Want to Spend Bitcoin on Amazon? There’s An App For That

Crypto investors have long been asking when Amazon, the massive American e-commerce giant, will integrate Bitcoin (BTC). These expectations make sense. If the platform accepted Bitcoin payments, users would effectively be able to stake their entire lives on cryptocurrency.

So far, Amazon has been mum on the topic. The firm did file a patent relating to a seeming cryptocurrency-related system, yet the firm hasn’t gone as far as to launch an AmazonCoin or Bezos Token.

Regardless, there is a new solution in town that may quench the aforementioned need of Bitcoin investors.

Meet Moon, a cryptocurrency infrastructure provider that has just launched a desktop browser extension that allows users to spend their favorite cryptocurrencies for Amazon goods. The extension is currently available for Google Chrome, the already crypto-centric Brave, and Opera. Crazy, right?

According to a TechCrunch post outlining the new product, Moon’s flagship product allows one to pay for Amazon goods with Lightning Network Bitcoin, base layer BTC, Litecoin, and Ethereum. Moon also allows one to pay with their holdings on their Coinbase account.

So how does this solution work?

Well, it’s pretty simple. Per TechCrunch, Moon uses prepaid value on Amazon, so that when one uses their cryptocurrencies to pay for goods, the service “automatically converts your cryptocurrencies, tops up your Amazon account and pays with your Amazon balance.” What’s interesting is that Moon isn’t charging extra fees to users of the service, making spending Bitcoin and its ilk on Amazon that much more of a breeze.

It’s an interesting concept, for sure. But, it remains to be seen how this interesting cryptocurrency product, which is currently available for those in the U.S. and Canada (Europe is purportedly soon to follow), will impact the story of the adoption of digital assets for the masses.

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Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by Nick Chong.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Wyckoff Logic: Bitcoin (BTC) May Soon Return to $6,000

Bitcoin Looking Weak

When asked about the drawbacks of Bitcoin, many people cite the cryptocurrency market’s immense volatility — multiple days a year, BTC and its ilk have 10%+ days.

Case in point, the Bitcoin price tumbled off a cliff in late September, falling from the lofty price point of $10,100 to $7,700 in a week’s time. This move, as made evident by over $500 million in BitMEX long position liquidations in an hour, caught many investors were their pants down.

But Bitcoin’s price action in this scenario may not be as random as it seems. One analyst has argued that since December 2018, BTC’s chart has looked exactly as defined by the four market phases defined in Wyckoff Logic, a way of looking at markets created by prominent historical investor Richard Wyckoff: accumulation, mark up, distribution, mark down.

The logic suggests that Bitcoin is in the midst of the bearish phase of markets, the mark down. Analyst Moe Mentum’s interpretation of the Logic shows that in the coming weeks, BTC may begin another -20%+ leg lower to $6,000 or potentially even deeper.

Wyckoff Logic isn’t the only sign pointing towards a Bitcoin price drop to $6,000 or even lower.

Timothy Peterson, an analyst at Cane Island Alternative Advisors, recently argued that there is a clear “relationship between the premium investors pay for OTC shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and the cryptocurrency’s Price.” Indeed, as can be seen through the investor’s post, BTC has tracked the GBTC premium per share over the course of the entire yet.

Seeing that BTC has yet to fulfill this correlation over the past few weeks, Peterson made the following harrowing conclusion about Bitcoin’s price action:

“The relationship between GBTC premium and bitcoin price has not been stable and predicable over time. However, our fundamental models also value BTC at about $6,000. It appears that institutional and long-term US investors in GBTC are expecting this price level for BTC as well.”

The Other Side of the (Bit)Coin

While Moe’s Wyckoff-based analysis is showing a bearish scenario, there is another analyst claiming that Wcykoff’s studies are implying appreciation, not depreciation.

Financial Survivalism noted last week that Bitcoin’s chart from the last week of September until now is eerily reminiscent of the textbook Wyckoff Accumulation pattern. Survivalism argued that if “this current pullback (referencing the fall from $8,350 to $8,100) creates a higher low above $8,000, then I would consider [the Wyckoff Accumulation] confirmed”.

Should this bullish pattern play out in full, Survivalism suggests that BTC will return above the key $10,000 price point in a few weeks’ time.

Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by Nick Chong.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Bitcoin (BTC) To $90,000 in 2020 Forecasts German Bank Report

After Retaking $8,000, Bitcoin to Recover Further

Germany’s seventh-largest financial institution, Bayern LB, published a report on bitcoin predicting a price of $90,000 next year.

Basing its prediction on stock-to-flow ratios, it states that bitcoin “digital gold” is a “harder” form of commodity money than gold.

Part of a series of reports on digital megatrends, subtitled “Is bitcoin outshining gold”, the report states:

“Applied to Bitcoin, an unusually strong correlation emerges between the market value of this cryptocurrency and the ratio between existing stockpiles of Bitcoin (‘stock’) and new supply (‘flow’).”

Although the bank’s analysts are quick to say caution should be the watchword when applying this model to bitcoin, it thinks it is nevertheless a useful approach.

Bayern LB concludes that taking this practical approach yields useful insights into how bitcoin should be valued.

“It becomes clear that Bitcoin is designed as an ultra-hard type of money. Next year, it will already exhibit a similarly high degree of hardness as gold. In 2024 (when halving is set to take place again), Bitcoin’s degree of hardness will again increase massively,” the report reads.

Gold developed its “hardness” over millennia while bitcoin has achieved similar properties through “supply engineering”, namely the protocol designed by Sataoshi Nakamoto.

The yellow metal is currently priced at $1,491 having pulled back from highs at $1,537 – its highest valuation since April 2013.

Bitcoin has returned 122% year to date and gold 16%.

Gold did it the hard way but bitcoin is not ‘cheating’

The report notes how gold earned its high stock-to-flow ratio the “hard way”:

“Moreover, there have been no shortcuts for the yellow metal: a higher stockpile could only have accumulated in a shorter space of time if it had been easier to mine gold. In that case, however, gold would not have qualified as a store of value and, in turn, nobody would have held the yellow metal.”

Because of its supply engineering bitcoin will be able to emulate and even surpass gold’s stock-to-flow ratio.

Stock-to-flow of course relates to scarcity, and with bitcoin’s addition of the difficulty adjustment mechanism the inventor was able to disconnect price from flow (supply), thereby making supply deterministic.

Using regression analysis Bayern LB plots a market capitalisation that is creeping up on gold by 2020 when the next halving takes place.

On this basis a price of $90,000 is postulated for next year, which indicates that bitcoin is massively undervalued.

“If the May 2020 stock-to-flow ratio for Bitcoin is factored into the model, a vertiginous price of around USD 90,000 emerges.”

But as the author(s) conclude, even the best statistical model can fall apart, so the report comes with a big dollop of Caveat Emptor.

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Bayern LB (Bayerische Landesbank ) is one of Germany’s six state banks. It is 75% owned by the state of Bavaria and has a €220 billion balance sheet.

The full report is available here.

Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by Gary McFarlane.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Bitcoin Price Strong at $8,300, May Be Ready to Bound Higher

Bitcoin Retakes $8,300

After a precipitous drop to $7,700 this weekend, Bitcoin (BTC) bulls have managed to reclaim some ground on Monday and Tuesday.

While the cryptocurrency market hasn’t flipped decidedly bullish yet — BTC remains below some key moving averages and support levels — analysts say that Bitcoin is momentum. In fact, it is up a few percentage points in the past day, having found some support at $8,300.

Despite not showing the qualities of a fully-fledged bullish reversal, analysts say that this recent bounce is a sign of good things to come. Whether or not this materializes in an imminent move to fresh all-time or year-to-date highs remains to be seen, however.

Upward Trend Forming, Analysts Suggest

Macro investor and gold proponent Dan Tapiero recently pointed out that the Bitcoin price chart has printed a massive bull signal. In a tweet, the institutional investor noted that the TD Sequential indicator, which is a time-based technical indicator, has drawn a buy 9 signal. Tapiero noted that the last time that this buy signal was seen was in January 2019, when the cryptocurrency traded at $3,600. What followed, of course, was a massive move to $14,000 over the course of the following months.

That’s not all. The Fisher Transform, a trend indicator, recently saw a bullish crossover on Bitcoin’s daily chart, implying that the cryptocurrency may soon be subject to some upward momentum.

And to put a cherry on top of the cryptocurrency cake, Bitcoin is currently trending to retake its 200-day moving average after a week-long hiatus. The 200-day MA is a level which many analysts claim is a sign of if an asset is in a macro bull or bear trend.

Fundamentals Back a Price Recovery

The fundamentals seem to support a price recovery as well. Speaking to The Independent in the week of last week’s price decline, eToro analyst Simon Peters remarked that with Bitcoin’s hash rate still strong, “and adoption of crypto still moving forward at pace, we could see the price rise back up to $10,000 within the space of the next month.”

BitBull Capital CEO Joe DiPasquale has echoed this, arguing that since the fundamentals of the Bitcoin network “remain strong”, a move higher — one that could potentially bring Bitcoin back to five digits — could take place in the “coming days”.

Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by Nick Chong.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

JP Morgan on What Caused Bitcoin Price Crash to $8,000

Bitcoin (BTC) hasn’t had the best week. In fact, the cryptocurrency is set to close down some 20% on the week, which is one of the asset’s worst performances since the bearish capitulation seen in November of last year.

A bit late to the party, JP Morgan recently came out with its analysis of the recent price crash, trying to explain to clients the cause behind Bitcoin’s precipitous plunge off a price cliff.

What Caused Bitcoin to Crash?

In a research note obtained by Bloomberg, JP Morgan analyst Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou and a team of strategists argued that Bakkt “probably depressed prices”, but not in the way that you may expect.

They wrote that instead of the low initial volumes, it “may be that the listing of physically settled futures contracts (that enables some holders of physical Bitcoin e.g. miners to hedge exposures) has contributed to recent price declines.”

Indeed, the launch of Bakkt’s physically-deliverable Bitcoin futures gives institutions and other larger market players another instrument through which they can play this market, potentially allowing for more complex price trends that might have been hard to obtain before.

That’s not all, however. Panigirtzoglou and the JP Morgan analysts explained that through analysis of Bitcoin futures markets, they determined that the past week saw a “mark marked capitulation” of Bitcoin long positions on BitMEX. They argue that this liquidation event “also likely contributed to the sharp falls in Bitcoin prices this week”.

JP Morgan’s analysis of the price crash is similar to others completed by other researchers, in that everyone widely believed that the launch of Bakkt and subsequent futures liquidations led to the -20% performance Bitcoin has incurred over the past week.

As reported by Ethereum World News previously, eToro’s Simon Peters said the following on the crash, echoing JP Morgan to a tee:

“Pessimism over the level of activity on Bakkt sparked this most recent sell-off. However, it was the liquidation of $600million worth of long positions on platforms like Bitmex that caused the price to dramatically slump by over a $1,000 in a 30 minute period.”

Soon to Recover

Despite the bearish price action, some analysts are expecting for Bitcoin to soon mount a recovery.

According to Josh Rager, as long as Bitcoin continues to “range between heavy support near $8,000”, the more likely it is that the cryptocurrency will see a nearly 10% bounce to $8,700.

The idea here is that as $8,000 has acted as an important historical level, it will here too. A close below it would be bearish; consistent closes above it implies that bulls have some semblance of control.

Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by Nick Chong.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Analyst Targets 10% Upside for Bitcoin As BTC Manages to Hold $8,000

After Retaking $8,000, Bitcoin to Recover Further

Over the past 48 hours, Bitcoin (BTC) price has started to show some strength. After the brutal drawdowns that were seen early this week, which saw BTC unravel to $7,700 from $10,200 in a few days’ time, this strength has been welcomed.

According to one leading analyst, this mild recovery, which has seen BTC slowly tick higher to $8,200, may just be the start of a short-term bout of strength.

Luke Martin, a prominent cryptocurrency analyst recently featured on CNN, noted that he is “expecting upside on BTC towards $9,000” — representing a 10% gain from the current price level.

While he didn’t explain his analysis in full, he made reference to a chart he made regarding the CME’s Bitcoin futures. As seen below, Bitcoin gained an average of 11.4% one week after the expiry of the CME’s last monthly Bitcoin future. And historically, it gained just over 1% one week after the expiry of a monthly future.

What this implies is that going into the next week of trading, the week after the future’s expiry, Bitcoin has a very slight bullish bias.

Separately, analyst Financial Survivalism noted that Bitcoin’s four-hour chart recently flashed an array of positive technical signs — a bullish divergence on the RSI, a rollover in the ADX, and the SAR having broken bullish.

Back to Five Digits

While a 10% rally from current levels would obviously be welcomed by bulls, others are convinced that Bitcoin will soon return to $10,000 — the level the cryptocurrency sat it prior to the recent dramatic downturn.

Speaking to British paper The Independent, Simon Peters, analyst at eToro, opined that BTC is ready to soon retake five digits:

“Now that Bitcoin is now trading below $8,500, it could become an attractive proposition for investors who want to buy the dip. Fundamentals such as hashrate remains strong, and adoption of crypto is still moving forward at pace. With those conditions in mind, we could see the price rise back up to $10,000 within the space of the next month.”

And Joe DiPasquale, the chief executive of BitBull Capital, echoed this cheery analysis, even going as far as to tighten the timeline for recovery. The industry executive asserted to CNBC that as “Bitcoin’s fundamentals remain strong”, a “price [recovery] back towards $10,000 [can be had] in the coming days”.

Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by Nick Chong.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

300,000-Employee Giant Trials Bitcoin (BTC) Payments for Staff

Pay for Lunch at Deloitte with BTC. Wait What?

Oh, what weird times we live in.

As first spotted by The Next Web, Deloitte was reported by the Luxembourg Times to have embraced Bitcoin (BTC) in a really weird way: by announcing intentions to purchase their lunches in-office with the leading cryptocurrency. The “Big Four” (the named given to a group of four massive auditing giants) professional services behemoth, which sports some 300,000 employees in offices across the globe, is purportedly integrating such a payments system to gauge the viability of BTC, which is an asset that auditing firms have increasingly had to deal with over recent years.

The report barely went into depth on this matter. First off, which is the payment processor being used to transact payments? Secondly, will the BTC received be converted back into fiat? And lastly, are people in line going to have to wait until their transaction is finalized on the blockchain before they can get their grub?

But, the report seems to be bona fide.

The report did not mention how far this pilot extends to through Deloitte, which itself is a giant that has branches across the globes that are manned by tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of staffers. However, seeing that this is a pilot, rolling out Bitcoin cafeteria payments to support 300,000 employees may likely be tough to get right on the first try.

Big Four Goes Big On Bitcoin (& Blockchain)

Deloitte isn’t the only “Big Four” firm to have recently given Bitcoin a positive nod. Previously, PWC Luxembourg revealed in a press release that it is “stepping further into blockchain” by accepting Bitcoin payments from its clients starting on October 1st.

While it isn’t clear how much actual demand PWC’s Luxembourg division will see for this solution, it asserted that it believes in Bitcoin’s future, hence its decision to accept it as a form of payment.

They called the cryptocurrency a “symbol of a revolutionary payment model”, touching on its status as the “first peer-to-peer payment mechanism that cannot be compromised and is based on a decentralized trust model”. PWC Luxembourg also accentuated the potential of blockchain in today’s society, calling the “technology underlying cryptocurrency” a likely “medium to long-term standard in the economy”. John Parkhouse, the chief executive of the regional division, stated in a press comment that he believes blockchain technologies have the potential to allow for dramatic cost savings in business, improvement of social capital, and unlocking value “currently stuck in the economy”.

Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by Nick Chong.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe