The cryptocurrency market has been finally gearing up in a way that the enthusiasts of the ecosystem have been looking forward to, wherein there are several factors that will lead mass adoption and the price points are being stabilized to invite institutional investors.
The entire crypto market has moved up 3.5%, by going over $179 billion this week. The top three cryptocurrency Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP observed a healthy growth of 3.92%, 4.87%, and 1.16% respectively. Some of the top gainers this week has been Binance Coin (29.61%), Tezos (42.48%), and Basic Attention Token (31.49%).
Bitcoin – BTC Bulls are attempting to break $5,300 Mark. Bitcoin has been moving up at a snail’s pace, illustrating the bull’s nervousness to buy aggressively at higher levels. However, if the flagship token rises above $5404.82, it purportedly will attract some buying and short covering.
Ethereum – ETHUSD is in a Bullish Trend, once again breaking out of the overhead resistance of $167.32. If the bulls sustain the price above the 12-day EMA, the $176 resistance level will be broken, and the price will climb to a previous high of $184 and $200 levels.
Ripple(XRP) – The Bullish Trend Terminates as the price is again back below $0.33108. XRPUSD will rise if the $0.33000 price level holds and more buyers emerge. However, if the bears are able to break the $0.33000 price level, the price will likely decline to the low at $0.32600.
Tron – Expect a Breakout or Breakdown, The price of Tron continues in a range-bound movement in its medium-term outlook. The bearish trend was intense with the close of yesterday candle an inverted hammer at $0.02700. On April 19, the price declined to $0.02616 in the demand area.
Bitcoin SV is suffering a 17.33% drop that can be attributed solely to Craig Wright and his clown show. Starting from Monday, the coin has been a series of delisting. It started off with Binance and ShapeShift delisted the token and just a day later on Tuesday, Kraken soon joined the gang.
The whole controversy sparked off when Wright threatened to sue a pseudonymous Twitter user nicknamed Hodlonaut, who started the bitcoin Lightning Torch, and Peter McCormack, a crypto investor, and podcaster unless they publicly recognized Wright as bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Nakamoto.
Binance Research – The cryptocurrency ecosystem has been waiting to see the end of the crypto winters, aka the end of the bear trend and with the recent bullish moments observed by all most all big and emerging cryptocurrencies, it seems the wish has finally been granted. The analytics arm of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Binance Research has claimed in its latest research report published on April 11, that Bitcoin (BTC) prices and altcoin prices could have already hit their lowest point.
Endowment Funds Are Allocating To Crypto Investments – While the so-called crypto winter was grappling the market, a lot of institutional endowments inclined towards crypto-related investments. As per a new survey, 94% of endowments have been allocating to crypto-related investments throughout 2018.
Trade publications Global Custodian and The Trade Crypto conducted the study in Q4 2018, in partnership with blockchain security firm BitGo. The study surveyed 150 endowments, of which 89% of the respondents were reportedly based in the United States and the rest either in the United Kingdom or Canada.
Blockchain Life 2019 – The global forum Blockchain Life 2019 brings together more than 3000 participants from 70+ countries. Founders of top blockchain and crypto companies, investors, developers, crypto traders, CEOs of projects, entrepreneurs and businessmen are coming to Blockchain Life 2019 on April 23-24 in Singapore.
GBF Brings Blockchain Investors Summit to South Korea – Global Blockchain Foundation’s Blockchain Investors Summit is ready to take the stage in South Korea on 30th May 2019, after a great success of Blockchain Investors Summit Singapore, to connect startups with high profiled investors around the globe to help them create their success stories. GBF will bring together 250+ attendees, 25+ profiled investors, 30+ blockchain speakers and 30+ blockchain projects
Tron doubles its 24-hour Transaction Volume And Trading Volume – While Tron hasn’t had the best few weeks due to the bear market it is facing, the Tron foundation’s new initiatives and the communities’ support towards its DApps has been keeping Tron moving forward. According to DApp weekly report, Tron’s DApps number has had crossed 300, with more than 700 smart contracts. The new DApps mainly include gaming and gambling application, that has reportedly increased in its Daily Average User [DAU] from 10,000 last week to 40,000.
Binance Chain – Binance launches its new custom blockchain, dubbed as Binance Chain the network will support its $3 billion BNB cryptocurrency, currently running on ethereum. The BNB will be activated on the new network on April 23 and the token holders could migrate their balances to the new network after that.
Notably, In just about two days of its launch, Binance’s blockchain protocol has supported its first project launch on its network. Mithril, a decentralized social media platform will migrate to Binance Chain, subsequently, the MITH token with a 121st ranks on CoinMarketCap will transfer from ERC20 to Binance’s BEP2 standard.
Bitcoin Bonds – The governors of the central banks of Afghanistan and Tunisia revealed in the 2019 annual Spring Meetings in Washington DC, hosted by the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that they are working towards issuing the world’s first sovereign Bitcoin bond. The central bank is exploring Hyperledger’s blockchain technology financial services platform in order to create a new financial instrument.
Learning Coin – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have partnered to launch a private blockchain and its subsequent native token quasi-cryptocurrency, as reported by the Financial Times (FT) on April 12. As per the publication, the asset called “Learning Coin” will only be accessible to the IMF and World Bank. The FT further underlines that the coin has no monetary value and thus is not a real cryptocurrency.
Nestle and Carrefour employ IBM’s Food Trust platform – The consumer of Nestle, a Swiss food giant and Carrefour, a French retailer will now be able to access the product data, through IBM’s Food Trust platform, as announced by the two firms jointly on Monday.
As per the announcement, the consumer could track the Mousline line of instant mashed potato from Nestle’s factory to Carrefour’s stores by scanning a QR code on the packaging with a smartphone. The code will provide the product’s production date, quality control parameters and storage times and the locations of warehouses.
DAML on the high – Adding another feather to its cap, the smart contract language DAML by the blockchain software firm Digital Asset, will integrate with Hyperledger Sawtooth, a modular platform for distributed ledgers. Digital Asset revealed in a post that they have started working with Hyperledger members, Blockchain Technology Partners (BTP) to integrate the Digital Asset Modeling Language (DAML) runtime with Hyperledger Sawtooth. The Hyperledger Sawtooth is a modular platform for building, deploying, and running distributed ledgers like blockchains.
Volkswagen to use Blockchain Technology – Volkswagen Group, the German automaker will be employing blockchain tech in order to track its mineral supply chains. The company elaborated that in order to “responsibly source” minerals such as cobalt (used in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles), they have joined an open industry collaboration, which also includes Ford as a member.
Fighting Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals – Portland State University (PSU) researchers have developed a protocol based on Blockchain Technology that could purportedly prevent counterfeit pharmaceuticals from filling the market. Nirupama Bulusu, a PSU researcher and professor of computer science at the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science collaborates with Naif Alzahrani, a PSU computer science doctoral student, to publish a work titled as “A new product anti-counterfeiting blockchain using a truly decentralized dynamic consensus protocol.”
Tech Mahindra Will Be Using Samsung’s Nexledger Blockchain – Indian IT giant Tech Mahindra and Samsung SDS have reportedly partnered with each other in an attempt to enter the overseas blockchain market. SDS, the systems integration arm of Korean tech behemoth Samsung is allegedly planning to expand the use of its Nexledger blockchain platform in India, the United States, and Europe. As per the agreement, the two companies will purportedly look for more business opportunities in the region.
New Regulatory Sandbox – According to a newly announced regulatory sandbox by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on April 18, the country now allows various applications based on blockchain technology, however, cryptocurrency-related projects are clearly excluded. Along with the blockchain platforms, the other “innovative technologies” that are awarded green light to apply for sandbox testing includes mobile-based payment and digital identity software, data analytics, and artificial intelligence or machine learning applications.
Platforms related to cryptocurrencies or the ones that enable crypto assets to be traded and invested and the initial coin offerings have been excluded from the list.
Campaigning for cryptocurrencies – Andrew Yang is a United States Democratic presidential candidate for the 2020 elections and notably, he is advocating for clear regulations on digital assets. Being an entrepreneur, Yang has contributed $120,000 to establish Venture For America (VFA). The VFA is an accelerator focussed at aiding and building new startups in emerging cities. As part of his presidential campaign for 2020, Yang expresses his support for cryptocurrency and stands for the implementation of digital assets regulation in the country.
India Considers Using Blockchain To Boost Digital Payments – The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is considering employing a highly scalable blockchain solution in order to further strengthen digital payments. Promoted by 10 banks in India under the aegis of the IBA, NPCI aims to become the “best payments network globally”.
NPCI is basically an umbrella organization for all retail payments in the country. Set up with the guidance and support of the Reserve Bank of India and the Indian Banks Association (IBA), the payment network presently has 56 banks as shareholders. NPCI provides services like cheque clearance and facilitates digital payments.
Coinbase expands its trading services – a major San Francisco-based Cryptocurrency exchange is expanding its crypto-to-crypto conversions and trading services to 11 more countries. As per the press release, the firm will now be accessible to customers in Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Chile, India, Hong Kong, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and New Zealand for crypto-to-crypto exchanging services. With the new development, Coinbase now has a presence in a total of 53 countries across four continents.
Gate Points – Gate.io, one of the oldest Chinese exchanges has reportedly garnered $64 million worth of crypto assets in seven days, directed at its own exchange cryptocurrency that won’t be launched on a blockchain for at least six months. The firm claims that it has been heavily oversubscribed with orders totaling $2.99 billion for the so-called Gate Points, which can be used for offsetting trading fees on the platform.
Ethereum (ETH) and XRP OTC Trading – Coincheck, the Japanese crypto exchange is prepping to offer Ethereum and XRP to institutional investors, though it’s just launched over-the-counter (OTC) trading for the two assets, following the debut of a similar Bitcoin OTC on April 1st.
With OTC trading, deep-pocketed investors could make large trades at a pre-arranged, fixed price without the hindrance of price fluctuations on traditional spot trading order books. Currently, the minimum amount of Bitcoin OTC investors can trade on Coincheck is set at 20 BTC. However, the recommended trading amounts can go as high as 225 BTC, which is worth about $1.15 million at the time of publishing.
EToro Launches A Crypto Exchange for Pro Traders – eToro, a global social trading platform has introduced a special cryptocurrency exchange for pro traders. Dubbed as EToroX, the firm claims that the platform will be a secure and fully regulated trading venue. For now, 37 trading pairs will be offered on the platform including bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), ripple (XRP), dash (DASH), bitcoin cash (BCH) and litecoin (LTC). Doron Rosenblum, the managing director of eToroX added that the firm will launch more pairs in coming months. The platform also offers the ability to convert six cryptocurrencies to fiat, including Dollar, Euro, and Swiss franc.
New fiat-to-crypto platform – Cryptocurrency exchange giant Binance will be launching its new fiat-to-crypto platform in Singapore next week, as stated by the chief financial officer. Initially, the platform will only support bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies will be reportedly added later.
Physical Bitcoin Futures – LedgerX, a Cryptocurrency derivatives provider is planning to place itself as the first U.S. firm to offer physically settled bitcoin futures contracts. As per an announcement, the company has filed for a designated contract market (DCM) license that will enable LedgerX to offer physically-settled bitcoin futures products to its customers. The said product will give the customers actual bitcoin underlying a contract after it expires, rather than the U.S. dollar equivalent, offered by cash-settled bitcoin futures offered by CME Group.
Unocoin Goes For Mass Layoffs – The ongoing ban on cryptocurrency in India has been choking the cryptocurrency companies in the country including Unocoin. Based out of Bengaluru, Unocoin has been tumbling downhill the arrest of its co-founders Harish BV and Sathvik Viswanath, last October. The lack of follow on investment, have made sustaining quite difficult. Subsequently, the layoff was a suitable option.
Shut down – Coinnest, once South Korea’s third-largest Cryptocurrency exchange has now announced its closure, through a notice on its website on Tuesday. The exchange will no longer be operating and the exchange users are required to withdraw any funds held on its platform by April 30. Notably, the fees for withdrawals and the minimum threshold have been lowered to assist the withdrawal process.
Transforming the MENA region’ – Roel Wolfert, Managing Partner at VGrip asserted that ‘Blockchain technology can transform’ the region in a blog titled “How Blockchain Will Help Banks Tap New Markets in MENA.” Wolfert cites the obvious benefits of technology for the financial and other sectors as a whole.
The Expert says’ – The executive chairman of the Blockchain Research Institute, Donald Tapscott stated in an interview with Bloomberg on April 17, that the official Chinese currency, the renminbi (RMB), will become a cryptocurrency. He delves into the current and future plans of the Chinese government in regards to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
As the cryptocurrency and blockchain market enters a new week, we hope our weekly blog helped you through a good precap for the week that was.
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