Bitcoin Breaks $10K and 3 Weeks Before One BTC Prediction

John P. Njui   •   BITCOIN (BTC) NEWS   •   JULY 26, 2020

Quick take:

• Bitcoin has bulldozed the $10K psychological price level before dropping back to $9,900.
• This move by Bitcoin had been predicted by Timothy Peterson of Cane Island Alternative Advisors.
• His prediction had set a mid-August date for Bitcoin breaking $10K.
• BTC has achieved this feat 3 weeks ahead of schedule.
• The VISA, Mastercard, Paypal and OCC news could be behind Bitcoin’s bullishness.

Sundays are usually slow days in the crypto markets with many traders expecting sideways movement from Bitcoin (BTC) or a catastrophic dip. However, Bitcoin has done the opposite only moments ago when BTC wicked hard from the $9,700 price level to $10,115 – Binance rate.

With this quick move, Bitcoin has broken the psychological price level of $10,000. However, the King of Crypto has since dropped down to $9,970 as crypto traders attempt to figure out BTC’s next move.

A $10K Bitcoin Had Been Predicted, But by Mid August

The exciting move by Bitcoin above $10,000 had been predicted by Timothy Peterson, an Investment Manager at Cane Island Alternative Advisors. Mr. Peterson had predicted that BTC would retest $10,000 by mid-August. His prediction was based on his use of Metcalfe’s law. He made this prediction on July 1st via the following tweet.

#Bitcoin #10KCountdown is inspired by this price prediction from a popular (but not knowledgeable) bitcoiner. Using Metcalfe's law, I will show how predictable bitcoin's price is (within statistical margins). We're 49 days away. pic.twitter.com/VBnvNzsB0i

— Timothy Peterson (@nsquaredcrypto) July 1, 2020

Metcalfe’s law is usually used in the telecommunications industry and states that the effect of a telecoms network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system. Mr. Perteson has expanded this law to analyze Bitcoin and has even published a research paper about it.

He has since provided a glimpse of how he uses it to calculate Bitcoin’s value via the following tweet only hours ago.

#bitcoin #10KCountdown demonstrating that Metcalfe's Law determines bitcoin's value (and #ethereum, and #chainlink, and #twitter, and #facebook, and #google, and the internet, and #apple…) pic.twitter.com/BH4WsLXrVW

— Timothy Peterson (@nsquaredcrypto) July 26, 2020

What Next for Bitcoin (BTC) in the Crypto Markets?

Bitcoin’s surge above $10K has returned BTC to pre-Covid19 levels last seen in late February. To note is that the CME Bitcoin futures are still paused at Friday’s price of $9,600. Additionally, the CME futures expire this Friday, 31st July. Therefore, judging by past situations where there is a CME gap, Bitcoin will eventually dip down and fill it. To get a feel as to when this might happen, it is worth looking at the daily BTC/USDT chart.

(Click image for larger view)

From the daily Bitcoin chart, the following can be observed.

• Bitcoin’s price at $9,970 is above the 50-day, 100-day and 200-day moving averages, thus pleading the case for a bullish environment.
• MACD has crossed in a bullish manner around the baseline pointing that Bitcoin could continue pushing higher to retest $10,115.
• However, the daily MFI is high at 80 pointing to future sideways movement or a retracement.
• The mentioned moving averages provide adequate support at $9,300, $9,050 and $8,600 respectively.

Furthermore, Bitcoin could remain in bullish territory as a result of the news of VISA, Mastercard and Paypal planning on supporting crypto transactions. Additionally, the news of US banks being greenlighted to offer crypto custody solutions will provide much-needed fuel for BTC to rebound if it drops to fill the CME gap.

As with all analyses of Bitcoin, stop losses and low leverage are advised when trading BTC during volatile times.

Disclaimer: This article is not meant to give financial advice. Any additional opinion herein is purely the author’s and does not represent the opinion of EWN or any of its other writers. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the numerous cryptocurrencies available. Thank you.

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Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by John P. Njui.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Why Bitcoin Suddenly Spiked to $10,200, Instantly Liquidating $75M

The price of Bitcoin abruptly surged to $10,200, as it liquidated $75 million worth of short contracts.

Image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

            JULY 26, 2020

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) rose to as high as $10,272 on July 26 in an unexpected weekend rally. It liquidated $74 million worth of long contracts on BitMEX alone, catching many traders off guard.

The hourly price chart of Bitcoin. Source: TradingView.com (Click image for larger view)

There appear to be two main reasons behind the abrupt upsurge of Bitcoin from $9,700 to over $10,200. They are the liquidation of over-leveraged shorts and traders taking profit from over-extended alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins).

Profit-taking pattern observed as Bitcoin spikes

When the price started to rally, major altcoins, as well as well-performing DeFi tokens, began to slump. Ethereum declined from $322 to $311, and DeFi tokens, including Aave and YFI, saw steep rejections.

Cryptocurrency market performance July 26. Source: Coin360 (Click image for larger view)

The simultaneous rejections of major altcoins and the price surge of Bitcoin suggest that traders took profit from recent altcoin rallies. As traders moved their altcoin gains to Bitcoin, it possibly triggered a BTC uptrend, while altcoins declined.

ETH, as an example, rose from $247 on July 23 to $322 on the day’s peak, recording a 30% gain. Despite the strong sentiment around altcoins, investors are possibly taking a more cautious approach by hedging their gains.

Massive liquidations of short contracts

When Bitcoin initially broke over $10,000, it triggered over-leveraged short contracts to become liquidated. When BTC reached $10,200, it caused a cascade of liquidations to occur, totaling $74 million.

Bitcoin has seen many phases when more than $50 million worth of short or long contracts gets liquidated. But for this to occur within a span of a few hours is less typical.

The mass liquidations of long contracts at $10,000 also suggest that the $10,000 to $10,200 remains as a heavy resistance area. As soon as BTC hit $10,200, the price dropped below $10,000, marking a short-lived rally.

Investors express optimism over BTC’s near-term price trend

As the price of Bitcoin recovered strongly in recent weeks, some industry executives and investors expressed optimism toward BTC and ETH.

“Are you ready?” Grayscale CEO Barry Silbert tweeted when Ether price broke out of the dreaded $280 resistance level on July 25.

Well-known trader Peter Brandt, meanwhile, expects the price of Bitcoin to hit a new record high and eventually make its way to $50,000. He said:

“That is actually where my head is. Massive symmetrical triangle in $BTC points to ATHs, then $50k.”

But some variables could affect the short-term price trend of BTC price. First, the funding rate of Bitcoin is projected to be over 0.04% on BitMEX. That is nearly four times higher than the average funding rate of 0.01%. It signifies that the majority of the market is taking long positions.

For Ethereum’s ETH token, the funding rate is hovering at over 0.1%, which suggests the rally is beginning to get overheated. In February, ETH’s price rejected at $280 as its funding rate surpassed 0.2%, and when the overwhelming majority of the market was longing the asset.

Second, $10,000 has acted as a key psychological level for Bitcoin since October 2019. If BTC rejects at $10,200, it would still be lower than the previous peak in February 2020 at $10,473.

Although it would be far-fetched to call it a lower high formation, it might show that BTC price has not cleanly broken out of the multi-month range.

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Original article posted on the CoinTelegraph.com site, by Joseph Young.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

World Stablecoin Association Launched For Cryptocurrency Community

By RTTNews Staff Writer | Published: 7/24/2020 10:23 AM ET

A consortium of cryptocurrency firms have teamed up to launch the World Stablecoin Association (WSA) with the aim to promote global development of stablecoins and actively engage in the advocacy of digital currencies.

Stablecoin focused digital asset trading platform VirgoX and blockchain capital markets firm Global Digital Assets (GDA Capital) are the founding members of the WSA.

Geneva- headquartered WSA is an independent, not for profit organization with a mission to unite business leaders, enterprises, community buildings and regulators in the global stablecoin industry.

The WSA membership will also be open to enterprises, government agencies and other active companies adding value to and advocating for stablecoins.

Other members of the WSA include leading global stablecoin projects such as BRZ, CBRL, Peg Network, QCAD, QC, Ren, Stably, USDK, XDB and capital groups such as Alpha Sigma Capital, Consensus Labs, Nova Club and BlockGeeks, whose CEO Ameer Rosic is also on the WSA steering committee.

According to reports, the WSA is already in talks with leading stablecoin projects such as Tether (UDST), USD Coin (USDC), Dai (DAI), and HUSD and they are all expected to join the WSA by the end of 2020.

The WSA has four pillars including policy analysis, education, partnerships and advocacy, with each member organization having at least one executive participating in at least one of the initiatives.

The policy analysis committee will join forces with other research institutions, think tanks and associations to analyze the global regulatory and economic landscape of stablecoins.

The education committee will publish educational material and arrange offline meetups and conferences including an annual World Stablecoin Summit each year in Switzerland.

The partnerships committee will leverage relationships across industry verticals to support members in forming meaningful global alliances and the advocacy committee will accelerate the stablecoin policy making process.

According to market intelligence firm TokenAnalyst, the use and demand for stablecoins have been growing exponentially over the past few years with an increase in on-chain stablecoin activities of 800 percent in the last 12 months alone with $290 billion in transactions.

The total daily trading volume of stablecoins is now the largest of any digital asset on the market today and the total market capitalization of all stablecoins is now third, ahead of Ripple and behind Bitcoin and Ethereum.

With the increase in adoption of stablecoins, the WSA will act as a neutral voice that represents the global stablecoin industry. The majority of the world will not hold their wealth or transact in bitcoin or any digital asset that is extremely volatile as it presents too much risk. This is where stablecoins are useful.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

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Article written by an RTT News Staff Writer, and posted on the RTT News.com website.

Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

French Central Bank To Pilot Central Bank Digital Currency

By RTTNews Staff Writer | Published: 7/21/2020 10:19 AM ET

The French Central Bank is set to pilot the integration of central bank digital currency (CBDC) for interbank settlements after it selected eight candidates to participate in the experiment.

The selected candidates are Societe Generale, HSBC, Iznes, ProsperUS, Euroclear and Accenture as well as small time crypto-startups such as Seba Bank and LiquidShare.

Since the beginning of 2020, Banque de France had begun the process of experimenting with CDBC. It now aims to explore with partners the potential contributions of new technologies to improve the functioning of financial markets and more particularly interbank settlements.

To initiate the project, Banque de France successfully tested in mid-May the use of a blockchain developed by its teams to experiment with the use of a CDBC to settle a digital financial securities issue by Société Générale Forge.

Further experiments will now be carried out by the Banque de France in cooperation with the selected eight participants to test the use of a digital central bank euro in interbank settlements.

The experiments will focus on exploring new methods of exchanging financial instruments (excluding crypto-assets) for central bank money. It will also test the regulation in digital central bank money in order to improve the conditions of execution of cross-border payments and revisit the methods of making central bank money available.

The strong response to the call for applications for the experiments from finance and technology companies shows the interest in exploring the potential contributions of a digital euro issued by the central bank to improve the functioning of the financial markets, in particular interbank settlements.

The French central bank will start working with each of the eight firms over the next couple of days in order to carry out the experiments over the coming months. The digital euro is not expected for general consumer purposes, but only for interbank transactions.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

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Article written by an RTT News Staff Writer, and posted on the RTT News.com website.

Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Elon Musk Is Unwittingly Pumping His Favorite Cryptocurrency Again

Elon Musk Sees Dogecoin Engulfing the Global Financial System like A Sandstorm

By Bernice Nyambura – July 18, 2020

SpaceX and Tesla CEO is adamant to promote Dogecoin as his favorite cryptocurrency over Bitcoin. As one of the prominent public figures whose account was hacked during the twitter-bitcoin scam, Elon musk now thinks that Dogecoin will soon sweep over the global financial system like a sandstorm.

Within minutes of his tweet, Dogecoin’s price shot up by 8%, going up to 14% at the time of this writing. Last week, Dogecoin enjoyed a massive 150% spike after a TikTok user endorsed other users, saying that buying low could make a lot of people millionaires when the coin hits $1.

Elon Musk Only Sells Dogecoin

Loved for his high interaction with his Twitter followers, the crypto-verse often takes the opportunity to get him talking about Bitcoin and altcoins. Being one of the many public figures whose accounts got hacked during the twitter scam, Musk responded on a lighter note to one of his followers asking about his promised “Bitcoin giveaway” with:

“I only sell Dogecoin.”

However, his response doesn’t mean that he is totally against Bitcoin, evident as is from his earlier tweet in May, in which he said that he owns 0.25 BTC. Musk was on the frontline to advocate for more Bitcoin awareness when Harry Potter’s author J.K Rowling asked about how Bitcoin works, shortly after the third halving event.

Bitcoin vs Dogecoin

Musk’s advocacy for Dogecoin started in 2018, when he recruited Dogecoin’s creator, Jackson Palmer, to help him put a stop to multiple crypto spambots, some of which were impersonating him. In response, Palmer told him to send him a direct message, to get the script to fight annoying spammers.

In a 2019 April’s fool joke obviously aimed at advertising the coin, Dogecoin made Elon musk its CEO after conducting a twitter poll, that Elon won by 54% against prominent personalities, including Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Metal Payments’ CEO Marshall Hayner.

Again in March this year, Elon Musk made crypto headlines by saying that Dogecoin is the best cryptocurrency, in two separate tweets that reference an inside joke about Dogecoin’s origin.

Compared to the 21 million total Bitcoin supply, Dogecoin has over a 100 billion supply which according to its creators will ensure it will always have a low price and lower transaction fees than Bitcoin.

Currently, Dogecoin has a market cap of approximately $429 million, with its highly vibrant community believing it is a worthy investment and likely to hit $1 price in 2020.

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DISCLAIMER

The views expressed in the article are wholly those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, ZyCrypto. This article is not meant to give financial advice. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the various cryptocurrencies available.

The original article written by Bernice Nyambura and posted on ZyCrypto.com.

Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

ZCash (ZEC) is Overtaking Monero as the Go-To Privacy Coin – Weiss

John P. Njui   •   BITCOIN (BTC) NEWS   •   May 10, 2020

Quick take:

• According to Weiss Ratings, Monero (XMR) is losing its appeal as the choice privacy coin.
• Users who value privacy are leaning more towards ZCash (ZEC).
• ZCash recently went through the Heartwood upgrade that enables more third-party integrations and better privacy.
• ZCash (ZEC) also has a halving event in November of this year.

The team at Weiss ratings have concluded that Monero (XMR) is losing its appeal as the choice coin for privacy-centric crypto users. The same users now prefer ZCash (ZEC) due to the addition of new features through the recent Heartwood upgrade. The team at Weiss Ratings elaborated on the shift toward ZEC via a tweet that stated the following.

#Zcash has successfully hard forked in the planned network update “Heartwood.” Now, miners can receive transactions directly to their private address. Privacy coins are very important for the space, and Zcash is overtaking #Monero as the go-to privacy coin. #XMR #ZEC

ZCash’s Heartwood Network Upgrade

The mentioned heartwood upgrade was activated at block 903,000 of the ZCash network on the 16th of July at approximately 11a m UTC. This upgrade enables more third-party integrations and better privacy through shielded coinbase. Furthermore, the upgrades were as a result of the two ZCash improvement proposals of ZIP-221 and ZIP-213.

Flyclient, specified through ZIP 221, enables efficient proofs of Proof-of-Work for light clients. In addition to enabling improved light-client wallets, this improves many cross-chain protocols. This ZIP specifies modifications to be made to the Zcash block header format to include Merkle Mountain Range (MMR) commitments.

Shielded Coinbase – ZIP 213 defines modifications to the Zcash consensus rules that enable coinbase funds to be mined to shielded Sapling addresses. It does not disable the use of transparent addresses in coinbase transactions.

ZCash Halving in November 2020

Also worth mentioning is the fact that ZCash (ZEC) has a halving event later this year in mid-November. The halving will happen at block 1,046,400 which is estimated to occur on the 16th of November. With the ZCash halving, mining rewards will be reduced from the current 12.5 ZEC to 6.25 ZEC.

The event exactly four months away and ZCash could have adequate bullish momentum to retest the $75 resistance zone that was last visited in mid-February this year. Other zones of considerable resistance for ZCash on its way up include $64, $66, $69 and $73.

(Click image for larger view)

In the meantime, the daily ZEC/USDT chart indicates that ZCash could be due for a pullback. This can be seen through a reduction in trade volume; the MACD turning bearish; and a high daily MFI of 74.

As with all analyses of ZCash, traders and investors are advised to use adequate stop losses. Additionally, having an eye out for sudden Bitcoin movements is highly recommended when trading altcoins.

Disclaimer: This article is not meant to give financial advice. Any additional opinion herein is purely the author’s and does not represent the opinion of EWN or any of its other writers. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the numerous cryptocurrencies available. Thank you.

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Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by John P. Njui.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

More Darknet Entities Are Making Use Of Bitcoin Mixers, Study Finds

By Vincent Mislos – July 15, 2020

Everyone in the world can use Bitcoin, which means it is available for legitimate purposes and to those with malicious and criminal intent. The study by analytics firm Crystal Blockchain has revealed the growing use of Bitcoin in the darknet, made increasingly possible through the use of mixers.

According to the report, darknet entities actually sent a lesser amount of Bitcoins between Q1 2019 and Q2 2020, from 64k BTC to 50k BTC this year. However, this 50K BTC is of higher value when considering Bitcoin’s price in USD, which means darknet users have transacted $411 million worth of BTC in Q1 2020 vs. $384 million worth of BTC in Q1 2019.

Because of the requirements imposed by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), darknet users are increasingly not using exchanges with KYC requirements. FATF actually imposed its cryptocurrency regulations, especially the “travel rule” to its member countries and supervised regions. The countries’ governments are the ones who imposed the FATF regulations on exchanges within their jurisdiction. The ‘travel rule’ would require the exchanges to disclose the names and personal details of anyone who transacted above a certain amount (usually above $1,000) so naturally, darknet and criminal entities will not use this route.

However, Crystal Blockchain noted that in USD terms, the value that darknet entities received via exchanges with verification requirements have increased from $36 million in Q1 2019 to $73 million in Q1 2020.

The analytics firm also said darknet entities might also be using other, more private cryptocurrencies for transaction purposes.

Since the blockchain made it possible to identify the route of transactions, Crystal Blockchain also found out that darknet users are increasingly sending Bitcoins to one another. This activity grew by 10% vs last year. The analytics firm thought this indicates cooperation between the criminals or perhaps the criminals are trying to hide the Bitcoin within the darknet. This will avoid the risk of exposing their activities and entities.

Notable in Crystal Blockchain’s report is the darknet’s increasing use of mixers. In Q1 2019, darknet entities sent 790 BTC to mixers. In Q2, they sent 7,946 BTC. The number of Bitcoins these entities received via mixers has also increased, 288 BTC in Q1 2020 from just 106 BTC in Q1 2019.

“From this analysis, it seems that exchanges with verification requirements are becoming less popular as a way to withdraw bitcoin from darknet entities, while mixers are becoming more popular for withdrawing from darknet entities,” Crystal Blockchain noted.

Mixers are used by some individuals to mix their coins with other users, in order to preserve their privacy. But because exchanges can easily mark Bitcoins coming from mixers, some of them would refuse these “marked Bitcoins” from being deposited to their wallets. Paxos Global discouraged the use of mixers while Binance flags coins coming from mixing services. Paxos reaffirmed that they do not necessarily deny service to users who used mixers, but it is within their responsibility to ensure that their customers are not engaged in illegal activities.

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DISCLAIMER

The views expressed in the article are wholly those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, ZyCrypto. This article is not meant to give financial advice. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the various cryptocurrencies available.

The original article written by Vincent Mislos and posted on ZyCrypto.com.

Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe