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Bitcoin eased further on Wednesday following its initial drop after the weekend announcement that South Korean cryptocurrency exchange had been hacked.
Other major cryptocurrencies also weakened markedly.
Bitcoin traded as low as $6,455.91 early on Wednesday Asia time, its lowest level since April. Bitcoin pared some of those losses to trade around $6,581.88 by 3:15 p.m. HK/SIN, according to CoinDesk.
Bitcoin had fallen around 10 percent over the weekend following news that South Korean exchange Coinrail had been hacked, with a number of lesser-known cryptocurrencies such as Pundi X counting among those affected. Bitcoin, however, was not mentioned by the exchange in its statements, according to Google translate.
The continued downward move was unlikely a result of last week's hack, which saw a limited level of damage caused, said Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst at eToro.
"The narrative that such a small hack caused such a large price reaction has definitely been overplayed," he said, adding that bitcoin's drop on Sunday was caused by a technical correction.
Over the last 24 hours, Bitcoin has seen a dip of around 4 percent, according to CoinMarketCap. So far in 2018, the cryptocurrency is down more than 50 percent.
Chart analysts have indicated that bitcoin's move below the $7,000 mark suggested a speedy recovery was unlikely.
As for other crypto assets, the last day has proven challenging.
Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was down almost 7 percent in the last 24 hours, CoinMarketCap data showed. Ethereum stood at $496.47 at 3:15 p.m. HK/SIN, according to CoinDesk.
Ripple was lower by nearly 6 percent in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. It traded at 56 cents at 3:15 p.m. HK/SIN.
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Coinbase has finally added a fifth cryptocurrency to what was formally the “elite four” of the platform, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash. Although many were convinced they would list Ripple, instead they decided to go with Ethereum Classic.
It’s an odd choice. For background, Ethereum Classic was created during a hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain back in 2016. Although it was widely thought to become a zombie coin after that, it has taken on new life with an active developer community seeking to differentiate it from the more mainstream ethereum.
According to Coinbase’s official statement, “Per this process, we will now begin the engineering work (Step 4) for supporting Ethereum Classic. As part of this process, customers can expect to see public-facing APIs and other signs that the asset is being added.
When we reach the final testing phase of the technical integration, which we expect to occur over the next few months, we will publicly announce a launch date for trading via our blog and Twitter.”
As to the forked elephant in the room, Coinbase also confirmed in their statement customers who previously had an Ethereum Classic balance prior to the hard-fork which created Ethereum would receive a corresponding Ethereum Classic credit.
Interestingly, however, Coinbase made clear that Ethereum Classic would be gradually added to every Coinbase product EXCEPT the standard Coinbase consumer service. According to Coinbase, “per our previous guidance, Coinbase will list assets only after they are listed on Coinbase Pro and Prime.
After evaluating factors such as liquidity, price stability, and other market health metrics, we may choose to add Ethereum Classic to the Coinbase platform. It’s also worth repeating that Coinbase Markets, Coinbase Pro and Coinbase Prime will likely have more assets listed on the platform than the Coinbase platform, i.e. listing on Coinbase Markets does not guarantee listing on Coinbase.”
This should serve as an important reminder to our readers that despite volatile prices and big flashy headlines such as COINBASE ADDS ETHEREUM CLASSIC, the truth is often far more nuanced. Based on their statement, it could be argued that there is no guarantee that Ethereum classic will be purchasable on Coinbase at all.
It also bears examining why Coinbase adding a single coin SHOULD create such a frenzy in the cryptocurrency space, to begin with. Coinbase after all, is mainly responsible for the long period of time in which Bitcoin network transaction fees were incredibly high and Bitcoin transactions were incredibly slow. At the time, 40% of all Bitcoin network traffic moved through Coinbase.
They were one of the few exchanges to not implement Segwit, which drastically increased the efficiency of the network. In effect, due to their overwhelming centralized control, they held the entire network back from its full potential. Cryptocurrency (and Bitcoin in particular) was designed as a force of decentralization, yet as it becomes more mainstream, we should genuinely consider where trusting its future to centralized entities defeats the point.
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People tend to ignore just how rich and active the developer ecosystem for Ethereum actually is. The developer ecosystem is so rich, you have many people tackling the current big weakness of Ethereum. They also have the ambitious vision of blockchain scaling without any compromises with decentralization.
Thanks to Ethereum’s active developer community, we have creative solutions to the scalability problem being implemented.
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VanEck and SolidX Partners Inc. have filed a request to list a Bitcoin-based exchange-traded fund (ETF) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Bloomberg reports June 6.
VanEck is an NYC-based investment management firm with $38 bln under management and SolidX is a provider of blockchain software development and financial services.
According to a report by Bloomberg, the request filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is for a fund that is physically-backed, meaning it will hold actual Bitcoins. The firms bringing the request say that this will protect against the loss or theft of the cryptocurrency.
The SEC has held a strict attitude when it comes to ETFs (exchange-traded funds) involving cryptocurrencies, rejecting the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust ETF last year and asking about a dozen applications to be withdrawn in January.
SolidX CEO Daniel H. Gallancy said in a phone interview with Bloomberg that he thinks that “regulators are concerned right now about having an ETF that is available to retail investors,” and added that this attitude will change over time, “but right now a good place to start is with a product geared purely toward institutional investors.”
If their request is approved, Bloomberg reports that the share price of the fund will be around $200,000 in order to target institutional investors — significantly higher than most ETFs which have traditionally focused on individual investors.
The approval of a Bitcoin ETF is considered the holy grail of mainstream financial acceptance of cryptocurrency by some and major players like Huobi — the third largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume — are launching ETFs of their own.
An approved Bitcoin ETF would function as an investment vehicle that tracks the value of the underlying asset (the price of Bitcoin, in this case) and could be traded during the working hours of a stock exchange, making investments into Bitcoin simpler and less risky for mainstream customers.
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 On June 6, 2018, Spotcoin will open a pre-token sale whitelist, which begins at 18:00 (UTC +4). Slots are limited to 1,250 participants on a first-come, first-serve basis. Those who successfully apply, will receive a 20% discount on SPOT tokens, and will not be subject to a lockup period. The pre-token sale has a hardcap of 2.5 million SPOT tokens, which will be sold at a price of $0.40 USD per token. Spotcoin has limited the minimum investment to $1,000, and the maximum to $50,000 per participant. Those selected will be able to participate using Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), NEO, GAS, SIBCoin (SIB), or with the Euro (€). For information on how to register for the pre-token sale whitelist, visit the article below: https://medium.com/spotcoin/spotcoin-pre-ico-whitelist-opens-june-6th-at-18-00h-gmt-utc-4-5b5866844a31For more information about Spotcoin visit one of the links below.  Spotcoin Link FacebookGitHubLinkedInMediumRedditTelegramTwitterWebsiteWhite PaperYouTube |
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Talk to an average person, and 9.9 times out of 10, they’ll have no idea what blockchain is, with the exception of maybe Bitcoin. If they do know, it’s surface level details at best.
When a trend emerges, some people don’t want to wait to see how things play out — especially when there’s money to be made. Perhaps this story can be an example:
Remember the massive excitement Bitcoin last year? Speculative investment exploded. As the price soared, it gained public appeal. And legitimacy. And a lot of people made a lot of money, very fast.
Then the price dropped by 50%.
By the time Bitcoin’s value plummeted, it seemed like most people had lost faith. But that “lost faith” reaction really only happened among those who had jumped into space at the last minute, hoping to enjoy Bitcoin’s climb. People with knowledge of blockchain and cryptocurrencies saw this coming— in some way, shape, or form. Active participants in the emerging industry were hardly surprised by the plummet in price that followed. These are “growing pains” that arise with any new technology.
Unfortunately, that patience was not widespread. Many people who jumped into the industry looking to make a quick buck ended up jumping back out at its lowest slump. They chalked their ill-timed participation as the fault of blockchain being a “trend,” opposed to looking at the long-term nature of what it means to build something globally impactful — and the rising (and falling) tides that come with such a massive undertaking.
This is why, as markets begin to recover (and they already have), and new variations of blockchain technology cement themselves into our everyday lives, everyone from general consumers to high-profile investors need to have a firm understanding of the tech.
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Widely followed cryptocurrency start-up Ripple is shelling out millions to some top universities to speed up adoption of blockchain technology.
The company announced a partnership with 17 schools Monday, including the University of North Carolina, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania. Through the "University Blockchain Research Initiative" program, Ripple will donate $50 million for research and development in blockchain, cryptocurrency and digital payments.
The donation is in dollars and not the cryptocurrency, the company said.
"As globalization increases, so does the demand for technological solutions and talent to solve the world's hardest financial problems, such as retail remittances," Eric van Miltenburg, Ripple's SVP of business operations, said in an email.
The company said the initiative was launched in part because of a demand for jobs. More than 4,500 job openings with the terms "blockchain" or "cryptocurrency" were posted on LinkedIn last year, Ripple said, a 150 percent increase from a year earlier.
Blockchain is the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. While there are countless uses for that technology, Ripple's focus is on real-time transaction settlements for banks. It has announced partnerships with U.S. money transfer giants MoneyGram and Western Union as well as American Express and Santander.
Ripple is officially the name of the San Francisco-based company, which is developing a network for faster global financial payments. XRP is the name of the digital token that financial institutions on the network can use to transact quickly.
Some university research and projects will involve Ripple's technology and the cryptocurrency XRP but it is not a requirement, the company said.
The cryptocurrency was trading near 65 cents Monday, according to CoinDesk. XRP is one of the worst performing digital currencies in 2018, down more than 70 percent year to date.
Ripple owns about 60 billion of the 100 billion XRP ever made, bringing its market cap based on Monday's price and its holdings alone close to $39 billion.
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What is The Viva Network
BTCViva Network is a decentralized ecosystem that connects mortgage borrowers with global investors in an unlimited, blockchain-secured cloud platform. Viva's innovative technology employs the Ethereum smart contract to secure and secure personal home loans into Fractionalized Mortgage Shares (FMS) that can be easily purchased and sold on the Viva FMS Exchange application.
Using Fractionalized Mortgage Shares, Viva Network allows investors to crowdfund home buyer mortgages from anywhere in the world, making the process faster and easier for home buyers. With the ability to access the free market efficiently, both parties will now be able to take advantage of international interest rate arbitrage and earn lower mortgage interest rates and higher return on investment.
Viva Network should all happen seamlessly on the Viva Platform, an application that provides access to exclusive, innovative and first-to-market networking applications designed to boost and revolutionize the mortgage financing process. The Viva Network platform will consist of applications that will continue to evolve, upgrade and update to meet end-user needs and preferences over time. Viva uses proprietary technology, smart contracts, and crawling that will allow home buyers to earn home loans with fiat currency. Unlimited and decentralized home loan financing would eliminate the need to rely on intermediaries such as banks and other financial intermediaries. |
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