of 19.62%. At press time, LTC was valued at $47.09 with a market cap of $3.02 billion and a trading volume of $2.5 billion.

Digital Currency Pioneer David Chaum Announces Upcoming Release of xx Network, a Blockchain for Conducting Secure Transactions (Crowdfund Insider), Rated: A

David Chaum, who’s widely known for inventing the world’s first digital currency, called “e-Cash,” during the early 1980s, revealed on November 22 the upcoming release of the xx network whitepaper and the Praxxis technical brief.

The brief will reportedly provide details and key insights into the xx network and “xx coin,” a blockchain and cryptocurrency supported by Elixxir and Praxxis technology.

Zach Salter On How Blockchain And Crypto Will Benefit The Gig Economy (Forbes), Rated: A

Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are often seen as possible solutions to these problems. The blockchain ledger system, with its rigidity and immutability, can be the perfect channel where contracts can be executed, communications stored and payments processed swiftly and securely, according to Zach Salter, cofounder of blockchain and cryptocurrency investment firm Zima Digital Assets.

JPMorgan Explores Use Of Blockchain For Vehicle Tracking (PYMNTS), Rated: A

JPMorgan’s wholesale car financing arm has filed a patent application to use blockchain to track the automobile inventory it finances for car dealers.

ICO Scammer Maksim Zaslavskiy Sentenced to 18 Months in Prison (CryptoGlobe), Rated: A

Maksim Zaslavskiy, a 39-year-old businessman from New York, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after being convicted for “conspiring to commit securities fraud”, or more specifically running initial coin offering (ICO) scams.

Gladius Dissolves Ignoring SEC Order to Refund $ 12.7M ICO (CoinTelegraph), Rated: B

Distributed cybersecurity startup Gladius dissolved without complying with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to reimburse investors.

Blockchain Association Board Adds Ripple Executive, Ben Melnicki (Bitcoin Exchange Guide), Rated: B

Ben Melnicki of Ripple appears to be a new board member of the Blockchain Association. He recently tweeted that he is looking forward to working with the Blockchain Association and its members to “provide regulatory clarity” on what he referred to as a critical issue for the industry and market participants.

International

XRP has Overtaken Ethereum Again in the Transaction Volume Department (The Merkle), Rated: A

Looking at those statistics, it has become apparent that XRP is on the right track as of late.

How crypto-activism is trying to change the world. (Decrypt), Rated: AAA

For Micah White, the co-founder of Occupy Wall Street, the future of activism is in crypto. Even though his own street protest went viral in 2011, after thousands of protestors pitched tents near Wall Street to challenge wealth inequality, White considers street protest “a dying form of activism.” He says that “social media driven activism”, or “clicktivism,” isn’t particularly effective, either. But blockchain offers an effective alternative, says White. So much so, he took to the DEVCON stage in October 2019 to explain his vision for blockchain-backed activism.

92% of Institutional Investors Keep Crypto on Exchanges (CoinTelegraph), Rated: A

Cryptocurrency institutional investors overwhelmingly keep their wealth on exchanges despite the inherent security risks, new data claims.

Compiled by cryptocurrency exchange Binance on Nov. 22, a survey asked 76 institutional investors who used its platform about their trading habits.

Among the most surprising results was that 92% of participants chose to keep their crypto — Bitcoin (BTC), stablecoins and others — with trusted third parties, and not under their own control.

This week in tech: LG, Kakao, Lambo, Mitsubishi adapt blockchain (CoinGeek), Rated: A

You will now be able to follow your salmon, from the egg to the store using blockchain. This is after Cermaq, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi, revealed this week that it had launched a project that puts salmon on the blockchain.

Lamborghini is also turning to blockchain for car authentication.

Still in Europe, the Dutch soccer association is trialing a blockchain-powered ticketing app in one of its matches.

Over in China, one of the country’s provinces revealed this week that it had processed close to $6 billion via a blockchain-powered medical billing system.

World Chess To Launch Securitize-Powered Digital Securities Offering (The Tokenist), Rated: A

World Chess is a media outlet and web-based gaming company. Each year, they broadcast the World Chess Championships. Now, the company is turning to digital securities — also referred to as security tokens — to raise capital.

Here’s how it will work: a digital securities offering will take place sometime in the year 2020. During the offering, digital securities will be made available to accredited investors located in the United States and European Union.

Blockchain and cryptocurrency are enriching the lives of people in emerging markets (Yahoo! Finance), Rated: A

Isaac Phillips, the co-founder of Siglo, discusses how the Siglo platform leverages pre-paid cell phones prevalent in emerging market countries; how to use blockchain and cryptocurrencies to eliminate financial barriers where computers and internet don’t exist; and how stabilize the value of cryptocurrency to promote wider adoption and usage.

European Union

Binance Launched ETH/USDT Futures Contracts with 50x Leverage (Coinpedia), Rated: AAA

With all the negative publicity of the Shanghai office, the Binance exchange has some positive news for the crypto market. The exchange has launched the ETH/USDT futures contract with a range of 0 to 50x leverage. The futures contract are live now, however, on the Binance Testnet. The team got onto twitter to announce the positive news.

Binance Coin Price Down 23% This Week (BNB) (Mitchell Messenger), Rated: A

Binance Coin (CURRENCY:BNB) traded 2.5% lower against the U.S. dollar during the 24-hour period ending at 14:00 PM Eastern on November 24th. Over the last seven days, Binance Coin has traded down 23% against the U.S. dollar. Binance Coin has a total market cap of $2.45 billion and approximately $251.91 million worth of Binance Coin was traded on exchanges in the last day. One Binance Coin token can now be purchased for about $15.73 or 0.00219857 BTC on cryptocurrency exchanges including Bancor Network, AirSwap, Exrates and FCoin.

Ethereum (ETH) Downtrend Gaining Pace, $ 125 Next? (NewsBTC), Rated: AAA

• Ethereum is declining and it recently failed to recover above the $155 resistance against the US Dollar.
• Bitcoin price is now trading well below the $7,000 level and tested the final $6,500 bearish target.
• There is a key bearish trend line forming with resistance near $147 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken).
• The price is currently trading below $145 and it is likely to trade below the $135 support area.

Looking at the chart, Ethereum price is declining and likely to trade towards the $135 and $130 support levels. The key support zone could be $125, where the bulls are likely to put up a strong fight in the near term.

Only 0.01% of Ethereum holders are in profit; are DeFi liquidations fueling ETH’s downtrend? (Cryptoslate), Rated: AAA

According to IntoTheBlock, 99.99 percent of Ethereum addresses are at a loss or break-even after ETH’s weeks-long decline, a rally that has seen the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization shed more than 23 percent in USD terms since the start of the month.

Almost 55 percent of Bitcoin addresses remain in profit with BTC at $6,731.

ETH tied to DeFi reaches new all-time high (Crypto-News-Flash), Rated: AAA

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is undisputedly one of the biggest trends in the cryptocurrency market. As CNF reported at the end of October, the total number of Ether (ETH) locked into DeFi applications approached an all-time high of 2.332 million ETH. This was equivalent to around 2.13% of all Ether (ETH) in circulation. It is therefore not surprising that Decentralized Finance applications are referred to as “killer apps” for Ethereum.

Will Ethereum’s “parabolic” DeFi growth be the main factor of ETH recovery? (Cryptoslate), Rated: A

Year-to-date, the price of Ethereum is down slightly from $155 to $148 and has been noticeably struggling to recover to 2018 levels.

USD/ETH (ETH=) network congestion causing high transaction fees (Live Trading News), Rated: A

Ethereum Network congestion is observed on many days, and this can cause stratospherically high transaction charges. On some days, it can reach thirty dollars ($30).

The peak daily activity on the Ethereum network has reduced from its May 2019 height. From ninety-four percent (94%) in May 2019, the network’s present usage is around eighty-four percent (84%).

Ethereum Name Service – What’s Human Readable Domain Name Good For? (Cryptonews), Rated: A

Nick Johnson and Alex Van de Sande of the Ethereum Foundation began experimenting with a solution to replacing the hex addresses employed in the Ethereum blockchain with human-readable addresses. Following burgeoning interest from the market for the solution, the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) was launched in 2017. And this past October, the ENS added multi-coin support, which means you can use one ENS address to accept and receive different cryptocurrencies. But the development does not stop here.

The Quest for a Pan-European Approach to Cryptocurrency (CoinTelegraph), Rated: A

We’ve moved past the period in which many countries had their proverbial “head in the sand” when it comes to digital assets. There is a growing realization that the digital asset economy is a permanent part of the economic landscape, as well as an increasing wrestling about how this will work. While every individual provider may have preferences about the direction they would like regulation to take, a broader consensus is that a systematic, combined approach in as large a market as possible would be useful.

Swedish Governor outlines 6 steps to launch digital currency (Cryptopolitan), Rated: A

Stefan Ingves, the Governor of the Swedish Central Bank, has announced a 6-step plan, which outlines the main requirements before the country can officially launch a national digital coin.

United Kingdom

Cryptoqueen: How this woman scammed the world, then vanished (BBC), Rated: AAA

Ruja Ignatova called herself the Cryptoqueen. She told people she had invented a cryptocurrency to rival Bitcoin, and persuaded them to invest billions. Then, two years ago, she disappeared. Jamie Bartlett spent months investigating how she did it for the Missing Cryptoqueen podcast, and trying to figure out where she’s hiding.

Documents leaked to the BBC show that British people spent almost €30m on OneCoin in the first six months of 2016, €2m of it in a single week – and the rate of investment could have increased after the Wembley extravaganza. Between August 2014 and March 2017 more than €4bn was invested in dozens of countries.

Elliptic Launches the World’s First XRP Transaction Monitoring System – Identifies $ 400M of Illicit Activity in XRP Transactions (PR Newswire), Rated: A

Elliptic, aprovider of crypto-asset risk management solutions for crypto businesses and financial institutions, today announces transaction monitoring support for XRP, the currency of the Ripple payment network. For the first time, crypto businesses and financial institutions will be able to systematically screen XRP transactions for links to criminal activity and sanctioned entities with an enterprise-grade solution. XRP is the third largest cryptocurrency by market value after bitcoin and ether, and an increasingly popular asset in Asia.

China

China’s regulators launch ‘all-around’ crackdown on cryptocurrency (Technode), Rated: AAA

A government group leading the internet financial risk rectification efforts in China has launched an “all-around” crackdown campaign against cryptocurrency and illicit blockchain activities, state-run media Beijing Youth Daily reported on Sunday, following shortly after the People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC) Shanghai headquarters sent out a similar message on Friday.

China Raids Binance as Crypto Prices Fall (Blockpitch), Rated: A

Cointelegraph’s Aaron Wood reported on the recent Chinese crackdown on the cryptocurrency industry. The article he wrote is entitled “Markets Crash After Reports that Binance’s Shanghai Office Closed in Crypto Crackdown”. In it he describes how Chinese authorities raided the Binance exchange. Chinese regulators say they distributed a notification to comply with the reporting of virtual currencies. However, neither Binance nor the Beijing-funded Huobi claimed to have received the notification.

Australia/New Zealand

NZ Police seize $ 6m in cryptocurrency (InformationAge), Rated: A

New Zealand police have seized nearly $6 million in cryptocurrency from a man who allegedly operated a pirated movie streaming website.

Southeast Asia

Monero’s official software compromised by malware (International Business Times), Rated: AAA

Reports said the software available for download on the official website of Monero (XMR) would have been compromised in order to steal cryptos. This information was made public by the currency development team which suspects that the command terminal tools available on getmonero.org have been compromised in the last 24 hours. The team relied on the fact that the hashing of the binary files available on the platform was different from the original.

Neo partners with TomoChain to help developers gain end-users (Neo News Today), Rated: B

Neo and TomoChain, a public blockchain with smart contract functionality, have announced a strategic partnership. The two entities aim to “[leverage] their respective strengths to accelerate ecosystem development” by attracting users and talented developers.

MENA

Oman Oil and Orpic Group and HSBC Bank Oman SAOG Perform First Blockchain-based Trade Finance Transaction in the Country (Crowdfund Insider), Rated: AAA

According to a November 23 report from Oman Observer, Oman Oil and Orpic Group, the country’s largest oil and gas businesses, and HSBC Bank carried out a DLT-based trade finance transaction that involved the sale of polypropylene to Abu Dhabi’s National Carpet Factory. The transaction was conducted using R3’s Corda, an open-source DLT platform.

Much-hyped cryptocurrency website goes bust, revealing ties to binary options (The Times of Israel), Rated: A

The Israeli company behind the cryptocurrency exchange DX.Exchange is going through bankruptcy proceedings after 78 of its former and present employees petitioned an Israeli court to wind it up.

UAE-Saudi Digital Currency Project To Cut Remittance Costs (Cryptocurrency Guide), Rated: A

UAE Central Bank governor Mubarak Al Mansouri said the UAE-Saudi digital currency project will help cut remittance costs.

Eurasia

Russia’s Largest Bitcoin Mine Turns Water Into Cash (Bloomberg), Rated: AAA

Oceania

CBSI Gives Warning to Citizens Against the Use of Cryptocurrencies by Calling Them Unregulated (CryptoNewsZ), Rated: AAA

The Central Bank of Solomon Islands or CBSI has issued a warning to the native citizens against the virtual or digital currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and others. The reputed authority stated that these cryptocurrencies are not issued or controlled by the Central Bank.

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