BTC holds around $8700 as market takes a breather

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After the price action of yesterday took Bitcoin past an important resistance level and up towards $9000, the last 24 hours have been much quieter. It's currently trading at $8680 on Binance, although the last few hours have seen increasingly higher lows, so we could be set for another test of the $8900 level within the next 24 hours.

Most of the top 10 cryptos have seen losses, after yesterday's impressive double-digit performances. After a solid performance yesterday, Holo (HOT) has seen huge gains in the last 24 hours.

Japanese Cryptocurrency Exchanges Opening Twice More New Accounts Since March

It’s no secret that the trading volumes of exchanges remain high in bull markets and low in bear markets. Traders across the world decrease their trading frequencies during bear markets, and increase them during bull markets. According to some recent reports published by Japanese media, the cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan have observed a 200% rise in the number of new accounts being opened with them over the course of last two months.

They compiled their report based on the data collected from 3 trading platforms: Coincheck, DMM Bitcoin and Bitpoint. Daily account openings on Bitpoint are thrice more in May than they were in March, and at DMM they’re 1.5 times more than they were in April. Coincheck has also seen an increase in new account openings since March, but its increase is not as significant as that of DMM and Bitpoint.

However, collectively the number of new account openings on all these platforms are 2x more than they were about 2 months ago. The company said that the highest jump in the number of new accounts being opened came recently on 14th of May. That day 7x more new accounts were registered in comparison to other days.

Seoul To Put Its Citizen Cards On Blockchain for Its 26M Population

Local South Korean news outlet, Queen, reports that the capital city of Seoul will launch a blockchain-based citizen card as a part of its smart city initiative. Mayor Park Won-soon announced the blockchain initiative at the Korea Future Forum 2019 & Blockchain Tech Show. Won-soon acknowledged that many new technologies could bring great benefits and that it had many applications, some of which have already been implemented in South Korea – such as in an e-voting system that uses blockchain.

One of the global issues today is smart city, which uses innovative technology to lead the future society such as block chian, big data and AI…we will implement a blockchain integrated authentication system in Seoul’s citizen card and expand the base for easy access to various administrative services. We will do our best to enhance citizen’s utilization rate and convenience through linkage with ZeroPay. Identity services based on blockchain are going in popularity.

Microsoft recently announced that it would be building a decentralized identity service called ION on top of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Bittrex transfers 6,999,999 XRP to Upbit amid Ripple’s alleged report discrepancies

Most coins in the cryptocurrency market have been undergoing a series of ups and downs, impacting the prices of the cryptocurrencies. However, XRP, the third largest cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap was the only coin not undergoing any significant price change since the beginning of the year. However, the crypto-world has been seeing numerous fund movement and these funds are large in number and two such transactions were noted on Whale Alert’s Twitter handle recently.

A sum of 6,999,999 XRP was transferred from Bittrex’s Exchange wallet address to Upbit’s Exchange wallet address to the details of the transactions, the fund was moved on Saturday, May 18 at 09:25:22 UTC. Other details of the transaction are as given below: The Bittrex exchange had carried out another transaction on the same day, where it transferred 9,999,999 BTC worth $3,712,226 USD to Upbit. According to transaction details, this transaction took place before the aforementioned transaction on May 18 at 09:24:52 UTC.

The details of the transaction are as given below: This could be a mere transfer of token, however, the recent events with Ripple have raised some red flags within the community. According to a recent report from CoinMetrics, there were discrepancies in Ripple’s Q3 report of 2018 and Q1 report of 2019. The report stated: However, Ripple’s CTO David Schwartz  denied these claims and said:

Huobi To Host Special Sale On Bitcoin Pizza Day

May 18, 2019 18:30nbspUTC | Updated: May 18, 2019 at 18:30nbspUTC BynbspRushali Shome Leading blockchain firm Huobi Global is all set to celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day on the 22nd of this month with a variety of initiatives. In honour of the day, Huobi will also host a sale where Bitcoin will be sold at discounted prices, with nearly half the market price being slashed off. This will be the ninth Bitcoin Pizza Day after Florida-based programmer Laszlo Hanyecz went down in history on May 22nd, 2010 for buying two Bitcoins for 10,000 Bitcoins.

In light of this interesting purchase, Bitcoin Pizza Day has been a well-loved tradition within the crypto community. Livio Weng, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Huobi Global, has said that Bitcoin Pizza Day is basically being celebrated as Prime Day by Huobi in 2019. He elaborated on how the idea for the celebration came about and said: “Things started as a joke that we were going to list Bitcoin through Prime but then I kept thinking, what better way to mark Prime 3 and celebrate Pizza Day?.

Huobi’s Pizza Day promo will have Bitcoins worth 1.5 million USDT being offered at special discounts. There will be two rounds, the first beginning at 18:00 hours (GMT+8) of 22nd May, where 20% of the total supply of Bitcoin will be sold at 50% off the market price. The second round will see a 20% discount on the remaining Bitcoins.

These 13 Bitcoin Lightning Network Upgrades Will Solve Its ‘Biggest’ Hurdles

The Bitcoin Lightning Network will overcome some of its “biggest hurdles to use” in the near future as new features roll out from developers. As Bitcoinist has frequently reported over the past year, Lightning represents the ‘next level’ of payments using Bitcoin, and is widely considered to be the way in which the largest cryptocurrency will scale up to meet the needs of billions of future users. Looking forward, Swann presented a list of no fewer than thirteen upcoming improvements to Lightning which he says will boost its mainstream appeal.

The basis for the list came from a blog post by Bitcoin business Bitrefill, which offers a range of products and services payable using Lightning. Top on the list for Swann was Atomic Multipath Payments (AMPs) – or breaking a single payment down into several smaller ones, and sending them over multiple Lightning channels. As Bitcoinist reported last year, despite its rapid growth, the vast majority of Lightning payments worth more than several US cents failed.

Activity is gathering pace, however, and soon for example, Lightning will offer not just major efficiency gains for Bitcoin users, but those of other coins at the same time – via Atomic Swaps. The full list is as follows: As Bitcoinist reported, despite its technical level, Lightning gained significant publicity in 2019 thanks mainly to a public outreach project by Bitcoin user Hodlonaut. A form of transaction relay, the project, Lightning Torch, raised money for the plight of Venezuela’s citizens using Bitcoin, ultimately seeing participation from well-known figures both within and outside the cryptocurrency industry.

Bitcoin [BTC] transaction fees rise significantly despite fall in prices

published by Nelson cromwell @ Olleux.io

Although the bears were ravaging the crypto-market, the daily average transaction fee for Bitcoin shot up to $4.02 per transaction on May 17, 2019. This was the first time since February 2018 that the per block transaction fee had touched $4. A tweet by LongHash stated that the per block transaction fee was recorded to be $4.13.

The three-block fee was $3.81 per transaction and the six-block fee was $3.58 per transaction. The reason for this increase in transaction fees was attributed to BTC’s bullish rally and a number of unconfirmed transactions. As Bitcoin [BTC] crossed the $8,000-mark, the number of unconfirmed transactions also piled up.

The number of unconfirmed transactions reached 55,243 and the mempool size was 39,576,560 bytes, at press time. Another reason why the transaction fee spiked was the recent dip in Bitcoin prices. A similar congestion issue was seen during the Bitcoin frenzy of 2017, when the transaction fee was at an all-time-high of $37.49 per transaction.

Bitcoin (BTC) Could Peak At $80,000 If Crypto’s Cyclicality Persists

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 Published 29 minutes ago, by Nick Chong
ethereumworldnews.com 

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Bitcoin Could Rally By 2,400% From The Bottom As Bitcoin has returned over the past few days, many have been left asking where the cryptocurrency market could top. Level’s Josh Rager notes that over Bitcoin’s three completed cycles, the trough to peak gains decreased by around 80% each time, which is a concept defined by the law of diminishing returns. Of course, this isn’t a majority, but it shows that there are many traders in this market that don’t expect for Bitcoin to follow historical trends of diminishing marginal returns to an exact tee.

Others have also speculated that the next peak in the cryptocurrency market will result in much higher prices for Bitcoin than $80,000. As Ethereum World News reported previously, Galaxy, claims that Bitcoin’s current monthly chart looks eerily similar to that seen in late-2015, when BTC finally began to embark on a rally yet again. This is notable, as the last time BTC’s chart structure looked as it did now (a massive green candle after ~one year of selling pressure), what followed was a 6,500% price surge in a two-year time frame.

As reported by Ethereum World News in early-March, crypto personality $carface notes that if BTC continues to follow its multi-year trends of boom and bust, the asset could appreciate to $102,000 to $336,000 if it follows historical trends of rallying 5.1 to 16.89 times higher than its previous peak. As Filb Filb, a popular trader and researcher, explained in an extensive Twitter thread posted near December’s bottom, if BTC’s supply is issued on schedule, if crypto adoption follows that of the Internet’s, and if debt continues to increase, Bitcoin could easily see six figures by 2021, not decades down the line. Moreover, some are sure that in the next couple of years and decades, Bitcoin will begin to absorb some of gold’s market capitalization, which sits at $8 trillion.

Binance says operations will resume tomorrow

The CEO of Binance, Chengpeng Zhao has publicly announced that despite the security breach that occurred on the Binance platform yesterday, the exchange will renew its operations first thing tomorrow. This is, unfortunately, not the first time that Binance has been hacked. Binance has already suffered from the lower trading volume, being down by more than 24%.

Although Binance’s shutdown for today was in order to prevent any withdrawals or deposits from the hackers, it was still a major misstep from the company. But the idea has since been scrapped and Binance is now back to square one. However, as much as the strategy may have seemed like a paragon of liberty, the community was massively against it, seeing how too much power for the miners could spiral out of control and lead to not only BTC falling further in price, but also dragging Binance Coin with it as well.

Binance is one of the most popular crypto exchanges, that much simply cannot be doubted. But now that traders don’t have the option to constantly trade Bitcoin on Binance, the coin has calmed down a bit and is hovering between the $7,000 and $7,300 price points. Whether or not Bitcoin falls into another bear market, depends solely on Binance’s capabilities of improving the situation and either retrieving the API keys or blocking them completely.

Bitcoin Will Make 5% of Earth’s Market Share in Four Years: Billionaire VC Tim Draper BY JULIA SAKOVICH

ON SATURDAY, MAY 11TH, 2019 11:17AM UTC LEAVE A COMMENT

According to Tim Draper, Bitcoin will continue growing and in a couple of years will have a 5% world’s market share.

Photo: Shutterstock

While over the previous year some investors were gradually losing their belief in the bright future for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, serial VC investor Tim Draper has always been rather confident in his optimistic predictions. And just recently he has reaffirmed his positive vision. According to him, by 2023 Bitcoin will have won a 5% market share of the entire world.

Future of Bitcoin

Some people may say that Draper has his head stuck in the clouds with his predictions. Let us remind you that in February when the Bitcoin price was even really very far away from the record $20,000 height as BTC was traded for lower than $4,000, he insisted that in 2022 the coin would be traded for at least $250,000.

Nevertheless, Tim Draper was not going to change his opinion even at that time without mentioning the current moment when it looks like that the white stripe for Bitcoin has begun. At the time of writing the coin is traded for   $6813.31 having gained 8.06% over the last 24 hours and Draper believes that the price growth will continue.

Bitcoin Will Make 5% of Earth’s Market Share in Four Years: Billionaire VC Tim Draper BY JULIA SAKOVICH

ON SATURDAY, MAY 11TH, 2019 11:17AM UTC LEAVE A COMMENT

According to Tim Draper, Bitcoin will continue growing and in a couple of years will have a 5% world’s market share.

Photo: Shutterstock

While over the previous year some investors were gradually losing their belief in the bright future for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, serial VC investor Tim Draper has always been rather confident in his optimistic predictions. And just recently he has reaffirmed his positive vision. According to him, by 2023 Bitcoin will have won a 5% market share of the entire world.

Future of Bitcoin

Some people may say that Draper has his head stuck in the clouds with his predictions. Let us remind you that in February when the Bitcoin price was even really very far away from the record $20,000 height as BTC was traded for lower than $4,000, he insisted that in 2022 the coin would be traded for at least $250,000.

Nevertheless, Tim Draper was not going to change his opinion even at that time without mentioning the current moment when it looks like that the white stripe for Bitcoin has begun. At the time of writing the coin is traded for   $6813.31 having gained 8.06% over the last 24 hours and Draper believes that the price growth will continue.

Crypto market daily report – May 7, 2019

The cryptocurrency markets continued to show rises over the past 24 hours with Bitcoin Core (BTC) going up by around 5% to touch the $5,950 mark at press time on Tuesday. However, the real riser of the pack was the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Ethereum (ETH), which was up by no less than 11% to reach the $179 mark at press time, and, with turnover rising considerably, it looked poised for further gains in the short to medium term. Bitcoin SV(BSV) remained relatively flat at the $53 level where it seems to have found a bottom.

Although the increase was across the board, some currencies were slower to rise with for example Ripple only exhibiting a 2.5% increase to the $0.305 level. Litecoin (LTC) and EOS practically reversed all the losses of the past few days and were up by 6% and 7% respectively to the $77 and $4.97 levels with the latter appearing primed to move over the $5 mark. NEO also recovered with a 5% increase to soar over the $9.30 level, whilst Stellar (XLM) was up by a more conservative 3% to the $0.098 mark and appeared to be moving towards regaining the $0.10 threshold. IOTA and Cardano (ADA) were also in the green by 5% each to rub off some of the losses of the past few days. 

Smaller market cap coins also saw some considerable increases in some cases. LINK was up by a considerable 18% to the $0.60 level, whilst ZIL and IOST also posted some impressive gains with increases of 9% and 7% respectively. Ethereum Classic (ETC) was also up by around 6% to the $5.90 level with ONT posting a similar gain. ATOM recovered some of its past losses and posted an 8% gain to the $4.95 level, whilst VET and ICX posted similar 5% gains.

By William Suberg Cryptocurrency and Smart Contracts Will For Sure Enter Into Society, Says Senior UK Lawyer 219 56 2:10 Cryptocurrency and Smart Contracts Will For Sure Enter Into Society, Says Senior UK LawyerNEWS

One of the United Kingdom’s most senior lawyers said in a speech on May 2 that cryptocurrency and smart contract use will inevitably begin, but regulations are needed.

Addressing the University of Liverpool School of Law and the Northern Chancery Bar Association, Sir Geoffery Vos, Chancellor of the High Court, dedicated time to exploring necessary changes in order for smart contracts and crypto assets to become widespread.

“My starting point is to ask why smart contracts have taken so long to become ubiquitous,” he began. Vos continued:

“We have been discussing how and when they may take over the world of mainstream financial services for several years. Yet, they seem never to make that breakthrough into reality.”

Vos has revealed himself to be an advocate of technological reform in the legal sector, noting in a 2018 speech that the U.K. legal system was primed to cope with innovation.

This week’s pitch repeated that idea, with Vos advocating the fact that the use of smart contracts was a matter of when, not if.

“We should, therefore, be looking to identify and, if necessary, remove any fundamental legal impediment to the use of smart contracts,” he stated. Vos added:  

“We should try to avoid the creation of a new legal and regulatory regime that will discourage the use of new technologies rather than provide the foundation for them to flourish.”

Speaking about cryptocurrency directly, Vos meanwhile gave a stronger indication that its presence in society would only grow, rather than move to the sidelines.

US Citizens Can Now Accept Federal or State Tax Refunds in Bitcoin (BTC)

By Dalmas Ngetich 

 

May 3, 2019

Tax season is here, and it’s time once more, to sharpen those pencils and go through the IRS’s mountains of forms. While Amazon pulled in $11.2 billion as profit in profit in 2018 is going to pay zero in federal taxes, every Bitcoin investor is expected to pay the taxman or face the law.

Celebrities Impact the Cryptocurrency Industry Positively

The current digital marketing industry is very receptive to celebrities. The brands are aware of this fact and use celebrities to disrupt the markets and capture the attention of their target customers. The cryptocurrency industry has not being left behind with millions being pumped into the industry by renowned celebrities including musicians and actors.

Some of the celebrated people who have invested bulk amounts of cultural capital in terms of goodwill, interest, and public respect are Steven Seagal, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Lionel Messi and the list continues. They are mostly used to capture the attention of the public when a cryptocurrency company as an initial coin offering or introduces new digital currencies.