On a busy day for news, here are the standout stories from the world of crypto in our best of the day’s segment.
Ethereum and Bitcoin Look Bullish After Withstanding “Macro Beating”
Bitcoin and Ethereum are down from their recent 2021 highs, but compared to their traditional market counterparts, have shown more resilience during the recent “royal macro beating.” The two top crypto assets have been on an uptrend for a full year now.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey mints the first-ever published tweet on Ethereum service Cent
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has minted the first tweet ever posted on the social media platform on Ethereum-run service, Cent. Published by Dorsey on March 21, 2006, the tweet, which reads “just setting up my Twitter,” has already received a bid for $88,888.88 by a user called “@Crypto888crypto.”
Despite SEC lawsuit, Ripple thriving in the Asia Pacific
Despite the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit, Ripple not just surviving but thriving in the key Asia-Pacific region, according to CEO Brad Garlinghouse. In a March 5 interview with Reuters, Garlinghouse said “it has not really impacted what’s going on for us in the Asia Pacific.”
Polkadot partners with IOST for cross-chain interoperability
Polkadot [DOT] has gained immense popularity among several crypto-circles lately since it focuses on interoperability. Its DOT token has been returning 298% year-to-date to investors, with its fundamentals gaining strength with a hike in mainstream adoption.
3 million active users help lift Audius (AUDIO) to a new all-time high
Audius price hit a new all-time high after the decentralized music streaming platform surpassed 3 million active users and developers hinted at future NFT integrations. Audius (AUDIO) is one project that is chasing the first-mover advantage in the music streaming sector.
Bitcoin bulls want to remove a major overhead resistance level to build a $55,000 course. During the early trade hours on March 3 Bitcoin (BTC) price fell by $50,000 as bulls felt that their traction had been gained and most altcoins were joining during the rally the day.
BuyUcoin Markets and TradingView data indicate that Bitcoin’s price traded at $48,500 in the early hour of March 3, before increasing by an intraday peak of 8.6% to $52,631.
Currently, BTC market trades are marginally lower than $51,000 and while $50,000 may have been converted to soft support, regular close is needed to affirm that a bullish overhaul has taken place, above the 23.6% Fibonacci tracing ($52,000).
Bitcoin bulls want to remove a major overhead resistance level to build a $55,000 course. During the early trade hours on March 3 Bitcoin (BTC) price fell by $50,000 as bulls felt that their traction had been gained and most altcoins were joining during the rally the day.
BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
The on-line study of CryptoQuant shows Bitcoin whales regularly bought the dips below $50,000, and the institutional buy-out of Dollars, as seen by the orange line shown on the chart above, takes place according to CryptoQuant CEO Ki-Young Ju.
The mass acceptance of Bitcoin continues with the announcement by Ninepoint Partners that they are planning to switch their Bitcoin trust offering to Toronto Stock Exchange trading fund to improve liquidity for trade and to have better trading prices.
Higher returns bring the traditional markets under pressure
Bitcoin’s rise above $50,000 has led observers to speculate that further penetration into global capital markets would lead to a new all-time peak. At present, the global markets are weighing bearish macroeconomic factors and that could reduce short-term expansion.
S&P 500, Dow and NASDAQ faced selling pressure all day and shut down 1.31%, 0.39%, and 2.7% after an increase in US Treasury yield in the 10-year period. Renaissance fears about the US and global health stocks were revived.
Steinglass said headwinds in the U.S. open market for BTC are the result of GBTC’s downsizing, as the GBTC discount has fallen down to around 4.5%. Despite these hurdles, Steinglass sees Citigroup and Fidelity’s latest favourable Bitcoin remarks as a good backing for the storey about rising institutional acceptance.
Steinglass said: It is really promising that Bitcoin appears to be strong even though GBTC works like a resistant band that holds it back, and I can see that the overall tale of speeding up acceptance remains unchanged.
Bitcoin’s $50,000 pop has contributed to a surge in altcoins, with most of the top 100 currencies moving on Wednesday. Ether (ETH) won an intraday high of $1,610, compared to 15.7 to a day high of $21,18 for Cosmos (ATOM).
The breakout star of the day was Enjin Coin (ENJ) as more than 50% rose to a new all-time high of 1,32 dollars. The sharp double-digit event tends to be the outcome of Enjin’s transformation into a rising NFT marketplace and its increasing success. The global market cap on cryptocurrencies is currently $1.55 trillion and the domination figure on Bitcoin is 61%.
Bitcoin bull run is still at an early to mid-stage
The Glassnode Reserve Risk indicator says that Bitcoin’s rally is only at the start to the middle point, according to William Clemento, a crypto-currency analyst. As explained by Clemente, the price/HODL bank is identified as the reserve risk. The measure is “used at any time to determine the confidence of long-term owners in respect of the price of the native coin.”
Therefore, if the Reserve Probability continues to be comparatively low compared to previous highs, Bitcoin is not in danger of reaching a macro top. At present, the Bitcoin Reserve Risk stands at half the amount in 2013, 2014 and 2017, when the Bitcoin Price collapsed by well over 50% and the Bear Market entered.
The CEO of Moskovski Capital, Lex Moskovski, observed as well that strong investors are increasing their Bitcoin positions. As long as Bitcoin continues to accrue from heavy hands and high-net-worth holders, the bull market will probably remain intact.
Furthermore, Bitcoin remains a compellingly strong timeframe trading structure, since it ran over $46,000 and is becoming a new strategic help. In addition, in view of Bitcoin’s volatility over the last 20 hours, the global financial market has declined significantly.
Kyle Davies, Three Arrows’ co-founder, noticed that the macro soldered globally, but as a consequence Bitcoin did not see a massive shift. For example, on 3 March, a big sale was seen by major tech stocks and favourite stocks like Tesla. As a result, most risk-on assets have fallen in tandem with global macro market weakness.
Bitcoin wallet firm Exodus earlier this year sold $75 million in common stock in the company, purchasable only through its wallet. The sale was notable for the company’s decision to only accept Bitcoin……….. Read Full Coverage
The IAMAI’s Blockchain and Crypto Assets Council would establish a formal board of lawyers, technological experts, and fintech compliance experts to assure self-regulation. Read Full Coverage….
Coinbase stated Tuesday that it has formally listed dogecoin on Coinbase Pro, a huge milestone that exposes the “joke” cryptocurrency to one of the world’s top bitcoin and crypto exchanges, after teasing it earlier this month. In a blog post, Coinbase stated that it will “immediately” begin accepting inbound dogecoin transfers to Coinbase Pro in … Continue reading “Dogecoin Price might Explode Soon as Joke Crypto gets Listed on Coinbase Pro”
Blockchain infrastructure firm BisonTrails has launched support for the Cosmos ecosystem, allowing its clients to stake and run nodes for blockchain ecosystem Cosmos.
BIson Trails offers services to simplify the process of participating in blockchains, such as staking and running full nodes. The firm’s customers include custodians, exchanges, and funds, with Bison also helping Web 3.0 applications connect to blockchain data. The firm partnered with Coinbase in January to offer services under the U.S. exchange’s umbrella.
Bison’s customers can now use the firm’s infrastructure to stake and delegate their tokens using “participation clusters,” earning transaction fees and rewards while securing the Cosmos network.
Bison’s participation clusters feature two components to enhance security — validator nodes that are hosted in a private network, and “sentry nodes” that interface between said validator nodes and the public blockchain network. The clusters are deployed using remote hardware security modules to ensure validators’ private keys do not interact with the public internet. The announcement said:
“The participation clusters themselves are architected to withstand attacks. The sentry nodes act as a layer of defense to the validator nodes, enabling them to stay hidden and private from the public internet, and mitigating the risk of DDoS and remote access attacks.”
Bison Trails will also offer several node services, including full QT nodes, archival nodes, and light client support.
Cosmos comprises a decentralized ecosystem of parallel blockchains based on Cosmos’ open-source Tendermint protocol, facilitating intercommunication between the parallel chains.
Last month, Cosmos launched its Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol, or IBC, Stargate, to facilitate interoperability between the blockchains built using Cosmos’ Software’ Development and other blockchain networks.
As anticipation for the Stargate release built heading into February, Cosmos’ ATOM token surged into new all-time highs above $10, before rallying to $26 when the protocol went live on Feb. 18. ATOM has since retraced nearly 30% to currently trade for $18.50.
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) appear to be experiencing something of a slowdown, as on-chain data shows a dramatic decrease in the U.S dollar value of coins being sent across both blockchains in the past week. At the same time, transaction fees for both chains have receded from recent highs, or in Ethereum’s case, an all-time high.
Data from Bitinfocharts shows $46.68 billion worth of BTC was sent across the Bitcoin blockchain on Feb. 25. For some context, that’s around 5% of the total Bitcoin market cap, which stands at $925 billion at time of writing.
By three days later, on Feb. 28, the U.S. dollar value of Bitcoin being sent had fallen to $15.38 billion — a 66% drop off. At the same time, the average transaction fee for Bitcoin users fell by 53% — from $31.47 to $14.63. For context, the highest average fees ever recorded for Bitcoin came in December 2017 when BTC fees exceeded $55, marking the end of the coin’s bull run for that period.
Over on Ethereum, the slowdown was equally pronounced. In the four days between Feb. 23–27, the total value of coins sent across the Ethereum blockchain fell 65% from $11.1 billion to $3.84 billion.
The average fee statistic can often be misleading, as it is heavily weighted by the mass of large transactions that incur super-high fees. The typical Ethereum user may be more interested in the median transaction fee value, which also fell 72% down to $5.23. For context, the recommended fee for making a “rapid” Ethereum transaction is currently around $2.80 according to GasNow.org.
Such a sizable slowdown in activity on both blockchains could be interpreted by some as a sign that the current bull run is grinding to a halt. Yet a glance at the recent history of both chains shows that such pullbacks are not uncommon.
In January, the dollar value of Bitcoin transactions fell 72% over a two-week period, before picking back up again to soar even higher in February. Likewise, the average Bitcoin transaction fee dropped 58% in the same time period. The same general pattern was observed on Ethereum.
With this in mind, it is in all likelihood too early to assume that the current slowdown is indicative of the end of the crypto bull run, at least based on these metrics alone. Indeed, in the seven days since these metrics bottomed out, they have since begun to rise once more, as the ebb and flow of the cryptocurrency market continues.
Bitcoin (BTC) bulls appear to have found their momentum as BTC price reclaimed the $49,000 level within the last hour.
On March 2 the price dropped as low as $47,000 but currently, BTC is trading above the 20-day moving average. Bulls are likely to make another attempt at flipping the $50,000 resistance to support and a sustained high volume spike could send the price to $52,000 where a daily close would confirm that bulls are back in the driver’s seat.
Even though Bitcoin is struggling to secure a daily close above $50,000, a steady thread of favorable news continues to emerge.
Businessman and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary, who once called Bitcoin a “giant nothing burger,” revealed that 3% of his portfolio will be put into Bitcoin and in the future, O’Leary plans to invest in a sustainable mining operation.
The drive to secure a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) is also back in the headlines, following the successful launch of the Purpose Bitcoin exchange-traded fund in Canada. Evolve Funds Group revealed that it is now looking to secure approval for an Ether ETF product in Canada after it became the second firm approved to list a Bitcoin ETF in February.
In the U.S., the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) is hoping that the ETF approvals in Canada will add momentum to its Jan. 3 filing to list the Van Eck Bitcoin ETF after all of its attempts made in 2017 were denied.
Traditional markets cool off while altcoins find momentum
Traditional financial markets faced pressure on March 2 as trading cooled following Monday’s rally which saw the S&P 500 put on its best performance since June 2020.
The NASDAQ, Dow and S&P 500 all finished the day in the red, down 1.69%, 0.41% and 0.74% respectively, while the U.S. Treasury 10-year yield also continued its decline from last week’s spike.
Several altcoin projects made big announcements that helped provide a boost to their token values.
Sony Europe revealed that it had joined the Theta (THETA) network’s validator program. Following the announcement, the price of THETA increased by 15.31% to $3.70 while the network’s TFUEL gas token rallied to a new all-time high at $0.144.
Meanwhile, the launch of Aavegotchi’s (GHST) mainnet was accompanied by the platform’s first portal drop which involved 10,000 NFT-bearing portals selling out in under a minute. The successful launch and NFT sale was followed by GHST price rallying 15% to set a new all-time high at $1.79.
In a double alert published on March 1, James warned retail traders that they face heightened risks and low protection, both in terms of regular crypto trading and being potentially subject to “abusive and unsafe activity” by bad actors exploiting a period of widespread economic anxiety and high unemployment.
Regarding everyday trades and the allure of the 2021 crypto bull market, James’s alert pulled no punches. “Even if you purchase a well-established virtual currency from a more reputable trading platform, the price could crash in an instant,” the announcement notes, taking pains to stress that cryptocurrency trading is not like traditional stocks, bonds, and other assets:
“Trading in the current market exposes investors to risks, such as wild price swings, conflicts of interest among trading platform operators, and increased chances of market manipulation. Further, even ‘legitimate’ investments in virtual assets are subject to speculative bubbles.”
Moreover, in the absence of central, comprehensively-regulated exchanges, James warned that those targeted by fraudsters may have “no recourse” to help from law enforcement in the state.
James’s alert to cryptocurrency business operators comes in the wake of last week’s settlement with Bitfinex and Tether after they were found to have misrepresented the degree to which Tether (USDT) coins were backed by fiat collateral. The conclusion of the landmark case required the firms to stop servicing customers in the state of New York and to pay $18.5 million in damages to the state.
Given that virtual currency is defined as a commodity under New York’s Martin Act, James’s notice reminded broker-dealers, investment advisors and trading platforms that they are required by statute to register with the Office of the Attorney General. Should they fail to do so, they will be exposed to both civil and criminal liability and could be prohibited from future conduct, as well as ordered to pay out restitution and damages.
The notice also cites a recent Department of Justice that echoed the NY Attorney General’s earlier characterization of crypto trading platforms as being “highly susceptible to abuse,” offering protections for customers that are often “illusory.”
